This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Monica Townson analyzes the Cons' private-sector pension scheme and determines that it doesn't add anything to the privileged treatment already granted to saving by those who can afford it.
- pogge points out that as part of Peter MacKay's desperation in trying to shut down discussion about his personal use of military helicopters, he's doubling down in misusing public resources for his own personal ends.
- While we're a few years away from having actual data play any role whatsoever in federal crime policy, Neal Hall reports on some rather compelling evidence that the Cons' megaprisons are the last place we should be spending our public money.
- Finally, Crawford Kilian puts the deprivation facing Attawapiskat and other long-neglected First Nations in context.
On the megaprisons vs. education article, I take the general point but education in specific may be losing its edge as a crime reducer. The general point is that people commit property crimes mainly for economic reasons--but in a setting of structural unemployment where education is losing its ability to guarantee a job, making sure more people graduate from high school may mainly shuffle the economic reasons around rather than getting rid of them. Sure, the people who graduate instead of dropping out may be more likely to find work, but if there's no bleedin' jobs it will only be at the expense of some other jobseeker.
ReplyDeleteMore to the point would be simple direct job creation. At $109,000 per prison space/year, you could employ like 4 people at median wage (after they paid some of it back in taxes) for the cost of one prison inmate. And that's before you even consider that they would hopefully be doing useful things.