By Dan Oney
The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center announced the release of “The Impact of Probation and Parole Populations on Arrests in Four California Cities.” The study, which was funded by the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Fund for Nonviolence and the Rosenberg Foundation, answers one question that to date has been a matter of speculation among law enforcement and corrections officials everywhere: to what extent do people on parole and probation contribute to crime, as measured by arrests?
The Chiefs of the Los Angeles, Redlands, Sacramento, and San Francisco Police Departments commissioned the analysis in 2010. The 3.5-year timeframe covered in the study, which concluded in June 2011, immediately precedes the implementation of the state’s Public Safety Realignment Act, which commenced in October 2011.
Collecting and analyzing the data required an extraordinary effort spanning 11 independent agencies, including four local police jurisdictions, four county probation agencies, two county sheriffs’ departments, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Researchers at the CSG Justice Center collected and matched more than 2.5 million arrest, parole, and probation records generated between January 1, 2008 and June 11, 2011.
Among the most notable findings in these four jurisdictions:
- The majority of all adult felony and misdemeanor arrests involved people who were not currently under supervision. People under supervision accounted for only 22 percent of total arrests.
- Whereas people under probation and parole supervision accounted for one out of every six arrests for violent crimes, they accounted for one out of every three drug arrests.
- During a 3.5 year period in which total arrests fell by 18 percent, the number of arrests involving individuals under parole supervision declined by 61 percent and by 26 percent for individuals under probation supervision.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck observed, “This study reinforces the importance of police working collaboratively with our other criminal justice partners such as parole and probation in ensuring public safety. Additionally, this study points to the importance of calibrating the appropriate level of supervision and services to individuals on parole or probation to improve their chances of success. Finally, law enforcement has long recognized that all probationers and parolees are not alike and each poses a different degree of risk to a community. By working closely with parole and our probation partners, we are best situated to understand those who merit our attention and additional supervision.”
Redlands Police Chief Mark Garcia cautioned, however, “There is a small fraction of probationers and parolees who are contributing disproportionately to drug-related crime. Police on the street need information and resources so that they aren’t employing a one-size-fits all approach to this population.”
Rick Braziel, who was the Chief of Police in Sacramento when the study was commissioned and recently retired, said, “When making an arrest, law enforcement officers typically try to determine if an individual is on probation or parole. Our assumption has been that people under probation and parole were driving our arrest activity, but the data suggests otherwise. This new information opens up opportunities for law enforcement agencies, which are grappling with huge budget cuts, to work with partners in probation and parole to be more efficient and targeted in our prevention, intervention, and enforcement efforts.”
Another finding of interest was the extent to which risk assessment results effectively predicted the likelihood of probationers and parolees being rearrested. Said San Francisco Probation Chief Wendy Still, “This study demonstrates that we are a key partner in local government’s efforts to increase community safety. Our strategies to use the latest science to identify the people who are most likely to reoffend and to supervise them intensively are paying dividends.”
“This study challenges long held assumptions that those on parole and probation contribute overwhelmingly to overall crime rates,” said CDCR Secretary Jeff Beard. “This study also reinforces the effectiveness and importance of the CDCR’s evidence-based strategies for reducing the rate of failure on parole. We will continue to partner with local law enforcement and probation agencies to refine and coordinate risk assessment tools and supervision and treatment strategies to improve public safety.”
“I would like to see this study continued-and ideally expanded to include additional metropolitan areas in the state-to determine how arrest patterns have changed, if at all, since Realignment,” commented George Gascón, who was Chief of Police in San Francisco when the study was commissioned and was subsequently elected District Attorney. “It’s this type of rigorous analysis-not anecdotal observations and experiences-that need to drive discussion in the state about what impact the increased numbers of people on probation supervision is having on arrest activity.”
This study was funded by the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Fund for Nonviolence, and the Rosenberg Foundation.
The Council of State Governments Justice Center is a national nonprofit organization that serves policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels from all branches of government. The Justice Center provides practical, nonpartisan advice and evidence-based, consensus-driven strategies to increase public safety and strengthen communities.
CPOC Response to Recidivism Report: Supervised Offenders Are Not Driving Arrests in CA
Chief Probation Officers of California (CPOC) strongly supports efforts to gather data in our system in order to dispel myths and improve practices. We applaud Council of State Governments (CSG) and the jurisdictions that agreed to participate in this report. We should use the evidence to guide and enhance law enforcement and probation practices.
