10 ms·

They would probably be better off just giving the inmates 250k a pop and asking them to stay out of trouble.

by mrbadideas 5y ago

nashalo_nighly 5y ago
Ever heard about the cobra effect?
- rektide 5y ago
  I had. British India payed people to hunt & turn in Cobras & people of course started breeding Cobras[1] to collect money on them. None the less, it sucks a lot that society is basically punching itself in the face to punish & scar people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Society is spending a lot of money (far too much money) to keep dangerous people outside of society. That New York can't do this competently or cost-effectively does not mean that society would be better off if these people were put back on the street. A larger question is whether anyone can warehouse prisoners cost effectively. That's when you start thinking about exile, banishment to a remote island, or other mechanisms of expelling dangerous/undesirable people without actually locking them up in a small room for years. This latter point is indeed not necessary to protect society and seems to be unnecessarily costly. The problem is that no other society is likely to accept New York's criminal classes -- we have run out of Australias. In a world without Australias, another option might be to pay some other country to take them, revoking their US citizenship and preventing re-entry for a certain number of years equal to the time of their sentence (or permanently in the case of murder). That would be much cheaper than keeping them in prison, and I'm sure you could find a number of countries willing to take them for 10% of what New York spends per year, as many nations have a GDP per capita far less than 50K/year, and would even be able to furnish a decent quality of life for half that and keep the rest for themselves.
    - torgian 5y ago
      There's a sci-fi novel I read recently that puts criminals on islands that are inaccessible by any means other than air. The worst sentences are sent there for life in exile, to fend for themselves. Other lesser crimes are kept in your normal prison.
    - goldcd 5y ago
      My take is that a lot of the people jailed, aren't that dangerous. Issues with Education, Mental Health, Crappy Families, Substance abuse etc all seem to wash up in the criminal justice system - like somebody being lazy with their exception handling. If I had to guess why it's not working, it's that every cog in the system is doing the job they've been asked to do (police are arresting, prosecutors are sentencing, jailers are filling shiny jails etc). There's no single person responsible for the system, who's in a position to change it. You'd think a politician might try - but all opposing sides will take a pop at 'soft on crime' if they try. Mercy/Pragmatism doesn't play well. Similar to those giant soviet factories - there's one way to do it, it's always been done this way and each worker will add a cog to keep those shitty tractors coming off the production line. Nobody will be rewarded for solving the problem. Actually, maybe that's the answer - free-market rehabilitation. At sentencing put fulfilment of sentence out to tender - with cash payable on results. 50% up front, then 10% a year after release until they re-offend (or die).
    - asymptosis 5y ago
      > keep dangerous people outside of society This kind of assumption about prisoners is unhelpful. Not everyone who goes to jail is "dangerous". Laws are made based on the lowest common denominator, not universal demarcations between goodies vs baddies. Ex-con here, got in trouble about a decade ago (non-violent crime) when I was in my early 30s. Did my year inside and didn't even get into any fights. Turns out most prisoners are actually fairly reasonable if you don't go causing trouble with them. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, that's all you have to do. I kind of found prison beneficial, in that it gave me time to reflect on how I had been shooting myself in the foot, and what I should do to be a better person in future. And I haven't been in any trouble since leaving. But was it the optimal way for me to learn the lessons I needed to learn? I'm not sure about the answer to that question, but I can tell you what would have been a really stupid idea: pack me off to some corrupt 3rd world country for a year without easy ways for friends and family to visit me and support my transition back out into the community after release.
LouisSayers 5y ago
It'd certainly be a good experiment
undefined1 5y ago
Andrew Yang made a related point about the $1k/month Freedom Dividend (UBI). if you're in prison, you don't get it. more incentive to stay out and easier given the guaranteed income of at least $1k/mo.
- jMyles 5y ago
  I don't recall Yang making that specific point; I'm interested in a link if you have one handy. It seems awful to me to give the state an even greater incentive to enslave people, and also deeply inequitable to incarcerated folks, given that so few even had a trial.
  - conro1108 5y ago
    Does it really incentivize the state to incarcerate more people? Surely it costs more than 1k/month to keep someone in prison even in more cost-efficient locales.
    - mushbino 5y ago
      Honestly, it depends on where the added up $1k/month is going.
    - jMyles 5y ago
      The state obviously already has incentives to create pools of extremely cheap labor. Saving $1,000 is not much extra I'll grant, but it's still an additional incentive in the wrong direction.
  - TheRealSteel 5y ago
    The whole point of the article is they were spending ~42,000$ per month per inmate. If they were instead spending 1,000$ per month per person, they could afford to be paying that to ten times as many people and still be spending a quarter of what they are now. Plus with the added bonus of (hopefully) less crime. I'm not claiming those numbers are accurate, but as presented, it's a saving to keep people out of jail, not a cost. Besides, right now there's obviously a financial incentive to keep people out of jail, yet here we are, with the US having the highest portion of their population in jail of any country in the world. The financial incentive to the state obviously isn't working now.
pxeboot 5y ago
> They would probably be better off just giving the inmates 250k a pop and asking them to stay out of trouble. Wouldn't that just encourage more people to commit crimes so they could get a large check themselves?
dragonwriter 5y ago
> They would probably be better off just giving the inmates 250k a pop and asking them to stay out of trouble. Doing this preemptively in at-risk-of-offense groups has been a serious thing. [0] Specifically targeting convicted offenders is problematic since it creates an incentive to commit a first offense to qualify. [0] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/should-we-pay-people-not-to-commit-crime/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/should-we-pay-people-not-...
fctorial 5y ago
So you want to reward criminals for crimes.

