County officials across Mississippi are warning of job losses and deep deficits as local jails are being deprived of the state inmates needed to keep them afloat. . . .The basic story is that when its prisons were filled by the crime wave of the 80s and 90s and the draconian sentences put in place to fight it, Mississippi asked counties to expand their jails and make the space available for state prisoners. The counties were payed a fixed rate per prisoner per day. Of course the counties would not have done this unless they expected to earn a profit. For 15 years they did, and for a few counties that became a key part of their revenue. Now the pie is shrinking, as it were, as the number of new inmates falls and their sentences are shortened. So the various players – state prisons, privately operated prisons, and county jails – squabble over the available funds.
As the wave of mass incarceration begins to recede, the Mississippi controversy has local and state officials talking openly about how harmful locking up fewer people up will be for the economy, confirming the suspicions of those who have argued that mass incarceration is not merely a strategy directed at crime prevention.
So I don't think these county sheriffs are doing anything evil by demanding more prisoners. But I would ask why Mississippi was always able to find the money to lock more people up, but never finds the money for libraries or public schools or public defenders who might have kept some of those men out of jail in the first place. If the money was there to pay for housing prisoners, it ought to still be there for some other state purpose that could employ people as something more useful than prison guards.
5 comments:
"So I don't think these county sheriffs are doing anything evil by demanding more prisoners."
No? If there was some surplus of prisoners floating around elsewhere that needed a place to be incarcerated, perhaps. But their complaint is that there aren't enough criminals to go around, and they're effectively calling for the creation of more, with the unspoken implication of producing those criminals artificially, purely for the sake of profit. That strikes me as pretty fundamentally evil - like trying to fill your coffers by creating a tax on clean water, then going around poisoning wells.
"But I would ask why Mississippi was always able to find the money to lock more people up, but never finds the money for libraries or public schools or public defenders who might have kept some of those men out of jail in the first place."
You can't really make kickbacks on libraries, public schools, and public defenders.
They were always able to find the money for more jails and prisons because they were always willing to cut corners and skim off the top, resulting in a net profit. If the state pays you X amount per prisoner per day, and you manage to lock them up for less than that per day by cutting corners, you come out ahead. And even if the profit margin per prisoner is relatively small, if you incarcerate large enough numbers of people it still adds up - incentivizing you to push for more draconian laws, harsher punishments, longer sentences, and a betrayal of justice and the public good for the sake of profit.
I don't know about you, but that sounds decidedly evil to me.
"But I would ask why Mississippi was always able to find the money to lock more people up, but never finds the money for libraries or public schools or public defenders who might have kept some of those men out of jail in the first place."
-Where'd you get the idea schooling would prevent criminality? I think the opposite is more likely to be the case, as schools encourage close contact between potential criminals.
BTW, you're ignoring the racial aspect of this. Mississippi has the second-lowest difference between Black and White incarceration rates in the country. Its average composite ACT score for Blacks is .5 points worse than the nation's, but its average composite ACT score for Whites is a full 1.5 points worse than the nation's.
https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Natl-Scores-2014-Mississippi.pdf
Consequently, the State of Mississippi is clearly institutionally racist against Whites.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/the-facts/#map?dataset-option=BWR
I'm not entirely sure I'm even kidding here.
White Lives Matter.
@pithom
See, here's the thing. Everyone's life matters. Life is one of the three inalienable rights invoked in the US constitution. All men are created equal, and everyone has the right to equal protection under the law.
But there currently isn't equal protection under the law. A hugely disproportionate amount of homicides carried out by police are of African Americans. More than that, many of those being killed are completely unarmed and either compliant or physically restrained, rendering them victims of excessive force delivered without due process of law. They are literally being executed in the streets, and their executioners are evading all consequences.
So sure, you can get offended that millions of people are outraged at unchecked racially motived police brutality, and you can complain that whites get killed by police too - but at best your argument is completely irrelevant, and at worst it actively contributes to the continued tolerance of unrestrained police violence against all races.
No one deserves to be shot in the head without reason while lying prone and handcuffed in the street - and certainly the perpetrators of such acts should not be allowed to get away with them. And that's why laws exist - to protect people from such senseless violence.
But the protections of the law in America today are not equal. When people say "Black Lives Matter", what they're really saying is "White Lives Already Matter, Black Lives Should Too". Because currently, in many parts of the country, they do not.
So check your privilege, recognize that the inalienable right to life itself that you enjoy is being stolen from millions of Americans based purely on their skin color, and stop feeling indignant and resentful of their demands to not be gunned down in the street unjustly the way you and yours aren't.
"See, here's the thing. Everyone's life matters. Life is one of the three inalienable rights invoked in the US constitution. All men are created equal, and everyone has the right to equal protection under the law."
-Careful there. That's getting dangerously close to the phrase that crushed Martin O'Malley's presidential campaign.
"A hugely disproportionate amount of homicides carried out by police are of African Americans."
-You might get that impression from the media, but it's not true. Blacks constitute half of murderers (far more of murderers of police) and only a quarter of those shot by police.
"More than that, many of those being killed are completely unarmed and either compliant or physically restrained, rendering them victims of excessive force delivered without due process of law. They are literally being executed in the streets, and their executioners are evading all consequences."
-That sometimes happens and there is a very real problem with police accountability in the U.S. But a lot of the hyped-up supposed examples of this in the media are just hokum. The hunt for the Great Black Gentle Giant is very similar to that for the Great White Defendant -very much motivated by anti-White animus and often resulting in the digging up of fool's gold.
"But there currently isn't equal protection under the law."
-Agreed. Police response times in Detroit are much longer than in the suburbs. Which is why I don't live in Detroit.
"So check your privilege, recognize that the inalienable right to life itself that you enjoy is being stolen from millions of Americans based purely on their skin color, and stop feeling indignant and resentful of their demands to not be gunned down in the street unjustly the way you and yours aren't."
-I am not one to trust my accouterments with anyone to the Left of Walter Jones. I live around a lot of Asian Indians. I'm not noticing much crime and disorder perpetrated by them, nor much police brutality perpetrated against them.
"what they're really saying is "White Lives Already Matter, Black Lives Should Too""
-Except that's false. You are aware most people killed by police look like me, right?
"No one deserves to be shot in the head without reason while lying prone and handcuffed in the street - and certainly the perpetrators of such acts should not be allowed to get away with them. And that's why laws exist - to protect people from such senseless violence."
-Agreed.
"So sure, you can get offended that millions of people are outraged at unchecked racially motived police brutality, and you can complain that whites get killed by police too - but at best your argument is completely irrelevant, and at worst it actively contributes to the continued tolerance of unrestrained police violence against all races."
-Disagree entirely. If it's racially motivated, I can only see it as motivated by anti-White animus. More racially representative coverage of police violence should make it easier, not harder, for genuine police reform to be enacted.
Ignoring the Verloren/Pithom discussion at least for now, I want to focus on something else.
It's the for-profit prisons that are filling up w/ prisoners who otherwise would be filling those county jail cells. Pass a law (state or national; I don't care) that requires that all beds in public prisons be filled before a single prisoner can be sent to privately-operated, for-profit prisons.
That'll put the cash back in the hands, however corrupt, of the locals.
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