cost of prison

thebaz

Can someone explain to me how it costs a half a million a year to keep a young offender in a Juvenile detention centre ?

Top boarding schools in the country are no more than 20 k per pupil !!
Maybe theyd be better off sending the young offewnders there instead , where theyd get a proper education as well !

Is it me , or is this more madness , and more milking the overtime by inefficient civil servants !!!

Reported throughout yesterdays papers - no link on hand .

Cost per adult prisoner is between 250 and 300 k , which also seams outrageous .

abetarrush

If ur a prison guard, ur puttin ur life on the line IMO, so ye'd wana be gettin paid!


but yea, i dont think it actually costs that

Its so the court will actually do der jobs as opposed to jus throwin everyone in jail, theres no room

also bad, as sick people get crap sentences

biko

thebaz wrote:

Can someone explain to me how it costs a half a million a year to keep a young offender in a Juvenile detention centre ?

Cost per adult prisoner is between 250 and 300 k , which also seams outrageous .

The average cost of keeping an offender in custody in 2004 was 83,800 euro down 4,150 euro on the equivalent figure for 2003.

http://www.irishprisons.ie/newsItem.asp?newsID=35

FlutterinBantam

thebaz wrote:

Can someone explain to me how it costs a half a million a year to keep a young offender in a Juvenile detention centre ?

Top boarding schools in the country are no more than 20 k per pupil !!
Maybe theyd be better off sending the young offewnders there instead , where theyd get a proper education as well !

Is it me , or is this more madness , and more milking the overtime by inefficient civil servants !!!

Reported throughout yesterdays papers - no link on hand .

Cost per adult prisoner is between 250 and 300 k , which also seams outrageous .

Spot on the baz... those punters are milking to OT to beat the band same as the health Service.... time for the taxpayer to wake up and take stock and confront these wasters.

ressem

The figures referred to are a selection from an indo article yesterday.
"The €500,000 figure relates to the average cost of a place at Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre... the most expensive in the country".

but later mentions that this particular centre was "an organisation in crisis".
The average is closer to Scotland (€210,000). Two thirds of detainees released are back in detention within two years (edit incorrectly had one year).

Similarly, the €240,700 figure for adults goes only for Portlaoise, due to "it's unique security features".

Always tempting to replace prisons with a pair of 20kg locked ski boots when you see reoffend figures like these.

Funsterdelux

Prisons should pay for themselves, the dastards should be workin.

What happened to hard time?

MrJoeSoap

thebaz wrote:

Can someone explain to me how it costs a half a million a year to keep a young offender in a Juvenile detention centre ?

Top boarding schools in the country are no more than 20 k per pupil !!
Maybe theyd be better off sending the young offewnders there instead , where theyd get a proper education as well !

Is it me , or is this more madness , and more milking the overtime by inefficient civil servants !!!

Reported throughout yesterdays papers - no link on hand .

Cost per adult prisoner is between 250 and 300 k , which also seams outrageous .

Where did you get those figures?

thebaz

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Where did you get those figures?

As Ressem reminded me , the indo / or unison.ie --
its absolutly staggering - 1,420 a day per prisoner -- Youd get a couple of weeks in the K club for that -- what a waste !

MrJoeSoap

thebaz wrote:

As Ressem reminded me , the indo / or unison.ie --
its absolutly staggering - 1,420 a day per prisoner -- Youd get a couple of weeks in the K club for that -- what a waste !

IT costs almost €¼m a year to hold a prisoner in the high-security jail at Portlaoise.

The average daily prisoner population in Portlaoise, which houses mainly dissident republican activists or inmates transferred from elsewhere for security reasons, is estimated at 121.

Portlaoise tops the financial league for prisoners in custody because of its unique security features. At €240,700 per prisoner, the costs are way ahead of Mountjoy, which is in second place at €100,400, and St Patrick's Institution for young offenders at €90,700.

The figures are contained in the latest Irish Prison Service annual report. The cheapest running costs are at Loughan House, Blacklion, Co Cavan - an open centre, which holds an average of 74 male offenders.

The cost per prisoner is based on the average daily number of offenders in custody last year and includes actual running costs such as prison officer pay, overtime, food, light, heat and maintenance.

Rising

The average cost of keeping a prisoner in custody is estimated at €90,900, with rising wage levels mainly responsible for pushing up the figure from the previous year.

However, prison officials estimate that annual savings in excess of €20,000 per prisoner can be generated in the new prison campus at Thornton, north Dublin, when it replaces the Mountjoy complex.

Officials said the installation of state of the art security features such as electronic locking systems and extensive CCTV would enable reductions to be achieved in operating costs.

