What I am Costing You, 8-30-2010

 This will be my last piece on my sentencing and the federal sentencing guidelines.

My pre-sentence investigation report provides the following predicted costs, depending on type of punishment: $2,270.93 for imprisonment, $2,063.19 for community confinement, and $317.32 for supervision.

I will cost $342,910.43 for 151 months of incarceration. I presume that number does not adjust for inflation. If I had been sentenced to the statutory minimum, then I would have cost $141,555.80.

That is a difference of $201,354.63.

I know neither of those amounts man anything with regard to the federal budget. Neither may, totaling all of my fellow detainees here on the same charges. All them first-time, non-violent offenders.

I do not think the government's tally includes other costs, such as no taxes paid during my incarceration.

Still, I have questions:

1. What benefit is the public getting from my incarceration?
2. What benefit does the public get by having me in prison for the 90 months over my minimum statutory sentence?
3. Whatever the benefit the country gets from my incarceration, is it worth the benefit?
4. Is there any benefit to have those committing mom-violent, victimless crimes imprisoned rather than put on probation?

Those are the questions I have and had for a while. I doubt they will interest those who should be asking them - you people out there.

I must admit, I am not sure if the supervision mentioned in the pre-sentence report means probation. If so, the cost over 151 months would be $47,015.32.

Today's Indianapolis Star published "High Cost of Law and Order." Governor Daniels asked The Pew Center on the State and the Council of State Governments to audit Indiana's Department of Correction. The story really did not tell anything new to anyone involved in Indiana's criminal justice system, being tough on crime takes money. 

What goes unsaid is so much more interesting. How prosecutors, judges, and politicians have conditioned the people to think of harsh punishment as the proper role of the criminal justice system. Judges and prosecutors have campaigned about being tough on crime. Up in Madison County, we had a judge share a billboard with the prosecuting attorney. I wonder if any judge campaigns on the importance of judging rather than punishing. Careers depend on harshness.

Indiana's Commissioner of the Department of Correction had this to say about the audit:

They'll also find that the state's habit of sending low-level thieves, drug users, child support scofflaws and other nonviolent offenders to prison is bankrupting the system, Buss said.

Not that this kind of thinking applies to the federal system. I truly have come to believe the federal system has a different attitude to money. I cringe but must say Rush Limbaugh had a point when he said the feds can just print money, Today's Indianapolis Star also published from the AP, "Wasted Billions in Iraqi Reconstruction":

I will close with two more questions I have not been able to answer:

1. Who benefits from the criminal justice system of mandatory minimum prison sentences?
2. If you do not like spending on a criminal justice system of mandatory minimum prison sentences, what are you going to do about it?

sch