Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners themselves.
Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob.
The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox
machine, regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5 figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that 10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature.
I didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation. It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and depressed.
So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism.
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were designed in this way
You are blaming unethical people for profiting from a flawed system. I would say fixing the system is a easier problem, then fixing humanity as a whole.
For instance, what are the consequences for the mid level government bureaucrat who accepted the 7$ a tube toothpaste contract? It is obviously a flagrant violation with a paper trail. Even if it is revealed he gets a fully paid vacation every year from the bidding company, how do people even hold him accountable?
The government is involved in so many projects and employs so many people, that your one vote every few years means next to nothing.
Democracy was meant as a safeguard against tyranny. It cannot hold individual people in a vast system accountable very well.
You either split up each department in separate elections or reduce the scope and size of the government such that essential services like law and order get maximum visibility and priority.
You are blaming unethical people for profiting from a flawed system
Yes, and? Are unethical people somehow immune from blame for their decision to act unethically? Just because you see an opportunity for profit does not mean you are compelled to take it. That is, after all, the whole basis for incarceration in the first place, otherwise bank robbers would go free on the basis that once they realized how easy it was to rob a bank, they were unable to stop themselves.
> You are blaming unethical people for profiting from a flawed system. I would say fixing the system is a easier problem, then fixing humanity as a whole.
>It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism.
They are. In this Jon Oliver bit they cite a Powerpoint sales pitch from a prison corporation which notes that high recidivism rates are one of many reasons why you should invest.
I get sociopaths who have no remorse and don't really have a problem with them per se.
People who do this and try to rationalize their behavior with some flimsy excuse about putting food on the table or keeping America safe are, I'll say it, deplorables.
It's a socially acceptable form of mental torture whose aim is to break you down, not build you back up. In particular, the dehumanization you face from the guards makes one more anti-social.
Does the US court system not refund travel cost? Over here you can get full refund of travel cost if you are summoned to court(within reason - if you travel first class you will only get price of a normal ticket back).
For future reference, if you or others reading this catch a bullshit charge like you describe, it is very likely that you can have a lawyer handle everything for you and it may be cheaper than the extra travel costs and missed work days. Even if you are supposedly 'required' to appear. I'm not a lawyer so my specific advice is to call a few and explain the situation, then hire one to handle everything for you.
Even if a charge sticks, they will be better then you at pleading it down and/or negotiating reduced fines when possible.
Again, it's likely going to be cheaper then travel costs and you should have a lawyer anyway, right from the very start. It sucks to be unfairly targeted but there is an easy way out. I hire a lawyer for even the most minor traffic violations and they really can save you money once you factor all costs (insurance rates, etc...).
I learned this lesson the hard way. I have weird facial tics. People often remark that I must be a very happy go lucky guy because I often smile involuntarily (or maybe that's the default position of my lips). During a pleading where I was highly anxious, a judge thought I wasn't taking the matter at hand seriously because I was smiling and decided to throw the book at me for that. This phenomenon is also what caused "Foxy Knoxy" to be immediately labeled guilty. One would think that judges would judge people by more objective measures, but sometimes they can be the worst judge of character.
Protip: If you have to appear in front of a judge, try your best to be the first party the judge sees in the morning or right after lunch. Your chances of a favorable judgment lessen as time wears on and judge's get cranky. I use this same philosophy for job interviews: try to appear before the interviewer at the least stressful time, and they are more likely to view you favorably.
ALWAYS lawyer up with the best you can afford. Justice may be blind, but the more money you have and, accordingly, the higher a quality of lawyer you can afford, the more "justice" you will receive.
That's why it's so difficult for rich/powerful people to ever land inside a jail cell.
At the end of my ordeal I had to pay 25 dollars of non-refundable "court costs". There is a Supreme Court to be decided on soon which should determine the constitutionality of this practice even after one has been exonerated.
My ex was found not guilty for driving while suspended (he didn't know at the time). They took about $45 of his bail money to cover it, and this was back in the late 90's.
Um, no? That verdict is what you are paying your lawyer to get for you. And if you are one of the few who aren't to accept a plea bargain and actually force the issue to go to trial (which is necessary to prove that you were wrongly convicted), it's going to cost many thousands of dollars.
A median for the defense is about $1500, including all the cheap plea bargains that don't go to a time-consuming expensive trial. A starting price for a misdemeanor that goes to trial might be $2000-$3000. Felonies and long, complicated trials just go up from there.
You may be thinking of a civil defense, where you can work out to pay nothing if you lose, but they're going to take some of the pot if you win. Or of a public defender, who is nominally free, but most states charge a few hundred to a couple thousand in court fees anyway.
