This is why we have stalled in general ; everyone has some "slippery slope" boogeyman as an excuse why we can't solve problems society faces.
Outlawing such arrangements only pushes the blackmarket economy of kids for cash underground. Instead, of course, it should be regulated.
Ideas like this show a moral bankruptcy that has become so ingrained in our Technocratic elites and we wonder why there is such a disconnection between different groups in our society.
So, eliminating markets for people was a bad thing?
Why, for example, would a market for health care be good, but a market for child-imprisonment be bad? If a market for child-imprisonment were susceptible to bad actors, perverse incentives, and bad outcomes, then it stands to reason the same could be said of all markets. That's a rather large implication, I'm sure we agree on.
If humane child imprisonment is valued by the market participants, then that's what the market will provide. If a market doesn't signal that it's important, then it's definitionally not important. That's what price signalling is all about.
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/02/is-liberalism-worth-savi...
The conversation flits around a bit too quickly for my taste, but some interesting points are made.
It will be most efficient. I promise!
That's pretty much what happened to the judge in the article linked by GP (you should read it, it's horrifying). Mostly because it's hard to work as a judge when you're serving a 17.5 year prison sentence.
/s
Is judges colluding with prison operators a frequent and normal occurrence? The US prison system is bad, but to my knowledge these things are the exception.
Last big scandal about large scale wrongful imprisonment - of children, no less - the people profiting from this were:
1) Directly profiting
* the District Attorney
* 2 judges
* the director of ... of the Juvenile Probation Office
* the brother of the District Attorney, who ran the prison
2) Involved, capable of stopping the abuse, not proven to have personally profited, yet they cooperated:
* the district attorney
* a supreme court lawyer
* a supreme court justice personally
* the whole Pennsylvania supreme court
* the governor of Pennsylvania
* Pennsylvania's Judicial Conduct Board
* the FBI
3) the only parties the justice system considered guilty
* the brother of the District Attorney, who ran the prison. Note: he's still in business. The SAME business. He was convicted for a small amount, because he lied about paying off judges. He, and his brother the district attorney, are of course completely innocent of plotting for a decade to wrongfully imprison children, for profit.
The scheme continued for 7 YEARS after complaints about corruption were filed.
The profit has not been paid back.
* the lowest level judges
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
This gets brought up all the time as evidence of something systemic, but the linked article only mentions two judges convicted. Is there any evidence this is widespread?
But yeah, this sort of thing is widespread.
https://apnews.com/article/prisons-us-department-of-justice-...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/final-defendants-includin...
https://scheerpost.com/2022/01/23/the-scandal-of-u-s-prisons...
https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/prison-ame...
But all of the above is employees violating the law. Worse is the justice system itself abusing the law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder (the state has a duty to prosecute. This is NOT what lawmakers mean by that, yet nobody ever sees any consequences). More general this is an example of: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2022_jail_churn.html
>https://apnews.com/article/prisons-us-department-of-justice-...
>https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/final-defendants-includin...
>https://scheerpost.com/2022/01/23/the-scandal-of-u-s-prisons...
>https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/prison-ame...
I agree that these are all examples of justice system employees abusing their positions, but the examples given are slightly short of the original claim of "delivering inmates and redirecting profits", which implies some sort of concerted effort to send more people to jail for the purpose of enriching oneself. That's present in the cash 4 kids scandal, but really present when a corrections employee is mistreating prisoners. I certainly don't think the people
That problem is endemic, and occurs everywhere, and is also individuals enriching themselves, just a bit more indirect.
But these individuals that DO abuse the system for personal enrichment, they are the worst of all.
Dystopian: Ex-cons learn how to evade capture. Law enforcement and enforcement capability is gutted, through lobbying.
The prison would be incentivized to do this so as to help prevent recidivism. They'd also be incentivized to get that person the help they need so they don't commit crimes and can do the job too.
The reason I wouldn't hire them is because the system salivates to put those people back in the system, and I prefer to hire someone less likely to get pulled into the abyss at any random moment and cause me to lose out on my trained workforce. Their PO, any officer scanning automatic plate readers, customs agents, whoever, they're all chomping at the bit to pull that person back out of society and employment.
I basically always have to wait for an HSI detective to show up after hours until they try everything possible to get me on some absurd made up crime, all because my file says "maybe a criminal" or something like that. If I have work I may miss that too because it could be almost a full day from hitting the border until I'm released, and the officers don't let me sleep in detention.
How Kafkaesque.
The category being "Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe" (imprisonment for failure to pay a fine)
Do you have a source for your claim?
The article is about the lack of more fine-grained data in that category
So what do you choose? Pay x000 euro? Or go to prison for 1 day, a week at most? There are a substantial number of people picking the second option. Hell, people joke it's about the experience.
(Also this is in fact mostly about speeding tickets, not public transport fares)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plötzensee_Prison
https://taz.de/135-Schwarzfahrer-hinter-Gittern/!5134051/
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/jeder-dritte-in-plotzense...
I think this could be read two ways:
> In Germany, 1/3 of the total population is in prison because they used a train or bus without a ticket.
> In Germany, 1/3 of the total prison population is there because they used a train or bus without a ticket.
I suspect you mean the second, just noting that it could be misunderstood. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken!)
I could believe the latter.
But I assume that sentences for fare evasion are shorter than for other types of theft, or more serious things like murder?
The population of Germany is about 84m. The total prison population in Germany is 56557. [1]
What are you talking about?
I can't imagine that 1 in ten verdicts for fare dodging would result in one third of the prison population being fare dodgers.
Government apparatuses don't shrink in size. This is why the war on drugs started after prohibition, Henry Anslinger had to go after the evil marijuana. If people stop committing crimes we'll just have to invent more.
https://charterforcompassion.org/shareable-community-ideas/p...
