Its been clear for ages that many public service cuts are false economies.... as a friend of mine pointed out some time ago, if you cut early intervention & prevention services (which can be relatively cheap & effective), you then enlarge the demand for more expensive (and often mandatory) crisis services....
A new IFS study that looked at closing police stations, suggests, likewise that every £1 saved by closing a location increased social costs by £3!
@ChrisMayLA6 A friend of mine who has regular stays in mental health institutions has found a MH gardening group once a week was lifechanging cos it gave a safe focus away from home. This has now been cut due to lack of funding. There is nothing for "care in the community" if you are severely unwell a lot of the time.
Similarly we send people out of prisons to live in shitty crime-riddled places with no house, job, money and wonder why people reoffend. It's absolute madness.
@ChrisMayLA6
that’s an interesting example coming from a US perspective, because police budgets are usually immune from being cut—but you see things like cutting other social services, leaving police to respond to things that are not police matters (e.g., someone is having a mental health crisis, so police are sent to deal with it—resulting in a mentally ill person being shot)
@ChrisMayLA6@tkinias
I've often thought that hospitals and prisons are both the most expensive solutions to problems, and their growth is an indicator of failure of more cost-effective solutions to social problems
You will always need both, people get sick and will need hospital. People are awful and will need prison.
However using either to solve societies ills is wrong.
Better health promotion, better social care, earlier intervention and people will be better.
However I definitely agree that both locking people up isn't the answer and if we solved societal problems, then we wouldn't need as many prison spaces
Spend less than we do and has functionally ended homelessness.
I think it comes back to Graham Norton quote on taxes "we can spend money to build a wall or pay taxes so we don't have to" ie life is better for all if we properly fund societal improvement
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