Crime and Punishment

[warpus]

But I guess those cost are much lower than the direct incarceration cost of for example the US, not to mention the follow up cost and other social, education and human damage.

There are a bunch of for profit prisons in the U.S. too, and they have contracts with the state or municipality or whatever that mandate by law how many people have to be in the jail. So the state/municipality/whatever is obligated to provide those prisoners, so they might not have any incentive to not send people to jail for drug use or petty crimes, and might in fact have an incentive to maximize jail use

Where? That hasn't been the case among adults in the United States.

Portugal, the Netherlands, Colorado

Give it some time and one day most of those teens in Colorado should be adults

 

[W|M]

Even in non-private prisons, slave labour is legal in US prisons, which, from the perspective of the state, makes it worthwhile to fill prisons up as much as possible to gain as much free labour as possible

 

[BvBPL]

Portugal, the Netherlands, Colorado

Give it some time and one day most of those teens in Colorado should be adults

Colorado has shown an increase in adult use.

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/06/study_more_oregon_college_stud.html
http://www.denverpost.com/2014/12/2...-in-colorado-according-to-new-federal-survey/

Also, the rate of opiate use in Colorado following marijuana legalization is conflicting: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/06/opioids_hospitalizations_emerg.html

 

[Borachio]

Even in non-private prisons, slave labour is legal in US prisons, which, from the perspective of the state, makes it worthwhile to fill prisons up as much as possible to gain as much free labour as possible

Hmm. I wonder if the figures show that this is an economically sound thing to do.

I can see that it makes sense to recoup some of the costs of incarcerating people by exploiting their labour. But, as far as I know, running a prison is a very expensive and labour-intensive undertaking.

Far more sensible to just employ people, pay them a wage, and let them look after themselves, I would think.

But if you have the figures to prove me wrong...

Do the private prisons get paid by the government as well as using free labour (as I expect)? Or are they completely self-sufficient (proving me totally wrong)?

 

[warpus]

Colorado has shown an increase in adult use.

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/06/study_more_oregon_college_stud.html
http://www.denverpost.com/2014/12/2...-in-colorado-according-to-new-federal-survey/

Also, the rate of opiate use in Colorado following marijuana legalization is conflicting: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/06/opioids_hospitalizations_emerg.html

It's only been legalized recently. If usage goes down in most other places years after legalization, then judging by the usage patterns of teens in Colorado it seems it would make sense that it'd go down there for adults eventually too.

But I mean, it's totally possible that Colorado is a weird outlier and everyone there is a clone of Snoop Dogg or whatever, or maybe they are counting weed tourists from other states in their numbers

 

[BvBPL]

Colorado is certainly an outlier.

 

[Lexicus]

Also, the rate of opiate use in Colorado following marijuana legalization is conflicting: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/06/opioids_hospitalizations_emerg.html

The study discussed in that article doesn't claim that opioid hospitalizations skyrocketed after marijuana legalization - it claims that they increased a lot from 2005 to 2014, which is pretty unsurprising.

 

[Flying Pig]

Even in non-private prisons, slave labour is legal in US prisons, which, from the perspective of the state, makes it worthwhile to fill prisons up as much as possible to gain as much free labour as possible

Given that the average prisoner is 'paid' $28,000 in the cost of running the prison, and it can go up to $40,000, they would be much better off just employing people. Not to mention that most work done in prisons is actually for the upkeep of the prison itself, or else light manufacturing (apparently a good chunk of the US's numberplates are made in a prison) that can almost certainly be done more efficiently by highly-mechanised private companies. The point of prison labour is (charitably) to teach prisoners skills and the value of hard work, and to give them something meaningful and positive to do, or (less charitably) to prevent 'idle hands' and to make being in prison less pleasant. You could point out that prisoners working for private companies (as here) shifts the cost of their work from the company to the state, but that's not really in the state's interest. It would be far more efficient for the state to hire people and subcontract them for free, effectively just paying the employees' wages.

Essentially, arguing that the US government is trying to run its own slave system also means arguing that it's not very good at running a slave system.

 

[Kyriakos]

Axe-murdering a pawn-shop owner and her sister = a couple of years in Siberia

 

[W|M]

Hmm. I wonder if the figures show that this is an economically sound thing to do.

I can see that it makes sense to recoup some of the costs of incarcerating people by exploiting their labour. But, as far as I know, running a prison is a very expensive and labour-intensive undertaking.

Far more sensible to just employ people, pay them a wage, and let them look after themselves, I would think.

But if you have the figures to prove me wrong...

Do the private prisons get paid by the government as well as using free labour (as I expect)? Or are they completely self-sufficient (proving me totally wrong)?