I'm genuinely trying to square your thinking with the specific services I listed in an earlier comment:
> housing services
It seems obvious and intuitive to me that providing discounted housing services would clearly have an effect. Clearly if we can manage spiraling housing costs, more people can stay housed and fewer people will be destitute. And the case in Vienna supports this notion: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...
Have you found an RCT-like study that provided affordable housing of this quality and failed to find an effect?
> mental health services
I would be surprised if you found that providing quality mental health services does not have an effect.
> medical services
This is another one which seems obvious and intuitive to me. A fair number of people in the USA end up homeless or destitute due to medical debt or lack of appropriate medical care. Every other major country offers some form of free medical care and I cannot see how this would fail to have an effect.
> transportation infrastructure
If you follow the urbanists on youtube or websites like Strong Towns it seems clear that requiring everyone to have a car places a heavy burden on the poor, and it seems obvious to me that if you have good transportation infrastructure (high speed rail between cities and good metro rail in cities, appropriate zoning for walkable neighborhoods), then it becomes much easier for the poor. This is not something that you can easily study as an RCT.
> and related things like maternity and paternity leave, good labor rights, good pay and fair working conditions
Again these are obviously beneficial.
I feel like I provided a lot of good examples and I am surprised by the continued assertion of "very very very weak evidence". Really? For every one of these things?
I also agree that many of these have beneficial effects besides a reduction in crime and we should maybe provide these services anyway because it makes peoples lives better.
I also agree we should manage spiraling housing costs by upzoning everywhere. I think affordable housing could actually make things worse by concentrating poverty.
I'm not convince transportation infrastructure helps the poor more than direct cash transfers. The US is really terrible at building cost effective transportation infrastructure, and most of the places that have it are terrible places to be poor like San Francisco or New York.
The only example I need is one replicated natural experiment or RCT that shows any of these working.
I think the research is out there to support these policies, whether the data is an RCT or something else, as I hope the above argument highlights. If you remain neutral while you wait for an RCT, there can be real world consequences for vulnerable people.
I do agree that the US is terrible at building transportation infrastructure, but as advocates like Strong Towns point out, we're actually bankrupting local towns with car-dependent sprawl (due to high tax burdens to maintain the infrastructure) so we really must improve that one regardless. That it will benefit the poor is simply another reason to accelerate these changes.
It's the difference between "Look at all these policies that reduce crime." to "Here are some good ideas for policies we should test out in as controlled an environment as possible to see if they reduce crime".
"The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. "
My brother in law was released recently from 12+ years of incarceration in the federal system. His crime was armed robbery, first offense, no one was injured, and he profited a grand total of $35,000.
He spent 12 years doing slave labor for a $1.25 while being charged absorbent fees to make phone calls, send emails (something like $5 for 10 minutes), and purchase the daily necessities like deodorant and medicine. After 12 years, he still owes reparation where even if he was paid a bare minimum wage he could have easily repaid his debt to society.
The US has the largest number of incarnated adults in the developed world because our government and capitalism demands it be so. We are a society whose engine has always been driven by slave labor. Until I was exposed to it in this manner, I would have been a "who cares do the crime pay the price" but that price extends so far, impacts everyone in a prisoners family even if they did no crime, and sets them up for failure when reentering the world.
None of it is accidental, all the way down to stubborn insistence on impeding criminal reform around drugs and petty crime to the prison industrial complex being the single biggest contributor to anti-pot reform pacs and advertising.
No one was harmed. But the crime involved threat of death. So threatening to kill at least one person is a pretty serious crime. It’s good that no one was killed, but definitely the intent to kill for personal gain was part of the reason for such a lengthy sentence.
There are many flaws with the prison system but I wanted to point out the logical flaw of “no one was killed in this game of Russian roulette so it’s not that bad of a thing” kind of thinking. Threatening someone’s life for $35k is a big deal, I think.
Is 12 years being enslaved for $1.25 fitting with another 3 on probation and in halfway houses? I don't believe it is especially when watching white collar folks steal millions, do infinitely more damage, and be released in 1/3 the time to pick up where they left off.
Ultimately, being forced into slave labor and having to pay hundreds per a month to talk to family despite research showing it's one of the best ways to drive good behavior and rehabilitation in prisoners, is cruel and unusual punishment even if the crime committed means the person is never getting out.
Even if we agree on the length of sentence, for someone who did work the entirety of their 12 year sentence, in roles that would have paid $50-70K a year to emerge still owing restitution on a paltry debt of less than a new car, is a travesty.
Completely agreed. And it's not just that -- ex-prisoners also come out without any social network other than what they may have gained among prisoners, and they face extreme social stigma that makes finding work difficult even if they had the skills and connections.
Anything beyond that is charity.
I didn't try to kill them, even though I managed to fight the upper hand off of them. When the scuffle ended all I said was "don't point things at my head."
Choose to believe me or not. Don't make presumptions about eagerness.
The death penalty will always be executed with a certain false positive rate. Willing it as a form of punishment necessarily entails willing the death of innocent people, who crucially can’t be brought back in the event that the state realizes it was mistaken.
There are plenty of criticisms for the death penalty but now you're changing the goalposts as you realize your description written in a science fiction feel good reality was a bad fit.
Post one: The death penalty is always wrong because it can be handed out in error and cannot be revoked.
Post two: The death penalty is always wrong because it can be handed out in error and cannot be revoked.
No goalposts have changed in the making of this thread.
The slave labor is punishment, and I believe the only form of slavery allowed under the US constitution. I think the prison could pay nothing but they choose practically nothing.
I agree on reforming exploitative services like $5/minute phone calls. I don’t think prisoners should be abused financially. I wish I could vote for candidates who supported this kind of reform.