Key in their findings today is the data dispelling the perception that probationers and parolees are the biggest drivers of crime in our communities. Probationers and parolees do not make up the majority of arrests and only account for 22% of all arrests in the jurisdictions participating. While line law enforcement focus groups reported they were arresting a disproportionate number of persons under supervision, or the same persons over and over, the study points out that notion is not borne out by the data collected. While no amount of crime is acceptable, analyzing the data to appropriately target resources in methods proven to address the causes of crime is what all Californians should expect from the criminal justice system. Today’s report can provide valuable information to policy makers and practitioners alike.
The report and recommendations affirms the importance of enhanced training, communicating, and partnering between law enforcement and probation. As the report points out – To be successful in providing public safety in our communities training and collaboration is imperative in today’s criminal justice system.
All corners of the system operate within the pressure of scarce resources. It is extremely important to use evidence gathered to target those resources in the most cost effective way and base decisions on what works.
The report also supports the position CPOC has recently taken in terms of information sharing with law enforcement. According to San Diego Chief Mack Jenkins, President of CPOC, “Probation’s mission is to protect public safety by supervising offenders and facilitating their rehabilitation in order to reduce recidivism. In pursuing that goal, probation recognizes the need to work closely with law enforcement, and as necessary, sharing probation information in a manner that supports criminal investigations and the prevention or reduction of crime.”
To view the report, “The Impact of Probation and Parole Populations on Arrests in Four California Cities” by Council of State Governments Justice Center, please click on the following link: http://www.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/publications/california-arrests-study
Originally Published at PublicCEO.com. Reprinted by Permission.
22% is a big number.
It would go up with law enforcement forced to be all touchy feely about parolees and probationers.
By and large, the studies show that lousy job markets – particularly for young or unskilled men – re linked to more thefts.
I would guess that the jobless rate for convicts is extremely high in Barak Omama’s jobless “rcovery”.
Instead of blaming and focusing on law enforcement, how about focusing on the unemployment rate and blaming a president and congress, and governor and state legislature that continues hostility toward business and free enterprise.
How many California jobs does Phil Mickelson generate by living here?
You should read the other article too Jeff, because what is clear is that the way they handle post-release contributes to the problem.
Specifically Jeff, you want to make everything partisan, but the problem is that it doesn’t matter how many jobs are created in an economy if a convicted felon has to mark the box and thus precludes himself from getting a job.
Partisan? I just blamed our politicians for a jobless recovery, how is that partisan?
I agree that a convicted felon has trouble getting a job, but much of that problem is supply and demand. If the economy was creating jobs and REAL unemployment was back to 6%, more employers would be willing to give a convict a try.
I did read the article, and as usual it is critical of law enforcement. Can we improve the system. certainly. However, there is no proof that chaging the way law enforcement deals with parolees and probationers would not INCREASE their crime rates. Frankly, this may be as good as it gets for criminals.
Instead of wringing our hands over how they are dealth with in the system, let’s focus on what helps prevent more from being caught up in the system.
You say let’s prevent more from being caught up in the system, but you ignore the 70% recidivism rate which is a huge problem and you can begin to solve that by allowing people a way to make a living. It was instructive that even providing them with unemployment insurance was enough to significantly reduce recidivism in one study.
“I agree that a convicted felon has trouble getting a job, but much of that problem is supply and demand. If the economy was creating jobs and REAL unemployment was back to 6%, more employers would be willing to give a convict a try. “
I couldn’t disagree me. I worked in law when the unemployment rate was far below 6% and felons weren’t being hired there. You are talking about low skill and risky hires.
Siegel:
“I worked in law when the unemployment rate was far below 6% and felons weren’t being hired there.”
Oh, you must be talking about the Bush presidency years.
I worked in law for thirty years, but I was thinking of about two decades of time that ended with the collapse of the economy, things were not better for convicted felons at that time.
The employment agencies that work to find jobs for felons are typically looking for entry level jobs in kitchens or construction for example. How do you think those job prospects are doing in this jobless recovery?
But I understand the simple logic of hiring.
If I had this person who was incarcerated for five years with skills and this other person who has never been incarcerated has the same skills, who would I choose?
In a job market with an over-supply of labor, the convict has trouble competing. One way he can compete is to have developed strong skills and a great track record of work and personal references following his trouble with the law. The best way to develop those references is to work temporary jobs. But with an over-supply of labor, he has trouble landing even temporary jobs. Hence he is stuck when the unemployment rate continues to be double and triple what it is in a healthy economy.
But back to partisanship… that is fine from our liberal perspective since there are enough rich people that should pay more of their “fair share” so we can just hand it over to the convicted felons that cannot find a job.
