Americans are accustomed to the idea that there will be an unreachable underclass within our borders. Rather than figure out a way to fix inner city schools and turn these folks into productive citizens it is cheaper and easier, apparently, to give the teenager mothers AFDC and collect the young men up into our growing population of prisoners (more than 2 million people now).
Producing so many uneducated people and sending so many young men into prison creates a labor shortage in an advanced economy, which requires that we import laborers from Third World countries (see this page and http://www.h1b.info/ for some stats).
Does it make sense to keep people in prison at $25,000 per year (source) merely because there is no place for them in the U.S. economy? If we gave them a $20,000 per year stipend they would have an above-average income in all but 27 of the 208 countries in this World Bank chart, while the U.S. taxpayers would enjoy a 20% savings.
Why would a foreign country want to take an American who is unwelcome on the streets of his homeland? In the case of violent criminals, perhaps they wouldn’t (this source says that we have about 1.2 million people imprisoned for nonviolent crimes). But what about all the people who are in prisons, often for life, for possession of drugs? The foreign country would be happy to collect taxes on the former offender’s $20,000/year income. The former offender’s education and skills might well be above average in most Third World countries, thus qualifying him for a wide variety of jobs. And with a guaranteed source of income there would be no reason for the offender to return to the drug industry. Recall Mark Twain’s comment that “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
Congratulations, you’ve just reinvented exile, the punishment of choice for most of recorded history.
Or maybe Philip is simply making the point that exile would actually be preferable to our current system for both the public and the “criminals”. Either someone is being too subtle here or someone else is being too dense.
A german comedian has made some calculations about sending criminals to the cheap standard-german holiday island (Mallorca, Spain) instead of putting into prison. He then takes off and calculates that instead of subsidising coal-mine workers, farmers etc, it would be cheaper to put them into prison (or, cheaper but less drastic, Mallorca). He continues with the people from ex-GDR (everyone pays taxes for the build-up of ex-GDR, per GDR-person much more than per prisoner, we could have kept the wall 🙂 and notes that medical doctors seem to generate patients for themselves which is even more costly……
If you understand german language, the comedian’s name is Volker Pispers, the piece is called “Was das kostet!”.
The only difference is that you seem to be serious about this 🙂
By the way, didn’t the Brits do the same with their criminals? A one-way ticket for a south-sea cruise,
and look what became of it? Respected people and allies for all sorts of conflicts.
This, alas, is why no one outside of Germany can name a single kraut komedian (same might be true INSIDE of Germany as well)….Hey, HERR ALEX von DIETER: If you understand german language, you might want to go back to writing in die blogs in german language only, ja? You certainly show the “all Germans speak excellent English” to be something of a muth. Enjoy your Oktoberfest and leave the comedy to non-Nazis. Stick to VWs and goth music.
It seems to me that Philip is holding up one distressing situation — the burgeoning prison population and it’s economic affect (among other things) — against the obviously undesirable ‘Exile’ as someone put it above, to highlight the problem with the first situation.
What’s interesting is that when it’s described in such a way as to make Exile sound like a reasonable solution, people are choosing exile rather than to perhaps say ‘hang on a minute, maybe we have a problem here…’
Is America a nation of extremists who just don’t get it?
How about a less punitive system that offers renunciation of citizenship and paid expatriation as an option to incarceration? In other words the state offers to pay for relocating to a country willing to accept. This would not be offered as an alternative in most or all cases involving violence. But in the case of illegal drug possession there might be countries where such drug use is not criminalized and the person might not be unwelcome. The person has shown an unwillingness to conduct himself in accordance with existing laws so maybe relocation would be sensible.
Perhaps the long term effect would be unexpectedly positive. After all, as Bill Murray has put it, “the US is made up of people who were kicked out of every decent country in the world”. So why couldn’t this produce an equal or better result?
Phil – ever the agent provocateur</>. There is also the blindingly obvious solution: make most (if not all) drugs legal and grant an amnesty to everyone whose only crime is possession or minor dealing. That would release an underclass for the labor market. Whether they would want to work is another matter! Also regulate and tax the drug trade – as well as saving the $25,000 per year in incarceration costs, the government would also collect revenues on all the vice that’s going on. The annual value of the drug business is astronomical, even by conservative estimates.
As for exile, this would be first case of PAID exile in human history (AFAIK). However, if we have someone facing a 5-year sentence, do we just offer them 5 years in exile and then let them back in? They would be returning from a third-world country where their $20,000 stipend enabled them to afford a good home, one or more servants, etc. only to become a member of the underclass once again (i.e. the crime, sentencing, exile loop). The other option would be to keep them abroad on payroll for life – but there would be no saving at all in that solution.
Thanks, Tom!
You’re stating exactly what I am thinking (secretly)! Wow. Now I don’t even need to use my self-pity anymore to seek the words to articulate what I feel to myself. Even this side of intellectual service is delivered by this board (now one doesn’t even need to think oneself anymore for the words, as they are foreseen for one!). You could have excluded the “von” from the list of elements of your Kraut-bashing, though. As I carry it in my name I have to unfortunately feel too much included in from what I distance myself inside. But that’s the price of “being in the pool”, I guess. And you, of course, in your quest for sincerity could never allow such superstitious considerations to get into your way…
S.
I’ve thought about that for years. Honestly I think that sending someone to Liberia to see lawlessness first hand would make them want to create a decent society where law is important.
The US jail system is completely wrong anyway, many US jails are like the movie Blow – simply training camps where people detained can plan their next crime. Finland has the system right – for non violent criminals jail terms are more like a hotel where people must live while they are reintegrated into society.
