Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement • Hacker News Board

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#91

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #80

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, there are two aspects you want to balance: safety of the society and cost of ensuring that safety. When you have a person that commits crimes due to severe mental issues, you could observe that: - punishment won't work as a deterrent - punishment definitely won't work as resocialization tool - it's of questionable morality to blame a person for things they have no control over Applying punishment in…

> If the condition is not currently treatable, you can isolate the person from society - but this will already win you all the safety you can get, so there's no point in punishing them further. We have to remember here that some prisoners are a danger even to their cellmates--I've heard of some who threatened to kill any cell mate, then did so. For that population of violent people who are a danger to everyone, isola…

Still, assuming an untreatable criminal like such, if you don't want to just go and execute them, solitary confinement isn't the only option. You can isolate such a person in a normal (if smaller) cell, and still provide them access to basic amenities, books and visitors.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#92

Post by runarb » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #89

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breivik's solitary confinement is also much, much different than the little rooms in the US. He has 3 rooms to move around in. He can cook for himself, play instruments, has exercise equipment. He has a computer, though I think his internet access is limited to nil. He has medical and mental health care at his disposal. He can have visitors, though they are through glass. They made an exception to that glass before h…

I strongly doubt that Breivik will ever be let out of solitary confinement unless the Norwegian high court finds that the Norwegian penal system violates Norwegian law. I doubt that even a conviction in the European court of human rights would cause Norwegian authorities to change the practice. The official explanation for the solitary confinement is that other prisoners would kill him if they had access to him. The…

> Actually, it's pretty ironic to have this discussion the same week that a convicted child sex offender was killed in a Norwegian prison after numerous warnings.

That an inmate gets killed in a Norwegian prison is extremely rare. As you mention it did happened this week, but the last time before that was in 1982 (according to http://frifagbevegelse.no/nffmagasinet/drapet-i-ringerike-fe... )

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#93

Post by slavik81 » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

ploggingdev wrote: post #2

> the federal government and about half of the states in the country began restricting their use of solitary. These efforts gained bipartisan support for economical, not compassionate, reasons That is the most telling line about how the Government thinks. Do these people not think about how cruel solitary confinement is? The best way to make people understand these cruel practices is to imagine themselves in solitary…

> The best way to make peopleunderstand these cruel practices is to imagine themselves in solitary confinement. Would you want that? Obviously no...

That's not effective unless people actually understand what solitary confinement is.

I have zero desire to spend my time living with a whole bunch of criminals and don't find the thought of being alone to be particularly scary. I doubt I'd even miss people for at least a month.

Give me a few books, a bed, desk, stationary and a toilet and it would feel like a writer's retreat.

It was only after reading accounts from people in solitary that I discovered that you get none of that. Just an empty room with a hole in the floor. The term 'solitary confinement' doesn't communicate anything beyond the fact that you're alone, but the reality is that they take a lot more than social interaction away.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#94

Post by IsaacL » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 7:24 PM UTC

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #67

IsaacL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how much people suffer if their house is broken into, if they are robbed at gunpoint, if they are raped, etc? Not just the direct harm, but the ongoing psychological harm?

But why does the magnitude of that harm justify harming the perpetrator an equal amount? What is the logic of retribution? It seems inherently fair to our animal instincts that a victim of violence should received "satisfaction" for their unjust suffering. But do the victims gain anything from this supposed satisfaction? Maybe some of them do experience a reduction in their ongoing suffering; I doubt it makes the pai…

The logic is based on the needs of any society. Every society needs a set of rules which everyone agrees to follow. History shows that the smaller the set of rules, the better, but you need to at least prevent people from infringing the life and liberty of others.

The simple reason for retribution is deterrence: there should be a negative incentive to committing crimes. The deeper reason is to make the kind of world people can live in. When everyone sees that criminals are punished, it tells would-be criminals to think twice, and it tells law-abiding citizens that someone is looking out for them.

I don't think punishment should be excessively cruel, prison is probably sufficient, and excessive solitary confinement is probably unjustified. But many people on this thread seem to think punishment in general is always unjust.

I think the underlying this is the modern belief that no-one is responsible for their actions, and that criminals are the product of social forces who need compassion and understanding. The argument against that is the standard argument against any form of determinism - if people are determined by outside forces, so are judges and prison guards, who similarly cannot help themselves from punishing criminals, and so should not face moral judgement. It's contradictory to judge judges but forgive criminals.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#95

Post by FreezerburnV » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 7:25 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #83

FreezerburnV wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, I don't tend to get involved in HN talks about religion/Christianity, but I'm going to make an exception this time. As someone who is a Christian (I define as a "follower of Christ", not just as someone who follows some set of rules) I actually find the common misconception that "behaving badly" getting you thrown in Hell or "behaving well" gets you a ticket into Heaven to be one of the greatest, and saddes…

> after that point nothing you do can take it away from you Eternal security is a Calvinist view that is far from universally held.

