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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37978 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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Long term incarceration is expensive. In California, it is about 350$ a day. And you would have to be prepared to lock up a lot of people, because the chronic homeless population is heavily slanted towards people who are unable to follow their long term incentives -- jail one to deter 100 will not work.

If we ignore the utility to the homeless themselves (as you seem to prefer), the question becomes whether the negative externalities of the median homeless person are above that sum. I don't doubt that there are some whose negative externalities can reach 1k$/day, but I don't think that is the typical case.

Long term incarceration is expensive.

Because of the same category of people who are telling us to be compassionate for the homeless! You cant cause a problem then use that problem as a reason to not solve another problem! Its disingenuous!

I agree that the minimum viable prison is just a fenced-off area with some guards watching the fence who optionally throw food in.

Unfortunately, such a prison would also be a human rights violation. If you imprison someone, you take away most of their agency which they could have used to look after their basic human interests, such as being housed, fed, adequately medicated and neither raped nor murdered. I think it is reasonable that the society who imprisoned a person should take care of these necessities.

And caring for a bunch of people who have already failed to be deterred by the grossest disincentive society has against bad behavior (prison) and preventing them from raping and murdering each other is going to be more expensive per capita than running a boarding school.

I would be surprised if the cost of imprisonment was that high because bleeding heart liberals had pushed for daily changed satin bed sheets and a wide selection of organic food for the prisoners. My money would be on general cost disease, possibly with a sprinkling of market failure (e.g. regulatory capture by the prison industrial complex).

Even in Texas, the costs per prisoner per day are 77$.

The rhetoric around human rights has just become silly. We clapped ourselves in the manacles of human rights and now we're confused why we are hamstrung. Everything ever described as a "human right" is a luxury designed for a rich, strong, and healthy society to indulge in in order to feel good. We don't live in that world anymore. We live in a sick, weak, and struggling country which desperately needs to strengthen itself or be torn apart. This homeless problem and our inability to handle it is a symptom of that.

I assume we are still talking about the US, here?

Since the universal declaration of human rights was signed in 1948, the per-capita inflation-adjusted GDP has quadrupled. Jim Crow laws were still going strong. The witch-hunt on suspected communists was just getting started.

The idea that that any previous age was the real Golden Age and today we are just witnessing the decline is false for the US. Sure, the rent is too damn high, and a significant fraction of the population are pursuing grievance studies instead of something productive, but rumors of the impending collapse of the US or civil war are highly exaggerated.

Now, I will grant you that there is a tendency to claim that more and more stuff are human rights. Someone using the wrong pronouns or some ethnicity having worse outcomes in some field (but equal outcomes when correcting for skill) is not a human rights violation. Still, the idea that human rights are only for whiny wokes is wrong.

Almost nobody will say: "This country was so much better when we had slavery. If we abolish due process and just have the police shoot any suspected criminals, that will be much better. And if the whiny liberals complain, we should be able to make a law against criticizing to government and shoot them as well."

I agree that the minimum viable prison is just a fenced-off area with some guards watching the fence who optionally throw food in.

Unfortunately, such a prison would also be a human rights violation. If you imprison someone, you take away most of their agency which they could have used to look after their basic human interests, such as being housed, fed, adequately medicated and neither raped nor murdered. I think it is reasonable that the society who imprisoned a person should take care of these necessities.

"Human rights" aren't real. They were literally made up from nothing by enlightenment thinkers. What about my right to walk the streets and use the library without being hassled by underclass vagrants? No one cares for it.

Of course, human rights aren't real. The only thing I can be certain about is that that something which runs my mind exists. All the other stuff, electrons, sun flowers, homeless people, other entities which experience qualia, laws of mathematics or societies and so on are at best useful models to make sense of my sensory inputs.

Of course, most of these concepts were not made up at random by people who were high. Instead, they were invented to solve problems -- from describing their sensory experiences ('reality') to trying to prevent the repeat of bad outcomes in society.

The US was one of the forerunners with regard to the idea of human rights, and I would argue that this played a significant role in their economic success.

Fortunately for you, there are all kinds of countries who share your disdain for human rights. Mainland China, the Taliban regime, Iran or Somalia all agree with you that the convenience of important people like yourself should trump the desire of some less important people not to be sent to some gulag or shot in the streets.

Even Texas is subject to lawfare.

We know how to prevent all that sort of stuff in prisons. All activity is conducted in public. Lights out at 8. And probably a good dose of racial segregation. The costs are high because prisons now have extravagant designs full of concrete and video monitors which are all less effective than chain link and guards being able to see around corners.

No moral framework can justify the dregs of our society incurring $350/day in costs. It's absolutely unmitigated cost disease through unions and regulatory capture.

Perhaps most importantly, the Californian prison system doesn't even give us anything for those costs. They have all the same problems with rape and overcrowding as any other US prison system, even if it's not at the same scale as the worst of them.

I agree that the minimum viable prison is just a fenced-off area with some guards watching the fence who optionally throw food in.

Sounds like the American built camps for former German soldiers.

Unfortunately, such a prison would also be a human rights violation.

Not according to any US administration since camps for "Disarmed Enemy Forces" were built, for no House of Representatives, Senate or President has at least offered condolences, let alone expressed regret or admitted wrongdoing.

By today's standards, these camps would be a human rights violation. Of course, the state of the imprisoned had set a really low bar for human rights.

I would still argue that there is a difference in degree between Nazi soldiers who plunged Europe into war and genocided millions and homeless who shit in the streets of San Francisco. Sometimes you have to commit actions of dubious human rights status to stop more severe human rights violations from going on, and the severity of what you try to stop should be considered.

There are some more differences to consider, though:

  • The Nazi soldiers were used to follow the orders of their officers. Military prisoners can self-organize in a way that ideally limits the amount of prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
  • The people in these camps were selected only by their willingness to surrender instead of dying the Heldentod for their Fuehrer, and as such represented a normal cross-section of men in society. Granted, they were indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda, but it is not like they had any Jews or commies to victimize. By contrast, the people populating civil prisons -- or even homeless camps -- are heavily selected for aggression or mental health problems, respectively.
  • Most of the prisoners were there for a single summer. This would explain the exceedingly low death toll (6k over 2M, per Wikipedia). However, the Endloesung to the homeless question proposed in this thread was basically life imprisonment. Bad weather and infectious diseases and the inability to control food distribution would likely cause significant attrition even if no explicit violence took place among the inmates.

Sounds like the American built camps for former German soldiers.

Jesus, TIL. Fascinating and horrible.

For a similar one further back in history, see the Andersonville POW camp in the American Civil War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_Prison

You do realize $350 and $77 are much different numbers.

We also have tech solutions today to prevent them from raping and murdering each other. Require them to wear Apple glasses or just watches. Put cheap cameras everywhere.

If you kill someone then we just need an immediate execution. If you rape someone then off to the hole for 10 years. This would negate the need for highly paid unionized gods.

Prison guards. Highly paid. These two descriptors do not belong in the same sentence.

I think labor costs are high because prisons take a lot of labor.

I think the obvious is unions. Outsource this stuff to the rust belt. The flight each way is like $1k with security.

The all-in costs should be something like 16k a year in rural areas. Notre Dame room and board is 17k. Lower the quality of the housing and the food. Add-in some expenses for security. Probably got more rural than there. Get rid of so it’s impossible to bring in substances. Make it one road in one road out type of compound.

Spending this amount of money on incarceration is a policy choice. It could very easily be brought down to $35 a day, if not lower.

We already spend a lot on the problem with very little to show for it. I wonder if the overall cost would be lower

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