My instinctive emotional reaction to this post is that it worries me, because it feels a bit like âpurchasing a personâ, or purchasing their membership in civil society. I think that a common reaction to this kind of idea would be that it contributes to, or at least continues, the commodification and dehumanization of prison inmates, the reduction of people to their financial worth /â bottom line (indeed, parts of your analysis explicitly ignore non-monetary aspects of peopleâs interactions with society and the state; as far as I can tell, all of it ignores the benefits to the inmate of different treatment by different prisons).
This is in a context where the prison system is already seen by some as effectively legal slavery by the back door, where people believe that (for example) black people have been deliberately criminalized by the war on drugs as part of an explicit effort to exploit and suppress them, and where popular rhetoric around criminals has always been eager to treat them as less than human.
This perspective explicitly doesnât address the specific content of your proposal, but I think thereâs a few reasons why itâs important to pay attention to it:
It can help you to communicate better with people about your proposal, understand why they might be hostile to it, and what you can do to distance yourself from implicit associations that you donât want.
It raises the idea that perhaps viewing the problem with prisons as one of incentive design is missing the point entirely â the problem is not a misalignment of interests of the government and private prisons, but that the interests of the government are wrong in the first place. If true, that diagnosis prompts an entirely different kind of solution.
Similarly, you donât address the reason why the seemingly-terrible existing incentive structure exists already, and the role played in its construction and maintenance by lobbying from prison groups and corruption in politicians. Keeping that in mind, you need to think not only how your proposal would function now, but how it would be mutated by continued lobbying and corruption, if they were left unaddressed.
Iâm posting this as a âframe challengeâ, but I think I also have some critiques of your model on its own terms, which Iâll post as a separate comment.
My instinctive emotional reaction to this post is that it worries me, because it feels a bit like âpurchasing a personâ, or purchasing their membership in civil society. I think that a common reaction to this kind of idea would be that it contributes to, or at least continues, the commodification and dehumanization of prison inmates, the reduction of people to their financial worth /â bottom line
No one is going to run a prison for freeâthere has to be some money exchanged (even in public prisons, you must pay the employees). Whether that exchange is moral or not, depends on whether it is facilitated by a system that has good consequences. I think a worthy goal is maximizing the societal contribution of any given set of inmates without restricting their freedom after release. This goal is achieved by the system I proposed (a claim supported by my argument in the post). Under this system, I think prisons will treat their inmates far better than they currently do: allowing inmates to get raped probably doesnât help maximize societal contribution. âCommodificationâ and âdehumanizationâ donât mean anything unless you can point to their concrete effects. If Iâve missed some avoidable concrete effect, I will concede it as a good criticism.
(indeed, parts of your analysis explicitly ignore non-monetary aspects of peopleâs interactions with society and the state; as far as I can tell, all of it ignores the benefits to the inmate of different treatment by different prisons).
Not every desirable thing needs to be explicitly stated in the goal of the system: Good consequences can be implied. As I mentioned, inmates will probably be treated much better under my system. Another good implicit consequence of satisfying stated goal, is that prisons will only pursue a rehabilitative measure if and if it is in the interests of society (again, you wouldnât want to prevent the theft of a candy bar for a million dollars).
I account for the nonmonetary aspects of the crimes. But yes, the rest is ignored. If this ignored amount correlates with the measured factors, this is not really an issue.
No one is going to run a prison for freeâthere has to be some exchange of money (even in public prisons, you must pay the employees). Whether that exchange is moral or not, depends on whether it is facilitated by a system that has good consequences.
In the predominant popular consciousness, this is not sufficient for the exchange to be moral. Buying a slave and treating them well is not moral, even if they end up with a happier life than they otherwise would have had. Personally, Iâm consequentialist, so in some sense I agree with you, but even then, âconsequencesâ includes all consequences, including those on societal norms, perceptions, and attitudes, so in practice framing effects and philosophical objections do still have relevance.
Of course there has to be an exchange of money, but itâs still very relevant what, conceptually or practically, that money buys. We have concepts like âcriminal lawâ and âhuman rightsâ because we see benefits to not permitting everything to be bought or sold or contracted, so itâs worth considering whether something like this crosses one of those lines.
Under this system, I think prisons will treat their inmates far better than they currently do: allowing inmates to get raped probably doesnât help maximize societal contribution.
I agree that seems likely, but in my mind itâs not the main reason to prevent it, and treating it as an afterthought or a happy coincidence is a serious omission. If your prison systemâs foundational goal doesnât recognize what (IMO) may be the most serious negative consequence of prison as it exists today, then your goal is inadequate. Indirect effects canât patch that.
As a concrete example, there are people that you might predict are likely to die in prison (e.g. they have a terminal illness with a prognosis shorter than their remaining sentence). Their expected future tax revenue is roughly zero. Preventing their torture is still important, but your system wonât view it as such.
