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Comment by orange_county | Hacker News Reader

This is a great example of the government being inefficient at getting things done. However in this case, this ended up saving tax payers money by having inmates released early.

"Early estimates indicate the offenders were released from prison an average 55 days before their correct release dates, according to Inslee’s general counsel, Nicholas Brown."

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> This is a great example of the government being inefficient at getting things done.

I don't see any reason that "being government" had anything to do with this category of error. I'm also not sure that "inefficient" describes the problem.

I don't know whether this was the case here, but in general governments are more likely (in compare to private entities) to award contracts to incompetent contractors. Case in point: http://inside-poland.com/t/polands-election-software-open-to...

Basically, with state bureaucracies and government procurements - politics, various forms of corruption and other non-merithorical factors can often affect the outcome. Because it's taxpayer's money that's getting spent.

I'd argue that often it's also like this: 1) incompetence => ill-defined requirements; 2) being afraid of corruption accusations if non-cheapest option wins => cheapest offer wins if it matches the ill-defined spec, regardless of any other factors.

The "cheapest offer wins" is (IMO) in general not how private companies work, but very often how governmental bodies work. The clerks have nothing to gain for choosing the right option, but potentially a lot to lose.

> The "cheapest offer wins" is (IMO) in general not how private companies work.

I'd disagree with that assessment - "cheapest offer wins" is pretty much the way private companies work as well any time they can get away with it. See: procurement in any mid-to-large company, or the whole stereotype of "made in China = sucks" when it's not the fault of Chinese factories, but of companies that want to pay as little as possible for manufacturing (if they'd pay for quality production, they'd get quality products even from China).

Private companies can be as inefficient as public institutions, but it isn't talked about since they're usually wasting just their own (and their customers') money.

Another example: The "Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM" mantra.

In the US, many government bodies are bound by law to choose the cheapest option, precisely because doing otherwise would either appear to be inefficient or favoritism.

That's no different from the decision making process in any sufficiently large private company.

Most "private" corporations are only so large because their inefficiencies are subsidized by the state. [1]

[1] https://c4ss.org/content/18100

Governments go with contractors due to a multi-decade effort by the economic right to promote the idea that government is less efficient than the private sector, providing strong political incentives for downsizing actual government departments.

Turns out private companies are at least as incompetent...

Governments themselves are the worst, as someone from the former Eastern Bloc I know what I'm talking about...

However in this case, this ended up saving tax payers money by having inmates released early.

I hear this a bit but it doesn't seem include the cost of having criminals in the streets. At least some of them will re-offend and the sooner they're released, the younger they will be, the likelier it is that they will. With a few months across 3500 people, it can add up.

Even if they commit a crime which you believe shouldn't be a crime (some drug offence), they will consume a lot of resources while going through the legal system again.

Not to mention the legal mess this bug created that will need to be sorted out now. Highly doubtful that there were any savings here. Knowing the government operations, you'll end up paying even more.

Perhaps a valid concern but is it also possible that the cost and percentage of re offenders is lower than the cost of keeping all of them in jail?

That's quite a pessimistic view. But if you genuinely believe some will in fact commit crime again and therefore add costs to the legal system, would those costs still be more than the taxpayer cost of room and board in a prison for 2 months?

And if, say, 10% were repeat offenders, how does this factor into the true "costs" of the legal system dealing with them, vs. the 90% who saved taxes by getting released early?

I think you'd be surprised just how much of a tax burden keeping people in prison truly is. And I think for many crimes, the odds of one of these released inmates committing crime again is much lower than you suggest. And even if they do commit a crime, that 55 days early release is going to make much difference.

> And if, say, 10% were repeat offenders

http://www.bjs.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm

> > The most recent BJS recidivism study estimated the recidivism patterns of about 400,000 persons released from state prisons in 30 states in 2005. [...]

> > In a 15 State study, over two-thirds of released prisoners were rearrested within three years

US prisons don't work.

They work great - very few non-released prisoners were rearrested within that three year period.

I want to read the story of those non-released prisoners who were rearrested.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/pr...

I'm a bit confused about the downvotes for this comment.

Parent wants to know about people in prison being arrested. I provide a link that gives information about the crimes committed by people in prison.

> Uncounted in the official tallies are the hundreds of thousands of crimes that take place in the country's prison system, a vast and growing residential network whose forsaken tenants increasingly bear the brunt of America's propensity for anger and violence.

Ho ho, but you forget that some prisoners continue to commit crime while in prison.

The US doesn't bother to collect accurate statistics on that - they've only just last year started gathering data on rape inside prison.

Interestingly enough, it appears that the statistics are calculated badly (hopefully not on purpose)

A recent peer reviewed study shows that just 1/3rd of offenders ever go back to prison, and 11% of offenders go back to prison more than twice. THat's far lower than we've been told.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/1...

I mentioned the legal cost separately because the largest and primary cost comes from the crimes themselves: the damage a criminal does directly (stolen goods, destroyed property, injured people) and indirectly (lowered trust in society, trauma).

