In the State of California, the very highest-paying job that can is within reach of most people who do not have college degrees is to be a State prison guard.
That can be unpleasant and dangerous work so I readily agree it should pay well however it has resulted in their union being one of the most-powerful political lobbies in the state. Dozens of new prisons have been built in the last few decades but only one new University of California campus.
Several years ago a Federal judge ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding. It hasn't made much progress.
Bingo. For-profit prisons exist, but they are a tiny minority. But even the state prisons come with a financial motive attached. And, because people are conditioned to see unions as good guys, this obvious lobbying bias is never checked.
Actually about 15% of all state/federal prisons are owned or managed by for-profit corporations. There are really two classifications of "for-profit" prisons. One is where the company owns/operates the entire facility. These are the ones that receive the most attention even though they are the minority comparatively. The big for-profit companies usually try to buy first before moving to option 2.
The second option is where the state/county builds a prison or jail, owns the facility, possibly supplements some staffing, but contracts out the day-to-day operations to a for-profit company. This is what is more common as many states won't sell the actual facility and/or land. They just want someone to takeover the day-to-day operations so they don't have to worry about it.
Both are just as bad and both have occupancy based contracts.
The incompetent medical and mental health care in the Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Washington is largely due to a contractor trying to save a few pennies by ordering prescription drugs from a pharmacy in Maryland.
This has the result that lots of mentally ill inmates - including myself - land in Western State Hospital at a cost to the taxpayer of $550.00 per day.
I've been taking psychiatric medicine since 1985; the very most I have ever paid for my happy pills was $1000.00 per month.
Because the contractor wants to save perhaps ten dollars per month, every mentally ill inmate goes cold turkey on their medicine when they are detained. Every prescriber I have ever met adamantly urged me never to stop my medicine suddenly. There are all kinds of ways that could lead to death but in my particular case I find myself in a very expensive nuthouse rather than an inexpensive slammer.
Unions are in general a force for good for their members - the problem is there is no countervailing unions to oppose the interests of the prison guard union. If we had more union members in other industries then the interest of these other union members would act as a check on the power of the guards.
The whole point of a union is to benefit its members contra the interests of their employer. The problem with public sector unions is that they benefit government employees contra the interests of the public.
And yet in some countries the union is able to work together with the employer so that everyone wins. (By wins I mean the employer makes money and stays in business and the employees earn a living wage.) This of course requires mature sensible people who see beyond the next financial quarter or the next paycheck.
For private sector unions this is true, because employers have a vested interest in the success (or at least survival) of their employer. In the public sector, prison guards don't have a vested interest in reducing the prison population (quite the opposite), police officers don't have a vested interest in keeping themselves accountable for use of force (quite the opposite), and so forth.
Yes because the vast majority of the public is not in a union. If they were then their union would be fighting for their interest and prevent the public sector unions capturing all the benefits at their expense.
Kuro5hin's Orion Blastar is completely convinced that I am anti-business, despite that I own two different corporations and get all my consulting gigs from businesses.
However it is hard for me to find work at all because I will not work for companies that I regard as unethical. Orion claims this implies that I regard ALL companies as unethical, but no, only certain specific ones.
Why is this ironic? I am a not anti-free markets. If a solution exists for a problem that can be solved by the market then I am of the opinion that the market should solve it.
> In the State of California, the very highest-paying job that can is within reach of most people who do not have college degrees is to be a State prison guard.
This is very interesting, this means there's a big business behind it. I don't know which are the requirements to be hired as prison guard, for sure is, as you said, an unpleasant and dangerous work, but I don't get why a prison guard should be paid higher than a cop, that is always facing criminals, but in more dangerous situations.
> Several years ago a Federal judge ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding. It hasn't made much progress.
This would definitely cost a lot, prison overcrowding, in some countries, is a big issue. There's no real solution other than build new prisons, hire new people and transfer prisoners. I read in the past an article stating that the future of prisons will be mostly private, turned into a real business. I honestly laughed in a first instance, then reading a lot about the topic, I figured out that maybe that article wasn't so much wrong after all...
There's no real solution other than build new prisons, hire new people and transfer prisoners.
There's a lot more solutions than that.
Decriminalizing drug use, and treating it like a public health issue (which it is) would drastically reduce incarceration rates. It would save the nation a lot of money too. Just tax and regulate it.
