Prioritization of carceral spending in U.S. cities

December 20, 2022 9:15 PM

...most large U.S. cities spend more on carceral systems than on health and supportive services, combined. ...After controlling for age, the strongest prioritization of carceral systems was observed in cities where the proportion of low-income Black residents approached or exceeded that of high-income white residents.
posted by latkes (6 comments total)

Shocking, but not surprising. I first bristled at the " abolish prison" and " defund the police" bumpersticker but its really the call to abolish slavery and defund the overseers capos and hitmen.

Thanks for posting this
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:22 PM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

I had a quick look at what the numbers were here in Norway, and it seems like the ratio of public spending on carceral systems to health services is in the vicinity of 1:7 (5 billion NOK for prisons only, 25 billion for police and courts, vs 200 billion for regional health services in the latest proposed budget).
posted by Harald74 at 5:33 AM on December 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

"Budgets are moral documents," has been arguably attributed to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. But if he didn't coin that exact phase, he very well could have.... he surely did say, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:13 PM on December 21, 2022 [4 favorites]

Might want to clarify in the post that “carceral” relates to prisons and imprisonment as it isn’t a common word.
posted by interogative mood at 3:38 PM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

It s good to have something measurable as to what happened in the nineties

It s difficult to explain to older liberals that things are very different from when they were coming up
posted by eustatic at 8:15 PM on December 21, 2022

And that it happened while they weren't looking
posted by eustatic at 8:17 PM on December 21, 2022