Now that Iâm thinking about it, Iâm more convinced that this is exactly the kind of thing people are concerned about when they are concerned about commodification and dehumanization. Your system attempts to quantify the good consequences of rehabilitation, but entirely omits the benefits for the person being rehabilitated. You measure them only by what they can do for others â how they can be used. That seems textbook dehumanization to me, and the concrete consequence is that when they canât be used they are worthless, and need not be protected or cared for.
I agree that seems likely, but in my mind itâs not the main reason to prevent it, and treating it as an afterthought or a happy coincidence is a serious omission.
No, this consequence was one of my intentions. It was not an afterthought. Not every goal needs to be stated, they can be implied.
You measure them only by what they can do for others
âŠby the convictâs own free will. And just because thatâs the only thing being measured, doesnât mean Iâm disregarding everything else. Societal contribution and a personâs value are different things: A person who lives separately from society has value. But I donât know how to construct a system that incorporates that value.
when they canât be used they are worthless, and need not be protected or cared for.
This is a misunderstanding of the policy. Crimes that occur within prison must be paid for, so the prisons want to protect their inmates.
there are people that you might predict are likely to die in prison
This is a good point. Maybe they should be put in a public prison.
Societal contribution and a personâs value are different things: A person who lives separately from society has value. But I donât know how to construct a system that incorporates that value.
Possibly a tangent, but I think itâs maybe relevant that QALYs do not have that problem.
Thatâs a good point. You could set up the system so that itâs âsocietal contributionâ + fundingâprice (which is what it is at the moment) + âConvictâs QALYs in dollarsâ (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.
Iâm hesitant to make that change though. The change would allow prisons to trade off societal benefit for the inmateâs benefit, who, as some people say, âowes a debt to societyâ. 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 doesnât mean the inmate is not looked after either. Thereâs a kind of⊠âLaffer Curveâ equivalent where decreasing inmate wellbeing beyond a certain point necessarily means a reduction in societal contribution (destroying an inmateâs mind is not good for their future societal contribution). So inmate wellbeing is not minimized by the system Iâve described (itâs not maximized either).
Iâm not 100 percent set on the exact funding function. I might change my mind in the future.
And denying the trade-off doesnât mean the inmate is not looked after either
Agreed, but at least in theory, a model that takes into account inmateâs 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 Iâve made this same mistake ~4 years ago when discussing a different topic (animal testing), so I think itâs worth flagging explicitly.
Iâm 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 donât currently have a protocol in place for declaring things to be outdated.
Agreed, but at least in theory, a model that takes into account inmateâs 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 inmateâs wellbeing at the right level? Then the funding function could completely ignore the inmateâs wellbeing, and the prisonsâ bids would drop to account for any extra cost to support the inmateâs wellbeing or loss to societal contribution. Thatâs what I was trying to do by saying the goal was to âmaximize the total societal contribution of any given set of inmates within the limits of the lawâ. There definitely should be limits on how a prison can treat its inmates, even if it were to serve the rest of societyâs interests.
But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of having the inmateâs 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 itâs 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 donât care about what happens to inmates, which is nice.
My instinctive emotional reaction to this post is that it worries me, because it feels a bit like âpurchasing a personâ, or purchasing their membership in civil society. I think that a common reaction to this kind of idea would be that it contributes to, or at least continues, the commodification and dehumanization of prison inmates, the reduction of people to their financial worth /â bottom line (indeed, parts of your analysis explicitly ignore non-monetary aspects of peopleâs interactions with society and the state; as far as I can tell, all of it ignores the benefits to the inmate of different treatment by different prisons).
This is in a context where the prison system is already seen by some as effectively legal slavery by the back door, where people believe that (for example) black people have been deliberately criminalized by the war on drugs as part of an explicit effort to exploit and suppress them, and where popular rhetoric around criminals has always been eager to treat them as less than human.
This perspective explicitly doesnât address the specific content of your proposal, but I think thereâs a few reasons why itâs important to pay attention to it:
It can help you to communicate better with people about your proposal, understand why they might be hostile to it, and what you can do to distance yourself from implicit associations that you donât want.
It raises the idea that perhaps viewing the problem with prisons as one of incentive design is missing the point entirely â the problem is not a misalignment of interests of the government and private prisons, but that the interests of the government are wrong in the first place. If true, that diagnosis prompts an entirely different kind of solution.
Similarly, you donât address the reason why the seemingly-terrible existing incentive structure exists already, and the role played in its construction and maintenance by lobbying from prison groups and corruption in politicians. Keeping that in mind, you need to think not only how your proposal would function now, but how it would be mutated by continued lobbying and corruption, if they were left unaddressed.
