Universal Basic Income

[sanantone]

I saw multiple inmates show back up in the yard after a month or 3 of being a free man. It's not that far fetched to say free room and board. If it were so awful, they would stay out. Heard lots of life stories and sob stories from our orderlies and other inmates....the'yre lying most of the time, check their file.

I spent 70 to 80 hours a week with those idiots, and I have less empathy now for inmates than I had before I started. Screw em, they have more rights than COs in our system.

I worked as a corrections officer and a substance abuse counselor to inmates. As a corrections officer, you don't know as much as you think you do. Counselors actually had more access to an inmate's history than a run-of-the-mill corrections officer. I had information on my clients that none of the officers were privy to because of HIPAA. Once you really get to talk to them, you start to understand why they keep messing up. Most inmates need some form of counseling or rehabilitation program, but most will never receive it in prison because states are dumb enough to waste billions on locking people up and releasing them with the same problems just so that they can come back.

I knew one client who owed a lot in back child support due to his previous incarceration and hardly had any money left in his check from his $10 an hour job. When his disabled mother was about to be evicted and he had no money to help her, he committed fraud to get the money. The story with his mother was confirmed. Another client started selling drugs again because no one would hire him. Thankfully, our program helped him get his GED so that, he could not only qualify for more jobs, but he could also qualify for training programs that require a high school diploma or GED.

Fortunately, at the jail where I was a corrections officer, the experienced officers and supervisors taught everyone to treat the inmates humanely because any of us could end up where they are. What they said is true. Some people simply make mistakes. Several of our deputies became alcoholics, and some of them were arrested for DWIs.

Additionally, you'll come across a disproportionate number of inmates who have anti-social personality disorders (similar to a sociopath, but that's not a clinical term). They aren't the majority, but there is a high number of them. There's really not much help for them. There are also a lot of anti-social corrections officers who are no better than the inmates they oversee. They can't feel empathy, and they get enjoyment from hurting others. Some people take the job to have control over others because they are losers in real life.

Then, you have the corrections officers who help facilitate crimes. There are always corrections officers sleeping with inmates; it's very common. It doesn't even help to separate the sexes. There are male corrections officers sleeping with male inmates and female corrections officers sleeping with female inmates. A lot of the drugs that are smuggled into prisons get there with the help of corrections officers. Most of the cell phone smuggling is done by corrections officers. There is a reason why most jails and prisons will not allow anyone, including employees, to take a cell phone inside. Many corrections officers are also directly or indirectly affiliated with gangs, but background investigations miss this. I saw corrections officers with gang tattoos that should have been easily identified by the supervisors, but corrections doesn't exactly attract the brightest people.

This is exactly the problem that I see with all these programs - that once you're on them, it just becomes too hard to get off. The way to get people out of poverty is NOT to throw more and more programs/money at them - that just reinforces the cycle of poverty, unfortunately. The way to get out of poverty is to get people on jobs. Realistically, not everyone who works will end up doing better - but you have to admit, that if you're actually working, there's a chance. If you stay on programs, there's no chance.

On a personal level, I have to say that there was one point in my life that I was contemplating joining the "gang". I watched how people who were on all the programs got Section 8, food stamps, Heap, and medicaid (or whatever it's called now). We were paying for all those things ourselves, including medical insurance. Adding up all this money, plus figuring out how much we paid in payroll taxes, transportation and other job related costs, I figured out that if my husband would take an "easier" job, with less hours (and would be closer so that transportation would be cheaper) we would actually come out ahead, money-wise. I really wanted to do it, but my husband said nothing doing. He said that he sees that people who start on programs just never get off, and he doesn't want that life.

So, my husband works 50 hours a week, and here I am, looking to get my degree so I can also work long hours Sometimes I really wonder if we made the right decision...

The solution is to not drastically reduce benefits when people get a minimum wage job. The solution is definitely not to cut spending on retraining for the unemployed, which is what the government is currently considering.

Sure, how you were raised affects you today. I don't see it as an excuse because I can't comprehend it.
To illustrate a bit, I was excessively abused (physically and psychologically) as a child, yet I have no emotional or intellectual problems according to my psychologist (oxymoronic, but I went to a psychologist to have an IQ test + some personality tests done, I'm perfectly normal). My parents have no concept of how to handle financial matters, and I am the antithesis of their bad habits - being overly frugal. My father is incredibly lazy and my mother, while hardworking for a time, is complacent and wants to be lazy (her admission), but I have become so focused on my long-term goals that I haven't taken more than one consecutive day off of work in three years.

It's not that I never had emotional issues or scarring, or that I haven't ever desired to buy the shiniest and newest toys, or that I wasn't inherently lazy until I hit my later teenage years. It's that I realized the self-destructive nature of those issues and became determined to move past them.
There's a lot more going on, and more that I am working on, but those are the big three.

For that reason, I have almost no empathy toward people like that, not even my own father. If I can move past it, that means you can too, it just comes down to resolve. That doesn't mean working hard will solve financial problems, or that you can overcome the mental scarring from being sexually abused or physically beat by family members entirely, but that you can't use your problems as a crutch your whole life because, "It's hard."

Do you know what I learned to do? I learned not to compare everyone's resilience and abilities to my own. While some people can come out of child abuse mostly fine, many others can't. I had an abusive, dysfunctional childhood and manage to pass psychological testing for law enforcement positions. I don't have any mental health problems even though I have family members with mental health problems giving me a genetic predisposition, but not everyone is like me. I'm good at self-teaching and can manage to pass most tests with minimal study; my IQ is above average. I am not the average person. While I could have done well in a school with poor teachers, many students can't. I know I can only go so far when comparing myself to other people in similar situations.

Prisons and jails house more mentally ill people than behavioral hospitals. At least a quarter of inmates have mental health problems. Some of them have been diagnosed, but haven't been on their medications or in therapy. Some of them are yet to be diagnosed. Even among the general population, there are access issues to mental health treatment. It's expensive, and the government wants to take away the requirement for insurance companies to cover mental health and substance abuse treatment. Even if you can find a way to afford treatment, there are severe shortages of mental health professionals nationwide. In Texas, over 72% of the counties have no psychiatrist. Texas used to be one of the worst states for mental health spending and finally came to the realization that they needed to do something about the lack of access.

Can't really call it poverty in my opinion because most these people that are taking advantage of these programs are living quite well.

Then, you don't know a lot of people on welfare.