Can a criminal lead to more than $30k (low end) or $100k (higher end) damage in a year? Easily. That's one drunk driver causing a single accident where someone gets hurt.

Wile it's partially because legal, incarceration, and healthcare costs are bordering on obscene in the US, I'd bet (moral issues aside) that it's still a good trade-off to keep people prone to crime in prison.

I'm beginning to think we should entirely abolish the punishment motivation in the criminal justice system.

It negatively affects recidivism rates, creates a huge societal cost, and really serves no purpose other than vengeance for the victim.

There are many excellent aspects of United States (and other British common law descendants) law, but they were created without the psychological understanding we now have of the factors that lead to crime. The current tripartite understanding of the reasons for prison sentences (punishment, deterrence, and removal from society) is simply not an accurate reflection of the reality of how to reduce criminal activity.

Sure, there are some people that we need to just remove from society. However, these individuals who have truly incurably pathological tendencies toward illegal actions are relatively rare.

The true purpose of the prison system needs to be reform. We need an evidence-based approach to crime prevention, not one based on human instinct, or the haphazard trial and error algorithm that developed our current legal system. Criminals need to be treated for mental illness, withdrawn from substance abuse, and most importantly given the socioeconomic tools they need to cope as law abiding citizens. Anything else is a waste of resources.

Except we have no idea how to "reform" people. Even various pre-K programs return dismal results when tried at any significant scale. And these are impressionable kids, not hardened criminals.

Perhaps not coincidentally, we also have a rather poor track record of helping mental patients. You could attribute some of it to mistreatment and maltreatment but largely we just don't know what to do.

Absolutely. But the goal needs to be reform. We have some idea of how to approach it (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mandatory real time drug and alcohol monitoring, psychotropics such as antipsychotics, employable skillsets, stable housing, stable income, anger management, etc.)

We don't entirely know what to do yet, but I bet we could get a lot better at reform if that's where we focused our efforts, rather than attributing all crime to moral failing.

That'd be a great idea if psychiatry had any better idea of what moves people to commit crimes, and how to stop them doing it again, than anyone else does. And even then, it'd be a terrible idea. You're proposing psychiatry become, not just an arm of the state, but an arm of the criminal justice system, with all the baggage that implies. What in the history of the field gives you to imagine it's mature enough, with responsible enough practitioners, to be given that much potential for abuse both well-meaning and otherwise?

Community service results in massively lower recidivism rates than custodial sentences (even when the original crime was the same). We're not great at reforming people (though there are a few cheap targeted interventions we should be doing at every opportunity - namely ensuring mothers are well fed during the last few months of pregnancy, and avoiding lead exposure), but replacing most prison sentences with community service would most likely massively cut crime.

Plus even after they've served their time they still have an incredibly hard time finding work, housing, and anything else that would fall under the category of "required for life."

And then we wonder why recidivism is so fucking high.

Has it never occurred to you (the obvious) that punishment is one of the things (if not the most important one) that keeps people from committing crimes? It's a matter of disincentive. Not only that, it's part of the reform, since it's a form of reprehension. I can't understand how you can't see what is basically common sense.

Except the punishments do not make the victim whole again, they cost society a shitload of money, and oftentimes the offenders have no idea what the consequences actually are. So, what is this for?

I'm not advocating no consequences for anything, but I think a financial penalty would be far more effective and might have a chance at actually giving the victim something besides some nebulous feeling of satisfaction, while saving us money and not costing us productive members of society who had a moment of lapsed judgement.

I've worked with a lot of ex cons. Sure you have some that are hard core criminals, but the vast, vast majority are just people who did something stupid, know it, regret it, and are branded for life for it. It sucks.

While the idea sounds straightforward, I don't believe that it's as simple as "punishment deters crime". IMHO, the deterrent effect of imprisonment is negligible; it's primary effect is to prevent those who commit crimes from committing more in the public arena by locking them up.

http://primary.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_scienc...

>This is a great example of the government being inefficient at getting things done.

No more than any example of private companies screwing up (which they do a lot, sometimes with thousands of deaths too) being an example of the private sector being inefficient at getting things done.

If the government instead had outsourced this system to a private contractor, who subsequently made the same mistake, would you still blame government?

Possibly. Public procurement should always be under close scrutiny, as for who got the contract and why.

Unfortunately, it's the same public scrutiny that makes public procurement not work in the first place. It prevents corrupt people choosing based on personal interest, but it also prevents people who know their stuff from cutting through marketing bullshit and buying a solution that works, instead of the cheapest one. I don't see a good solution.

If you think government is inefficient, you have never seen a large corporation from the inside :)

Most prisons are privitized in the US but this sounds like not in this case.

Most prisons are privitized in the US

I know this sounds true from the rhetoric around them, but they actually only house 6% and 16% of state and federal prisoners, respectively.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration/privatization...

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