> Even the juror compensation is something ridiculous like $10/day
Yes, it seems logical if jurors would be compensated at least as the minimal wage per hour. In small communities it could probably lead to something like 'professional juror' but I think it could be dealt with by monthly/yearly cap for compensation.
You can't choose to sit on a jury in the US. People are randomly selected (I think from voting registrations). Small towns have less crime and less need for jurors. Even so, because the choice is not up to you, the "professional juror" would just be a very unlucky person.
I get sufficient pay from my "real job" and vacation time, and never, ever was required to provide military service (or even register for the draft due to my date of birth), so I don't worry about compensation when the jury summons comes.
LOL no - not laughing at you, but laughing so as not to cry at the injustice. The US approach to this issue would be that you should spend more money suing the person who made the false accusation against you.
Although it's a little dense, a really good book on American legal culture is Adversarial Legalism by robert Kagan. Culturally the US is absolutely obsessed with property rights and the exhaustive accounting for them has provided fertile soil for a whole forest of complex litigation practices.
Many people would rather spent $10,000 on fighting a court case than pay $500 that they felt was unjustly billed to them. I once worked for a guy who got in a dispute with someone he had hired over ownership of the work product - he had not paid the bill for the photography and so the photographer was sitting on the footage. He took the photographer to small claims court; the court basically said 'meh, pay him what you owe and you, photographer, hand over the footage when he does.' We went outside and my erstwhile boss said 'well I showed him! that's the last time someone sues ME!' I literally walked away on the spot and never returned any of his calls even though he owed me some money; for my own sanity and safety I can not be around someone with that level of cognitive dissonance. I liked the guy, a lot, but he was literally editing reality in his head to fit his feelings from moment to moment. That sort of person is dangerous.
Where I'm originally from(Poland) it was the same - I was summoned to court, after the trial I went to the clerk, said where I drove from and was paid cash for fuel. Had I taken the train it would have been refunded fully.
Is this the same regardless of your role in the trial?
Over here (Finland), if you are witness, you are compensated (meagerly, not always reasonable).
If you are the accused, you pay for your own travel - so the professional criminal class just skips the trial, thereby causing lot of unnecessary hassle to witnesses and injured parties. Then a new trial date is set, and on the nth try the police might pick up the accused, and bring him or her to trial (at no cost), then to be released on a conditional discharge.
According to [0](sorry, in Polish) both sides can get the money back for costs of getting to/back from court, not just the accusing/witness.
Not sure about UK.
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is very powerful in state and local elections and through association with other providers who are also union pretty much have the state on the ropes.
Contractors might be part of the problem but they only are as much as CCPOA allows for. As in, you play by their rules or you don't get to play.
Same reason we spend so much on education and don't see improvement. Nothing is about the prisoner or the student, it is all about political control
Prison guards aren't regularly raking in six figures, they make on average less than police officers.
Ultimately, I think you've got it the other way around. Prisons don't build themselves, contracts are put out for their construction, their vastly overpriced buses, cells, etc.
For example, the absolutely disgusting and dehumanizing water fountain/toilet combo, ensuring that every sip you take you smell and taste feces, costs $2600 while a normal stainless steel toilet runs about $250. Also, private prisons gain the benefits of a conscripted labor force without having to worry about slavery laws.
Corps have co-opted the unions to vote in their interest. After all, they have the carrot of offering a nice, kushy corporate gig. That prison guard's pension isn't going too far.
Follow the money
That doesn't seem very outrageous. Even at $500m in overtime that's only 5% of the total prison budget. You'd probably have to hire up to counter the overtime cost so its not like its more than a few percentage points of waste.
Apparently, California's prison guard union (CCPOA) has a history of lobbying against measures that would reduce the prisoner population and/or reduce state spending on prisons:
1994: With the help of CCPOA’s $101,000 support, Californians passed Proposition 184, the nation’s toughest three-strikes law mandating 25-years-to-life sentences for most felony offenders with two previous serious convictions.
2000: The CCPOA contributes at least $75,000 to the opponents of Proposition 36, the 2000 initiative that replaced incarceration with substance abuse treatment for certain nonviolent offenders.
2004: The CCPOA spends over $1 million to defeat Prop 66, the initiative that would have limited the crimes that triggered a life sentence under the Three Strikes law.
2005: The CCPOA defeats Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to “reduce the prison population by as much as 20,000, mainly through a program that diverted parole violators into rehabilitation efforts: drug programs, halfway houses and home detention.”
2008: The CCPOA contributes $2 million to Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign. The CCPOA contributes $1 million against Prop 5, a measure to reduce prison overcrowding by providing treatment rather than prison sentences for nonviolent drug users.
