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New York City spends nearly 450k per prisoner per year, which is almost 3 times higher than second place King County (which contains Seattle). Why is New York such an outlier?

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Source: Vera Institute of Justice

Azor Ahai -him-
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EveryoneElse
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    I suspect the study is flawed. Except for one place, the study looked at county jail budgets. For example, the Los Angeles (County) Sheriff Department budget does include expenses for city jails such as the Los Angeles (City) police department. There are 42 cities and towns in Los Angeles County. The one exception is New York City, which encompasses five counties (aka burroughs). The outsized number for NYC and the undersized numbers for several counties suggests to me that the study is deeply flawed. – David Hammen Oct 05 '21 at 10:54
  • Just to be clear, King County isn't coterminous with Seattle, although Seattle is its largest city (33% of the population) and seat. – Azor Ahai -him- Oct 05 '21 at 14:09
  • Have you tried living in New York? It's really expensive! – CJ Dennis Oct 06 '21 at 02:23

1 Answers1

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New York City jails have the highest officer-to-inmate ratio (4 officers per 3 detainees) of any prison system in the nation, by far. That's a massive payroll expense which is basically the whole answer right there.

You can read more about it in this New York Focus article. According to this article, the 4-to-3 ratio alone is 7 times higher than the national average, which should account for a large part of the discrepancy.

Yakk
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William Walker III
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    Some amazing stuff there "In May, the lack of available officers got so bad city jail officials put a Rikers facility housing seriously mental ill detainees on lockdown because there were not enough available officers. Some 1,200 correction officers called out sick that day, and another 700 or so were on medically restricted duty for various health reasons. [...] “We have 1,400 people on any day calling in sick and 5,000 people not coming to work and not calling, AWOLing [absent without official leave],” Schiraldi told NY1." That was in May 2021, and there wasn't that much Covid in NY anymore. – the gods from engineering Oct 05 '21 at 01:11
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    Maybe it would be good to add some details in the answer about why NY has so high an officer-to-inmate ratio ? – Evargalo Oct 05 '21 at 06:30
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    It would also be interesting to see if the outlier, internationally speaking, is NYC or all the other places in the US. My gut feeling is that the guard-to-inmate ratio in many European countries will also be a lot higher than 4-to-21. – xLeitix Oct 05 '21 at 12:25
  • @Evargalo Why is a hard question to answer, as motives are hard to prove, and departments of corrections aren't exactly the most transparent of institutions, but I'll sniff around a bit. – William Walker III Oct 05 '21 at 13:01
  • @xLeitix Why did you put 4 to 21 when the answer clear states, twice 4 to 3? Is it because 2+1=3??? – Andy Oct 05 '21 at 14:59
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    @Andy xLeitix was referring to the ratio for the rest of the country. The answer states that the 4:3 ratio was 7× that of the rest of the country, so (4/3)/7 is 4/21 or 4:21. – KRyan Oct 05 '21 at 15:38
  • @xLeitix: At least on a certain day (2018-11-30), according to https://www.rnz.de/politik/suedwest_artikel,-gefaengnisse-in-baden-wuerttemberg-60-haeftlinge-ein-waechter-_arid,424525.html (last paragraph, in German), several prisons in Germany had much lower ratios (10/683, 13/796, 10/406, 16/579 and 4/99). That was the night shift, and the article tries to prove a point (not enough personnel), so use those numbers with caution, but the numbers are even much lower than 4/21. – Guntram Blohm Oct 05 '21 at 17:34
  • From a quick search it seems that new york city prison officers get paid about $60K per year. If you assume employment overheads mean the cost of an employee is 2x their headline salary that only accounts for $160K per inmate per year. – Peter Green Oct 06 '21 at 04:04
  • @Andy What KRyan said. Thanks for letting me know that 2+1 and 21 are not the same thing, but I was already aware of that ;) – xLeitix Oct 06 '21 at 06:34
  • That article does not appear to be from the New Yorker, but from New York Focus, an "independent newsroom". I have not yet been able to find any independent/3rd-party description of this organization so I'd recommend some caution in reviewing it's reporting. – RBarryYoung Oct 06 '21 at 14:04
  • @PeterGreen I was an employer for over 30 years and I can tell you from experience that 2x is actually on the low end of what for-profit companies aspire to for total/salary cost factor. Depending on how it is counted, this factor can be much larger, especially for an inefficient government organization. – RBarryYoung Oct 06 '21 at 14:19
  • I did find this favorable review of NYSFOCUS.COM, but nothing else so far. – RBarryYoung Oct 06 '21 at 14:30
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    @Andy I think it's because 4/3 is seven times more than 4/21 which is the national average given in the answer. – JimmyJames Oct 06 '21 at 15:31