I posted  this over at the Midwest Pages to Prisoners blog after seeing it on Corinna’s. This story, about a proposed plan by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels to transfer inmates from California’s overcrowded prisons, to vacant spots in Indiana prisons, shows some interesting things, including the massive number of incarcerated people in total, and especially in places like California. Also, it shows the connections between prison management and private industry. Finally, I think it shows the outlandish scenarios that happen when the industry of the construction of prisons comes before assessing the role that we want incarceration to play in our society.  Noteably, that prisons need to be filled, one way or another, whether it’s creating laws that make it more likely for people to end up in prison, or actually shipping prisoners from one place to another.  It also speaks the commodification of human lives, when people can be moved around to maximize efficiency, like so many widgets.  And it’s hard really, because the reality of such decisions might stand to improve the day to day life of some CA prisoners, but, in the end, it speaks to the fundamental flaws of the system, that requires a change in attitudes and priorities instead of just a reallocation of resources.

From the Indianapolis Star:

Gov. Mitch Daniels’ plan to make money by opening Indiana prisons to inmates from packed California prisons has fallen short, with few convicts volunteering and what may be insurmountable objections and concerns from prisoner advocates and guards.

Despite the setback, Indiana Department of Correction Commissioner J. David Donahue said Saturday the state hasn’t given up on the notion of housing prisoners from other states.

He said Indiana is in preliminary talks with “another jurisdiction” that may be interested in sending its inmates to Indiana if the deal with California collapses.

Under the deal between Daniels and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, up to 1,200 California offenders would have been sent to the New Castle Correctional Facility.

Schwarzenegger in October declared a state of emergency in California after his state’s prison population had swelled to nearly 173,000 inmates crammed into a system designed to hold about 100,000.

Indiana was motivated to act in part because about 60 percent of the 2,400-bed Henry County medium-security prison sits empty, Donahue said.

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I saw this article posted on /. of all places.  Charles Wheelan writes about the rising gap between incomes in the US and brings up Brazil and their large income gap and the amount of violence in their society as an example of the ultimate negative implications of income inequality.

He invokes a stat called the Gini coefficient for measuring income equality.  Which I hadn’t heard of before.

The most convenient statistic for measuring income inequality is called a Gini coefficient, which measures a country’s distribution of income from 0 (absolute equality, with each person sharing the same amount of wealth) to 1 (absolute inequality, with one person controlling all of the nation’s wealth).

Here’s what that statistic looks like for a handful of countries, including contemporary and historic figures for the U.S.:

* Japan: .25
* Sweden: .25
* India: .33
* The United States 1970: .39
* The United States 2005: .47 (Note that a small fraction of the increase over time is due to a change in the methodology for calculating the Gini coefficient; still, income inequality has climbed steadily by this measure over the past four decades.)
* Brazil: .58

He states that income inequality might have advantages because it “motivates risk, hard work, and innovation” but that “income inequality doesn’t motivate anything good when there’s no hope of sharing in the pot of gold.” 

I’ve spent enough time in inner-city schools to wonder if we’re really providing an opportunity for the motivated and gifted to make their way from the projects to Wall Street.

Yes, it happens — you can watch Will Smith do it at your local multiplex in The Pursuit of Happyness, which is inspired by a true story. But how often does it not happen?

I’m convinced that part of what’s going on in Brazil is that the socioeconomic ladder is broken. There’s no real path from favela to bulletproof apartment, and some people with guns have decided that they don’t want to play by the rules made by the people in those apartments.

He also points out an interesting psychological effect where people would rather have fewer resources as long as they have more stuff than their neighbors.  So, the motivations for income inequality could actually motivate less advantageous situations for everybody.

In other words, we care less about how much money we have than we do about how much money we have relative to everyone else. In a fascinating survey, Cornell economist Robert Frank found that a majority of Americans would prefer to earn $100,000 while everyone else earns $85,000, rather than earning $110,000 while everyone else earns $200,000.

Think about it: People would prefer to have less stuff, as long as they have more stuff than the neighbors.

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