

Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences - raheemm
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/us/19judges.html?ref=global-home

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hugh3
I thought "Wow, only $37,000 for a three-year sentence? I thought it cost more
than that per year!" But apparently I was looking at California standards.
Compare:

<http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=MO> average cost per inmate $16K
to

<http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=CA> average cost per inmate $45K.

At the extremes, New York pays $55K per prisoner and Montana just $11K. This
is insane.

It looks like California should be looking at solving its budget problems by
outsourcing its prisons to Montana. This would save approximately four billion
dollars a year.

~~~
lliiffee
I believe Schwarzenegger wants to do exactly that, but has been prevented by
prison guard unions.

~~~
mahmud
I don't care much for the jailers, but what about the families of inmates who
might want to visit them? Will they be forced to travel out of state? Couldn't
denying someone visitors be construed as cruel and unusual punishment?

~~~
lliiffee
Good point! Theoretically, you could have Montana come and run a prison in
California. Of course, that would never be allowed, for the same reasons that
it costs so much to house prisoners in California now...

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acangiano
I believe that prison for non-violent crimes is an absolutely antiquate
concept and it doesn't belong to a modern society. There are far more
effective ways to prevent crime and educate people. How much good could be
done for society if we had millions of people doing community work instead of
being imprisoned? But I'm afraid society is not ready yet for such a liberal
stance, and there are powerful interests working against it as well (think
private prisons).

~~~
baddox
I agree, although it would be important to define "violent" in some formal
way. Is theft through fraud violence? What about inciting others to violence?

~~~
pjscott
One possible hack you could try is defining _three_ categories:

1\. Definitely violent crimes, like stabbing someone and taking his wallet.

2\. Definitely non-violent crimes, like selling illegal drugs.

3\. Crimes we're not entirely sure about. _If_ you imprison people whose
crimes fall in this category, they should only go to prisons with other people
in this category.

Of course nothing is a perfect solution here, but I think this might be a
helpful way of thinking about it.

~~~
baddox
Perhaps it's best to say we shouldn't have prison sentences for victim-less
crimes. That way, we can clearly identify drug possession or dealing as
victim-less, and fraud clearly has victims.

Of course, at that point, you can easily argue that "victim-less crimes"
shouldn't be crimes at all. Some sort of exception would have to be made for
simple stuff like traffic/parking violations.

~~~
wtallis
Traffic and parking crimes have victims, they're just not easy to identify.
When you make crazy maneuvers on a highway without signalling and trigger a
traffic jam that persists for two hours, you have quite a few victims, all
affected in minor ways, but it adds up. Parking violations do not always have
victims, but clearly you shouldn't be off the hook just because you got lucky
that nobody handicapped showed up to find you had taken the spot reserved for
people like them.

We don't need any special exceptions in order to keep those violations in the
same category as fraud.

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lliiffee
I wonder if the algorithm includes the taxes that people won't be paying due
to sentences. That could get really complicated. For example, having a felony
conviction on your record probably hugely reduces lifetime incomes. For
certain people, the lost taxes might be much larger than the "direct" costs.

~~~
hugh3
If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes
they won't be committing?

A burglar maybe steals $52,000 worth of stuff every year, and it winds up
being worthwhile locking him up. But a child rapist has no major impact on
economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this
mercenary approach to sentencing.

~~~
lliiffee
If we are committed to the mercenary approach, we would have to define how bad
a murder is "in dollars".

If you think we should be focused on justice instead of a cold cost-benefit
analysis, may I suggest defining how valuable justice is, in dollars? (I'm
joking, I think...)

~~~
matwood
You mean putting a dollar number on a human life? This is done everyday by
actuaries primarily for insurance purposes.

~~~
hugh3
Whatever dollar value may be put on a human life for insurance purposes it's
not an _actual_ value. For instance, I can't pay that amount and then kill
you.

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ewjordan
This is actually a bit more interesting than merely providing judges with the
costs. FTFA:

 _The concept is simple: fill in an offender’s conviction code, criminal
history and other background, and the program spits out a range of recommended
sentences, new statistical information about the likelihood that Missouri
criminals with similar profiles (and the sentences they received) might commit
more crimes, and the various options’ price tags._

The fact that the system actually gives info about likelihood of committing
future crimes is pretty neat, if it's done well. This is one of the first
practical moves I've seen towards data-driven sentencing, and if it spreads
and grows, it could be the start of a major tidal shift in our entire
philosophy of criminal justice.

~~~
Someone
Are you suggesting that people should be judged on the probability that they
might commit more crimes in the future, that is, for crimes they have not
committed?

~~~
jerf
They already are, by the ultimate opaque system, semi-random collections of
human brains. Recall all the senses of the word "judge", after all; judges
certainly take that into account as part of their human decisions.

This is more transparent and more subject to validation and verification. Are
you _sure_ you think this is actually a step backward?

~~~
Someone
I did not say so, but I do think this is a road to hell, paved with good
intentions. 'Minority Report' is on that road.

Judges may sometimes or often be biased, but, institutionalizing that is IMO a
step too far.

Having said that, I think there is gray area; for example, I do not believe in
the British "if it's murder, it must be life in prison", and I do think that
sentences like "follow this anger management course or go to prison for three
months" can be based on statistics of repeat offending.

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abalashov
Hey, if there is a practical incentive for judges to incarcerate less people
in this psychotic, off-the-deep-end "justice" system where almost nobody who
is incarcerated long-term should be, I'm all for it. Whatever it takes.

On the other hand, I am intensely wary of formulations like this: "The
imprisonment of X will cost taxpayers $YYY,YYY over his lifetime." That sounds
awfully similar to posters for the Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program, e.g.
"This mental invalid costs the Reich 60,000 marks over his lifetime. Do the
merciful thing... it's your money." There has got to be a more delicate way to
put that.