In elections near me, this isn’t even an issue where candidates differentiate. There were a few candidates that were running for reform but they were more along the lines of not prosecuting certain misdemeanors.
I think the whit collar crime being punished less than violent crime kind of makes sense. I’d rather someone steal $1M than injure someone. It’s pretty mercenary to say that someone stealing $5M without violence is worse than someone stealing $35k with violence. I also don’t think prison sentences have clear relationships for comparison.
Is your brothers crime worse than raping 5 people? He would have received less jail time. Is that right? I’m not sure.
For what it’s worth, I agree with his point. The west looks down on revenge ruling, “an eye for an eye” etc. Yet the US prison system isn’t any more evolved.
The worst part of it is because we are talking about “bad people”, any defence of their treatment is easy to dismiss - and I get why. Arguing that someone who commuted armed robbery should have rights too does sound like a perverse thing to say. But ignoring those rights just allows problems to proliferate. So all your prison system does is the proverbial cutting off ones nose to spite ones face.
He was making doing exactly that when he said no one was injured. Just because someone wasn't physically injured doesn't mean they weren't profoundly harmed by being a victim or armed robbery. How long did it take that victim to feel safe in their community again? His brother-in-law took that away from someone and deserves harsh punishment.
I get the need for justice but what you’re describing is revenge, not justice. Justice needs to contain a rehabilitation part and not just punishment. The point the GP was making is that the rehabilitation part has been substituted for exploitation. Regardless of whether you think the sentencing was just or not, and to be clear: I don’t think even the GP was suggesting that his brother-in-law didn’t deserve jail time, if you don’t try and rehabilitate then you’re just encouraging your offenders to go out and reoffend. Thus perpetuating the cycle of crime and increasing the number of peoples who are physically and mentally scared from crimes in the process.
Rehabilitating inmates doesnt need to be done for altruistic purposes. There’s a very self reason to do so: those inmates will become less likely to commit further crimes upon release.
And that is the crux of the argument here. It’s what the discussion should be focused on, rather than a pseudo-morality debate about whether they deserve the time. Because literally no one believes there shouldn’t be punishment for crimes. But what we don’t agree on is whether criminals deserve a chance to reform.
Treating prisoners as captive markets to be bled is not good for society.
It's been said that if you asked someone to design a process to create more criminals, they would likely invent prisons: mix as many skilled criminals, with random unfortunate individuals, so that they can share their knowledge of criminality, and have to fight to survive.
Prison is bad as a deterrent and is terrible at reforming criminals. The only thing prison is good at, is keeping violent people off the street. There's absolutely no reason why non-violent offenders should be in a prison, give them any other punishment instead.
Whoever, while committing a robbery, is armed with a dangerous weapon or any article used or fashioned in a manner to lead the victim to reasonably believe it to be a dangerous weapon, or inflicts bodily harm upon another, is guilty of aggravated robbery in the first degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $35,000, or both.
Or is your stance that a person committing robbery with a weapon and threatening to use it should instead be considered a hapless person that has not chosen to act in a way that is highly likely to cause great injury or death? Like a gun is "ok" and should not be considered as evidence of intent to commit harm during the act of robbery unless they shoot it?
"Or is your stance that a person committing robbery..."
Consider the crime of attempted murder.(IMAL) that's when a person attempted to commit murder but failed. So they had intent and action, they just failed
Armed robbery is someone whose intent is to rob someone and they are successful at the act of robbery.
The reason the robber is armed is not to harm the person but as a threat. If their intent is to harm the person that's an additional crime (assault, murder, attempted murder)
"that is highly likely to cause great injury or death?"
Highly likely for the robbery or if they carry out the threat. I believe the vast majority of robberies where violence was threatened don't end in violence. I don't have data for this so if you contest it I'll recind that claim.
If they simply rob without a weapon, there are generally robbery charges with lessor penalties.
There is a clear uplift of risk/jeopardy of death or harm when using a weapon while committing robbery -- the person committing the crime is only partially in control of the outcome: the victim, witnesses, law enforcement interruption or an infinite number of random events can all trigger the harm (which is attached to the original crime). But this is well known and a decision the assailant made before committing the act -- they inherently are willing to kill or harm the second they chose to use the weapon in the act even if their intent walking into it was not to kill specifically.
I guess we just disagree, but I am very happy the laws and punishments are written to align with my POV.
Because they brought a gun. I’m not sure how you truly know someone’s intention. But getting a gun, loading it, and threatening someone with it is perhaps the closest to knowing they are willing to use it.
I think that people can’t even know themselves as many who claim they didn’t mean to, still “accidentally” shot someone.
But in the case of sentencing guidelines, you don’t need to know whether they will or not. If they use lethal force that’s a multiplier in prison time.
And I’m ok with that. I don’t care to get into nuance with people who threaten innocent people with death.
Note, there are exceptions when the gun isn’t loaded and the sentence is not the same as a loaded gun.
No, US has the largest number of adults in prison because we have a very ideologically diverse population, as well as a semblance of personal freedom, which necessarily will result in more people committing crimes. Nothing to do with capitalism. In fact, a true capitalism-based solutions would actually be organized forced labor camps - instead of sitting in cells prisoners would be forced to work, and have access to food and medicine to continue to optimize their productivity.
Also, as an aside
>Until I was exposed to it in this manner, I would have been a "who cares do the crime pay the price" but that price extends so far, impacts everyone in a prisoners family even if they did no crime, and sets them up for failure when reentering the world.
If you hold a position but change this solely because of a personal experience, you don't actually believe in either side of the issue, you just go with what feels right.
Arizona communities would 'collapse' without cheap prison labor, Corrections director says
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2022/07/1...
Louisiana is another state that's notable for the degree to which it has institutionalized this economic practice.
<citation needed>
Take a look at any "tough on crime" or "conservative" politician, and the majority of then will say stuff to that regard.