Iâm posting this as a âframe challengeâ, but I think I also have some critiques of your model on its own terms, which Iâll post as a separate comment.
No one is going to run a prison for freeâthere has to be some money exchanged (even in public prisons, you must pay the employees). Whether that exchange is moral or not, depends on whether it is facilitated by a system that has good consequences. I think a worthy goal is maximizing the societal contribution of any given set of inmates without restricting their freedom after release. This goal is achieved by the system I proposed (a claim supported by my argument in the post). Under this system, I think prisons will treat their inmates far better than they currently do: allowing inmates to get raped probably doesnât help maximize societal contribution. âCommodificationâ and âdehumanizationâ donât mean anything unless you can point to their concrete effects. If Iâve missed some avoidable concrete effect, I will concede it as a good criticism.
Not every desirable thing needs to be explicitly stated in the goal of the system: Good consequences can be implied. As I mentioned, inmates will probably be treated much better under my system. Another good implicit consequence of satisfying stated goal, is that prisons will only pursue a rehabilitative measure if and if it is in the interests of society (again, you wouldnât want to prevent the theft of a candy bar for a million dollars).
I account for the nonmonetary aspects of the crimes. But yes, the rest is ignored. If this ignored amount correlates with the measured factors, this is not really an issue.
In the predominant popular consciousness, this is not sufficient for the exchange to be moral. Buying a slave and treating them well is not moral, even if they end up with a happier life than they otherwise would have had. Personally, Iâm consequentialist, so in some sense I agree with you, but even then, âconsequencesâ includes all consequences, including those on societal norms, perceptions, and attitudes, so in practice framing effects and philosophical objections do still have relevance.
Of course there has to be an exchange of money, but itâs still very relevant what, conceptually or practically, that money buys. We have concepts like âcriminal lawâ and âhuman rightsâ because we see benefits to not permitting everything to be bought or sold or contracted, so itâs worth considering whether something like this crosses one of those lines.
I agree that seems likely, but in my mind itâs not the main reason to prevent it, and treating it as an afterthought or a happy coincidence is a serious omission. If your prison systemâs foundational goal doesnât recognize what (IMO) may be the most serious negative consequence of prison as it exists today, then your goal is inadequate. Indirect effects canât patch that.
As a concrete example, there are people that you might predict are likely to die in prison (e.g. they have a terminal illness with a prognosis shorter than their remaining sentence). Their expected future tax revenue is roughly zero. Preventing their torture is still important, but your system wonât view it as such.
Now that Iâm thinking about it, Iâm more convinced that this is exactly the kind of thing people are concerned about when they are concerned about commodification and dehumanization. Your system attempts to quantify the good consequences of rehabilitation, but entirely omits the benefits for the person being rehabilitated. You measure them only by what they can do for others â how they can be used. That seems textbook dehumanization to me, and the concrete consequence is that when they canât be used they are worthless, and need not be protected or cared for.
No, this consequence was one of my intentions. It was not an afterthought. Not every goal needs to be stated, they can be implied.
âŠby the convictâs own free will. And just because thatâs the only thing being measured, doesnât mean Iâm disregarding everything else. Societal contribution and a personâs value are different things: A person who lives separately from society has value. But I donât know how to construct a system that incorporates that value.
This is a misunderstanding of the policy. Crimes that occur within prison must be paid for, so the prisons want to protect their inmates.
This is a good point. Maybe they should be put in a public prison.
Possibly a tangent, but I think itâs maybe relevant that QALYs do not have that problem.
Thatâs a good point. You could set up the system so that itâs âsocietal contributionâ + fundingâprice (which is what it is at the moment) + âConvictâs QALYs in dollarsâ (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.
Iâm hesitant to make that change though. The change would allow prisons to trade off societal benefit for the inmateâs benefit, who, as some people say, âowes a debt to societyâ. 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 doesnât mean the inmate is not looked after either. Thereâs a kind of⊠âLaffer Curveâ equivalent where decreasing inmate wellbeing beyond a certain point necessarily means a reduction in societal contribution (destroying an inmateâs mind is not good for their future societal contribution). So inmate wellbeing is not minimized by the system Iâve described (itâs not maximized either).
Iâm 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 inmateâs 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 Iâve made this same mistake ~4 years ago when discussing a different topic (animal testing), so I think itâs 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 donât 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 inmateâs wellbeing at the right level? Then the funding function could completely ignore the inmateâs wellbeing, and the prisonsâ bids would drop to account for any extra cost to support the inmateâs wellbeing or loss to societal contribution. Thatâs what I was trying to do by saying the goal was to âmaximize the total societal contribution of any given set of inmates within the limits of the lawâ. There definitely should be limits on how a prison can treat its inmates, even if it were to serve the rest of societyâs interests.
But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of having the inmateâs 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 itâs 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 donât care about what happens to inmates, which is nice.