The problem with several of your assumptions.
First, implicit is that you somehow believe we will have a situation where a previously convicted person will somehow not be competing with someone who has no such handicap.
Second, you write ” this other person who has never been incarcerated has the same skills” – the problem is that most of the people incarcerated don’t have the same skills. So you need a job training component if you wish to deal with the issue.
The overall recidivism problem is gigantic compared to the subset studied here.
From Wikipedia: “California–7 out of 10 prisoners in California return to jail or prison within three years. This is the highest recidivism rate in the nation. In order to render this statistic, the prisoners will receive counseling, risk assessment, housing assistance, drug treatment and so on. Also, more health care is provided and available in the state for all inmates. This high recidivism rate contributes greatly to the overcrowding of jails and prisons in California.[25]”
Put everyone “under supervision” when they complete their prison terms?
[i]So you need a job training component if you wish to deal with the issue.[/i]
I am okay with that.
But the solution to the problem is to have a robust enough job market, and a good enough education system so that fewer people resort to crime as a way to make a life for themselves.
Once a person falls below the line, it is hard to recover… it is becoming harder and harder to recover since they are not only competing with other Americans for jobs, but they are competing with a global labor market.
Another solution is to deal with the fatherless households. There is plenty of evidence that the majority of convicts come from fatherless households.
I think you under-appreciate just how exclusionary the box is, until you find a way to deal with that, this problem goes nowhere. You want to talk about the fatherless households, the problem is that they are in prison.
It would be interesting to investigate what kind of incentives are given to law enforcement for re-arresting someone on parole. The rumor in Solano Co. is that there are unofficial bonuses for parole officers & other members of the law enforcement community who get a parolee re-arrested. Similar to “cash for convictions” but very unofficial. That is a rumor I can’t prove. What I do know, first hand, is if someone plea bargains, even if they are innocent, that person will be on law enforcement’s radar forever.
I meant to say probation, not parole.
[quote]Instead of blaming and focusing on law enforcement, how about focusing on the unemployment rate and blaming a president and congress, and governor and state legislature that continues hostility toward business and free enterprise. [/quote]
How about not focusing on whom to “blame” but rather on how best to devise solutions to the problem.
Some modest suggestions:
1) Do not incarcerate for non violent, non sexual, non weapons related crimes. Don’t pile on
enhancements.
2) Put the money spent not incarcerating into mandatory work programs or job related training.
3) Once incarcerated, provide intensive remedial educational programs and jobs training in place of the
very sketchy programs now offered ( personal acquaintance with some teachers in our prison system).
4) Stop using our jails and prisons as holding areas for the mentally ill. This has been going on per my own direct experience for at least 30 years.
[i]Do not incarcerate for non violent, non sexual, non weapons related crimes.[/i]
So the guy breaks into your car or house and steals a bunch of stuff… you want us to just leave him alone?
[i]Put the money spent not incarcerating into mandatory work programs or job related training[/i]
I’m okay with this… but there are no jobs.
I have a few questions.
Would you hire a felon to babysit your children?
Would you trust a felon with your store cash register?
Would you hire a felon as a security guard?
Would you hire a felon to work in your house?
Could anyone post a list of Davis businesses that hire felons?
Where do pedophiles work? UCD?
[quote]I’m okay with this… but there are no jobs.[/quote]
There could be if we were not insisten that all jobs had to be “public sector”. We could have reentry public works jobs so that the parolees could learn the habits and skills that are necessary to maintaining a job, build a resume and perhaps some day be more acceptable for employment within the public sector.
But I suspect that many will be disinclined to do this even though it would cost us less because after all
in the view of some, the government “screws up everything”.
[quote]Would you hire a felon to babysit your children? – Yes if the crime were for example embezzlement.
Would you trust a felon with your store cash register? – Yes, if the crime did not involve money such as
drunken driving and the felon is now in remission.
Would you hire a felon as a security guard? – yes, if the crime were drunken driving and the felon is now in remission
Would you hire a felon to work in your house? – Yes, again in a case which did not involve robbery.
There are probably many felons that I would hire whose life circumstances have changed since their conviction especially in the cases of those who were previous alcoholics or drug uses but are now in remission or who were very young when their crime was committed. I also feel that there are probably many felons whose crime I would never have felt appropriate for incarceration.
