California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

[Shakespear]

I simply have no words reading a story like this. This is Ape Shit Insanity gone over the edge.

I know those dollars are just printed paper, but still those in need would surely do more with them than in those prisons.

Christ, send them to Club Med if you spend this kind of money and they will change their ways !!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/op...stof.html?_r=1

Arnold, Wake the Hell Up !!!! :confused: :confused:

[Mega]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

Neo-Lib BULSH*T

We had the same crap 10 years ago, "Oh its not their fault, let them go"

We then had a MEGA CRIME wave!

Mike

[flintlock]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

Yeah, when do we reach the point we should just pay criminals to be good boys.:rolleyes:

We should model our prisons on this:

[gwynedd1]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

I always love the "good schools" crap like its about money. Catholic schools get by on shoe strings because they are fully paid by the student's parents. They never have new anything. Good school , bad school, make no difference. What matters is good students or bad students.

[don]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

California's prison system has become an unsolvable hairball, caught in the throat of the Golden State. There's plenty of bad-asses in Cali, gang-bangers and psychos. The thriving, competitive drug distribution biz provides a steady stream of inmates. Add in 30,000 plus illegals now incarcerated on the state's dime (wonder what FIREman got that okay'd) instead of returned home. A prison guard union totally out of control, both fiscally and socially. (A few years back guards were staging lethal inmate gladiator combat that was investigated by the FBI. The federales were sent fleeing for their lives down the interstate, prison officials in hot pursuit.) Most law-abiding Calis ignored the state prison business's financial tidal wave - longer mandatory sentences for everything, 3-strikes for life, privatized prisons, lifetime pensions bloated by overtime, 100% of pay, full healthcare, etc. until the fiscal shit hit the fan. Now there's no way out. Shooting the inmates, though widely prescribed, doesn't seem feasible.

[World Traveler]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

It costs average approx. $30-40k to house adult prisoners. Majority are non-violent.

What we do know is that the current U.S. incarceration policies are not working, drug use has not gone down, for example. The states, which pay most of the costs, cannot stay on same upward trajectory of imprisonment, they just don't have the money.

Focus on treament (which is cheaper) instead of punishment is also more enlightened and acknowledges that drug addiction is a medical issue. That would be a start.

There's all kinds of other less expensive alternatives the U.S. could experiment with to drive down prison costs for non-violent adult and juvenile offenderss.

Some examples: subsidize community college tuition for ex-offenders who want to go straight. Ex-offenders have a hard time getting a job once they're out, so have A SERIOUS jobs program with positive financial incentives for employers who hire ex-offenders. Get rid of mandatory minimums for drug crimes. Restore sentencing discretion to judges, expecially for for first-time offenders...a certain percentage will be scared straight by their first time in court. Re-visit what should be considered a "felony crime"...the bar on what is a "felony crime" has been lowered, often considerably, over the last 30 years and felony ex-offenders face dismal job prospects.

This is not bleeding heart stuff, just a practical recognition that our current system is expensive and broken. A focus on "being tough on crime" and punishment may feel good in the short term but it costs a lot of money in the long run. We have to deal with these folks one way or another, since they're going to live in the U.S. the rest of their lives.

[bcassill]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

I read something not too long ago that although the U.S. has only 3% of the world's population, we house something like 25% of world's prison population. I'm all for locking up the bad guys and throwing away the key, but that is absolute insanity. It's pretty much guaranteed that someone will be looking at ways to reduce spending by letting some of these folks out (preferably the non-violent ones) given state's collapse in tax revenues. However, prison is big business here what will all the unionized prison guards (at least in Cali) and the private prison business. I think that anything that will potentially turn off the money spigot to these people will be met with a lot of resistance.

[MarkL]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

It's been said that 12.5% of US prisoners are in jail for pot charges. I live in California and don't have any evidence for this, but I expect that here, the percentage is higher. At $216k/prisoner how much money are we wasting by incarcerating pot heads? I'm not a fan of pot... but boy it sure seems expensive to have it criminalized.

[Diarmuid]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

I read something not too long ago that although the U.S. has only 3% of the world's population, we house something like 25% of world's prison population. I'm all for locking up the bad guys and throwing away the key, but that is absolute insanity. It's pretty much guaranteed that someone will be looking at ways to reduce spending by letting some of these folks out (preferably the non-violent ones) given state's collapse in tax revenues. However, prison is big business here what will all the unionized prison guards (at least in Cali) and the private prison business. I think that anything that will potentially turn off the money spigot to these people will be met with a lot of resistance.

Is there money and profit in the destruction of communities? - I would like to see a graph of stock earning for these private prison companies next to prison numbers plotted against time and with clear labels on the time axis of legislation enacted which helped fill the prisions such as three strike your out rule - is it possible to forecast profits based on beds filled? The FIRE must be fed.

ancedotal story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...tention-centre


Jailed for a MySpace parody, the student who exposed America's cash for kids scandal

• Judges deny kickbacks for imprisoning youths
• Slapping a friend or having tantrum led to prison