The new facilities would also allow authorities to carry out detailed security assessments of every prisoner. At present, prison designs mean that all prisoners in Mountjoy and St Patrick's are subject to similar levels of security, regardless of their offence.

Lower security levels, officials pointed out, equated to lower staffing numbers and significant financial savings.

Costs will also be reduced by locating 30pc of Ireland's prison population on a single site at Thornton with shared facilities such as healthcare, laundry, baking and catering.

Capacity

The report shows that most prisons operated at or near full capacity during the year. The average daily number of prisoners in custody was 3,151, a slight decrease of 1.5pc on the previous year but the average count of female inmates jumped by 6pc to 103.

An average of 5pc of prisoners were allowed out on temporary release, a significant decrease on the previous year.

Most of those were on a structured parole programme, often under the direct supervision of the probation and welfare service, while others were set free for compassionate reasons such as ill health or death in the family.

There were three jail escapes in 2005, all from the Dochas Centre for female offenders in Mountjoy. Another six offenders escaped from the custody of prison officers while either attending court or receiving medical treatment.

A total of 81 prisoners absconded from an open centre or while on accompanied outings with an officer, a prison chaplain or other support services. Forty-nine of those were returned to custody by the end of the year.

Tom Brady

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1694570&issue_id=14688

This article?

MrJoeSoap

<--Silence-->

thebaz

MrJoeSoap wrote:

<--Silence-->

Think it was in the broadsheet rather than the above article . i.e. 500 k a year per juvenile inmate.

MrJoeSoap

I'm 99.9% sure they're the exact same article.

ressem

They were side by side in the paper, but not in the archives

YOUNG offenders are now each costing the taxpayer more than half-a-million euro every year.

The cost of each place in a young-offenders institution has rocketed to €507,470. This shocking figure is to be disclosed in a special report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) when the Dail comes back this week.

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1694553&issue_id=14688
registration required.

Red Alert

I'd say the inmates of Folsom Prison earn their keep!

Johnny_the_fox

it sounds like 'do the crime... we'll pay the time'..

Dyr

thebaz wrote:

As Ressem reminded me , the indo / or unison.ie --
its absolutly staggering - 1,420 a day per prisoner -- Youd get a couple of weeks in the K club for that -- what a waste !

Yeah but it's really easy to break outta the K club..

nesf

It always amuses me when this comes up. If we keep the prisoners in windowless stone cells with straw on the floor to sleep on, the public complains. If we put them in relatively modern prisons, the public complains. We can't win with you people!

doubledown

Well then, let's just keep the prisoners in windowless stone cells with straw on the floor to sleep on if the public are going to complain either way.

Prison should be a place that they DO NOT want to return to. And they should be working too. Bring back chain gangs, I say. Get them to work on the roads. Just have them doing SOMETHING useful apart from beating each other up and doing tons of drugs.

Victor

doubledown wrote:

Bring back chain gangs, I say. Get them to work on the roads.

Chain gangs are more expensive than prison, because you need an even higher staffing level.

thebaz

nesf wrote:

It always amuses me when this comes up. If we keep the prisoners in windowless stone cells with straw on the floor to sleep on, the public complains. If we put them in relatively modern prisons, the public complains. We can't win with you people!

How comes a top boarding school like Clongowes or Blackrock would be no more than 20 grand a year .. ok you have security issues and special needs/rehabilitaion issues, and you need to be open year round .. but these costs should be no more than 10 times the cost of the boarding school , which would bring it up to 200 k ....
500 k is having a laugh , plus the facilities in Clongowes would be a lot better than a so called modern jail.

luckat

http://www.finglasdetentionschool.ie/childadolescent.htm

is the website, by the way.

I don't know the centre myself, but one small point: when someone goes to an upper-class boarding school, he usually (usually) doesn't arrive with issues of child abuse, violence in the home, addiction in the home, a peer group centred on criminal activity... oh wait, maybe I'm wrong there...

Seriously, though, whatever the faults of upper-class parents, the kids who end up in Finglas come with a packet of big problems to start with. They need a lot of intervention.

Half a million now is well worth it if the intervention - psych help, good education, training for education, help with housing and friends and getting on with other people - is going to result in a (relatively) happy, productive, sane member of society.

It could be dearer in the end to spend less.

thebaz

luckat wrote:

http://www.finglasdetentionschool.ie/childadolescent.htm

is the website, by the way.

I don't know the centre myself, but one small point: when someone goes to an upper-class boarding school, he usually (usually) doesn't arrive with issues of child abuse, violence in the home, addiction in the home, a peer group centred on criminal activity... oh wait, maybe I'm wrong there...

Seriously, though, whatever the faults of upper-class parents, the kids who end up in Finglas come with a packet of big problems to start with. They need a lot of intervention.