Craised: Having worked in prisons for over 10 years, and having met and talked with (sometimes over months or years) many felons, I can safely say that there are some felons who I would hire/trust to do all those things. There are also a lot I would not. In the community, I have talked and met thousands of people over the years and many of them may have been felons but I don’t know. The simple fact of being a felon does not (and should not) characterize someone for life. People do change – some for the better, some not.
I’m not sure what you are saying about pedophiles.
[i]I’m okay with this… but there are no jobs.
[/i]
That, of course, is not true, and you know it.
“Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 155,000 in December, and the unemployment
rate was unchanged at 7.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
today. Employment increased in health care, food services and drinking places,
construction, and manufacturing.”
[url]http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm[/url]
Education in prisons obviously should focus on vocational training. I gave talks at Vacaville CMF to the hort program there. Actually, they were some of the best audiences I’ve ever had. It gave new meaning to the term ‘captive audience’. Landscapers need laborers; so do builders. Wholesale growers need workers. California’s economy is housing-driven. As the housing market picks up, that’s where the jobs will be that ex-cons can realistically get, along with food service.
[quote]So the guy breaks into your car or house and steals a bunch of stuff… you want us to just leave him alone?
[/quote]
No, but then incarceration vs “just leave him alone” are not the only two options.
I would rather have him have to work to pay for the stuff he stole that see him incarcerated.
A job and an ankle bracelet would seem preferable to me and I suspect, might seem preferable to him too.
Don, there are no jobs…
[quote]While the BLS was reporting seasonally adjusted headline unemployment in December 2012 was only 7.8 percent, it was also reporting the broader U6 seasonally adjusted unemployment in December 2012 was 14.4 percent.
In his subscription newsletter, Williams contended the “headline changes” reported by BLS for the December 2012 unemployment rate of 7.8 percent “lack statistical significance.”
“To the extent that there is any significance in the monthly reporting,” he said, “it is that the economy is not in recovery, and that unemployment has made a new high, at a level that rivals any other downturn of the post-Great Depression era.”
The only measure BLS reports to the public as the official monthly unemployment rate is the headline, seasonally adjusted U3 number[/quote]
U6 includes all the discouraged workers that stopped looking for work and started voted for Democrats that would extend their unemployment benefits indefinitely.
Also…
[quote]According to a just-released report by the McKinsey Global Institute, between 90 and 95 million low-skilled workers, or 2.6% of the global workforce, could be permanently jobless by 2020.
At the same time, employers will increasingly seek medium- and high-skilled workers, meaning those who have completed secondary school and some vocational training, and workers with college or postgraduate degrees.
In advanced economies, says the report, demand for high-skilled labor is growing faster than supply, while demand for low-skilled labor is weakening. Says the report, “Income inequality is growing as lower-skill workers—including 75 million young people—experience unemployment, underemployment, and stagnating wages.”[/quote]
So, I repeat… [b]There are no jobs[/b]
[i]A job and an ankle bracelet would seem preferable to me and I suspect, might seem preferable to him too[/i]
medwoman… hold the press… we agree!
[i]Education in prisons obviously should focus on vocational training. [/i]
Don I agree with this.
But why wait until the kids end up in prison. Why not put the vocational education in the public schools so those kids can get a job before their select a life of crime?
before [i]they[/i] select a life of crime.
You can repeat it, but you’re wrong. Unemployment is going down, job numbers are going up. The economy is in a slow, steady recovery. I do see that the problem is that you get your news from the World Net Daily. That explains a lot. The economists who agree with your columnist for WND are mostly people who believe the ideology of WND, which is paranoid/far-right/Tea Party nonsense.
What surprises me in this discussion is that you are attributing bad choices to economic determinants, whereas usually you are quick to assert that people are responsible for their own behavior. But finally at 10:37 pm you caught yourself: [i]’before they select a life of crime’.[/i] So I guess President Obama didn’t cause crime after all.
The other things re-entering ex-cons need are training in life skills, substance abuse counseling in many cases, mentoring, and help parlaying personal connections into job offers. Most people get jobs by knowing people.
[i]I do see that the problem is that you get your news from the World Net Daily[/i]
Come on now Don, let’s not shoot the messenger or deflect from having to accept the facts.
This is serious stuff. Do you really believe these low unemployment numbers? Even the gubment agrees that a large number of people have dropped out of the job search. This from BLS…
[quote]Discouraged workers are a subset of persons marginally attached to the labor force. The marginally attached are those persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.[/quote]
Guess what? People of color are over-represented in the numbers of discouraged workers. They are also over-represented in convicts. Is there a correlation? I think so.