Spending time and money to help people not re-offend (and go back to jail) would also be cost-effective.
Unfortunately, there are big interests that want to keep the status quo.
After legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, Colorado has seen a 50% increase in Marijuana related DUI arrests [0].
The state/counties already tax the hell out of the plant (roughly 23% in my county). The state always finds ways to make money off their citizenry. This created a market for a less expensive product that's also conveniently illegal.
The dispensaries can't open bank accounts and are forced to maintain multi-million dollar cash stockpiles. They are so afraid of being robbed, they hire ex-military to travel around town with them armed with semi-automatic rifles [1]. Isn't this asking for more violent crime?
The dispensaries can't open bank accounts and are forced to maintain multi-million dollar cash stockpiles. They are so afraid of being robbed, they hire ex-military to travel around town with them armed with semi-automatic rifles [1]. Isn't this asking for more violent crime?
Well, if Marijuana was legal at the federal level too, then maybe the dispensaries could do business like everybody else. I don't see that as a valid argument to stop decriminalization.
I didn't say drug use wasn't a problem, just that it should be treated like a public health issue, instead of a criminal justice one.
One thing to keep in mind is that guards put in a lot of overtime. Example: Prisoner gets hurt and has to go to the hospital? A guard has to go with him, and he gets paid for all of it.
It's a pretty shitty job, mostly due to the work-life balance, but it pays pretty well for a job that doesn't require a college degree. A guard who puts in enough overtime can make 100k+ pretty easily, and that's in areas that aren't very expensive. After all, many prisons are in the middle of nowhere. For every San Quentin, there are a lot more Vacavilles.
Source: Girlfriend worked as a corrections nurse for a few years at the state prison and county jail levels. That's another shitty but well-paying job.
Sorry, should have specified that it's for California (both cops and guards). And it might be a highball figure (I didn't search too much).
From your article:
> There's also a lot of range between salaries in different parts of the country. In San Francisco, one of the least affordable cities in the country, cops get paid the most to reflect the cost of living, with an annual mean wage of $99,000. Meanwhile, cops in rural Mississippi earn the least: $29,870.
Similarly, prison guards also get paid more in California.
Whatever the case, I think cops do get paid a bit more, but I think it's much harder to get the job. Police might be penalised a bit for being in a glamour profession though (there's more people who want to be cops than prison guards - not many movies have a prison guard as the hero).
One real good way to reduce prison overcrowding would be to abide by court precedent.
Oregon Advocacy Center v. Mink, 9th Circuit, 1993 (IIRC) ruled that when a judge orders a defendant to a mental hospital, the state has seven days to get the defendant actually admitted to the hospital.
The 9th Circuit governs the Western United States, including California, but even so despite that the ruling was made in 1993, it is quite uncommon for the state to obey the law by getting inmates into psych hospitals despite being specifically ordered to do so by a judge.
I personally fault the defense attorneys for this. Every defense attorney should move for dismissal on day 8, but I myself am the only defendant that I am aware of that has had his case dismissed this way.
My attorney was completely unaware of the 9th circuit's ruling until I brought it to his attention. I learned it from a jailhouse lawyer who found it in the jail's law library.
Among the reasons that I get arrested a lot, is that I learned in High School American History that the Supreme Court does not write "advisory opinions" as do the high courts of some other nations.
That is, one cannot simply request that a law be struck down as unconstitutional. Loosely speaking one must actually violate the law then face all the consequences in hopes that one's appeal will be heard in the Supreme Court.
It happens all the time that one loses over really petty things, such as that one's case could have been settled by a state court. While SCOTUS regards its job as deciding Constitutional issues it is also reluctant to make any decision that it does not really have to make.
I don't have any statistics readily at hand but I have reason to believe that it is more dangerous to be a guard than a police officer.
Consider the Attica prison riot in which roughly 250 died.
Guards generally do not carry firearms because they could be snatched by an inmate. They do carry Tazers these days but they have a very short range and are limited to two shots. If a bunch of inmates all gang up on a guard there's not a whole lot he can do to defend himself.
That can be unpleasant and dangerous work so I readily agree it should pay well however it has resulted in their union being one of the most-powerful political lobbies in the state. Dozens of new prisons have been built in the last few decades but only one new University of California campus.
Several years ago a Federal judge ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding. It hasn't made much progress.