Given that the average prisoner is 'paid' $28,000 in the cost of running the prison, and it can go up to $40,000, they would be much better off just employing people. Not to mention that most work done in prisons is actually for the upkeep of the prison itself, or else light manufacturing (apparently a good chunk of the US's numberplates are made in a prison) that can almost certainly be done more efficiently by highly-mechanised private companies. The point of prison labour is (charitably) to teach prisoners skills and the value of hard work, and to give them something meaningful and positive to do, or (less charitably) to prevent 'idle hands' and to make being in prison less pleasant. You could point out that prisoners working for private companies (as here) shifts the cost of their work from the company to the state, but that's not really in the state's interest. It would be far more efficient for the state to hire people and subcontract them for free, effectively just paying the employees' wages.

Essentially, arguing that the US government is trying to run its own slave system also means arguing that it's not very good at running a slave system.

The primary purpose of prisons is to isolate people who commit crimes from society efficiently and in a way that retains a high level of control over them, which means that the costs of feeding, clothing etc. are going to be there regardless. This makes paying a wage completely pointless to the state, since prisoners already have their basic needs provided for anyway, and allows for slave labour to be a secondary purpose of prisons, because since prisoners are ''paid'' $28-40k whether they work or not, the work they do is effectively free, which is cheaper than getting machines to do the labour. Much of the work in prisons is actually agricultural, and you can see this if you visit, say, Angola prison, you'll see thousands of mostly black slaves digging up the soil for white masters; The ideological justification for the use of prison labour is secondary to the more hidden economic justification.

Convict leasing can actually be very profitable for certain states, since the private company is often what provides for the prisoners basic needs, so the state doesn't have to provide them any more, and can get a profit from the private companies paying them too. Even if the private companies just use the labour without paying for the needs of the prisoners, as far as I know they still have to pay the state to use the prisoners, which makes them potentially profitable anyway. Private corporations also tend to be heavily involved in the running of the state, especially with influencing elected officials, which makes it easier for state actors to justify ''giving'' them the labour-power of prisoners.

 

[Borachio]

The primary purpose of prisons <snip>.

All this is true. But it's not what I was objecting to. Which was your original point that the authorities are filling up the prisons in order to have a cheap source of labour.

At least that's what I understood you to be saying.

Even in non-private prisons, slave labour is legal in US prisons, which, from the perspective of the state, makes it worthwhile to fill prisons up as much as possible to gain as much free labour as possible

That, to my mind, is a long way from saying that the authorities are exploiting the prisoners, which they would have anyway, as a means of recouping some of their costs. Which you seem to be saying now.

 

[Berzerker]

The paradox of punishment is that those who are punished are those who the threat of punishment did not deter.

a cage will do a better job

 

[Birdjaguar]

I wonder the extent that the short term pull of addiction outweighs the push of jail as a deterrent. I would think that the need for the next high would easily overcome any thoughts of long term consequences like jail.

 

[Kyriakos]

a cage will do a better job

It actually would. I mean it even turned the lowly ape RatPeter into a sort of human-aspiring ape, in the story by Franz Kafka (A report to an academy)

The main issue with prisons in most countries is that they are breeding grounds for more serious offenses, instead of rehabilitation centers.

 

[Traitorfish]

All of that hinges on finding someone who did something culpably wrong, though. It seems dangerous to go at the problem assuming that there must be someone who can be held up, and then trying to get them. What if, for example, they find that the builders followed regulations to the letter, but the regulations were inadequate? Or that mistakes were made, but below the level of gross negligence? I agree totally that there needs to be accountability, but that's not the same thing as saying that someone in the equation must unquestionably bear criminal responsibility.

It's about more than Grenfell, though. We live in a chronically mismanaged society, and people are long past the point of believing that it's all just down to a series of unhappy coincidences. Whatever the specific details of these case, the sheltering of the rich from accountability has becoming the normal functioning of British law, and people are naturally going to assume that this is the case here unless a special effort is made to prove otherwise.

 

[Akka]

a cage will do a better job

Imprisonment IS punishment. So it would be a better job than what ? Itself ?

 

[Borachio]

Imprisonment doesn't have to be punishment. It could simply be keeping an individual off the streets.

Or it could be holding someone on remand pending trial.

 

[Akka]

 

[Borachio]

Hahaha.

That got you stumped, I see!

 

[Commodore]

The paradox of punishment is that those who are punished are those who the threat of punishment did not deter.

Well, that's why the state then had to make good on that threat. That's just basic escalation of force. First you threaten something, then if that threat doesn't work you do the thing you threatened to do.