Just a heads up. The Bob Barker company is not run by the former Price is Right host. AFAIK he's never had anything to do with the company. Just the same name.
Oddly, this company which has been in existence for 20+ years fleecing correctional facilities still doesn't have a wikipedia page, and little is known about them. Would somebody please fix this?
This is a company that basically makes products of the lowest quality for the cheapest amount possible. An $800 3D printer I've used created higher quality items.
If you want a real laugh, check out the "Mission and values" section of their website. SPOILER: it has by far the least amount of content
As an addendum, the most disgusting thing I witnessed was the mandatory racial segregation that was enforced by the guards, ostensibly to make their jobs easier by cutting down on conflicts and physical fights. As a native of Detroit, I know all too well what racial segregation does to your view of the other, the out group(s).
I know it's just a smidge harder and takes a little more effort, but it is beyond crazy that we institutionally indoctrinate inmates into a race-based ideology. This engenders further wedges and future conflicts when inmates are released and trained to view other people with suspicion and mistrust....
Unless that's the point, serving as a useful distraction while the prestige is being performed
Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? Why not open up well-regulated competitive markets for these kinds of problems? Let some bright people solve them by going at them with their ingenuity. The fastest way towards progress is fair and honest competition.
Government can regulate the market by setting the goals: low violence inside, low costs, low re-offences of released, high security, high educational opportunities
> I think the best answer to these problems we face is competition.
I'm sorry, but that is the worst answer. Perverse incentives and moral hazard problems not withstanding, incarceration as a market, profit from human misery and suffering is absolutely morally repugnant.
> Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov?
You're comparing apples to naked mole rats. Running a website (that does exactly what you tell it) is a wee bit different than caring for violent, mentally disabled, borderline personalities, sexually, mentally abusive and abused, etc. individuals. (I'm including a lot of the guards in this description too)
> Businesses that get high marks automatically get more prisoners, ones that get low marks get none.
> That's a lot worse than gov run facilities, but gov facilities are probably not as good as properly regulated market.
Incarceration, and security in general, is the very definition of a market failure and one of the few things that a government needs to provide in the most liberal, laissez-faire economy
Think about how this will play out in reality, considering that prison guard unions and companies wield a large amount of political capital and no one really cares about the welfare of prisoners, if they're being mistreated/abused, etc. Companies can cook their books and no one will care.
We also live in the era where speech=money. Prison corporations spend large amounts of money lobbying. And they lobby for the sickest things possible: increases in sentences, increases in mandatory minimums, fighting against medical marijuana legalization just so they can imprison and profit off of "scary, criminal mastermind potheads"
Our economics is so backwards that we include spending on prisons in our GDP. Growth in the prison sector should not be added as growth in the overall economy
The market solution will not magically erase the culture of the prison economy or change its major players
Where we agree is that it is a dangerous place to open up to the market. If it's not well-regulated it could face these kinds of problems you mentioned, and others as well.
>Remember when a small team built a better healthcare.gov? Why not open up well-regulated competitive markets for these kinds of problems?
Because the solution ("making prison a market") is what caused the problem in the first place.
And because some things, like treating people in prison humanely, you don't want to live to the lowest bidder (though even that would be an improvement over the worse than third world shithole that are us prisons).
I agree there is a lot of danger in profiting from incarceration. However, it would be good if someone figured out how to solve the problem and a profit motive is a reliable way to do it.
In other words, the profit motive would have to work towards eliminatin the problem--that's my point about a properly regulated market.
Maybe some other users here are right and I am naive in thinking people will create fair and just rules that others wont try to cheat.
> Maybe some other users here are right and I am naive in thinking people will create fair and just rules that others wont try to cheat.
There's just not a lot to gain and a lot that can go wrong. It's high risk, minimal rewards. Making prisons more rehabilitative isn't difficult or some unsolved problem.
People in this country just have an appetite for righteous vengeance and ensuring that criminals receive their due suffering.
The problem is that the prisoners are not the buyers, the taxpayers are.
Which means any "profit motive" can (and normally will) work against them (the prisoners). After all feeding them crap and stuffing them in tiny cells is cheaper than giving them quality prison time and rehabilitation opportunities...
You are indeed not supposed to say 'penal system' and 'market' in the same sentence. That's kind of amoral and ends up costing everyone - that is what all for-profit prisons successfully show.
I don't think anyone claimed it to be moral or immoral?
> That is what all for-profit prisons successfully show
Seems like this argument could be made for the socialization of virtually any institution. In particular, the OP's solution is different from existing for-profit penal institutions, so there is no logical reason to downvote the OP on the basis of existing institutions.
Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob.
The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox machine, regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5 figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that 10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature. I didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation. It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and depressed.
So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize recidivism.
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were designed in this way