And, let’s really look at unemployment numbers for the parts of the country where these convicts would tend to be looking for work…
[img]http://www.cscdc.org/miscjeff/jobless.jpg[/img]
See a pattern?
I agree that solving unemployment is a primary solution of crime. However I disagree that free enterprise businesses is the provider of the needed jobs, because free enterprise prefers to hire no one to cut cost. Free enterprise only hire people if they [i]have to[/i]. It goes in this order:
1) Most preferred: Automate the process and hire no one.
2) Outsource the work to cheaper labors overseas
3) Hire local
I think it is fair to view free enterprise as a significant cause of unemployment. In a free enterprise system, wealth is not distributed equally. As a result, people, per se, has no value. The free enterprise does not need them as workers as processes are automated, and does not need them as consumers as they target those who have the money. It creates a force that eliminates (kills) the people in the bottom tier. Survival crime is a result of that threat.
I think the solution to full employment requires a few paradigm shifts or corrections to false ideologies. I had not thought through a sound plan, but one of the false ideologies is that free enterprise is the solution. Does anyone have an argument against my explanation above of why free enterprise is a cause of unemployment, not a solution?
Technology advancement is not an enemy. The problem is that morality did not adapt to a world that is technologically advanced.
Consider a village with 10 people. Each person farms for 8 hours a day, and everyone is well-fed. One day, one of them invents a farming machine that only needs 1 operator, but can farm for all 10 people. What happens next?
Immoral Outcome: The inventor the machine uses the surplus of time and resources to develop weapon, take over all the land, monopolize food production and enslave the other villagers, who now must please him to survive. Although the productivity has increased 10 times, none of the other villagers were freed.
Moral Outcome: The inventor shares the machine with the other villagers. Instead of working 8 hours each day, now each person only needs to work 8 hours every 10 days. The villagers now get more family and community gatherings to hang out, to make music, and to think about what else they could farm to add variety to their meals.
Now back to our reality. Given all the technological advantages we have, for the sake of survival, what is the necessary amount of work society should expect a person to do? Is our world more similar to a moral world or an immoral world?
Now consider this situation: A village has 10 villagers. Each one works for 8 hours a day and produce values equivalent to $10 a day. In total, there is $100 circulating among the villagers, and each person is using that money happily to exchange for goods they need. Then, 10 new people arrives at the village, each of them are working just as hard and produce the same amount as the original villagers. But there is a problem because there aren’t enough money to go around. What should the village do?
Option a) Since everyone is hard-working, let’s re-divide the money and give $5 to each person. The price of everything with become halved (deflation). It looks a little weird but it is mathematically the same.
Option b) Since everyone is hard-working, let’s create an extra $100 out of the blue and give them to the new villagers. This way everything can still be at the same prices.
Option c) Well, you know what, the new villagers are causing deflation. My dad used to make $10 a day, now I can only make $5 a day. They are messing up the economy. Let’s drive out the new villagers so that we can have the same economy as before.
Back to our reality. Forget about free enterprise. If a society can define a common standard of fair work (which can fluctuate) and there is resource to let people work their shares, “money” is not an issue. Job opportunities does not depend on “money”. As long as someone is willing to work, society can afford to pay without creating inflation.
I believe that using the same ongoing statistic shows us the trend. The trend is downward unemployment. The ratio of unemployed to jobs has been steadily declining. It’s still high, because we’re still in recovery. Slow recovery. But the trends are in the right direction. So the oft-repeated statements ‘there are no jobs’ and ‘it’s a jobless recovery’ are just ideology.
As to your ‘pattern’ — with respect to California, it shows that joblessness is high in the Central Valley. That is because that is where there are a lot of migrant, seasonal workers, as well as people of non-white ethnicity. Prisons tend to be located in low-population rural areas where joblessness is always high.
Atlantic City has its own reasons that I’m sure you are aware of, and the resource rich, low-population regions like Fargo and Midland are doing great thanks to the energy boom. By all means, let’s send released ex-cons to Fargo. Maybe not at this time of year, though.
I’m guessing that isn’t the pattern you were seeing.
[i] let’s not shoot the messenger or deflect from having to accept the facts. [/i]
World Net Daily is a site of paranoid rantings of an anti-Muslim, anti-gay, fanatical birther who promotes impeachment, white supremacy, conspiracy theories, and more. His more ‘reasoned’ commentators are Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan. If something is on that site, I consider it more likely false than true. Joseph Farah, the former and final editor of the Sacramento Union, is just this side of dangerously insane. But no, I won’t shoot the messenger. Anybody can find an economics writer to support any particular viewpoint.
