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

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#111

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

soundwave106 wrote: post #56

praptak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obiously they should. The article hints at the sad reason they aren't: "...economical, not compassionate, reasons...". It's just cheaper to lock them up.

Housing even non-solitary confinement prisoners is pretty expensive though. Average cost is about $30K a year per prisoner in the United States ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost... ). Some areas of course are way more expensive: In NYC, it's $168K per prisoner per year apparently. I think part of the issue here is that, in the past, mental health institutions itself had their own huge iss…

>I think part of the issue here is that, in the past, mental health institutions itself had their own huge issues. There was a large movement to move away from mental health institutions, at least in the US, in the 1970s as a result (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation).

There was a new generation of drugs people thought would end the need for institutions. I don't think they even considered the possibility people with mental illnesses would, in a state of mental soundness, decide not to take the drugs necessary to keep them there.

There was also a bit too much optimism when it came to assessing the effectiveness of the drugs.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#112

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

slavik81 wrote: post #93

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…

Yeah, it's not just solitary confinement. It's also, in some prisons, the complete lack of intellectual stimulation. You're locked in a box with nothing at all to occupy your mind - no books, television, radio, computer, newspaper, human interaction... nothing. There isn't even anything to write with or on.

Prisoners start smearing shit on the walls just to relieve the monotony.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#113

Post by ars » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 1:51 AM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #107

ars wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But at this point, I assert that we need to deprive the system of labor, especially from good people You are delusional. You want to reform the prison system by only hiring bad people to run it?

I have expressly said that I don't want to "reform" the prison system. I used the word "smash" - I'm not sure how much further from "reform" you can get. I want prisons gone completely from this land, as they were for most of our history.

What's your plan for criminals then? Say, someone who mugged someone at gunpoint?

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#114

Post by jMyles » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 5:22 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #113

jMyles wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have expressly said that I don't want to "reform" the prison system. I used the word "smash" - I'm not sure how much further from "reform" you can get. I want prisons gone completely from this land, as they were for most of our history.

What's your plan for criminals then? Say, someone who mugged someone at gunpoint?

Before I answer this, are you asserting that crime has gone down during the relatively short human experiment with prisons? If so, can you demonstrate that this is a casual connection?

I think that the burden of proof is on prisons as a concept, and I don't think that they have done any good for society. In addition, they are places of great evil and suffering.

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#115

Post by ars » Sun, Mar 05, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #114

ars wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your plan for criminals then? Say, someone who mugged someone at gunpoint?

Before I answer this, are you asserting that crime has gone down during the relatively short human experiment with prisons? If so, can you demonstrate that this is a casual connection? I think that the burden of proof is on prisons as a concept, and I don't think that they have done any good for society. In addition, they are places of great evil and suffering.

So basically you are thinking corporal punishment? Lashing probably?

In the olden days thieves who could not repay what they stole would be sold as time-limited slaves. Are you planning that too?

Re: Buried Alive: Stories from Inside Solitary Confinement

#116

Post by IsaacL » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

digler999 wrote: post #104

IsaacL wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental point is that if determinism is true then morality is meaningless. I think we have free will. (This will probably be a controversial point on HN so to expand a little: I think consciousness is both non-mystical and non-material - the mind is entirely natural, mind and matter interact, but the mind is not the same as the brain, and is not made of atoms. Qualia and the binding problem [1] cannot be expl…

nice retreat into philosophical fantasy-land. doesn't do much about reality where crime occurs.

Nice response to my argument with insults. Once you're talking about moral judgement and people being determined, you're in philosophical territory.

In reality we have free will. If every action was predetermined, there'd be no point judging people.