I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition.
Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.
Back to the topic, prisons are just another haven for contract robbing. The prison contracts everything from security to mopping. Everything is 3x more expensive. Prison costs are a sink to our society.
Except taxpayers foot the bill. Theres an economic incentive to keeping crime low and right now were all being robbed blind, in this area as well (because yes there are too many to count)
The amount who are released within 5 years with little to no recovery or are going to end up in an even worse state, with even less of an ability to get a job, are more likely to continue to commit crime to make ends meet.
Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be able to contribute to society once they are released.
We have a very protestant implementation of prison, they exist to punish people, not to reabilitate people or address the issues, and everyone ends up paying a higher cost with more damage in the end.
Yes people who are doing serious crimes should be put away, but we know that most of the time thats not the case, and furthemore, we know that alot of serious crimes including rape, have men released within 5 years, while a first time offender selling green could land 15 in prison.
Yes the idea of having a criminal record is silly - It's a self-fulfilling label.
Once you are labeled a criminal, it only makes it harder to get a job and give up crime.
Besides, crime has become such an arbitrary thing.
A corporation is allowed to quietly syphon away billions of dollars from society using clever
government lobbying and tax avoidance schemes but if a member of society physically
steals something from a corporation, they'll go to jail.
Why don't corporations like JP Morgan and their executives get a permanent criminal
record when they are found guilty of criminal activity?
Either it should be consistent for all or it should be abolished entirely.
There are a number of companies that exist with the intended purpose of providing jobs to ex convicts.
The risk that a regular company takes, however, is one of "this individual has done XYZ when times were hard in the past. How can we be sure they won't again?" This is combined with that for many good paying jobs there are more applications than positions allowing for the "filter by felon" to be a not unreasonable first level filter for HR to apply.
I mostly agree that the record makes it harder to get a job and give up crime, but what about the deterrence factor? How many more would commit crimes knowing that it wouldn't have any impact on their ability to get a decent job right after serving some time?
> A corporation is allowed to quietly syphon away billions of dollars from society using clever government lobbying and tax avoidance schemes
Was it society's to begin with?
And you can't completely pin the financial crisis on the likes of JP Morgan when the feds bailed them out with our tax dollars. That was the crime.
But is there really a deterrence factor? Most people don't commit crimes, due to a personal moral code. Those who have morals that don't get in the way of crime, just use the deterrence factor to find ways of not getting caught.
Now what would really help, especially with recidivism, is to use the profit motive of prisons in a different way. First-time offenders-- the prison gets paid full price. If an offender returns to prison, the prison should get paid less, or not at all. That would encourage the private prison system to rehabilitate, and provide post-release re-integration assistance.
Alternatively, there could be a payment based directly on the outcome. Say there is a period in which the ex-con pays back 'restitution', probably based on the crime and length of sentence. During that period the ex-con owes some percentage of their paycheck. That is, this prison makes most of its money from the restitution payments.
This would encourage prisons to also take an active role in finding ex-cons jobs afterwards, advocating for the highest possible pay (since they make more money), and also encourages them to train/teach the prisoner more to make them more likely to get a job as an ex-con. I think most victim advocates would be ok with this too as there would continue to be a penalty imposed for the crime.
The private prisons have an interest in filling beds. That is where the money is. They don't get money by reducing recidivism, or providing job training, or providing preventative and maintenance health care (dentists to fill cavities so that the person doesn't need to get a root canal when they're released and then runs out of money on medical bills...)
This is part of the contract, and officials making short sighted deals that have the appearance of reducing costs while actually raising them in the long term is a oft heard refrain.
I have difficulty believing that any private, for profit company would be working to negatively impact its bottom line. While it is possible that there are places where improvements in efficiency over government run facilities can be had, at the end of the day the duty of the company is to the shareholders ( CXW - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreCivic , GEO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEO_Group ) rather than to the taxpayers of a state.
> Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) CCA’s facilities lacked adequate safety and security standards and were less efficient at offering correctional services than the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (“BOP”) facilities; (ii) CCA’s rehabilitative services for inmates were less effective than those provided by BOP; (iii) consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) was unlikely to renew and/or extend its contracts with CCA; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, CCA’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
The profit motive for a private prison has shown in the past that in the interest in short term gains they will understaff and cut back on programs. Give them everyone who has been incarcerated before and they'll take the profits they've gotten and close that franchise. Furthermore, the lobbying efforts of private companies creates odd incentives in writing laws and negotiating contracts compared to facilities run and maintained by state or federal workers.
Sure it does, in the sense that wealth only exists as a construct of society. If Bill Gates is on a deserted island it doesn't matter if he has $1 or $60 billion, because without society his money has no value.
One could make an argument that if society has made you very wealthy you owe a lot to society. Personally I don't disagree.
Of course from there it gets messier because everyone has opinions about how wealth is earned, how beholden the earners are to everyone else, how much of personal success is solely based on an individual's merits as opposed to support from society and other external sources. People want to minimize or maximize the particular points best serve their beliefs in this case. Hard to say who is the rightiest.
And so do property rights and pretty much any other kind of right. To begin with, the construct was there, but the wealth wasn't, and definitely not Bill Gates' wealth, which did not exist prior to the creation of Microsoft and the aggregate consumer surplus and capital it created.
You're blaming the fed for something they did under metaphorical gunpoint. "Too big to fail" isn't just a saying, and ultimately if we are to blame someone other than our financial oppressors, the responsibility rests on the people for not standing up in unison against the bailouts. But the blame circles back to our financial oppressors and their use of propaganda and socio-economic control.
> I mostly agree that the record makes it harder to get a job and give up crime, but what about the deterrence factor? How many more would commit crimes knowing that it wouldn't have any impact on their ability to get a decent job right after serving some time?
It's very little deterrence.(look up hyperbolic discounting) The average person is pretty bad at weighing consequences 10 years from now. And criminals I imagine are far worse than average.
Yes, that's the average person, but for those who aren't average like the upper middle class kid wanting to get into a decent school, get a good job and not bring life-long shame to his family, I think it's fairly strong.
Criminals definitely are worse at it, but I asked "how many more would commit crimes..." so that's not really relevant.
Hypothesis: most people who commit crimes are (for whatever reason) focused far more on short term goals then long term goals when they commit the crime.
No, but if it were, would you be more likely to break the law?
My point was about the total cost of the crime. e.g. if speeding tickets had no impact on insurance rates, don't you think fewer people would care about a $200 fine?
How is it silly? If you are socially irresponsible and destructive you should have consequences. Just like financially irresponsible results in a credit hit and difficulty getting loans. You label yourself a risk when you do dumb things.
I actually know someone who didn't get a government job at an animal shelter because of his poor credit. He has an MBA too. I don't think that's fair but maybe financially irresponsible people aren't as good at their job. Same with criminals.
Sure that's part of it if it's actually adequate, but people and businesses have a right to know if you have a criminal record and make risk-assessments based on that.
Jail time doesn't reverse your wrongdoing on society and the way it's currently setup - it's not really a redeeming process. Why should a business hire you over someone as qualified with no record?
We're basically talking about felonies anyway. Misdemeanors are generally irrelevant for most jobs and you can get those expunged from your record.
At the same time, would you want to work with a guy who raped some body? Lets assume that the video was leaked on facebook or something and there isn't much doubt about the guilt.
'The prison contracts everything from security to mopping.'
In the vast majority of American prisons, the prisoners do the mopping. Security is still done by guards, but nearly every other job in the prison is done by the offenders. It's much cheaper this way - for state prisons average starting wage for non-industrial jobs is $0.25/hr. Industrial jobs don't start much higher, but they tend to have a higher cap around $2.50/hr instead of the standard cap of $1.00/hr. There are a few cases of offenders making minimum wage, but these are the exception rather than the norm.
Prisons are run by the offenders - it's cheaper this way.
So where is the $75k cost to house them coming from? Clearly some contract is too expensive and something is not adding up.
For that price, we should have Harvard classes taught at prisons, and maybe these inmates could have a shot at using their disparate lifestyle extremes to have new ways to employ/create new businesses that can improve society in areas where they see/experience/witness need for improvement, and put our tax payers to good work.
