You've heard of the school-to-prison pipeline, but have you heard of the prison-to-school pipeline?
2 2021-01-07 by itsnotmyfault
As long as the US government sees it fit to lock people up for incredible amounts of time, and use them as slave labor for much of that period of time, why don't they invest heavily in those that are locked up for 20+ years?
That's their go-to strategy for the military: everyone serves some minimum amount before they're given their GI bill education and let free... so why don't they just do it in reverse for prisoners?
I've had friends sign contracts with the Department of Education, trading payment for a 2 year master's degree for 4 year stints in "high needs" school districts... and I can't imagine a higher need school district than remedial education within prisons. Instead of suckering seniors with mediocre GPAs and no job prospects, you can just force prisoners into becoming teachers for 10+ years, depending on the crime. Education can't cost that much when the teachers are slave-labor prisoners too, right? Even if they're shitty teachers, what are their students going to do? Be rowdy and drop out? lol.
What's the downside? The government wasted some trying to educate its people? It already does that. Some liberals get mad about civil rights or something? LOL. How is free training/education/resources/meaningful work for prisoners WORSE than the status quo. Just tell them to fuck off.
Plus, think of the maximum upside: If someone manages to get to Ph.D tier work and has to do it for free for the rest of their natural life??? That's at least 6 figures in cost savings per year. There's going to be HUGE incentives to put bankers, lawyers and other educated "elites" into jail too, thus satisfying any rightoids who are mad about the government giving away educations. I can imagine true bi-partisan support.
The ROI is just off the fucking charts. Prison-to-school-to-white-collar-slave-camp pipeline NOW. It may be a neoliberal hellscape, but I'm pretty sure free education as part of a criminal justice reform is unironically far better than current, disgustingly inefficient, neoliberal hellscape that we have. All I'm trying to say is that there is a point where we needed to stop and we have clearly passed it ... but let's keep going and see what happens.
This post has been inspired by "In Defense of Flogging" by Peter Moskos, which unironically makes the absolutely good point that if you had to choose between 1 year of prison and 10 lashes, almost everyone would go for the lashes. However, we've become "civilized" and think that locking people to do nothing useful for a year besides hang out with other criminals is the better option. Whips are cheap, fast, and easy.
7 comments
13 JimieWhales 2021-01-07
Imagine believing postdocs make six figs.
You'll be getting $40-60k worth of work in some esoteric discipline that's no use to anyone. Hope you're really hyped about sociocultural influences on early mesoamerican herpetology.
3 itsnotmyfault 2021-01-07
The first decade or so of the program will be all teachers, therapists, and social workers until it's self-sustaining. I guess you'll also need engineers to continue building more prisons, and probably doctors, but it'll be a while before they get to the more esoteric stuff.
I guess I was imagining more along the lines of 6 figure military contractors, who are often glorified field techs and overpaid retirees. Often they do work in the esoteric field of "hanging out with other vets to shoot the breeze for $100/hour" or the esoteric field of "this hardware that was supposed to be retired 20 years ago when I first enlisted and was trained on it, but we still have orders to maintain". COST SAVINGS.
10 Osterion 2021-01-07
agreed
4 Pepperglue 2021-01-07
You got my vote.
1 IonicPaul 2021-01-07
Hey Lawlz you forgot to log out of your alt.
1 itsnotmyfault 2021-01-07
This is actually not the first time people have said that to me.