Hillary Transue was 14 when she carried out her prank. She built a hoax MySpace page in which she posed as the vice-principal of her school, poking fun at her strictness. At the bottom of the page she added a disclaimer just to make sure everyone knew it was a joke. "When you find this I hope you have a sense of humour," she wrote.
Humour is not in abundance, it seems, in Luzerne County, northern Pennsylvania. In January 2007 Transue was charged with harassment. She was called before the juvenile court in Wilkes-Barre, an old coal town about 20 miles from her home.
Less than a minute into the hearing the gavel came down. "Adjudicated delinquent!" the judge proclaimed, and sentenced her to three months in a juvenile detention centre. Hillary, who hadn't even presented her side of the story, was handcuffed and led away. But her mother, Laurene, protested to the local law centre, setting in train a process that would uncover one of the most egregious violations of children's rights in US legal history.
Last month the judge involved, Mark Ciavarella, and the presiding judge of the juvenile court, Michael Conahan, pleaded guilty to having accepted $2.6m (£1.8m) from the co-owner and builder of a private detention centre where children aged from 10 to 17 were locked up.
The cases of up to 2,000 children put into custody by Ciavarella over the past seven years - including that of Transue - are now being reviewed in a billowing scandal dubbed "kids for cash". The alleged racket has raised questions about the cosy ties between the courts and private contractors, and about the harsh treatment meted out to adolescents.
Alerted by Laurene Transue, the Juvenile Law Centre in Wilkes-Barre began to uncover scores of cases in which teenagers had been summarily sent to custody by Ciavarella, dating as far back as 1999. One child was detained for stealing a $4 jar of nutmeg, another for throwing a sandal at her mother, a third aged 14 was held for six months for slapping a friend at school.
Half of all the children who came before Ciavarella had no legal representation, despite it being a right under state law. The Juvenile Law Centre has issued a class action against the two judges and other implicated parties in which it seeks compensation for more than 80 children who it claims were victims of injustice.
The prosecution charge sheet alleges that from about June 2000 to January 2007 Ciavarella entered into an "understanding" with Conahan to concoct a scheme to enrich themselves. The two judges conspired to strip the local state detention centre of funding, diverting the money to a private company called PA Child Care which it helped to build a new facility in the area.
In January 2002, prosecutors allege, Conahan signed a "placement guarantee agreement" with the firm to send teenagers into their custody. Enough children would be detained to ensure the firm received more than $1m a year in public money. In late 2004 a long-term deal was secured with PACC worth about $58m.
In return, the prosecutors allege, the judges received at least $2.6m in kickbacks. They bought a condominium in Florida with the proceeds. PACC's then owner, Bob Powell, who has not been charged, used to moor his yacht at a nearby marina. He called the boat "Reel Justice".
For a man who has agreed to serve more than seven years in jail as part of a plea bargain, Ciavarella comes across as remarkably unflustered. He invited the Guardian into his Wilkes-Barre home where he remains free on bail pending sentencing.
Though he pleaded guilty to conflict of interest and evasion of taxes, he insists that he took the money in all innocence, assuming it to be a legitimate "finder's fee" from the private company for help in building the detention centre. He denies sending children to custody in return for kickbacks. "Cash for kids? It never happened. People have jumped to conclusions - I didn't do any of these things."
He says that he regarded his court as a place of treatment for troubled adolescents, not of punishment. "I wanted these children to avoid becoming statistics in an adult world. That's all it was, trying to help these kids straighten out their lives."
As evidence, Ciavarella claims the percentage of children he sentenced to custodial placements remained steady from 1996, when he was appointed to the court, until he stood down from it in 2008. Yet the facts suggest otherwise.
For the first two years of his term his rate of custodial sentencing was static at 4.5% of cases. In 1999 - shortly before he allegedly began the racket with Conahan, according to prosecutors - it suddenly shot up to 13.7%. By 2004 it had risen to up to 26% of all teenagers entering his court.
Ciavarella hopes that with good behaviour he may spend only six years in jail.
Hillary Transue, meanwhile, is now 17 and in high school. She spent a month in detention for the parody. For many months afterwards she was ostracised by friends and neighbours, labelled a delinquent.
"It's nice to see him on the other side of the bench," she says of Ciavarella. "I'm sure he understands now how it feels."

[*T*]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

It's a racket.

Pennsylvania Judges Plead Guilty in Juvenile-Center Kickback Scheme

two judges pleaded guilty to operating a kickback scheme involving juvenile offenders. The allegations: the judges, Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, took more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

An estimated 5,000 juveniles were sentenced by Ciaveralla since 2003 (Conahan is accused of setting up the contracts in 2002); many of them were first-time offenders and still remain detained.

[bpr]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

It's a racket.

Pennsylvania Judges Plead Guilty in Juvenile-Center Kickback Scheme

You beat me to it.

Where I come from, every step of the justice system is designed to use taxpayer money to pay for rehabilitation programs designed by former officials and their friends and family members who happen to own a business that provide these "needs."

After incarceration and detention, the perps are usually set free with an exorbitantly priced ankle bracelet that is provided by the county via no-bid contract to a different company that happens to be owned by someone related to a judge or a county official.

I would venture to guess that California is no different, just larger and with a higher transient population.

[*T*]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

You beat me to it.

Where I come from, every step of the justice system is designed to use taxpayer money to pay for rehabilitation programs designed by former officials and their friends and family members who happen to own a business that provide these "needs."

After incarceration and detention, the perps are usually set free with an exorbitantly priced ankle bracelet that is provided by the county via no-bid contract to a different company that happens to be owned by someone related to a judge or a county official.

I would venture to guess that California is no different, just larger and with a higher transient population.

At least your scenario involves guilty people (sigh)

[bpr]

Re: California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system

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