The Oregon case decided Friday is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live.

The Oregon case decided Friday is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live.

    • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
      191·
      5 months ago

      At a far higher rate than actually employing them at the median income would be as well.

      the median state spent $64,865 per prisoner for the year.

      The only reason that companies want prison labor is because it is cheap for them since the taxpayers are subsidizing the labor costs.

      Overall it would be cheaper for states to just pay the homeless the median income than to incarcerate them. A lower rate that could be described as a basic income that is implemented universally would go pretty far in both increasing the opportunities for the homeless to afford housing and reduce the chance of people from becoming homeless.

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
        15·
        5 months ago

        See, this is the most frustrating part of the American homeless crisis. Literally the cheapest solution is to just build free housing.

        The cheapest solution is to just fix the problem, but instead we choose to do more expensive things that don’t do anything to address the issue, but may possibly make it temporarily someone else’s problem.

        • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
          111·
          5 months ago

          Incarcerating them is a benefit for multiple terrible reasons!

          • Cheap, state subsidized labor.
          • Gets undesirables out of public spaces so fragile people don’t have to acknowledge their existence.
          • Gives those in power ammunition in the form of incarceration rates for riling up the masses about ‘crime’.
          • Gives undesirables a history of incarceration so they can be denied other things if they somehow get out of their situation.
          • Gives undesirables a history of incarceration so they can be an easy suspect for criminal activity.
      • ColeSloth
        2·
        5 months ago

        It’s that high to employ all the guards and construction and wardens and whatnot. A lot of hands are in that cookie jar.

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
      12·
      5 months ago

      As well as to extract tax money from the working class. As it makes more economic sense to house and rehabilitate a person then it does to put them in jail. But the jail tends to have more kickbacks for the owner class.