Alright Don, let’s try something from one your more trusted left-leaning news sources…
[url]http://www.cnbc.com/id/49450120/Steinbock_America039s_Unemployment_Cliff[/url]
[i]I think it is fair to view free enterprise as a significant cause of unemployment[/i]
Edgar, that is like saying that you think it is fair to view farming as a significant cause of malnutrition.
Neither is a logical point.
Free enterprise is the ONLY reason that anyone in this country has a job.
But I agree that free enterprise seeks efficiency, and since labor is usually the largest expense for most business (often exacerbated by unions) business will naturally seek to reduce the cost of labor per unit of production.
Free enterprise in a capitalist system works because it enables and encourages creative destruction and creativity. The inefficient are replaced by the efficient. Efficiency creates a greater value proposition for the market which, in turn, creates greater demand and fuels business expansion. It is business expansion – e.g. economic growth – that serves our job needs. Without growth, or with lackluster growth, we will have too few jobs. We have been experiencing lackluster growth for over four years.
You can pick holes in free enterprise all you want… certainly it is not a perfect system; however, it is the best system when understood and honored. Collective-owned and operated production will always fail. It does not provide the natural incentives that serve to sustain the enterprise.
The dream of the collectivist keeps recurring even before the previous resulting nightmare is forgotten. I don’t know why this is. I don’t know why some people are possessed with this insatiable need to prove it right over and over again even when the history demonstrates that the only thing it does well is produce mountains of gleaming bones belonging to the humans it once tried to “help”.
I think you could rank the different levels of free enterprise system in terms of stability:
1) A society where there is no public air. People who are not efficient enough to keep up die from suffocation in 3 minutes.
2) A society where there is no public water. People who are not creative or efficient enough to keep up die from thirst in 3 days.
3) A society where there is no public food. People who are not creative or efficient enough to keep up die from hunger in 10 days.
4) A society where there is no public shelter. People who are not creative or efficient enough die from the elements in 1 month.
5) A society where there is no public health care. People who are not creative or efficient enough are expected to die by age 50.
If you don’t think that free enterprise is a significant cause of unemployment, then what do you think the cause is?
I think it is also a false ideology that people don’t work unless they are threatened. Some examples are hobbies and various social/family roles.
When a mother takes care of a child, the [i]loving[/i] mother is not thinking, “Ah, I better do it myself, it will save me the money for hiring a baby sister!” She is thinking, “Why would I want someone else to take care of my child if I have the time? I like to see him so much!”
Free enterprise is the force behind the conclusion like this: “Well, baby-sitting is only a $10/hr job. If I go to work for an hour, I could earn $20/hr. Why would I want to be with my kid? It is a misuse of resources. That would be [i]illogical[/i] wouldn’t it?”
Depending on the competitive stress, it could also lead to this conclusion: “As much as I would like to spend time with my kid, I simply cannot [i]afford[/i] to do so. If I don’t work and take those online training courses, I can’t keep up. I will be fired. I cannot afford to spend time with my family. My son may not have me in his childhood, but at least he will be alive.”
Free enterprise without moral distorts values. There are different levels of combinations that allows freedom in entrepreneurship and social services that establishes a basic level of stability. Free enterprise on its own cannot provide that safety net.
The level of safety net that a society provides depends on moral and availability of resources.
On the other hand, there is no such thing as a moral society that does not tolerate freedom in entrepreneurship. It is a contradiction. A moral society, by definition, allows diversity in thoughts and pursuits as long as they don’t pose any threat.
A society that is moral has both safety net and the freedom to pursuit. Whether the people who pursuit different dreams are competing or cooperatively exploring is a different matter.
This is cooperative exploration:
John and Mary are stuck in a desert and don’t know where water is. They decide to explore in opposite direction and tell the other when the find the water.
This is real competition:
John and Mary are stuck in a desert and don’t know where water is. Both of them believe that water is in the East. They race to the East trying to beat the other person to the water.
In general, a hobby is what a person does even when the activity has no monetary gain or expecting any external reward. The motivation of having the hobby is personal enjoyment. A hobby could also bring joy and benefits to other people without any monetary transaction. People are free to work on hobbies that benefits others when their basic needs are provided.
I think that your concern is this:
When a person’s basic needs are provided for, they will choose hobbies that only benefit themselves but not anyone else. As such, they will become “parasites” of society because they aren’t “productive”.
Which concern is more dangerous?
a) A person who does not need to struggle for survival may have useless hobbies.
b) A person who must struggle to survive would do anything to stay alive.
