Friend of ours is a well educated psychologist, she does drug counseling in lieu of jail. Convicts in her program have 4x better outcomes and her program (including her salary) costs the county less than 1/10th what they pay to keep drug charge convicts in jail. Still, the county refuses to expand the program and pays far more to send the majority of their drug cases to jail, because that’s how the judges want to handle it.
Aghhhhh. I hate this so much. The same with head start programs. Like every $1 spent on early childhood programs saves $7 (at the low end!) in the long run. We have the answers. Makes me want to scream honestly.
Florida is making some progress on the early childhood side, they’ve been funding “Free VPK” for 20+ years now, and unemployed parents get automatic “Florida KidCare” insurance (basically Medicaid) for their children. Still, could be better.
See The End of Policing for stats on why locking people up costs more than housing. See According to Need podcast for why housing-first costs less.
Yeah, but giving them housing and food doesn’t punish poor people or increase our slave population!
Friend of ours is a well educated psychologist, she does drug counseling in lieu of jail. Convicts in her program have 4x better outcomes and her program (including her salary) costs the county less than 1/10th what they pay to keep drug charge convicts in jail. Still, the county refuses to expand the program and pays far more to send the majority of their drug cases to jail, because that’s how the judges want to handle it.
Aghhhhh. I hate this so much. The same with head start programs. Like every $1 spent on early childhood programs saves $7 (at the low end!) in the long run. We have the answers. Makes me want to scream honestly.
Florida is making some progress on the early childhood side, they’ve been funding “Free VPK” for 20+ years now, and unemployed parents get automatic “Florida KidCare” insurance (basically Medicaid) for their children. Still, could be better.