You are reading a single comment by @hugo7 and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
£77,500. It’s not about recovering costs
That number does seem punchy as I thought it was more like £50k in the UK, and you'd expect the economies of scale to be better in the US.
But I guess for me there is a mix of reasons you send people to prison. One of those is to provide society at large with a concept of justice and retribution.
I think there is a fundamental difference between making people on means tested benefits repay money, vs choosing who morally wears the cost of paying for prisoners.
However, I would say this is all hypothetical because were I a benevolent dictator I'd be designing a justice system which prosecutes and sentences very quickly, and also didn't have the as many things illegal in the first place.
hugo7
I started writing a response and it kept branching out into really depressing aspects of current US society and possibly human nature. There’s just too much to unpick.
I don’t agree with convicts being made to pay for their stay in the current system. If costs are so high they need to pay for their stay, useless incarceration as it is needs to be reassessed. Etc etc etc.
$249 a day is $90,885 a year, £77,500. It’s not about recovering costs, they’ve designed a system that creates lifelong, legalised slave labour; that preys on the vulnerable (whether convicts or not); and that actively chews away at the foundations of a safe, functional society/economy/country.
Fucked isn’t strong enough a word.