It's not just the conservatives. HN will happily argue for disproportionate punishments for "risk of life and limb" type crimes in which there was no criminal intent and nobody was harmed. "Anti-social" crimes or "crimes that make a mockery of the system" (turnstyle jumping, vandalism of public property, stuff like that) are a pretty close second.
I think generally you can't compare the US with European countries on many things. The US are much more individualist, wealth is much less equally distributed, the population is much more diverse, there's still a lot of the frontier mindset. That'll create a different profile which you can see in e.g. entrepreneurship, and probably also in crime-rate.
As an American, I think that rehabilitation should be the goal. But for the most part, it isn't. But not just to "cut costs."
There's the human cost of lost potential, which is worth much more than money. But the current system also penalizes families and communities and society at-large by limiting the opportunities for those who have been convicted of a crime.
The issues with incarceration in the US go much deeper than that. You mention homelessness/joblessness. That's a very real issue, that's a result of stigmatizing (often for life) people convicted of a crime. But that's not a result of the system of incarceration, rather it's a result of government and societal devaluing of human life. And more's the pity.
As to this specific situation, I'd note that there are no prisons in New York City.
Rather, they are jails[0]:
Jail and prison are often used interchangeably as places of confinement. If
you want to be specific jail can be used to describe a place for those
awaiting trial or held for minor crimes, whereas prison describes a place for
criminals convicted of serious crimes.
As such, this move is even more egregious, as many (most?) of these folks haven't even been convicted of a crime.
Yes, the US systems (note the plural, there are at least 51) of incarceration tend (sometimes pretty hard) towards retribution and exploitation, But they are not monolithic. They're mostly bad, but some are worse than others.
NYC had been moving in a more positive direction, with bail reform and plans to shut down the notorious Riker's Island[2] in favor of multiple, smaller jails across NYC.
However, just last week, after body/security cam footage of a mentally ill Riker's Island inmate (not convicted of a crime, but awaiting trial) being violently transferred to a "mental health" unit of the jail, the Corrections Department (DOC) [3] restricted access for the Board of Corrections (BOC) [4] (the oversight agency for the Corrections department) to such videos.
This was pretty obviously retribution for the release of the video to the media.
And now they want to further punish/exploit those who are incarcerated (again, many/most of whom haven't been convicted of a crime) with this.
It's pretty awful, but, at least in this case, please don't paint these folks with the broad brush of "criminal" as many have not been adjudged to be guilty of any crime, or are serving a short sentence for minor crimes (shoplifting, public urination, etc.).
I am not pleased with how the DOC is backsliding and will hold my elected representatives accountable in 2025 (City Council, Mayor, etc.) for these punitive and egregious abuses.
Understand that I'm not making light of your point WRT inhumane conditions and retribution/abuse/exploitation in the various US systems of incarceration. You're quite correct. I expounded because this is even more egregious than usual given the population involved.
I'd also say that our current systems don't just harm those who are incarcerated, but also the communities they come from and the economy, as those with criminal convictions are limited by the stigma of criminal convictions in the economic activity they can generate.
It's a lose-lose proposition and it requires fixing. Sadly, I won't hold my breath. :(
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/jail-vs-prison...
[1] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/public-safety/2023/01/1...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikers_Island
Though, maybe in practice Calvinism deviates from theory.
If you're born to a wealthy privileged life, this belief says that you deserve it because you're one of God's chosen- that's why life is so good. And it's a good thing that all those bad things happen to other people because they are bad people. God didn't choose them.
This is an extreme view, but the seeds of it are everywhere in our society. Just the term "bad guys" is used to imply a generic evil that we need to stop. Meanwhile real life is far more nuanced (with most true sociopaths actually doing very well in finance and politics).
Presumably, the Calvinists believed that Peter, Paul, and others were predestined to be saved, and that Jesus was on the right side of history.
This is the first I've heard that John Calvin preached that bad things don't happen to people who are predestined for salvation.
Predestination is a much more mainstream Christian doctrine that has nothing to do with "good people" vs "bad people", or even "good actions" vs "sinful actions". Predestination means some people are "destined" to salvation and others are not.
Predestination is a challenging theology that has to balance God being all knowing (omniscient) and free will.
Obviously not everyone believes all of it to the same extent, and they may have a softer padding between these beliefs and how they act within the real world, but based on my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities) most people who take the title Calvinist, and even most who rather take the label Reformed (because Calvinism has earned its bad name) do believe this to a fair extent.
Disappointing to see your unusually extensive first-hand experience downvoted to the bottom of this sub-thread.
Philosopher Slavoj Zižek argues that it is religion/ideology that allows for the commission of atrocities, by ascribing cosmic importance to otherwise banal conflicts over resources and prior injuries.
In nature, predatory animals might hunt prey to extinction and then die off themselves. But this is more likely to happen in theoretical models or very isolated/extreme environments with an unusually narrow 'fault tolerance. In more complex environments, adversarial populations wax and wane chaotically, selection pressure yield evolutionary innovations and arms races that allow breakouts from local minima, and so on.
A History of Warfare by John Keegan is a good introduction (with an excellent bibliography) to the anthropology of warfare, and has a particularly good treatment of initially adaptive social mores can end in catastrophe when they bump into resource limits or experience an external shock. Keegan emphasizes the role of technologies (both physical and social) which confer overwhelming advantages in conflict, which may or may not be sustainable. For example, pastoral herding/hunting practices developed on the large scale of the Mongolian steppe allowed nomadic hordes under leaders like Genghis Khan to overwhelm less dynamic agricultural societies. But lacking deep administrative foundations (quite literally, due to a lack of construction materials and incentives) they were unable to lock in their massive tactical advantages over a longer timescale.
