In our book The Elephant in the Brain, Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, Kevin Simler and I first review the reasons to expect humans to often have hidden motives, and then we describe our main hidden motives in each of ten areas of life. In each area, we start with the usual claimed motive, identify puzzles that don’t fit well with that story, and then describe another plausible motive that fits better.
I'm just eternally suspicious of Just So reasoning:"...forager era...mobs...informally...consensus...known failure modes...law as a partial replacement...plausible..."It is plausible. But so are many stories. I certainly think that this is a reasonable way to start thinking about law. But you'd have to get loads of evidence if you wanted to do any reasoning *from* this point.And the last point is just tendentious. There is no reason other than the author's own biases to suppose that systems of law systematically trending towards milder punishments (which I agree is the trend) are because of some desire to look good, rather than a desire to inflict less punishment. That's not even a plausible Just So story.
Prisoners are exempt from the 13th amendment, they can be made to work without pay (although the modern US economy is less geared toward such very cheap labor). Slaves in the US were SOMETIMES paid, and a small number were able to buy their freedom that way, but when slavery was abolished and many of them stayed on the same land as sharecroppers, their total compensation went significantly up (even with restrictions on headhunters giving them other options and other laws designed to reduce their pay). In a Malthusian situation all laborers are just paid enough to keep the population stable (near subsistence levels) and it doesn't matter whether they are slaves/serfs or renting land, but America since colonization has never been Malthusian.
You haven't specified what the company has to do to get the money, and what state the prisoners need to be in on release.
The company could well make a profit from the prisoners by making them work, and rewarding the prisoners with wages, and treating them very nicely indeed in proportion to how well they work. The company may even pay the government to let them have control over the prisoners.
Overcrowding in California prisons was not reduced because it cost too much to fight the prisoners over it. It was reduced because judges ordered it. If the government contracted out prisons to a completely unregulated (this a hypothetical, not a realistic possibility) for-profit company which received money for each prisoner and had to cover all costs (including those of violently suppressing them), the expectation would be that conditions would be horrible because it would be more profitable not to provide niceties they currently get.
And not the aspiration/pretension we are civilized and not barbarians though just barely and not always? Failure shouldn't surprise anyone, but any success at all.
There are many mean things that cost money. In fact any mean treatment costs money because people will defend themselves and fight back.
I haven't made any definite claims about health care. I am just saying that your claim of denying health care isn't proven. It is reasonable speculation, but still speculation.
Possibly, but maybe that would cause riots and push the costs way up
I'm sure we can all imagine cheap and mean prisons and cheap and nice prisons, and expensive and nice prisons and expensive and mean prisons. I can even imagine a prison full of white collar fraud inmates running at a profit to the government and being very nice by getting the inmates to trade in the financial markets.
I just don't see any necessary link between nice and costly.
I really don't know. But I think you would get quite a range of results when comparing individual prisons and various states and nations rather than just one cheap state and one expensive state and depend on a stereotype for your reasoning of meanness.
Im sure its easy to find cheap prisons in the world that are nicer than many expensive ones.
Guantanimo Bay was likely the worlds most expensive ptison a few yers back but it was probably meaner than any prison in the US. It costs a lot to shackle prisoners by the neck to the floor with 2 feet of chain while making them balance on their feet and playing loud music for hours each day.
The meanness depends much more on the attitude to the prisoners than the money spent.
Aren't American prisoners provided with healthcare, and for many their lifespan goes up as a result of incarceration? I would think it would be cheaper not to do so, at the expense of mortality.
Among current jails, the meaner ones are more expensive, and the nicer ones cheaper, probably because the more problematic people are in the more expensive jails. Are ypu proposing some new type of mean but cheap jail such as a concrete box or something? I don't think there is necessarily a correlation between mean and cheap or nice and expensive.
The late Mark Kleiman would say that the delay and lack of clarity in convictions greatly undermines deterrence. Effective penalties on hyperbolic discounters (which criminals tend to be) must be swift & certain, even if minor.