Are we saying that a person who does not need to struggle to stay alive will become drug addicts because recreational drug would be the main hobby they will pursue?
But I don’t think that is how people behave. Self-numbing activities are responses to stresses. Most people want to be useful. Most people want to express their creativity. However, in a society where everything is judged by their market value, people’s sense of self-worth and creativity could be harmed.
The basic evaluation of a person should not be their efficiency but their moral and good intention. Capitalism alone cannot lead a society toward peace.
[quote]But why wait until the kids end up in prison. Why not put the vocational education in the public schools so those kids can get a job before their select a life of crime?[/quote]
Why keep creating false dichotomies ? This is not an either/or proposition. Why not increase vocational education in the public schools, [u]and[/u] increase vocational and life skills training in the jails and prisons to prevent recidivism ? With the amount of money we now spend incarcerating the non dangerous felons, we could probably afford to do both to a degree that would have significant impact.
This however would require ch if anging the mind set surrounding yet another false dichotomy. This would be the idea that not holding strictly to a ” do the crime, do the time” mentality equals being “soft on crime”. This false dichotomy is, in my opinion largely responsible for much of our current culture of
warehousing criminals and the mentally ill with its enormous financial and social cost to our society.
Oops. That should read ” This would require changing…”
Edgar – First, I absolutely agree with your point about morality. Your comment “Free enterprise without moral distorts values” is right on. Have you read Adam Smith?
[i]The basic evaluation of a person should not be their efficiency but their moral and good intention. Capitalism alone cannot lead a society toward peace.[/i]
So, do I understand that you would rather we distribute the reward of a more prosperous life to people based on an assessment of their morals and intentions rather than their success trading value in a free enterprise system? Not only would that be very problematic since the assessment of morality and intentions would be highly qualitative and argumentative, but also because we are losing our basis for morality in a growing secular society. People are more likely to define strong morals and intentions as what makes them feel better at a given time. They would demand acceptance for their intentions pursuing what makes them feel better. Emotional dysfunctional people can become masters at objectifying their behavior as righteous, more and well-intended… even as it is harmful to their very well-being.
Assuming you believe in the theory of evolution, then you would accept that man evolved into a reasoning creature that could create safety and sustenance in excess and use the extra time this provided him to creatively develop. But that excess time has only been available for a relatively short time in the recorded human history. Less than one and one-half centuries ago, for the majority of people on this planet, finding, growing, hunting and gathering food and required natural resource occupied almost all available time. That is not unusual in the animal kingdom. In fact, finding food and shelter occupies almost all available animal time.
So humans, where their ability to reason, emote and grasp things with their opposable thumb, start creating these marvelous inventions that add value and save labor. In doing so, they create more time to think deeply and create more marvelous machines.
Now you are blaming the marvelous machines and the people that create them for “creating unemployment”.
The way I see it, survival work must always come before free-time. Free-time should be used to pursue happiness, but not at the expense of work time. Self-actualization is that top-level need pursuit, and it should be the golden ring that all strive for. But again, you have to survive first.
A capitalist free-enterprise system is in effect an artificial survival system. For example, if a large meteor crashed into the earth and wiped out 90% of the human and animal population, for a great while there would be no need or benefit in having a free enterprise system; humans would be spending all their time trying to survive on the scarce resources available. Eventually they would form tribes and pool their labor. They would create new marvelous machines that helped free their time. With that free time they would create more marvelous machines and some would create art and philanthropy and wisdom-perpetuating mythology.
Boiling this down to my simple principals of understanding… the human animal is built to work and will be corrupted if it does not work. And by working, I mean striving to survive and to earn wealth that provides more free-time to pursue higher level needs. It is this process and continuum that sustains us. It is why the US is fabulous and why countries like China, with significantly greater history, have taken to copying us and stealing the marvelous machines we have created.
Everyone that values free-time and the pursuit of higher level human needs should bow-down to the principles of free-enterprise. Because it is the engine that sustains a society that can and does create marvelous inventions and allows the most people to achieve self-actualization.
[i]”…also because we are losing our basis for morality in a growing secular society.”
[/i]
Growing secularism does not lead to a decline in morality. Wikipedia has a good overview of secular ethics. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_ethics[/url]
As religious affiliation decreases, we lose the influence of religious sects in how we define ethics. Much of that is ‘negative’ in the sense of defining behaviors that those sects believe should be proscribed. But we gain an opportunity: there are many ‘bases for morality’ already present in secular organizations that exist to promote better civic responsibility. The Wikipedia article cites three: The Girl Scout code, the U.S. Naval Academy, and Minnesota Principles.
