How moronic does a society have to be to agree to pay taxes to keep people in jail who don’t need to be there but not to pay taxes for actual firefighters? In California, they are arguing that they can’t release prisoners because they need them to put out wildfires.
It’s supposed to be cheaper this way.
Out of California’s years-long litigation over reducing the population of prisons deemed unconstitutionally overcrowded by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, another obstacle to addressing the U.S. epidemic of mass incarceration has emerged: The utility of cheap prison labor.
In recent filings, lawyers for the state have resisted court orders that they expand parole programs, reasoning not that releasing inmates early is logistically impossible or would threaten public safety, but instead that prisons won’t have enough minimum security inmates left to perform inmate jobs.
The debate culminated Friday, when a three-judge federal panel ordered California to expand an early parole program. California now has no choice but to broaden a program known as 2-for-1 credits that gives inmates who meet certain milestones the opportunity to have their sentences reduced. But California’s objections raise troubling questions about whether prison labor creates perverse incentives to keep inmates in prison even when they don’t need to be there.
Does anyone seriously think it is cheaper to imprison someone than to pay them to be a firefighter? Anyone?
It only begins to make economic sense when you pay the inmate two dollars a day and you’re talking about an inmate who is already sentenced to a ludicrous term, and who will have his sentence reduced as partial compensation for fighting fires. Basically, the savings is in giving the state the excuse to reduce a sentence. But that could be done anyway.
So, now, California doesn’t want to give inmates any alternative ways to reduce their sentences because then they won’t have enough signing up to fight fires and they’ll have to go pay for actual firemen.
How about people stop moaning about paying taxes and pay them in a more sensible way that will actually save money?
If you want to let lots of people out of prison early, just don’t put new people in prison for so long in the first place.
Why not just toss thousands of inmates out of planes onto the flames, thereby putting out the fire and eliminating the cost of incarceration?
Your move, Alabama.
So California is America’s future–even in this? Who made the decision to fight this?
they had to come up with some reason
The decision was made many years ago with a built in positive feedback loop. As a percentage of the state’s revenues, what once went to public high education, now goes to the prison industrial complex and ed gets the lower percentage that prisons once got.
The argument that inmates can’t be released early because the state needs the cheap labor was apparently made by AG Kamala Harris. For me, she has just made Gavin Newsom look better.
agree with the analysis, not sure about blaming Harris. She may have said it but I’m certain the governor agrees. Jerry has been awful on prison issues.
can we find any other possibilities for the next election other than Harris and the empty suit Gavin Newsom?
If Harris doesn’t agree, she shouldn’t have said it. She was elected in her own right and doesn’t serve at the pleasure of Brown as the federal AG does.
Looking more like every elected official is coming down with deranged donkey disease.
The “tough on crime” posturing is way out of hand.
Elephantiasis.
Republicans are the parasites that are blocking the lymph vessels of government that usually aid in removing excess profits and societal disease.
Much like elephantiasis.
yes…if my home was in trouble, I’d be oh so happy to know that there was a convict, instead of an actual fireman trying to save my house.
Uh huh
Just another attack on public unions.
Well, private unions have all but been destroyed over the past 60+ years and we’ve been left with about 7% of the private workforce in unions or so.
So, next on the chopping block are the public unions, which are still holding strong at about 35% of public employees. We have to destroy the public unions, else the neo-Feudalist state we’re headed for won’t be as Feudal.
Here’s a couple of fun pics!
And anytime I see an article that comes out with respect to a particular government agency? The second the word “union” appears? Automatically, commenters flood the comment sections with “Oh, that’s why…those damn unions.”
Heres a pic of some brownshirt fascists closing down a union headquarters to keep Nazi Germany safe from UnionThugsTM
Maybe someday we can have some American fascists in camoshirts closing down a teachers union office to keep Amerikkka safe from elementary school teacher UnionThugsTM
With Republicans gaining in the 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial and state legislative elections, public service unions are under serious attack. Illinois just elected Bruce Rauner as governor. Rauner said his role model is Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and that state employees are a financial tumor on the state. The Republican plan is to dismantle public service unions in the Midwest, then go to the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region. Then it’s on to California.
The worst thing that we can do as a nation is provide the rabble with decent-paying jobs and pensions, allowing them to think and act independent of the oligarchs who own and operate this country.
Mostly because of FreedumbTM
The difference is that the IL General Assembly is 2-1 Democrat, what happened in WI won’t happen here
Sorry, Booman, but even California has to fight the scourge of FireWelfareTM
S̶l̶a̶v̶e̶s̶ Prisoners are cheaper than paying the proles a living wage to do essential and dangerous work.
Here are some more suggestions in how the US and State gub’mints can fight Socialism. I choose to share in picture format because pictures are fun and I just went through my saved pictures folder and want to share them.
Hmm. Keeping people in captivity immorally so people can extract cheap labor from them. Sounds like a certain American institution which was supposed to have been eliminated in 1865.