War by Azar Gat has a deeper exploration of competition between socio-cultural systems and incorporates fresher scholarship, but at the price of being somewhat more tendentious and a much less engaging read.
Parenting is hard. Parenting someone who is already an adult is harder still. Beyond incentives, they might not have the resources to rehabilitate the prisoners.
If we realize that it's barely more expensive or even cheaper in the long run to rehabilitate instead of punishing purely, we can decide to allocate more resources to rehabilitation (at least in theory)
[0] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-co...
The social and economic benefits of rehabilitation far outweigh any costs incurred in rehabilitating folks.
Communities would be wealthier and safer if we didn't penalize convicted persons for the rest of their lives, by denying them jobs, housing and access to the financial system.
And since we do penalize folks that way, is it any wonder they turn to more potentially lucrative illegal pursuits?
And the economic argument is even stronger than the social argument. All those folks could learn skills and provide boosts to local economies if they were allowed to get decent jobs. That would improve overall GDP and provide a strong incentive for convicted felons to walk the straight and narrow.
Is it necessarily easy? No. But it makes societal and economic sense.
Doing the work to restore that trust is the work of justice.
Furthermore, in the USA a fair percentage of the incarcerated suffer from mental illness.
We could mitigate both of these. But we don't.
Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples lives improve, less crime, save money.
This heavily incentivizes people to commit crimes and drop out of school.
So you are forced to only use metrics that are outside their control such as parent's previous income level. And you'll get nowhere near a 50% false positive rate using only these metrics.
Not to mention all of the frustration felt by their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year.
Also we don't produce enough goods in the economy to make a 50k UBI possible.
And they wouldn't be mad that inmates are getting $100k/yr in court mandated housing services sitting in a cell doing nothing because for some insane reason we decided that it's a good use of our money and their time? Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it?
Yes. What a stupid question, of course people would rather pay money to punish criminals than to pay that money to have them play videogames.
You might argue that people shouldn't think that way, but not only do all apes have a sense of fairness, almost all other semi intelligent creatures do too.
Asking people to go go against a built-in drive is like asking teenagers to practice abstinence.
If we didn't have prisons would we punish criminals in a different way or just let criminal commit as many crimes as they'd like? I guess taking a hand or a foot is cheaper than a prison but most people think prison is more human.
> would we punish criminals in a different way
Yes, this is implied. The most popular alternative is "house arrest" (i.e "adult grounding") where you're monitored but allowed to go to work, school, and essential places like the doctor, grocery store, etc.. If you need more we can keep stacking on things like garnished wages, daily detention, mandatory community service.
I think that's way more human. The number of people that, for the safety of others, need to be separated from society I think it's vanishingly small, and smaller than that the number who are such a danger that they require confinement in cells.
This kind of thinking makes no sense in a world where prison sentences are finite. If you think being arrested for a “violent” offense means you are such a danger to others you have to be physically separated from society then you might as well make all prison sentences for life.
“But people can reform” — Great then let them out the moment that happens. Get rid of minimum sentencing.
The thing I care about when it comes to “violent” offenses isn’t what they did but why. If I had an oracle that could see into their soul and know with certainty they would never reoffend I wouldn’t even bother locking them up at all. And if their offense was situational I want to see that corrected first. For $100k/yr we can be a lot more creative about setting people up for success. That kind of money is at the level of send them off to college or trade school, full time caretaker, the very best psych care, rehab, full-on relocation, or pulling them entirely out of poverty.
Prison being the place where people with issues society has decided we don’t want to deal with is heartbreaking. If we have any other option we should take it.
Business man built a giant company and is about to get divorced. Wife is about to get half of everything because he got married before he had any success. He likes her to keep it.
Highly situational murder, zero risk to reoffend. You're saying because he had a zero recidivism rate we shouldn't jail him?
- Instead of losing half his money he now loses 75% of it.
- Instead of alimony 40% of his earnings and appreciation of assets are garnished.
All the money gets split between the wife’s family and a charity that financially supports the victims of violent crime.
- He loses all stake in the company he built and can’t hold any position in the company or a position the company contracts with. All his shares get returned to the company itself like a buyback (that he doesn’t benefit from).
- He is not allowed to remarry.
- He will get tattooed with a symbol people will recognize as a domestic abuser on his pelvis. It won’t show in normal circumstances but any intimate partner will know and he’ll have to explain it for the rest of his life.
If that’s not punishment enough for you then come up with your own scheme. Just so long as it’s not torture and he can continue living a semi-normal life among the rest of society since he’s not actually a danger to anyone.
Bet our hypothetical homeboy will regret his murder a million times more than sitting in a luxury prison for rich people while his stocks appreciate.
However
> we identified people likely to become criminals
This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will likely be used in court as evidence that a person likely commit a crime. Sadly, this is already happening today [2]
> you can have this as long as you don't do crime.
So if you are convicted of a crime, in addition to all the stuff convictions currently do to prevent you from getting a job and beating any chance to better yourself besides crime, you also loose that UBI making you even MORE desperate than you were before. All you have done is increase the longer term punishment of prision.
Not to mention it encourages first time convictions so the city can save money. There are many vindictive judges, who will say something like "You don't deserve the money the goverment is giving you."
[1] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-co...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-algorith...
If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.
Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.
But more seriously, even if the AI was super smart, it's still limited on it's inputs. The factors you listed are how the current crime AIs determine likely hood the person committed the crime.
This AI is very smart and people trust it. If it says you committed the crime then you must have done it!
> If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.
> Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.
These are exactly my points. Being marked by the AI gives you money, but people won't trust you.
If you're on trail it's this big weight people want to hate you. The jury isn't likely getting the money, why should this person on trail get it.
The judge has an incentive to incarcerate.
Even as a thought experiment, this idea can not stand.
Also, I think you might be missing how impulsive criminals can be... murder is often a crime of passion.
