Societal contribution and a person’s value are different things: A person who lives separately from society has value. But I don’t know how to construct a system that incorporates that value.
Possibly a tangent, but I think it’s maybe relevant that QALYs do not have that problem.
That’s a good point. You could set up the system so that it’s “societal contribution” + funding—price (which is what it is at the moment) + “Convict’s QALYs in dollars” (maybe plus some other stuff too). The fact that you have to value a murder means that you should already have the numbers to do the dollar conversion of the QALYs.
I’m hesitant to make that change though. The change would allow prisons to trade off societal benefit for the inmate’s benefit, who, as some people say, “owes a debt to society”. Allowing this trade-off would also reduce the deterrence effect of prisons on would-be offenders, so denying the trade-off is not necessarily an anti-utilitarian stance.
And denying the trade-off doesn’t mean the inmate is not looked after either. There’s a kind of… “Laffer Curve” equivalent where decreasing inmate wellbeing beyond a certain point necessarily means a reduction in societal contribution (destroying an inmate’s mind is not good for their future societal contribution). So inmate wellbeing is not minimized by the system I’ve described (it’s not maximized either).
I’m not 100 percent set on the exact funding function. I might change my mind in the future.
And denying the trade-off doesn’t mean the inmate is not looked after either
Agreed, but at least in theory, a model that takes into account inmate’s welfare at the proper level will, all else being equal, do better under utilitarian lights than a model that does not take into account inmate welfare.
This may be an obvious point, but I’ve made this same mistake ~4 years ago when discussing a different topic (animal testing), so I think it’s worth flagging explicitly.
I’m not 100 percent set on the exact funding function. I might change my mind in the future.
Please feel free to edit the post if you do! I worry that many posts (my own included) on the internet are stale, and we don’t currently have a protocol in place for declaring things to be outdated.
Agreed, but at least in theory, a model that takes into account inmate’s welfare at the proper level will, all else being equal, do better under utilitarian lights than a model that does not take into account inmate welfare.
What if the laws forced prisons to treat inmates in a particular way, and the legal treatment of inmates coincided with putting each inmate’s wellbeing at the right level? Then the funding function could completely ignore the inmate’s wellbeing, and the prisons’ bids would drop to account for any extra cost to support the inmate’s wellbeing or loss to societal contribution. That’s what I was trying to do by saying the goal was to “maximize the total societal contribution of any given set of inmates within the limits of the law”. There definitely should be limits on how a prison can treat its inmates, even if it were to serve the rest of society’s interests.
But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of having the inmate’s welfare as part of the funding function. It would avoid having to go through the process of developing the right laws to make the prison system function as intended, and it’s better at self-correcting when compared to laws (i.e. the prisons that are better at supporting inmate welfare will outcompete the prisons that are bad at it). And it would probably reduce the number of people who think that supporters of this policy change don’t care about what happens to inmates, which is nice.
Possibly a tangent, but I think it’s maybe relevant that QALYs do not have that problem.
That’s a good point. You could set up the system so that it’s “societal contribution” + funding—price (which is what it is at the moment) + “Convict’s QALYs in dollars” (maybe plus some other stuff too). The fact that you have to value a murder means that you should already have the numbers to do the dollar conversion of the QALYs.
I’m hesitant to make that change though. The change would allow prisons to trade off societal benefit for the inmate’s benefit, who, as some people say, “owes a debt to society”. Allowing this trade-off would also reduce the deterrence effect of prisons on would-be offenders, so denying the trade-off is not necessarily an anti-utilitarian stance.
And denying the trade-off doesn’t mean the inmate is not looked after either. There’s a kind of… “Laffer Curve” equivalent where decreasing inmate wellbeing beyond a certain point necessarily means a reduction in societal contribution (destroying an inmate’s mind is not good for their future societal contribution). So inmate wellbeing is not minimized by the system I’ve described (it’s not maximized either).
I’m not 100 percent set on the exact funding function. I might change my mind in the future.
Thanks for your engagement!
Agreed, but at least in theory, a model that takes into account inmate’s welfare at the proper level will, all else being equal, do better under utilitarian lights than a model that does not take into account inmate welfare.
This may be an obvious point, but I’ve made this same mistake ~4 years ago when discussing a different topic (animal testing), so I think it’s worth flagging explicitly.
Please feel free to edit the post if you do! I worry that many posts (my own included) on the internet are stale, and we don’t currently have a protocol in place for declaring things to be outdated.
What if the laws forced prisons to treat inmates in a particular way, and the legal treatment of inmates coincided with putting each inmate’s wellbeing at the right level? Then the funding function could completely ignore the inmate’s wellbeing, and the prisons’ bids would drop to account for any extra cost to support the inmate’s wellbeing or loss to societal contribution. That’s what I was trying to do by saying the goal was to “maximize the total societal contribution of any given set of inmates within the limits of the law”. There definitely should be limits on how a prison can treat its inmates, even if it were to serve the rest of society’s interests.
But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of having the inmate’s welfare as part of the funding function. It would avoid having to go through the process of developing the right laws to make the prison system function as intended, and it’s better at self-correcting when compared to laws (i.e. the prisons that are better at supporting inmate welfare will outcompete the prisons that are bad at it). And it would probably reduce the number of people who think that supporters of this policy change don’t care about what happens to inmates, which is nice.