@Antigrav No, because that serves to rationalise slavery for thousands of people who are incarcerated in a a racist system. The prison slave economy in the US is big $$.

I think taking their assets will do the trick. The state can splash out for three hots and a cot.

@Antigrav Framing public expenditures as something we "can't afford" is exactly what the neoliberal project of the last half century wants us to do.

I certainly accept that some people need to be removed from general circulation among society, and that some of those are unlikely or impossible to be rehabilitated. So if we want to do this right, we accept that there is a cost to be borne and that's mostly just an operating expense, like maintaining roads and pipes and paying for things like public servants and conservation budgets.

But we also need to take a critical look at our "justice" system and admit that it is overwhelmingly a tool of colonial statecraft to subjugate the colonised, and to enforce the extraction of private wealth from what used to be the commons. So maybe we need to claw back those ill-gotten gains as well, and for those who insist on using the flawed accounting of the austerity freaks we can say this is how we pay for the things a country needs.