Another thing worth pointing out is this gives money to the young and the male more than anyone else.
Actually, do we even need the AI? We could give every African American male between the ages of 14 and 30 who lives in a crime ridden area, has been arrested, has an absentee father and has at least one friend in prison the money...
I'm not sure the more general approach wouldn't work, but "funnel a ton of money into poor crime ridden area" sounds obvious enough as a solution that its probably been tried. Anyone know what the results were?
I have vague recollections that a lot of gang crime is more about subculture incentives rather than money directly.
Apologies for disjointed thoughts.
Does it? I don't know that we can say it will, for sure. You're just assuming people are lazy, probably. Maybe it will discourage people from doing bullshit jobs and working on shitty advertising crapola, and instead we will have another human renaissance period of amazing things. Everyone I know, even those who aren't college educated and on the track to success since birth, would absolutely do amazing things for their communities with their time if they weren't doing stupid bullshit to enrich others.
I assumed that UBI meant Universal Basic Income; so I supposed that everybody got it. A UBI that only some people get is just some other benefit.
Anyway, thanks; there were some remarks upthread about UBI that I didn't understand. Now I do.
But I agree with the thrust of the idea - investing that money in reducing factors that would cause people to turn to crime is a good idea. I assume it's already being done but maybe not as effectively as we would hope?
This won't work because newfangled AI is very smart.
My opinion is that the money should be spent on labor camps, specifically towards guaranteeing good nutrition, secure housing, access to medicine, with oversight on a government level, but everyone is forced to work. You would solve for things like inner prison violence/drug trade, since people will be physically and mentally exhausted, and best of all, everyone finishing their sentences will have had a good number of years of blue collar work. If some dude spent 5 years every day welding up structures for solar panels, I guarantee you companies are gonna want to interview him to make use of his skills.
In US prisons I suppose. Most prisons in the world don't have shankings, or gangs, they're designed to rehabilitate, not punish.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...
The source publication concludes "that international comparisons are currently not valid" due to inconsistencies between countries' data and lack of transparency.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_Systema...
> An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years. (https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism)
Norway is often claimed to be one of the lowest in the world at ~20% within 5 years.
They're also low population, and quite wealthy from the giant oil fields national income.
If you broke the 330 million in the US into 5 million sized chunks, you likely find well performing outliers like Norway too. That's the problem when assuming a small thing should scale.
This article puts it at 25% (https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846) which admittedly isn't 20, but isn't far off. Wikipedia has it at 20% after 5 years using 2016 data, but I haven't checked their sources on that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway)
The wiki claim has three sources listed, none of which state the claim. The first claims 20%, no timeframe (so may well be the same 2 year value stated lots of places), the second sources the 20% in 2 years and a report (which looks to be a decent study, but does not have any claim of 25% at 5 years), and the third again has the 20% at 2 years with a linked report (the report also has that data).
Not one is a very good source, and if the person speaking for an interview were right, you'd think that data would appear all the times the 20% at 2 appears.
Given that, and that the data I cited was from a careful study [1] including lots of research from many countries (including the 20% at 2 years results from Norway), I tend to think the 25% is more or less made up wishful thinking. If it were defensible, it would be cited in other studies that aggregate all this data.
When you find something online, try to determine it's original source. Someone simply saying something is not generally true unless it's from a reputable place that actually measured it.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/pdf/wel...
And one successful program for treating homelessness handed out keys to apartments. The "moral hazard" involved offends lots of people: "I pay my rent! Why should some one/freeloader/whatever get a free place to live when I have to pay?" Outrage seems to be the driving force in media these days. Which is why nothing will change.
0 - https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mill...
I find it strange that you're just shrugging off the objections as "outrage", rather than trying to engage/address them in any serious way. I think the concept of fairness, and the fact that people might be incentivized to freeload are legitimate concerns. You might not think they're valid, but if you want their tax dollars to fund the social programs you want, it seems entirely reasonable that their concerns be addressed.
You too can have this "free" housing; all it will cost is your choice of living location and proving that you're incredibly poor.
If that sounds like a good deal, then this taxpayer is all for you mooching off the same system. But as with "I'm moving to Canada" I doubt we'll see significant movement.
So this outrage is emotional bluster, like a child who never learned to share.
>So this outrage is emotional bluster, like a child who never learned to share.
You're repeating the same mistake as the parent, by refusing to seriously engage with the opposition, instead arguing against a strawman version the opposition's argument, and then concluding that they must be insincere. If I had to steelman the opposition's positions, I would go with the following:
1. They think it's fundamentally not their responsibility to help society's downtrodden
2. They think think we have a responsibility to help society's downtrodden, but only the ones who physically can't support themselves. "free housing for everyone who's incredibly poor" wouldn't be compatible with this view, because it's possible for you to be be poor through laziness or whatever.
"It's fair because you too can get free housing if you're poor" doesn't address either of these concerns.
>like a child who never learned to share.
Okay, and what if they actually don't want to share? This isn't kindergarten where you can appeal to the teacher to forcibly get them to share. This is the real world, which means you need to amass a coalition of supporters to back you. Name-calling your opponents isn't going to help do that.
> 1. Not society's responsibility to help the downtrodden
Sadly, this fits the evidence. Thankfully most religions and ethical systems don't agree with it. This worldview is most common when a weakened population is under stress (e.g. scarcity, attack, change).
> 2. Only help those who physically can't support themselves.
Putting aside how many mental disabilities this rules out, I don't buy it because if it were true, there'd be agreement about this category of homeless people, which there isn't.
Further, all a lazy freeloader would have to do is cripple himself to get free housing. Same scenario to giving up your house and income for a "free" home.
> what if they don't want to share… can't appeal to a teacher
A government does exactly that, for example making us all pay taxes (that no individual wants to) for the benefit of all, like collective defense.
