If anyone with a background in this sort of analysis wants to work with me to make a detailed cost-benefit analysis of incarceration a reality, get in contact
"It may also have political economic effects- e.g. creating families and communities invested in incarceration."
Under this category is a joint consideration: economic ouput generated by employing guards, etc, and opportunity costs generated because those people are not employed elsewhere (on the presumption that additional units of output in the productive economy is more valuable than additional labour for incarceration.
The political economic effects that you refer to here are also complicated by often being geographical in nature: some prisons provide the basis of a local economy. But prisons also drive land values down and can lock-in underdevelopment.
There's also the question of prison labour performed by prisoners, which is an exceptionally cheap source of labour for some firms.
Economic output generated by employing guards is covered by other terms in the equation (e.g. the benefits of incarceration on crime etc)- since this is the output of prison unless there are forms of productivity being missed? As for costs, generally speaking, it would be assumed that the opportunity costs of guards not working elsewhere are already adequately represented by their wages, however there are interesting questions around whether this is valid (some think crowding out effects should be included in CBA for example, a debate I think is related).
Generally speaking we'd calculate difference in productivity between prison and not prison by looking at wages inside prison versus wages outside prison, but if costs inside prison don't really reflect productivity, adjustment is needed as you say.
I was more thinking of multiplier effects of spending on guards, hence why my mind went to the case of local economies propped up by prisons. The question here is whether other forms of public spending has a larger multiplier effect than prisons. There's some reason to think so, since the main channels for prisons, after construction, are (a) spending on wages and (b) spending on consumption needs (food, etc). The latter, however, is largely privatised and can often be delinked from the immediate area. It's my understanding, as well, that these contracts are often over-priced, which entails wasted public spending.
Meanwhile, construction and wages are at least shared by, say, investment into a port, or into a hospital, or some tourist park thing. Most public-facing projects of this kind generates flow-on effects in the form of additional business investment in the area, as well as a more diverse range of inputs that might be sourced from the area.
Importantly, I suspect that even if the multiplier effect came out to be equal, the *distribution* of those effects matters for welfare analysis because multipliers that concentrate in a particular geographical region and are relatively well distributed across that population are superior to multipliers whose value is primarily recorded in the bank balances of prison parasites – the companies that supply prisons.
The cost-benefit analysis of prisons should be rethought on the cost-benefit of creating an environment that deprecates people before they commit the crime. If someone is deprived of a proper livelihood, if he is deprived of a safe living environment, and if he is blamed for criminality before he commits a criminal act, do any of the actors that led him to become "criminal" bear any of the responsibility? Would there be less crime if justice focused on the actors who create the environment in which the crime occurs were themselves held criminally liable, thus removing the few who create that environment by imprisoning those actors as a method of reducing other actors from needing to commit crime? I have always wondered if crime against property would be less if property were more equitably distributed, and if crimes against people are not often emulations of those feeling removed from a proper respect. or a perception they are not properly respected. I am just uncertain if the man who makes a fortune or lives in a mansion is not being criminal by taking both property and value for himself that excludes others and I wonder how many crimes are committed because of that exclusion. But any cost-analysis of prisons and those who are forced to reside within them should not exclude external factors that make crime nearly inevitable. Once again, it seems you begin to allude to such an understanding without developing that understanding.
"It may also have political economic effects- e.g. creating families and communities invested in incarceration."
Under this category is a joint consideration: economic ouput generated by employing guards, etc, and opportunity costs generated because those people are not employed elsewhere (on the presumption that additional units of output in the productive economy is more valuable than additional labour for incarceration.
The political economic effects that you refer to here are also complicated by often being geographical in nature: some prisons provide the basis of a local economy. But prisons also drive land values down and can lock-in underdevelopment.
There's also the question of prison labour performed by prisoners, which is an exceptionally cheap source of labour for some firms.
Excellent comments!
Economic output generated by employing guards is covered by other terms in the equation (e.g. the benefits of incarceration on crime etc)- since this is the output of prison unless there are forms of productivity being missed? As for costs, generally speaking, it would be assumed that the opportunity costs of guards not working elsewhere are already adequately represented by their wages, however there are interesting questions around whether this is valid (some think crowding out effects should be included in CBA for example, a debate I think is related).
Generally speaking we'd calculate difference in productivity between prison and not prison by looking at wages inside prison versus wages outside prison, but if costs inside prison don't really reflect productivity, adjustment is needed as you say.
I was more thinking of multiplier effects of spending on guards, hence why my mind went to the case of local economies propped up by prisons. The question here is whether other forms of public spending has a larger multiplier effect than prisons. There's some reason to think so, since the main channels for prisons, after construction, are (a) spending on wages and (b) spending on consumption needs (food, etc). The latter, however, is largely privatised and can often be delinked from the immediate area. It's my understanding, as well, that these contracts are often over-priced, which entails wasted public spending.
Meanwhile, construction and wages are at least shared by, say, investment into a port, or into a hospital, or some tourist park thing. Most public-facing projects of this kind generates flow-on effects in the form of additional business investment in the area, as well as a more diverse range of inputs that might be sourced from the area.
Importantly, I suspect that even if the multiplier effect came out to be equal, the *distribution* of those effects matters for welfare analysis because multipliers that concentrate in a particular geographical region and are relatively well distributed across that population are superior to multipliers whose value is primarily recorded in the bank balances of prison parasites – the companies that supply prisons.
> Three strikes and your out
Typo, should be "you're".
The cost-benefit analysis of prisons should be rethought on the cost-benefit of creating an environment that deprecates people before they commit the crime. If someone is deprived of a proper livelihood, if he is deprived of a safe living environment, and if he is blamed for criminality before he commits a criminal act, do any of the actors that led him to become "criminal" bear any of the responsibility? Would there be less crime if justice focused on the actors who create the environment in which the crime occurs were themselves held criminally liable, thus removing the few who create that environment by imprisoning those actors as a method of reducing other actors from needing to commit crime? I have always wondered if crime against property would be less if property were more equitably distributed, and if crimes against people are not often emulations of those feeling removed from a proper respect. or a perception they are not properly respected. I am just uncertain if the man who makes a fortune or lives in a mansion is not being criminal by taking both property and value for himself that excludes others and I wonder how many crimes are committed because of that exclusion. But any cost-analysis of prisons and those who are forced to reside within them should not exclude external factors that make crime nearly inevitable. Once again, it seems you begin to allude to such an understanding without developing that understanding.