Trigger warning for rape.
The American Action Forum is in support of balanced budgets! That’s cool, I think we can all be in support of balanced budgets (although we might disagree about how and when best this is implemented). However, they are also in support of rape, which is possibly a little bit less cool.
Despite an admirable goal, this “landmark rule” [of measures to prevent prison rape] imposes a costly, complicated regulatory framework on states currently battling recurring budget deficits, offers little assurance of success, and fails to explain this new burden to the states as required by the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act…
Not only is success questionable at best, the DOJ’s own estimates illustrate the fiscal effects of such a heavy-handed approach. The Department predicts that average total costs for each year will equal nearly $470 million. Many of the annual estimates are slightly below that figure. However, DOJ estimated roughly $745 million in costs for the remaining months in 2012. This $300 million spike, compared to other years, demonstrates the steep learning curve for state correctional facilities.
Yes. They have to learn how to prevent rape in correctional facilities! Because they weren’t really doing that before! They wouldn’t have to do that if the prisons were doing their job in the first place and keeping people inside them from being raped. I have very little sympathy for how much the states will spend on learning how to do their fucking jobs.
Also, that half a billion sure sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It works out as about 200 dollars per person incarcerated in the United States. I dunno, man, personally I’d gladly pay 200 dollars to cut my risk of being raped.
If we spend more than 22 times as much every year on just one type of drone. Just so we’re clear about the American Action Forum’s priorities here. 11.8 billion dollars on drones? “Forward-looking program” that will increase America’s military readiness. Half a million to keep people from being raped? OH GOD WE WILL BE BROKE FOREVER AND EVER WE MUST BE FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE AND LET PEOPLE BE RAPED.
Awesome, guys.
At this point I could point out that it’s going to cost less than half a million– after all, you wouldn’t have to deal with the mental health consequences of 200,000 people being raped in the prison system every year, which has got to be some cost savings. But fuck that. I refuse the idea that basic human rights should be justified by their bloody cost-effectiveness. Rape is by definition cruel and unusual punishment; if America does not prevent prison rape, it is violating the Constitution, the most fundamental law of the land. And here I thought the right wing liked the Constitution.
Tell the American Action Forum they’re full of shit.
About ozyfrantz
I think their point is that there is no way of showing that this program actually works, not that preventing rape isn’t worthwhile. Good intentions are all well and good, buy if you are going to spend large sums of money on a public program, you had better find a way of proving it actually works.
No, that can’t possibly be it. They’re in favor of the missile defense program (http://americanactionforum.org/topic/foreign-policy-2013-missile-defense), which has never shown any signs of working even slightly, even once, after twenty years and hundreds of billions-with-a-B wasted.
So no, “actually works” is evidently not the American Action Forum’s criterion.
That isn’t really answering Nicholas. If it doesn’t work (and the burden of proof has to be on the folks proposing the program), then they have a point. Pointing at what the writer says about an unrelated topic is pretty much the definition of derailing.
It’s rather destructive both to public discourse and to actually getting things done to equate how much is spent on a problem with how important you think it is. I’m about as far away from a fiscal conservative as you can get, but I read Ozy’s post as saying that throwing money at a problem solves or ameliorates it in proportion to the amount spent. If that worked, the super-rich would also be the super-happiest. Clearly, this isn’t the case.
Does anyone have an example of a prison rape prevention program that works? Would we know what to do with the money if it was appropriated? I’m more interested in reading about that.
I know one prison-rape prevention program that is guaranteed to reduce the amount of prison rape going on: Abolish mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related offenses.
If there are fewer prisoners, not only are there fewer people for other prisoners TO rape, but the smaller numbers will make their behavior easier to manage by prison staff.
Of course, the privatization of America’s prisons means that this has a snowflake’s chance of actually happening, but it would be the logical and humane solution.
I second this. Spot-on, The_L.
Spot on indeed.
Pretty much the case.
Also has the advantage of saving money on corrections, which is the American Action Forum’s stated goal.
I eagerly await their endorsement of sentencing reform.
“Does anyone have an example of a prison rape prevention program that works?”
Do you have an example of a prison rape prevention program? The unspoken consensus seems to be that being raped is part of the price you pay for breaking the law.
@ Nicholas Miles
“I think their point is that there is no way of showing that this program actually works”
Why don’t they pilot it? If no one is questioning the data on the rapes, data can be gathered the same way after the program is implemented. If American Action Forum has concerns with specific aspects of the program, why not suggest changes and have multiple pilot programs if cost isn’t the prime motivator?
“Also, that half a million sure sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It works out as about 200 dollars per person incarcerated in the United States. I dunno, man, personally I’d gladly pay 200 dollars to cut my risk of being raped.”
Maybe I am reading this wrong but I believe you mean half a billion and 2000 dollars per person.
Aaaah, typos.
It’s entirely possible that one program is going to work, and the other never will, but I don’t think that there is any hard proof either way. It doesn’t take much to acknowledge that society in general doesn’t consider ending rape in prisons as a worthwhile or practical pursuit, but they like the idea of ever fancier killing machines. Even I feel like geeking out over the idea of a flying killer robot named the “MQ-9 Reaper”. (Sarcasm warning) It all goes back to the idea that bad people are more bad than people. The supposedly evil deeds that landed that person in jail, (or on the wrong end of a MQ-9) has not only nullified their ethical value, but reversed it. Thus the more they suffer the better, whether that means letting another bad guy rape them, or sending a UAV to blown them to smithereens. I mean if we can’t rely the departments of Defence and Justice to tell us who to hate, rape, and kill, then who?
No, we’re definitely not “all” in support of balanced budgets. Some of us are not drinking that Kool Aid. Austerity kills. And while I appreciate your gesture at nuance with your parenthetical qualification, this endless nodding of our heads to the idea of ‘balanced budgets’ at a time when we’re desperately in need of strong fiscal stimulus is really just doing the 1%’s work for them.
But, other than that, good column, Ozy.
I’m against austerity too but I’m trying to be nice and inclusive of different people’s political opinions and shit.