Professional sports and the prison system
What the downsides of sports and prisons can teach us about the moral status of our society.
Poverty is the mother of crime
- Marcus Aurelius
Professional sports and prison have some glaring similarities. Any professional athlete will tell you that when they started out, in whatever sports system, that the system is very much set up like a prison system with very few rights of the individual, housing in closed complexes and a constant monitoring of their on and off pitch behaviour.
Blowing up the bank
In terms of sheer economic spending, both are extremely wasteful and expensive. The combined world expenditure on incarceration is over $1 trillion dollars, with the US topping the list at just over $100 billion. In comparison, New Zealand spends nearly $1.5 billion on putting people behind bars, often for the most minor offenses. The recent federal legislative changes around cannabis possession in the US are a start, but are not nearly enough (only affecting about 2000 people in jail,) as individual state law supersedes federal law and most states still have pretty tough penalties for this offense. Per capita, professional sports are even worse. The top ten sporting clubs in the world spend $23 billion on player salaries, with the NFL in the US bearing the brunt of this with nearly $5 billion! Across the Atlantic, the top ten football players in Europe, Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo and co., make over $1 billion between them.
There is something wrong with this picture, these humans are essentially playing a ‘game’ (throwing a ball or kicking it) that they love to play, and our society (the market?!) is willing to fork over these excessive salaries, deeming these specimens worth more than teachers, nurses or firefighters. Most athletes make more in one month than any of those other vocations do in their entire life. A bizarre yet profoundly shocking statistic from a moral perspective.
What is going here? Let’s look at the prison system
I recently watched the Louis Theroux documentary film “Behind Bars,” where Louis visits the maximum security prison in San Quentin, California for two weeks and interviews some of the inmates. The interviews vary from inmates incarcerated for minor charges like car theft, robbery, and other larceny to more major charges like murder, torture and voluntary manslaughter - some rough guys, ex gang members but also homosexuals who fashion themselves as women who don’t identify as trans. Interestingly the latter of these say in their interviews that it is easier to come out in prison than it is on the outside as they feel safer, which seems counter intuitive but he reasoning is that they are far less likely to be beat up when they have make-up on, because other inmates “don’t want to hit a woman.” Like he always does, Louis manages to lure the interviewees into a safe place where they trust him and divulge information that they wouldn’t normally tell others. One of the inmates, serving 500 life sentences for murder and vicious torture, really got me thinking. He reveals that prison is his 401K plan, essentially his retirement plan.
“I’ll never have to worry about not getting food or having shelter, for the rest of my life.”
I started to think how twisted this is. There are so many destitute and homeless people in California, in fact it has one of the highest per capita homelessness rates in the developed world. In 2021, when the pandemic was in full swing it was estimated that nearly 1 in 20 Californians were struggling to find a home and were living on the street. Many of these starving and dying of covid infections at a disproportionately higher rate compared to the rest of the population. I began to think how insane this was. In order to survive this world, you need to commit a crime and then the state will take care of you, feed you 3 meals a day, provide a job and give you a room with no rent to pay. It seems completely topsy turvy and is a serious sign of how messed up the system is.
Many of Louis’ interviewees stated how easy it was to be in jail, one even compared San Quentin to a giant playground. The most depressing part was when some of the inmates, who had served their time and were being released, said that they would commit a crime immediately upon release. Because “it is worth the risk.” Hearing the guards say about these inmates “oh yes, he’ll be back within a week, this is his 15th stint” was heartbreaking.
Prison doesn’t do anything but make a bad situation worse
Imprisoning people who commit a crime doesn’t prevent them re offending, in fact, in most cases, it exacerbates the chances of them committing a worse crime. Precisely because of the people they are surrounded by on the inside. You become who you spend time with. And in prison all they ever talk about is the crimes they committed and how to get away with it. For instance, a prisoner who gets put in jail on minor burglary charges will come out knowing how to steal a car or rob a bank, so it is no surprise that when they get out, they reoffend.
Now let’s have a think about why people commit crime. Omitting those with mental health problems, most crimes are done out of economic desperation and poverty. People who struggle to put food on the table for their families will do anything to help them survive. This is an evolutionary prerogative, encoded in our brains. Without this need to provide, we would never have made it this far as a species. The irony of the whole abortion debate was always that people who traditionally vote against abortion also vote in favour of reducing the welfare state, essentially deeming a human foetus more valuable than an actual living child. This apparent contradiction in values becomes more apparent when we look at what happens once a human is put into the penal system.
Prison life = Lower middle class
Once you get charged with a crime, the state provides you with a lawyer (free legal advice - as opposed to a working tenant who is getting kicked out of their apartment, they have to fund their own legal representation,) then you get given a room rent free, clothes, 3 meals a day and in most instances, a paying job. None of these things are available to people who haven’t broken the law. So it becomes self-evident that being a criminal is actually an incredibly smart ‘career’ move for someone who was born into poverty with no lifeline in sight. It is actually a completely insane system. Especially when you consider that the cost of running prisons outweighs the cost of a welfare state and that most studies that look into states with robust welfare systems, all draw the same conclusion, they make countries GDP increase in the long run.
What if we took the trillions spent on sports and prisons and instead put this money towards helping poor people survive their lives with dignity, BEFORE they get so desperate that they steal food or rob a car? Tackle the root of the problem instead of constantly treating the symptoms. It’s like an ambulance waiting at the bottom of a cliff for survivors, rather than meeting people preemptively at what they need to live a good life.
And maybe instead of paying grown adults billions of dollars to play a game, why don’t we invest in children who want to play sports but whose family struggles to cover the costs. Instead of Ronaldo earning $40 000 an hour to kick a ball, why not pay the person ensuring the future of our children (a teacher) a living wage?
Just a thought, have a good day and weekend all!
Thank you for reading, again, don’t worry I am not planning on retiring in a prison!
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With wealth, one is in a position of responsibility. You must try to help others. It is as simple as that.
I love reading your stuff. It reminds me how radically different two people's interpretation of the same facts can be.
Stay safe brother.