That’s just a hair over $70k/bed per year. $200/night per bed. They could literally make it rain on these people as they crossed the border and it would cost less money. Abolish ICE.
ETA: I’m not trying to hate on you. Just the article.
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It costs a lot to make sure that people aren’t free to leave.
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Literally shitting on the administration for putting children up at hotels.
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Well, initially I thought surely they aren’t paying something ridiculous like $8k/bed per month. And then I did the math and it was $6k/bed month and I thought…most progressive president ever. And it made me feel OK because what more should we ask for than for something to be described as most + progressive.
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fyp
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Yeah, I love how the attack on biden has now shifted from “he’s keeping the kids in Trump’s concentration camps!!!1!!!one” to: “He’s spending too much to keep the kids in hotel rooms!!!11!!one!”
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Gotta make sure deficit spending doesn’t get out of control.
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I’m happy to share part of why I’m not celebrating the news of “Biden Admin gives $86M to ICE to pay $6k/mo each for 1200 beds in hotel rooms”.
- I’m never going to celebrate giving $86M to ICE. Never. Abolish ICE.
- I won’t celebrate adding 1200 more beds to America’s incarceration capacity for the same reasons that I don’t celebrate the announcement of $86M being spent to build a prison.
This helps perpetuate the Prison Industrial Complex. I won’t celebrate more of that. Hope that helps.
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I agree with all this but I just have no idea how to have a productive conversation with “you can’t handle the truth!” people. I’ve never seen that movie, but are we supposed to believe that jack has a point?
I’ve seen the movie, but I’m not understanding your question. I’m open to dialogue, so if you’re able to rephrase your point, I’ll do my best to engage with it.
It’s just that we’re detaining thousands of kids, ostensibly because we can’t guarantee their safety. How do you explain to people how ridiculous that is?
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I agree with Dostoyevsky that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
I don’t consider safe hotel rooms children stay in before they can be safely placed with families and friends to be prisons, but I also don’t see why the prisons we do have and need to house violent criminals should be starved of funds.
I don’t know what their budgetary situation is. I know it is very expensive to run a prison and maintain even minimal standards, which I suppose leads everyone to want to abolish them.
I far prefer we limit the number of people who are incarcerated, if that can be done safely, and create much more palatable conditions for prisoners. Whether this takes more money after non-violent offenders are released I don’t know, but I would increase funding absolutely to have far more humane conditions than at present, if that was necessary.
This question is a can of worms (kind of like you’d find in an American prison kitchen - ha!).
There is probably a lack of public funding per inmate, but there are maybe 100x more inmates than necessary. So, I guess it depends on how you define adequate funding. If the system wasn’t designed under a for profit model with 100x more prisoners than necessary, then the current amount of funding might make sense.
As institutions to punish people for violating the social contract? Overfunded.
As institutions to actually reduce crime through helping those same violators be less desperate economically when they get out of prison? Massively underfunded.
The fact that job training in prison is anything but mandatory, and that prison jobs pay less than market wages (which should be accumulating in a savings account for the prisoner when they get released or used to pay restitution to the victims of the crime) is completely and totally insane. If we cared even a little bit about reducing the size of our prison population the prisons would basically be community college with bars on the windows and locks on the front door.
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Uh, no. People want to abolish prisons in the US because they hold countless people in inhumane conditions that don’t need to be there.
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Ok but once you abolish prisons where do you put violent offenders?
Thanks. Here’s another fun fact:
Norway has an incarceration rate more than 10x smaller than the US but pays more than 3x per inmate in cost. Their prisoners live in humane conditions and have lower rates old recidivism.
Most of the prisoners in the US are defacto political prisoners, they are there in service to the white supremacy political model in the US. I am playing loose with terminology but they are incarcerated for purposes other than crime prevention and rehabilitation so I’m going with it.
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In better prisons. For example, Norways prisons would not be recognizable to Americans as “prisons”.
Really good piece. Makes a lot of good points refuting conventional wisdom like a huge percentage of folks are in prison solely for drug offenses.
I do take issue somewhat with:
Despite this evidence, people convicted of violent offenses often face decades of incarceration, and those convicted of sexual offenses can be committed to indefinite confinementor stigmatized by sex offender registries long after completing their sentences.
I do think the recidivism risk of murderers and rapists and child molesters should not be the primary focus of their incarceration terms.