It never went away. It built our farm-to-market roads in the early days of the automobile. It stamped our license plates. It picks up litter and fights fires and harvests our crops today. That institution, whether done in debt, orange jumpsuits, or chains remains. And so do the slave patrols that catch or manufacture the runaways.
And it hides behind being “tough on crime”. Or not letting criminals make a living wage. Or not having documents, which in itself is criminal.
Incarceration rates have always varied by states — and as LA, MO, and OK currently have the highest rates, guess that it’s always been higher in the south.
US prisoners in 1970 were 400,000 to 450,000; recently there were 2.3 million and while violent crime rates have decreased. 1970 US population – 203 million. 2010 population – 308 million. How did we get so dumb since 1970 that we’ve incarcerated 1.6 million too many people?
Tough on crime posturing, as in:
Jail time for possession of small amounts of drugs
Prosecutors honing their “tough on crime” credentials
Plea bargaining with poor representation
Mandatory sentencing
Three strikes and you’re out
“Tough on crime” probation boards
Private/public prison contracts
Accounting for all levels of prisons–local, state, and federal–as a result of law enforcement assistance grants in the 1970s.
Defunding of schools
Economic policies that encourage higher unemployment
Increased number of police
…all done in a punitive spirit and without reference to how to deter crime from occurring in the first place.
In the South, guys could draw 30 days for failure to pay child support, go to a county jail, work every day on the chain gang (they still called them that although there were no chains, just a deputy with a shotgun) and get out. Now he had a jail record which made it even more difficult to find a job and more difficult to pay child support. Pretty soon he was back for another 30 days of free labor. This was in the early 1980s. I don’t know if county jails still work this way or not. The more serious crimes were state crimes and generally got one a year or more at a minimum security work camp or much longer at Central Prison, which was maximum security.
Interesting that Missouri has among highest rates in light of what has been exposed in Ferguson.
The War on Drugs was a great start, if not the cause.
OT:
Re. MO state of emergency
Belmar is chief of the Saint Louis County Police Department and his FB pic used to show a Confederate flag in his den.
Not a comforting sign of good police behavior at all. Getting the bigots all fired up before the showdown.
Correction: St. Louis Metro Police Department Chief Dotson, not the neo-Confed guy. Still. O’Reilly?
For another example of our stupidity…
If you want to know where income inequality comes from here is a perfect example from the world of high finance.
“Putting Allergan into play effectively created about $20 billion of value almost out of thin air.”
There you go! $20 billion created out of thin air and not one job to go with it.
“His investment partner, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, appeared to withdraw from a hostile takeover battle to buy Allergan, the maker of Botox, when a higher rival offer emerged. Normally, Mr. Ackman and Valeant would be considered the losers, having been unable to complete the deal that they set out to clinch months ago.
However, Mr. Ackman and, to a lesser extent, Valeant found a backdoor way to win: Having acquired 9.7 percent of Allergan’s stock before they made their takeover bid — which put the company in play — Mr. Ackman’s fund now stands to collect $2.6 billion. He will share 15 percent of the profits with Valeant, or $389 million, leaving him with a tidy profit of $2.2 billion.”
“The buyer, Actavis, is probably the right acquirer, unlike Valeant, which had been expected to decimate Allergan’s research and development budget.”
If you were an employee of Allergan minding your own business when this all started, would you have gone out to buy a new car? Would you have bought a new home or new furniture? Would you have done anything at work other every day other than polish up your resume and network with others while looking for a new job?
Liberals are having a debate about doing something for the middle class. Immigration reform, minimum wage, blah fucking blah. None of it will matter when some Wall St. asshole can create $20 billion out of thin air while terrorizing the employees of their target. None of it will matter because the media will find this tactic “clever.”
Fuck these people.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/the-luck-of-a-loser-to-the-tune-of-2-2-billion/?ref=internati
onal
Annual cost of keeping someone in a California state prison: $49,000
Typical pay for a beginning California temp firefighter for the wildfire season: $15,240
Value of humiliating people who look different from you and got caught using drugs, and fighting wildfires at the same time: Priceless!
The problem is how to get the money from Pot A to Pot B.
The cost/prisoner average overstates the cost/prisoner that are “employed” as firefighters. However, it’s still more than what a seasonal firefighter would be paid. As the majority of the costs of incarceration are for staffing, a lot of guards would lose their jobs. Average CA prison guard salary and benefits is approximately $100,000/year. They have a strong union and are a force in CA politics. (That’s one reason why Jerry Brown supports them.) About the CCPOA
Another point — would those inmate, seasonal firefighters be hired upon release if the money from Pot A were moved to Pot B? There’s a lot of competition for those seasonal jobs.
Yeah, that was a little facile on my part. On the other hand surely fixing the overcrowding of California prisons, which has to be done anyway, would not lead so much to massive job loss for those guys as gradual attrition and non-replacement as they retire. I’m sure the ex-cons wouldn’t have a chance of getting the firefighting jobs, but wouldn’t it be nice if they did?