"physical" was probably the wrong choice of words, but the general sense is basically people who couldn't support themselves, according to some arbitrary definition. People with mental illnesses might be included, but of course that's subject to debate. There's a spectrum between "you get free housing if you're even a little depressed" and "depression isn't real and people should just choose not to be sad".
>I don't buy it because if it were true, there'd be agreement about this category of homeless people, which there isn't.
I don't think this is true. There might not be universal support for giving quadriplegics some sort of financial assistance, but there should be enough support to comfortably get a ballot measure/bill passed. The problem comes down to politics. The side pushing for assistance doesn't want to be seen as weak and "settling" for only quadriplegics, and the side that doesn't want assistance doesn't want to start a slipper slope. In the end the question of "should we give assistance to quadriplegics" turns into a referendum on whether we should help people in general.
>Further, all a lazy freeloader would have to do is cripple himself to get free housing. Same scenario to giving up your house and income for a "free" home.
Right, you're not going to be prevent all the freeloaders, but at least with a physical disability requirement it would be unpleasant enough that nobody would seriously go through with it. The same applies for committing a crime just so you can get free housing + food + healthcare. Despite the scattered stories you hear about it in the media, it's just not really a common thing poor people do.
>A government does exactly that, for example making us all pay taxes (that no individual wants to) for the benefit of all, like collective defense.
Right, but getting government to do something requires popular support, which clearly isn't present hence why people are on hacker news complaining about "outrage" is preventing their preferred policy from being implemented. The whole point of the kindergarten example is that the teacher can unilaterally do the "right" thing, without the need for popular support.
Compare it to prison with free healthcare, food and many more additional costs plus costs to society associated with whatever made somebody go to prison in the first place.
I mean, if you think about country income (or lack thereof) and spending, even ignoring military, corruption, church etc. There are still way bigger things to worry about regarding your tax dollars. There is tons of freeloading, exploitation and injustice, but if somebody is willing to accept living in slums to just have some roof over his head, he probably needs it, for whatever reason.
And even giving absolutely zero empathy, assuming no mental problems, childhood traumas etc., counting these specific irrelevant cents, it still may simply be the most economic solution from the society perspective.
How crappy/nice would it be? On one end of the spectrum is something like the camps set up at the border to house asylum seekers, and on the other is basically section 8 housing. You'd probably have to pay me a significant sum of money to stay in the former, but I would seriously consider the latter if it meant not having to pay thousands in rent in an expensive metro. The problem is that the nicer you make it, the more people would be attracted to using it for freeloading purposes, but if you make it too crappy, then people would rather sleep on the streets than use it. We see this for homeless shelters in some cities, for instance.
>Compare it to prison with free healthcare, food and many more additional costs plus costs to society associated with whatever made somebody go to prison in the first place.
Right, but the reason for prison isn't just keeping someone housed, there's also the additional concern that they're presumably a danger to society and therefore must be contained. Therefore the argument of "you don't want people to get free housing but are okay with prisoners getting free housing" isn't the type of gotcha you think it is.
>I mean, if you think about country income (or lack thereof) and spending, even ignoring military, corruption, church etc. There are still way bigger things to worry about regarding your tax dollars. There is tons of freeloading, exploitation and injustice, but if somebody is willing to accept living in slums to just have some roof over his head, he probably needs it, for whatever reason.
This is an entirely unpersuasive argument. Think about it from the flip side. Suppose the Other Side wants to increase funding for the police, and you object because you think that the police have shown a history of wasting the money on armored trucks and tacticool gear. They then reply with, "who cares? there are way bigger wastes of money you should worry about!" would you be convinced?
>And even giving absolutely zero empathy, assuming no mental problems, childhood traumas etc., counting these specific irrelevant cents, it still may simply be the most economic solution from the society perspective.
Has there been a serious attempt at estimating the costs? Taking (cost of a studio apartment) x (number of homeless in america) doesn't really get to the true costs, because:
1. it doesn't factor in the induced demand from people freeloading
2. that a studio apartment completely solves the homeless problem. for instance, for people with mental health/drug addiction issues, they might trash the place and cost more than a studio apartment, or might choose to live on the streets altogether.
Your argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense without that sense of outrage. Especially if you make the ridiculous economic argument you're making.
Firstly, there are serious housing shortages in many places in the US, driving up prices and making housing unaffordable[0] for many.
What's more, it's really hard to hold a job when you have no place to shower or store your stuff (I know this from personal experience), so homeless folks could be contributing to society (BTW, the data says that less than 10% of homeless folks have drug abuse/serious mental illness issues).
As such, providing most homeless folks with real housing (as compared with "shelters" which are dangerous and often unsanitary) can boost the economy by giving more folks the opportunity to work, make a living and contribute to the community/society.
It's really very simple. As James Ridgeway[0] pointed out back in 1988 or so (I've searched and searched for the Village Voice article over the years, but haven't been able to find it online) when he asked (then answered his own question):
"What do homeless people want?"
The answer being, "homes, mostly."
This is not a new issue, nor is it a particularly complicated.
The vast majority of homeless people are willing and able to support themselves, but circumstance (medical bills, lawsuits, layoffs death of a partner/fellow breadwinner) has taken away their ability to afford rent. And given that a majority of Americans[0] (~60%) can't come up with $1,000 for an emergency expense should give you some pause.
Spending some money to get folks to a place where they can once again support themselves and their children (yes, I'm going with the "think of the children" trope, although in this case it seems useful/relevant), so they can earn a living in excess of that expenditure helps the homeless people, the economy where that person resides and the community in which they live.
And since "housing" people in shelters is more expensive[0] than putting these unfortunate folks in apartments[0], that's another strong reason to find permanent housing for homeless folks.
tl;dr: Since the economics of homelessness and our response to it broadly calls out for paying (at least until folks are able to pay themselves) rent on permanent housing rather than the half-assed measures that cost more, your argument about "fairness" falls really flat.