Americans already share ethics. Secularism will not decrease that.
I am trying to avoid writing long posts because it waste people’s time and could potentially distract the topic. If there is a particular point you want me to address please specify. At the same time, I am trying to discover a format that would make these discussions more efficient. Please forgive me if I start to sound robotic.
My proposal is this:
[b]Proposal 1:[/b] As technology advances, the workload needed per person to survive decreases. Let’s estimate the fair amount of work for a person to earn [i]the Basic Needs[/i], and let’s allow the government to create jobs that require that amount of work, and reward anyone who does those jobs with Basic Needs.
In this proposal, there are the following parameters:
Parameter 1: The current fair amount of work
Parameter 2: The definition of Basic Needs
Parameter 3: The format of the reward
As you adjust the parameters, you get different instances of the proposal. This is one possible instance:
[u]Proposal 1 Instance 1:[/u]
Fair Amount of Work = Pay Annual Tax of $2000.
Basic Needs = Medical Care
Reward Format = A record that is associated with the person’s Social Security Number, where the government would pick up the person’s medical bills.
In plain English, this Instance means, “Let anyone who pays $2000 or more tax per year to have free medical care.”
I do not accept Instance 1. My objection is this:
I think that it will distort the market of medical care. If we give a blank check to medical procedures, people working in the medical industry would be disproportionally rewarded. I do not trust the private industry not to overcharge the government.
This is another instance:
[u]Proposal 1 Instance 2:[/u]
Fair Amount of Work = Manual labor or weeding, composing & recycling, and farming public-owned organic community farms 5 workdays a week.
Basic Needs = Water, Food, Shelter
Reward Format = Drinking water as budgeted by the city council for the community farm, free food produced from that farm, and free shelter at the co-op farm house at the community farm. (No monetary reward)
For this instance I don’t have an objection. I think this instance addresses your concerns:
o Assessment of morality could be problematic. In this instance, the moral encoded in the policy is that one earns their share by farming their own food. The policy gives them the opportunity (i.e. the land) to do so.
o People would get too lazy if they don’t have to work for their lives. In this instance, people who get the opportunity to farm have to farm to feed themselves.
If you object this instance or the proposal as a whole, please give your reason. It will make it easier to associate the concern with the context.
I am trying to avoid writing long posts because it waste people’s time and could potentially distract the topic. If there is a particular point you want me to address please specify. At the same time, I am trying to discover a format that would make these discussions more efficient. Please forgive me if I start to sound robotic.
My proposal is this:
[b]Proposal 1:[/b] As technology advances, the workload needed per person to survive decreases. Let’s estimate the fair amount of work for a person to earn [i]the Basic Needs[/i], and let’s allow the government to create jobs that require that amount of work, and reward anyone who does those jobs with Basic Needs.
In this proposal, there are the following parameters:
Parameter 1: The current fair amount of work
Parameter 2: The definition of Basic Needs
Parameter 3: The format of the reward
As you adjust the parameters, you get different instances of the proposal. This is one possible instance:
[u]Proposal 1 Instance 1:[/u]
Fair Amount of Work = Pay Annual Tax of $2000.
Basic Needs = Medical Care
Reward Format = A record that is associated with the person’s Social Security Number, where the government would pick up the person’s medical bills.
In plain English, this Instance means, “Let anyone who pays $2000 or more tax per year to have free medical care.”
I do not accept Instance 1. My objection is this:
I think that it will distort the market of medical care. If we give a blank check to medical procedures, people working in the medical industry would be disproportionally rewarded. I do not trust the private industry not to overcharge the government.
This is another instance:
[u]Proposal 1 Instance 2:[/u]
Fair Amount of Work = Manual labor or weeding, composing & recycling, and farming public-owned organic community farms 5 workdays a week.
Basic Needs = Water, Food, Shelter
Reward Format = Drinking water as budgeted by the city council for the community farm, free food produced from that farm, and free shelter at the co-op farm house at the community farm. (No monetary reward)
For this instance I don’t have an objection. I think this instance addresses your concerns:
o Assessment of morality could be problematic. In this instance, the moral encoded in the policy is that one earns their share by farming their own food. The policy gives them the opportunity (i.e. the land) to do so.
o People would get too lazy if they don’t have to work for their lives. In this instance, people who get the opportunity to farm have to farm to feed themselves.
If you object this instance or the proposal as a whole, please give your reason. It will make it easier to associate the concern with the context.