I'm just eternally suspicious of Just So reasoning:"...forager era...mobs...informally...consensus...known failure modes...law as a partial replacement...plausible..."It is plausible. But so are many stories. I certainly think that this is a reasonable way to start thinking about law. But you'd have to get loads of evidence if you wanted to do any reasoning *from* this point.And the last point is just tendentious. There is no reason other than the author's own biases to suppose that systems of law systematically trending towards milder punishments (which I agree is the trend) are because of some desire to look good, rather than a desire to inflict less punishment. That's not even a plausible Just So story.
Prisoners are exempt from the 13th amendment, they can be made to work without pay (although the modern US economy is less geared toward such very cheap labor). Slaves in the US were SOMETIMES paid, and a small number were able to buy their freedom that way, but when slavery was abolished and many of them stayed on the same land as sharecroppers, their total compensation went significantly up (even with restrictions on headhunters giving them other options and other laws designed to reduce their pay). In a Malthusian situation all laborers are just paid enough to keep the population stable (near subsistence levels) and it doesn't matter whether they are slaves/serfs or renting land, but America since colonization has never been Malthusian.
You haven't specified what the company has to do to get the money, and what state the prisoners need to be in on release.
The company could well make a profit from the prisoners by making them work, and rewarding the prisoners with wages, and treating them very nicely indeed in proportion to how well they work. The company may even pay the government to let them have control over the prisoners.
Overcrowding in California prisons was not reduced because it cost too much to fight the prisoners over it. It was reduced because judges ordered it. If the government contracted out prisons to a completely unregulated (this a hypothetical, not a realistic possibility) for-profit company which received money for each prisoner and had to cover all costs (including those of violently suppressing them), the expectation would be that conditions would be horrible because it would be more profitable not to provide niceties they currently get.
And not the aspiration/pretension we are civilized and not barbarians though just barely and not always? Failure shouldn't surprise anyone, but any success at all.
There are many mean things that cost money. In fact any mean treatment costs money because people will defend themselves and fight back.
I haven't made any definite claims about health care. I am just saying that your claim of denying health care isn't proven. It is reasonable speculation, but still speculation.
I don't believe your claim about the relationship between the niceness of prisons & the probability of riots.
The necessary link is that there are many nice things that cost money.
Possibly, but maybe that would cause riots and push the costs way up
I'm sure we can all imagine cheap and mean prisons and cheap and nice prisons, and expensive and nice prisons and expensive and mean prisons. I can even imagine a prison full of white collar fraud inmates running at a profit to the government and being very nice by getting the inmates to trade in the financial markets.
I just don't see any necessary link between nice and costly.
But anyway, it's a side issue to Robin's point.
I really don't know. But I think you would get quite a range of results when comparing individual prisons and various states and nations rather than just one cheap state and one expensive state and depend on a stereotype for your reasoning of meanness.
Im sure its easy to find cheap prisons in the world that are nicer than many expensive ones.
Guantanimo Bay was likely the worlds most expensive ptison a few yers back but it was probably meaner than any prison in the US. It costs a lot to shackle prisoners by the neck to the floor with 2 feet of chain while making them balance on their feet and playing loud music for hours each day.
The meanness depends much more on the attitude to the prisoners than the money spent.
Across US states, the min prison cost is Alabama $14K/yr, max is NY $69K/yr. Do you doubt that the NY ones are nicer? https://www.vera.org/public...
Aren't American prisoners provided with healthcare, and for many their lifespan goes up as a result of incarceration? I would think it would be cheaper not to do so, at the expense of mortality.
Among current jails, the meaner ones are more expensive, and the nicer ones cheaper, probably because the more problematic people are in the more expensive jails. Are ypu proposing some new type of mean but cheap jail such as a concrete box or something? I don't think there is necessarily a correlation between mean and cheap or nice and expensive.
Mean jails are cheaper and less pleasant than nice jails.
Yes, which suggests we need an explanation for those delays. Seeking legitimacy offers such an explanation.
What is nice jail and mean jail?
The late Mark Kleiman would say that the delay and lack of clarity in convictions greatly undermines deterrence. Effective penalties on hyperbolic discounters (which criminals tend to be) must be swift & certain, even if minor.