Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
$1.75 million seems very little for spending the 35 years from age 19 to age 54 in prison.
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Indeed, and this is why I had the following idea a long time ago:
People who go to jail should start earning a special "jail income" from day 1, paid by the state, at the level of, say, a high-ranking company officer. The money is deposited every month onto a special bank account, like a salary, but held in escrow. This "salary" gets appraised every year the inmate stays in prison, like an employee's would.
When the inmate gets out of jail, they "lose their job" so to speak, but the money accrued during their time in the pokey remains in escrow. When they die, the money is paid back to the state.
If they are retried and found not guilty later on, they get to keep the income for the rest of their life (or they get it back if they were already out of jail), and the money in escrow is released to them.
This would achieve 3 things:
- The state would have a powerful incentive to get the judicial system to serve justice fast;
- The longer someone stays in the slammer for nothing, the more money they'd have to make up for lost years when they get out. It wouldn't ever replace the lost years, but it'd be better than nothing;
- Someone who's innocent but strongly believes they'll be free again some day view the time they spend in jail as a kind of a job, perhaps easing their predicament from a psychological point of view.