Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Roughly equivalent spend as % of CA general fund after 40yrs of policy regression

This elides the point. One has meaningful (if not fully optimized) economic returns, the other is sunk cost. Luckily CA has partially come to its senses on prison reform. Unfortunately, we haven't realized the catastrophic blunder of gutting education budgets yet.

Well, to return to Mike's point, these aren't options with total overlap on a population. (If you like, I'll let you know whether or not my stalker — who's threatened to rape and murder a number of other women — improves under CA's prison reform. Or you may read about it.)

Again, that wasn't the point being made. Of course we need prisons for violent offenders, but is the ROI of that $ positive in any financial analysis? No. It's dead weight. There is a research-backed 3-4x multiple of GDP per $ spent in CA higher ed. Clearly better $$$ spent.

Keeping people who might harm me away from me is not "dead weight" on a budget. Not everyone will be transformed into 4x labor participants via access to college-level coursework. I'm all for those who can. Show some nuance.

The 3-4x stat is the average of all dollars invested, regardless of individual outcomes. I'm not trying to minimize your experience, but it's a pretty twisted logic that your personal security should be defended at any economic cost while net + education just cant be afforded.