They would probably be better off just giving the inmates 250k a pop and asking them to stay out of trouble.

nashalo_nighly 5y ago

Ever heard about the cobra effect?

rektide 5y ago
I had. British India payed people to hunt & turn in Cobras & people of course started breeding Cobras[1] to collect money on them. None the less, it sucks a lot that society is basically punching itself in the face to punish & scar people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Society is spending a lot of money (far too much money) to keep dangerous people outside of society. That New York can't do this competently or cost-effectively does not mean that society would be better off if these people were put back on the street. A larger question is whether anyone can warehouse prisoners cost effectively. That's when you start thinking about exile, banishment to a remote island, or other mechanisms of expelling dangerous/undesirable people without actually locking them up in a small room for years. This latter point is indeed not necessary to protect society and seems to be unnecessarily costly. The problem is that no other society is likely to accept New York's criminal classes -- we have run out of Australias. In a world without Australias, another option might be to pay some other country to take them, revoking their US citizenship and preventing re-entry for a certain number of years equal to the time of their sentence (or permanently in the case of murder). That would be much cheaper than keeping them in prison, and I'm sure you could find a number of countries willing to take them for 10% of what New York spends per year, as many nations have a GDP per capita far less than 50K/year, and would even be able to furnish a decent quality of life for half that and keep the rest for themselves.
  - torgian 5y ago
    There's a sci-fi novel I read recently that puts criminals on islands that are inaccessible by any means other than air. The worst sentences are sent there for life in exile, to fend for themselves. Other lesser crimes are kept in your normal prison.
  - goldcd 5y ago
    My take is that a lot of the people jailed, aren't that dangerous. Issues with Education, Mental Health, Crappy Families, Substance abuse etc all seem to wash up in the criminal justice system - like somebody being lazy with their exception handling. If I had to guess why it's not working, it's that every cog in the system is doing the job they've been asked to do (police are arresting, prosecutors are sentencing, jailers are filling shiny jails etc). There's no single person responsible for the system, who's in a position to change it. You'd think a politician might try - but all opposing sides will take a pop at 'soft on crime' if they try. Mercy/Pragmatism doesn't play well. Similar to those giant soviet factories - there's one way to do it, it's always been done this way and each worker will add a cog to keep those shitty tractors coming off the production line. Nobody will be rewarded for solving the problem. Actually, maybe that's the answer - free-market rehabilitation. At sentencing put fulfilment of sentence out to tender - with cash payable on results. 50% up front, then 10% a year after release until they re-offend (or die).
  - asymptosis 5y ago
    > keep dangerous people outside of society This kind of assumption about prisoners is unhelpful. Not everyone who goes to jail is "dangerous". Laws are made based on the lowest common denominator, not universal demarcations between goodies vs baddies. Ex-con here, got in trouble about a decade ago (non-violent crime) when I was in my early 30s. Did my year inside and didn't even get into any fights. Turns out most prisoners are actually fairly reasonable if you don't go causing trouble with them. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, that's all you have to do. I kind of found prison beneficial, in that it gave me time to reflect on how I had been shooting myself in the foot, and what I should do to be a better person in future. And I haven't been in any trouble since leaving. But was it the optimal way for me to learn the lessons I needed to learn? I'm not sure about the answer to that question, but I can tell you what would have been a really stupid idea: pack me off to some corrupt 3rd world country for a year without easy ways for friends and family to visit me and support my transition back out into the community after release.

LouisSayers 5y ago

It'd certainly be a good experiment

undefined1 5y ago

Andrew Yang made a related point about the $1k/month Freedom Dividend (UBI). if you're in prison, you don't get it. more incentive to stay out and easier given the guaranteed income of at least $1k/mo.

jMyles 5y ago
I don't recall Yang making that specific point; I'm interested in a link if you have one handy. It seems awful to me to give the state an even greater incentive to enslave people, and also deeply inequitable to incarcerated folks, given that so few even had a trial.
- conro1108 5y ago
  Does it really incentivize the state to incarcerate more people? Surely it costs more than 1k/month to keep someone in prison even in more cost-efficient locales.
  - mushbino 5y ago
    Honestly, it depends on where the added up $1k/month is going.
  - jMyles 5y ago
    The state obviously already has incentives to create pools of extremely cheap labor. Saving $1,000 is not much extra I'll grant, but it's still an additional incentive in the wrong direction.
- TheRealSteel 5y ago
  The whole point of the article is they were spending ~42,000$ per month per inmate. If they were instead spending 1,000$ per month per person, they could afford to be paying that to ten times as many people and still be spending a quarter of what they are now. Plus with the added bonus of (hopefully) less crime. I'm not claiming those numbers are accurate, but as presented, it's a saving to keep people out of jail, not a cost. Besides, right now there's obviously a financial incentive to keep people out of jail, yet here we are, with the US having the highest portion of their population in jail of any country in the world. The financial incentive to the state obviously isn't working now.

pxeboot 5y ago

> They would probably be better off just giving the inmates 250k a pop and asking them to stay out of trouble. Wouldn't that just encourage more people to commit crimes so they could get a large check themselves?

dragonwriter 5y ago

> They would probably be better off just giving the inmates 250k a pop and asking them to stay out of trouble. Doing this preemptively in at-risk-of-offense groups has been a serious thing. [0] Specifically targeting convicted offenders is problematic since it creates an incentive to commit a first offense to qualify. [0] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/should-we-pay-people-not-to-commit-crime/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/should-we-pay-people-not-...

fctorial 5y ago

So you want to reward criminals for crimes.