At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by prepend on Friday March 22, 2019 @07:55AM (#19461655)

I think this is more romantic “grass is greener” thinking. It’s pretty hard to compare effectiveness of prisons for rehabilitations across countries. There is some research [0], and there is a lot of limitations in data, but it seems like Europe isn’t doing so well on recidivism. Or at least France and Germany seem to also struggle with people leaving and then reentering prison.

If I had to guess, I would say that prisons, in general, don’t rehabilitate. They just isolate for society’s protection because no one has a good idea of how to fix people that has effectiveness efficacy.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by monocasa on Friday March 22, 2019 @08:15AM (#19461768)

Your own link shows that Norway has less than half the recidivism rate as the US.

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by prepend on Friday March 22, 2019 @01:55PM (#19465059)

I tried to describe how this document has many limitations. I also don’t think 36% (if accurate), although better than the US, means Norway has figured it out.

My comment above did not intend to convey that the US has great prisons or that other countries have great prisons. I meant that recidivism is bad and too many criminals come back into the prison system.

Can the US improve? Of course. Can the US learn from other countries? Of course. Is rehabilitating criminals a solved problem that the US is ignoring? No.

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by chmod775 on Friday March 22, 2019 @11:29AM (#19463493)

I did some fact checking on the article you linked and it turns out it's garbage. Their own sources disagree with them.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19463425

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by prepend on Friday March 22, 2019 @01:56PM (#19465070)

Thanks for the link. There’s lots of limitations to this paper. I still think it’s useful in showing high recidivism, especially with your fact checking.

I think 20% is too high, even though it’s better than 30%.

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