If criminal tendancies are a large part inherited (genetically) does jail really work? Shouldn’t someone be looking at drug therapy?
Anthony
http://xminc.com/mt
Hey, don’t worry about the von, I won’t hold it against you. John von Neumann had one, of course, and he was no slouch: http://www.redfish.com/dkunkle/vonNeumann/ (Even if he didn’t keep his MIT email address so that no one could forget he was smart…)
“Does it make sense to keep people in prison at $25,000 per year merely because there is no place for them in the U.S. economy?”
I thought we were putting them there because we caught them trying to earn $25,000 per month in an illegal profession. Great idea, Phil–“Break the law, get free money!” Where do I sign up? If you give me $25,000 year, I promise I won’t deal drugs. Hell, I’ll even not grow corn for no extra charge.
Of course, there’s the whole should-drugs-be-illegal thing in the first place, but I can’t cover that in this short post. Exile is fine, though. Worked for Australia! 🙂
Paying people off to help stop crime doesn’t work. Bored people will be looking for something to do. Whatever country accepts them will get a large crime problem to go with the taxes, which in the end might cost them more. This would probably stop them from accepting anyone else.
For somewhat related information see:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/SIME-DIME83/report.htm
Every state is a “special repressive force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, no state is either “free” or a “people’s state.”
Lenin
People who are locked out of the economic system have always found ways to create their own by providing illegal goods and services which the government and corporate America takes its share of through the back door. Our system works prefectly well to keep the masses on their toes. Keep in mind that prisons are a great source of income for depressed towns whose leaders fight tooth and nail to have them located in their communities.
Hi there.
I am from what you Americans call a Third World Country. My country is definitely not in top 27 you are talking about.
But knowing skills of the people in my country, I would aggressively argue your statement about “The former offender’s education and skills might well be above average in most Third World countries”. Bullshit. Surely, they speak worse English. But there are as much good specialists in all areas (in percentage to population) as in States.
Yeah, and criminals are the same junk everywhere. “Third World Countries” do not need junkies from overseas (sorry, if person is in jail, he IS a junkie, even if he is non-violent one)
“And with a guaranteed source of income there would be no reason for the offender to return to the drug industry.”
This is incredibly naive. You presuppose that people do drugs because of poverty. Unfortunately, people do drugs because of addiction, and that addiction can become very expensive. Almost any drug user can blow through 20k in a matter of weeks, and then wind up looking for a job in an industry that provides better access to the drugs and the money to pay for them.
Gas chambers and crematoria attained permanent exile for a loathed underclass some years ago. I think it was called the final solution.
Recently, my girlfriend and I went on a weeklong cruise. The weather was good, but my fellow Americans were generally ugly. Most of the ship’s crew was from Indonesia. They were not paid a lot by first world standards even though they worked 14 hour days, seemed quite well educated, and spoke fluent English. As the week progressed, I kept wondering how they could make better use of their skills within the confines of the world’s current immigration and trade policies. At the same time, I heard many passengers complain about how “small” and “outdated” their 55K ton, ten year-old cruise ship was. Apparently, boats like this are being replaced with newer, larger models. The old ones go to less productive uses. The third thing that struck me was how damned cheap cruises are. We paid $580 each for the week. At this price, one could live on a cruise ship for about $30K/year, much less than the cost of a good nursing home!
So, why not buy a secondhand cruise ship and retrofit it for use as a floating nursing home? Older Americans could cut their costs in half while enjoying far superior care. Recently, NPR reported on the lives of lowly paid nursing home employees. They don’t like their jobs and often treat their patients with indifference at best. On my Nursing Ship, patients would be treated by the best, most compassionate Indonesians available. They would receive better pay than their cruise ship jobs provided and would get months of training in basic nursing tasks. Just like cruise ships, some of the staff might still be American, but the jobs we in the US find undesirable would be filled by people happy to have them (or at least thrilled by the pay).
Logistics would be tricky. To use foreign labor, the boat would have to spend most of its time in international waters. However, few families would place mom on a Nursing Ship if they were only able to see her a few times a year. To solve this problem, the ship will market itself to people in three costal cities: New York, Boston, and Baltimore/DC. Every day, the ship will sail from one city’s port to the next. Family can board the ship to visit their loved ones. Local doctors can visit their patients while still billing Medicare for their services. So that families can remain comfortable while mom is at sea or in another port, webcams will be set up in each room, and families can view their relatives’ care as it happens.
Being outside the US would have a drastic impact on the cost of drugs. They could be purchased in countries with the cheapest prices and delivered to the ship by a boat or helicopter. Also, I bet that my Nursing Ship could be registered outside the US and be owned by a corporation in country with favorable tort laws. Insurance costs would be negligible.
My girlfriend is a nursing home physical therapist. I ran this idea past her, and she said I was nuts. What if someone “codes” and needs to go to the hospital? Even if you send a helicopter out for them, they will likely have a worse outcome than if an ambulance had been able to take them to the local hospital. Nursing Ships aren’t for every old person. They’re for those who are forced to choose between quality and quantity of life and prefer to trade the latter for the former. Of course, wealthy Americans can choose both—they can afford $60K for a suburb nursing home. However, most middle class Americans must settle for surly nurses and human warehousing because they have no other options. The Nursing Ship is for them. Their relatives will be treated to individualized care from a highly trained staff, great food cooked to their liking, and abundant activities. In exchange, octogenarians must risk dying of a heart attack instead of receiving tens of thousands of dollars worth of emergency care. For most, this trade-off will be an easy choice.