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homeless-shelters-more-ex_n_5...
Or maybe perhaps you're not fully understanding their position? It's super tempting to write them off as "they're just being illogical/evil/bigoted, how can they possibly disagree with my position when my position so obviously right!?", but that's not going to help you change minds, or figure out which part of your policy needs to be changed to get widespread support.
That's basically what the parent post is stuck at. The guy has a policy proposal that he thinks is good and wants to get passed, but clearly he doesn't have enough supporters to do so. Instead of figuring out why people oppose his proposal, he rounds off all the opposition to "offense" and "outrage", then sulks about how "nothing will change".
> Especially if you make the ridiculous economic argument you're making.
What "economic argument" did I make? I literally made zero arguments in support or in opposition to the proposed policy itself last comment. I was only pointing out how the parent was rounding off all opposition as "outrage", and how that was wrong way to approach this.
Moreover, the whole "economic argument" that comprises the bulk of your comment also misses the point, because people care more than just dollars and cents. As you might be able to infer, the "Why should some one/freeloader/whatever get a free place to live when I have to pay" argument isn't really an economic one at all. It doesn't try to analyze the costs of the program vs its benefits, or even point out how unaffordable it would be. Instead, it tries to invoke the concept of fairness, or what is right, which makes it moral argument rather than an economic one. Suppose, you move into a neighborhood and the local mob demands $100/month from you as "protection". You're a highly paid software engineer, so you can totally afford it. Hell, it's probably not even worth your time to report it to the police, given how much you make per hour. Given this, would you feel right about paying the protection money? Sure, you can invoke a bunch of economic theory about how the mob is basically extracting rents from your community, and activities like that are a drag on the economy and is therefore bad, but most people have a more straightforward argument, that it's wrong for people to demand money from you for no reason. Needless to say, this isn't to say that giving people free housing is like a mob extracting protection, it's to point out that the "economic argument" isn't the be all end all of policy debates.
>Or maybe perhaps you're not fully understanding their position? It's super tempting to write them off as "they're just being illogical/evil/bigoted, how can they possibly disagree with my position when my position so obviously right!?", but that's not going to help you change minds, or figure out which part of your policy needs to be changed to get widespread support.
>That's basically what the parent post is stuck at. The guy has a policy proposal that he thinks is good and wants to get passed, but clearly he doesn't have enough supporters to do so. Instead of figuring out why people oppose his proposal, he rounds off all the opposition to "offense" and "outrage", then sulks about how "nothing will change".
No. I understand just fine. "Why should I pay rent when someone else doesn't have to. That's not fair!" sounds like outrage to me.
GP may well be attempting to persuade, but I'm not GP. And my goal here isn't to convince or convert. I gave that up years ago.
Because you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. And "someone is getting something I'm not! That's so unfair!" is a poster boy for unreasoned belief.
All that said, I agree that GP might catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (but not balsamic vinegar).
>What "economic argument" did I make? I literally made zero arguments in support or in opposition to the proposed policy itself last comment. I was only pointing out how the parent was rounding off all opposition as "outrage", and how that was wrong way to approach this.
You said:
"I think the concept of fairness, and the fact that people might be incentivized to freeload are legitimate concerns. You might not think they're valid, but if you want their tax dollars to fund the social programs you want, it seems entirely reasonable that their concerns be addressed."
First, moral and economic arguments aren't mutually exclusive. Second, policies concerning the disbursement of public funds are definitely economic arguments, even if there are other arguments that might be relevant. And finally, one can certainly make the moral argument that helping those in need in your community makes that community stronger and is a moral good.
>Moreover, the whole "economic argument" that comprises the bulk of your comment also misses the point, because people care more than just dollars and cents. As you might be able to infer, the "Why should some one/freeloader/whatever get a free place to live when I have to pay" argument isn't really an economic one at all."
That falls flat because the homeless already get free housing: at homeless shelters.
I've yet to hear anyone say "why should some one/freeloader/whatever get a free cot and a plastic box for their belongings at a homeless shelter when I have to pay?"
And since outcomes for folks who are put in actual apartments are better than for those in shelters and it costs less to do so, the entire argument falls apart.
Yes, I get that folks making an argument based on feelings don't focus on boring things like cost analyses, but that doesn't make such arguments any more valid, nor does it excuse local legislators/executives from doing those "boring" things -- after all, it's what we've elected them to do.
I'd argue it's just the opposite. If people believed Calvinism, then they would believe that all humanity has an innate capacity for evil and it's only circumstances that lead some people to become criminals and others judges. As I see it, the logical conclusion is that by changing people's circumstances we would be able to reform criminals.
However, I'm increasingly suspecting that many if not most people who profess to be Christians are actually just tribalists.
Can you talk more about how the doctrine of total depravity (I’m assuming that’s the “Calvinist nonsense” you meant) connects to putting people in prison?
Based on what you said earlier (“they are rewarded for cutting costs”), it seems entirely out of selfishness on the part of the prisons/cities/states, rather than a desire to exhibit specific harm on prisoners, that causes reductions in quality of life like this. But I do genuinely want to hear what you think regarding my question above.
The goal given to them is "house this person securely for a specific length of time at the lowest cost possible". They are rewarded for cutting costs.
But the total cost we pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It's the policing costs when they're homeless because they can't find housing or get a job. It's the health care costs they can never pay for when all of the above inevitably leads to further problems.
To reduce the lifetime cost of this person on society (financially and otherwise) we should be incentivising prisons to actually rehabilitate.
But we won't, because our society is largely based on Calvinist nonsense that says there are "bad people" and we should celebrate those people having bad things happen to them.