{"id":1872,"date":"2011-11-01T11:36:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T15:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2011-11-01T11:36:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T15:36:57","slug":"prison-vs-princeton-annual-cost-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/2011\/11\/01\/prison-vs-princeton-annual-cost-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison vs. Princeton: Annual cost comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Education<\/a>
Education vs. Prison in California | Public Administration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What works<\/h3>\n

The only part of this graphic I kind of liked was the part about California. Here, we are able to compare the average cost of education for a year with the average cost of prison for a year. This is better than comparing the cost of a single school to the average cost of prison, especially when that school is as expensive as Princeton. I still have a problem with this comparison because the cost of school is running over about 8 months whereas the cost of prison is running the full 12 months, or at least that seems to be true from what I can gather. My back-of-the-envelope math suggests prison would be about $32,143 for 8 months. This is still much higher than the average of $7,463 per student spending for 8 months of school. Parent and student contributions to schooling are not factored in, though the point of the graphic is to compare what the state spends on students to what it spends on prisoners, ignoring the total amount spent on students.<\/p>\n

What needs work<\/h3>\n

The information included in this graphic could have been presented in about one fifth of the space. I support the addition of graphical elements to information presentation only when they increase the clarity of the information provided or make the information delivery inarguably more elegant. <\/p>\n

What I vastly dislike are the long columns of graphics stacked on top of each other, meant to be viewed as some kind of visual essay. That was where I drew the California graphic from. I pasted it below. <\/p>\n

I’m curious. Do other people like these long, internet-only graphic essays? I find them extremely hard to digest. They seem to be plagued by apples-to-oranges faux comparisons, and unbashedly so. A year’s tuition at Princeton doesn’t include room and board. Prison does. Even if that were taken into account, the time frame is off. <\/p>\n

One more item to highlight<\/h3>\n

Note that in the last panel they clue us into an uncomfortable reality: recent college graduates have a higher unemployment rate (12%) than the general population (9%). Ouch. <\/p>\n

\"Prison<\/a>
Prison vs. Princeton | Public Administration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

References<\/h3>\n

Public Administration. (October 2011) “Prison vs. Princeton”<\/a> [information graphic]<\/p>\n

Resnick, Brian. (1 November 2011) Chart: One year of prison costs more than Princeton<\/a> The Atlantic online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What works The only part of this graphic I kind of liked was the part about California. Here, we are able to compare the average cost of education for a year with the average cost of prison for a year. This is better than comparing the cost of a single school to the average cost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991],"tags":[992,1063,36,78,989,145],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-comparison","tag-california","tag-criminology","tag-economics","tag-higher-education","tag-new-jersey","tag-prison"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1877,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions\/1877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/graphicsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}