If every prisoner is cooking mopping and doing whatever for free, where is the $75k/yr coming from?
According to the article, a big increase in California's state prison system is for salary and medical of the guards. I'm not sure if they're union guards over there, but the prison guard union is pretty powerful in the federal system and many states.
As far as other costs go, I'm not sure where they're getting up to 75k/year/offender. My experience has been mostly in the federal and midwest, where average cost of housing an offender for a year in a low/medium security facility is around 20k-25k.
I have a friend that is a Phd candidate at the University of Utah. He teaches physics/math/cosmology at the state prison from time to time. He says that inmates are far-and-away the best audiences he has ever taught to! They are a "captive" audience! Couldn't resist :)
And often times they can even sell the surplus labor, which is basically free money for the company operating the prison. (that they can then spend to lobby for harsher sentences)
I had a friend who lived in Bisbee, Arizona, which is a small town next to the border that has a big border patrol station in the city. He said that because of the border patrol presence there aren't any illegal aliens around to do construction. He could only get cheap labor from ex-convicts. It made me think that typically ex-cons have formed the lowest rung in the economic ladder that illegal aliens now fulfill.
How about paying what it's worth for labor instead of expecting to get 'cheap' labor?
Yesterday people expected cheap construction labor, today they complain there's not enough cheap home nurses around. I wonder if they'll aim for cheap software development labor tomorrow.
I wonder why I don't feel entitled to cheap caviar and cheap yachts?
I'm not entitled to their labour, I can't afford higher price labour (well I can). Also, middle class salaries can barely afford current rates (in this forum we're mostly upper middle class or higher. A lot looks cheap to us. Do the math for the cost to salary for a child care facility. Costs a fortune even for us, yet the employees are getting paid peanuts. )
Which, if there is a real labour shortage, is fine with me. I'll just forgo the project I wanted to build, build less. Whatever.
But there isn't a labour shortage. At least not when you look at particulars segments, locations, past-histories, ect.
I'm not trying to push any ideology here. I'm just saying that the economy, actually, sucks despite what point estimates that grossly overgeneralize are saying. It sucked under Bush. It sucked more under Obama. And it getting suckier under Trump.
Why? I don't know. In the meantime hire a local contractor and pay them double their rate (or give the employees a tip == to the cost of the service < this is what I do to my monthly cleaners)
Imagine if less people will be working illegally and taxation will be more transparent, with more people paying their share, with less spent on prisons for people who could be gainfully employed - you will probably have free child care, paid for by taxes. Staffed with legal workers too.
> I wonder why I don't feel entitled to cheap caviar and cheap yachts?
Let's stick to discussing services.
In well-populated niches like construction, nursing, and software development, you can safely assume that competition will make the price of the service as low as it can reasonably go and still get acceptable quality.
If construction labor costs go up to whatever point you consider "fair", then the cost of the finished products will rise to compensate. If you extrapolate this out for the results of all super-low-priced labor, then lots of costs go up, and the middle class suddenly has less buying power than before. Why, they'd need a raise just to keep the same standard of living!
It's a web, you can't tug on one part without moving lots of others. The only "stretch" available in this web is people who are earning more than they are actually worth, like some CEOs or Waltons. Which, come to think of it, is not that dear to me. So okay, fine, let's start raising the minimum wage.
When I was doing renovation at my place, I think I could go for much cheaper labor. Deadlines will likely slip, tho, as quality of work. I would perhaps end up paying more for worse result.
Try to pay as much as feasible for the actual work, as few as possible for overhead.
You end up paying extra for 'cheap' labor anyway, in the form of higher taxes for those who have to pay them, that includes you. Less transparent economy leads to what is discussed in parent article. All what 'cheap' labor does is lining the pockets of middle men selling this snake oil. With your money.
There is very often is an additional benefit. It just isn't directly to you.
Isn't that what minimum wage is all about? And disability, social security, and public education? There are lots of benefits to these programs, but the benefits often go directly to someone else, and indirectly back to whoever paid for them.