Half a million now is well worth it if the intervention - psych help, good education, training for education, help with housing and friends and getting on with other people - is going to result in a (relatively) happy, productive, sane member of society.

It could be dearer in the end to spend less.

How can you think 500 k spent on some youngster who has probably commited some vicious violent crime is money well spent , i'm not calling for chain gangs just common sense .

p.s. another quote from report
"More than half the 57 people appeared to gain no benefit from their experience,"

luckat

"Appeared to..."

What scientific language. Obviously carefully measured.

I think, since you ask, that if a kid is involved in any kind of criminal activity, whatever will help him (usually him) get out of that activity and learn to be a productive and happy member of our community is more useful than brutish revenge.

Flukey

If that money being spent on prisoners was invested in the communities they came from, that would help sort out a lot of the problems that leads to people ending up in prison in the first place. A fortune would be saved in the long run. People say money should not be spent on criminals like that, but it is through investing in these communities that we can reduce the chances of them becoming criminals and stop some altogether, so it is worth it.

As is the case with most prisons, a large amount of Irish prison populations come from the same areas. These areas usually are under-developed and neglected. Targetting a few million there over the years, would have saved the tax payer and the victims of crimes a lot of money and hassle now. Targetting a few million there now, will save many more millions in the future and save many people of being victims of crime. It would cut insurance costs, with less claims and have a multitude of other positive effects. Everyone would benefit.

So rather than it being a waste of money investing it in deprived communities, if properly done and managed, it can be one of the best investments made. If not, we'll keep getting more people in prisons and having them released into the same environment they came from which only leads them to ending up going back to prison again. We'll keep getting more of these articles - and that is not the first of them. The cost of keeping people out of prison is far cheaper than the cost of keeping them in. The cost of keeping one prisoner there now, if invested correctly, could prevent the expense of keeping a lot more people in prison in the future.

The best way to get rid of the skangers, that we have loads of threads about here all the time, is to invest money in them and keep them away from crime. Would you prefer to be paying to keep some skanger that mugged you in a nice prison cell overnight or paying money that prevents him ever becoming a skanger in the first place, resulting in you, and far less others, getting mugged? It is not a difficult choice, is it?

FranknFurter

ooh!
I want a criminal for xmas!
Ill lock em in my home, educate him, counsel him, feed him, and train him in a useful skill.

And Ill only charge 1999.99!!

:rolleyes:

luckat

It shouldn't be a choice, though: the money should go *both* to pulling up disadvantaged communities *and* to crisis intervention for the kids who could otherwise grow up to be "crime lords".

The Larkin Centre, Peter McVerry and other private attempts to tackle the deprivation of inner city Dublin are either unfunded or underfunded. Any bad area quickly finds some political wannabe who's willing to ride on its troubles to fame and fortune - but as far as doing anything real about deprivation goes, our politicians are all mouth and trousers.

thebaz

its back in the news today , the cost of upkeep for a young offender, at the states finest, is 500,000 big oness.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1703624&issue_id=14749
I could be very cynical, and say do i want the state paying a half a million a year on some youngsters , who stone fire brigades, rape young women , or intimadate and bully the vulnerable , such as the eldery , and then get to stay in a home costing a half a million a year .
Is there something wrong or is it me ?

Sleepy

Would we be better in the long run to just put a quick bullet into any current inmates and invest this cash into underprivileged areas/counselling services etc instead?

senordingdong

That's sickening.

Apparently in Russia they can hold 10 times for the same cost.
I reckon we should send them there. Then they'd really be repenting.

Dyr

Sleepy wrote:

Would we be better in the long run to just put a quick bullet into any current inmates and invest this cash into underprivileged areas/counselling services etc instead?

In a way a valid point, The Social Services and Father Peter McVerrys of this world will break their necks for teenage durtbags once they become a threat to society while the poor sap of a kid who's equally disadvantaged but isnt a menace to society gets f*** all. Nice way to reward delinquency.

Heres an idea, sort out an equal education system that isnt reliant on parents' income and you might see a dramatic fall in antisocial behaviour. Forget about wasting money on trying to rehabilitate career scumbags. It keeps some people in government grants and they make a nice career out of it but it doesnt get results

vorbis

You could be on to something there. Its the high cost of labour thats causing these exhorbitant costs. Are you allowed to export prisoners? You could send prisoners in for more than a year to a Russian prison for his / her sentence. Save a bloddy fortune!

senordingdong wrote:

That's sickening.

Apparently in Russia they can hold 10 times for the same cost.
I reckon we should send them there. Then they'd really be repenting.

senordingdong

I once worked with a man from Africa.
He said that sending them to Africa would set them straight.

There's a whole world of oppurtunities out there.