I probably phrased that badly/didn't fully expound upon what I meant there by just trying to hit a few main points that bother me. I'm not going to try and tackle anything complicated here, but merely state that once someone has decided to follow Jesus, assuming they continue to do so, their various sins from being a flawed being aren't going to take going to Heaven away from them, which is the entire point of grace. (and yes, I'm aware of "blaspheming the Holy Spirit", which to my knowledge nobody actually knows what that means or how you do that, and I'm deliberately leaving that out of my above statement to leave it simple)

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#96

Post by MaxfordAndSons » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:14 PM UTC

IsaacL wrote: post #94

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does the magnitude of that harm justify harming the perpetrator an equal amount? What is the logic of retribution? It seems inherently fair to our animal instincts that a victim of violence should received "satisfaction" for their unjust suffering. But do the victims gain anything from this supposed satisfaction? Maybe some of them do experience a reduction in their ongoing suffering; I doubt it makes the pai…

The logic is based on the needs of any society. Every society needs a set of rules which everyone agrees to follow. History shows that the smaller the set of rules, the better, but you need to at least prevent people from infringing the life and liberty of others. The simple reason for retribution is deterrence: there should be a negative incentive to committing crimes. The deeper reason is to make the kind of world…

I'm actually not arguing for an absence of punishment, but rather against punishments whose only end is retribution. Things like solitary confinement, mandatory minimums, inhumane conditions, forced prison labor and more, all very normalized within the US criminal justice system, are all suspect practices whose only definite result is an increase in suffering. Punishment could be educational and rehabilitative (and still austere and undesirable, without being purposelessly cruel).

Deterrence is commonly cited as a justification for retributive justice, but does it actually work that way? We obviously don't have a great control since we've had this system of justice for centuries so it's hard to imagine a radically different system. But the data we do have suggests that increasing the severity of punishments does little to increase the deterrence factor [1]. So we could likely make our criminal system significantly less cruel without reducing the degree of effective deterrence.

Also I wasn't arguing for moral judgements of judges and prison guards for working within the current retributive justice regime (though those who wantonly exacerbate the cruelty of the system should certainly be judged for doing so). It's a systemic issue that retribution and cruelty are the implicit end goals of the US criminal justice system.

[1]http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent...

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#97

Post by digler999 » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:17 PM UTC

IsaacL wrote: post #26

ploggingdev wrote: post #2

> the federal government and about half of the states in the country began restricting their use of solitary. These efforts gained bipartisan support for economical, not compassionate, reasons That is the most telling line about how the Government thinks. Do these people not think about how cruel solitary confinement is? The best way to make people understand these cruel practices is to imagine themselves in solitary…

Do you know how much people suffer if their house is broken into, if they are robbed at gunpoint, if they are raped, etc? Not just the direct harm, but the ongoing psychological harm?

paradoxically, there would be less total suffering (including inmate suffering) if prisons were more humane. That reduces your statement to "Should the victims be the only ones suffering?" after a violent crime. The part you miss is that there's no PSA video warning the perpetrators about the misery of solitary they face before they choose to commit the acts. They are either mentally ill or high when most of those crimes were committed. The only way you'd have a valid argument is if the criminal had a huge ctrl-z button, and once solitary "broke" them , and caused them to hit CTRL-Z, undo the victims' suffering, and everyone goes home. Then solitary would be an amazing, 99.99% effective punishment.

This is not even touching on the fact that a lot of these solitary inmates never commmitted heinous offenses. They just misbehaved in prison or were mentally ill and ran afoul of prison regs.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#98

Post by digler999 » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

IsaacL wrote: post #94

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does the magnitude of that harm justify harming the perpetrator an equal amount? What is the logic of retribution? It seems inherently fair to our animal instincts that a victim of violence should received "satisfaction" for their unjust suffering. But do the victims gain anything from this supposed satisfaction? Maybe some of them do experience a reduction in their ongoing suffering; I doubt it makes the pai…

The logic is based on the needs of any society. Every society needs a set of rules which everyone agrees to follow. History shows that the smaller the set of rules, the better, but you need to at least prevent people from infringing the life and liberty of others. The simple reason for retribution is deterrence: there should be a negative incentive to committing crimes. The deeper reason is to make the kind of world…

> if people are determined by outside forces, so are judges and prison guards,

false equivalency. people are determined by very different outside forces, and thats precisely why some people aren't deserving of the same levels of "moral judgement".

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#99

Post by yeahsurebut888 » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:37 PM UTC

ploggingdev wrote: post #2

> the federal government and about half of the states in the country began restricting their use of solitary. These efforts gained bipartisan support for economical, not compassionate, reasons That is the most telling line about how the Government thinks. Do these people not think about how cruel solitary confinement is? The best way to make people understand these cruel practices is to imagine themselves in solitary…

Personally, I see it as "the most telling line how the people let the Government behave."

Speaking up peacefully does work; SOPA was halted by coordinated effort.

But we spent our days coordinating around the economic activity dictated to us by the "wise old masters of commerce" instead.

You don't want them behaving like that? Don't let them.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#100

Post by yeahsurebut888 » Fri, Mar 03, 2017, 8:41 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #78

mfringel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the perpetrator's suffering make the victim un-robbed?

It might make some victims feel better, which can be considered a form of a moral compensation.

So would therapy. It's a lot cheaper financially and morally.

There is no benefit to society as a whole burden itself with such things in order to make "some victims" feel better.

Perhaps we could do better at caring for criminals who became criminals from mental disease (quite a few actually), and those who felt they had no other choice (even more).

We'd make fewer victims in the first place.