Also, I think a lot of problems come from paying the cheapest possible price, rather that paying for value. An over-focus on short-term profits causes a lot of long-term issues.
Well no, because of lack of general availability. But I pay extra for many things to avoid certain corporate behaviour. In a free market, that's my right. We're trying to wean ourselves off of Amazon, in fact, but we're a one-car family, and Prime is an amazing service.
Outsource manufacturing is a slightly different case because the labor might not be 'cheap' in the offshore country.
Offshore workers are often abused, but when they are not they might be paid a decent wage which is also peanuts when onsite wages are considered. You profit from arbitraging cost of living, not from exploitation.
Even if we enforce unions at oursource locations with wage control, outsource manufacturing won't disappear overnight.
> Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be able to contribute to society once they are released.
To play devils advocate prison contracts have valid extra costs you have to vet contactors more than say an office cleaner.
You also have to budget for extra security if your a contractor working in a prison you have to log all of your tools in and out to stop inmates nicking things that could be used as weapons or to aid an escape
I agree with who on the whole but I'm going to play....Angel's advocate? (What do you call the person playing devil's advocate to the Devil's advocate?)
There is a (relatively famous) prison in Norway where the rehabilitation is so effective that the prisoner's are given these jobs and are handed chainsaws, picks, the keys to the boat off the island. The prisoners are the ones ferrying people to and from the prison.
Sounds to me like (for the most part) we're doing prison wrong in the states.
What level of security is the prison? There are low security facilities in the United States where prisoners leave to work for the day and have to be back at a certain time.
Agreed. But how many ppl are in low security vs. max security?
How easy is it politically to build a min security facility in an area affluent enough to have day jobs for prisoners vs. building a max security prison in the middle of unemployed nowhere?
How common is that though? Taking one example is pretty fraught especially because the prisoners that are sent to that prison are naturally going to be of the lower risk, non-violent type unless that's how a majority of the prisons are run. There are prisons in the US with very open security too (though mainly for rich white collar criminals but then that's a group with a low likely-hood of attempting to escape). Heck there's a fair number of programs where prisoners are given big tools like that here in the US too.
nope, its not just an anecdotal example, its an entire country, and multiple countries in Europe do this now. They are collectively intelligent enough to agree everyone is better off when you enable people for success instead of punishment, torture, emotional and social isolation, abuse, lack of food and healthy outlets, and give them access to a job, a sense of pride, and allow them to reabilitate themselves.
but this is all based on a deep rooted belief that most people are good, and crime is usually a result of low income/and growing up in places stuck in a cycle of socioeconomic hopelessness (atleast the kind of crime people are imprisoned for, weve already established wallstreet bankers commit crime and dont go to prison), taking people out of these toxic environments and equipping them with a job where they are exposed to society and have a chance to rebuild their lives is beneficial, for them, and society as a whole.
In U.S. politics we have 300million people binned into two extremist views and prison reform is'nt trending hot on twitter right now and if it was it would be used as a litmus test to pit half the country against the other and a debate about whether people deserve the life they have or can better themselves and deserve to be treated better and we all know how that has played out in politics recently. bigotry and stereotyping win.
Very little hope for the incarcerated in this country
Quick aside, many people who go to Harvard Business School receive financial aid or pay for it out of their own pocket -- the school determines need based on your assets and not those of your parents. While there probably are still students who get support from rich dads, it is not the same kind of only-for-the-rich place that you are depicting...
> “Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” Fishman said. “At one point, he cornered the hot chocolate market. He bought up every package of Swiss Miss from the commissary and sold it for a profit in the prison yard. He monopolized hot chocolate! He made it so that, if you wanted any, you had to go through Bernie.”
The search for "madoff swiss chocolate" will find many more articles based on the above quote.
MBAs destabilise the market? By taking a six sigma approach to introduce cryptocurrencies into the prison system, I don't see how it couldn't be a success.
"While Max and Franz earnestly supervise rehearsals, Leo continues their old scam - overselling shares of the play to their fellow prisoners, and even to the warden. The song "Prisoners of Love" plays while the credits roll."
Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette derivatives and yard swaps.