Where are you getting the £10k cost of prisoner suffering in your model from? Roodman says $50k/year;* US prisons are worse than UK prisons so plausibly the UK number would be lower, but £10k seems like a huge underestimate even relative to the $50k baseline, and frankly $50k seems like an underestimate. I'd certainly rather be unemployed for two years (£50k lost earnings) than imprisoned for one (£25k lost earnings + £10k suffering, according to your model). To be sure, I'm sure people who would make the opposite call are overrepresented in the prison population; but that will most likely be due to the marginal utility of money being higher for them, not the suffering from prison being lower.
*Or rather, Scott Alexander says Roodman says $50k. On my phone and not bothered to double check.
Thanks. Basically, I used a very old estimate of value per QALY (£20-30k). Should have sense checked that better.
Most recent Green Book suggests the value should be £70k, which increases prisoner suffering to c£35k. Though Roodman's method is pretty crude - just half a year QALY lost per year in prison. This would be ripe for better WELLBY analysis - a quick look suggests that the wellbeing impact is not *that* dramatic, though obviously still negative: https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/260053867/fdz106f2.tif
Where are you getting the £10k cost of prisoner suffering in your model from? Roodman says $50k/year;* US prisons are worse than UK prisons so plausibly the UK number would be lower, but £10k seems like a huge underestimate even relative to the $50k baseline, and frankly $50k seems like an underestimate. I'd certainly rather be unemployed for two years (£50k lost earnings) than imprisoned for one (£25k lost earnings + £10k suffering, according to your model). To be sure, I'm sure people who would make the opposite call are overrepresented in the prison population; but that will most likely be due to the marginal utility of money being higher for them, not the suffering from prison being lower.
*Or rather, Scott Alexander says Roodman says $50k. On my phone and not bothered to double check.
Thanks. Basically, I used a very old estimate of value per QALY (£20-30k). Should have sense checked that better.
Most recent Green Book suggests the value should be £70k, which increases prisoner suffering to c£35k. Though Roodman's method is pretty crude - just half a year QALY lost per year in prison. This would be ripe for better WELLBY analysis - a quick look suggests that the wellbeing impact is not *that* dramatic, though obviously still negative: https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/260053867/fdz106f2.tif