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Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

latimes.com

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Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#411

Post by dang »

soup10 wrote: post #146

giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine: the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in), you must suffer as an example to others. Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better persons. T…

This subthread crosses into religious flamewar. We definitely don't want religious flamewars on HN, so please neither start nor perpetuate them.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14496283 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#414

Post by _acme »

cubano wrote: post #334
77pt77 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get no gain time for time spent in jail for your prison sentence, so its often called dead time or day-for-day or something. Excuse me?! So if I wait for 1 year in jail waiting to go to court and later I'm sentenced to 1 year in prison, I get to serve another year?!

No...you get sent home. Let me give a concrete example here, direct from experience. Florida DOC mandates you must do 85% of your prison (not jail...all jails have different gain time schemes just to make it really confusing) sentence, so that is roughly 5 days a month. Lets say you score out to 22 months like I was many years ago...thats a total of 110 potential gain-time days off my sentence...great I think almost…

No, that doesn't make any sense at all. What is 'gain time'? What does 'score out to' mean?

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#415

Post by lovich »

danielam wrote: post #197
lovich wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So other than the progeny part, how is prison labor not exactly what you said? People are literally captured, and based on overturned convictions at least some percentage are innocent. These people are then forced to work and can have their sentence extended arbitrarily by bureaucrats and not the court system. Based on the California example the system even tries to keep people working when given a court order to rel…

You're confusing things. There is a difference between forced hard labor as just (and thus commensurate) punishment for a crime and actual, particular abuses committed by the justice system. There is nothing wrong with forced hard labor as a punishment for a crime to the degree required by justice (and frankly, many crimes deserve far worse). There IS something wrong with inflicting pain on someone who is innocent, e…

If other entities were not profiting off of the labor I might agree that its a just punishment. However, if they are now cheap labor for companies, and can get extra punishments for not working, that is no longer a punishment in of itself. Its just slavery under the guise of justice

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#416

Post by lovich »

crusso wrote: post #400
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innocent ? All human beings are morally innocent, and with enough laws, anyone can be made a criminal. Enforced prison labor is slavery, no ifs ands or buts. It must be stopped. This is an Americanized version of Stalin's gulags.

All human beings are morally innocent If you're a member of a society and you break the law, then you aren't innocent. If the laws of the society are unjust then that's a different argument entirely. Africans who were not even members of the American colonies were kidnapped and forced into labor. They were completely innocent but regarded as sub-human and not deserving of rights. To equate their plight with the pligh…

A punishment in of itself is one thing, but these people are being forced to work for a third party(the other companies) at below minimum wage which is solely for the profit of the third party. Its not a punishment, the punishment is just whats used to keep these people in a situation where they are creating value for the company owners

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#417

Post by hfsktr »

_acme wrote: post #414
cubano wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No...you get sent home. Let me give a concrete example here, direct from experience. Florida DOC mandates you must do 85% of your prison (not jail...all jails have different gain time schemes just to make it really confusing) sentence, so that is roughly 5 days a month. Lets say you score out to 22 months like I was many years ago...thats a total of 110 potential gain-time days off my sentence...great I think almost…

No, that doesn't make any sense at all. What is 'gain time'? What does 'score out to' mean?

I am guessing a bit but I am understanding 'gain time' to be accrued time.

I think 'score out to' was 'sentenced to'.

If I read it right they are saying (mostly) the time spent in jail does not accrue days off a sentence like the time spent in the prison would.

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#418

Post by sedachv »

lordlimecat wrote: post #376
sedachv wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private prison contracts are structured to basically provide taxpayer-subsidized slave labor.[1][2] It is just another Reagan-Thatcher era privatization scam. [1] http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2013/09/private-pri... [2] http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2015/06/private-pri...

At some point blaming administrations 30 years ago for practices continued by subsequent administrations becomes deeply dishonest. California for instance (referenced multiple times here) has had many governors since the Reagan days and could have ended the practice on a state level, and at a federal level the pendulum has swung to both sides on multiple occasions. Any of these administrations could have made it a pr…

> At some point blaming administrations 30 years ago for practices continued by subsequent administrations becomes deeply dishonest.

That statement is nonsensical. Who else is to blame for originating these policies?

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#419

Post by cubano »

_acme wrote: post #414
cubano wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No...you get sent home. Let me give a concrete example here, direct from experience. Florida DOC mandates you must do 85% of your prison (not jail...all jails have different gain time schemes just to make it really confusing) sentence, so that is roughly 5 days a month. Lets say you score out to 22 months like I was many years ago...thats a total of 110 potential gain-time days off my sentence...great I think almost…

No, that doesn't make any sense at all. What is 'gain time'? What does 'score out to' mean?

The State of Florida in 1998, in order to fight disparity in sentencing, created a "scoring system"[0] where every crime in Florida is given a number that corresponds to the number of months in prison that crime could carry.

The scoring system is byzantine as all hell and I challenge anyone to figure it out.[1]

"Scoring out" is simply a term used by Florida convicts to explain how much time they got among themselves I guess. Maybe it was inappropriate to use it here.

Gain-time is a sentence reduction scheme where people get time off their total sentence for staying out of trouble.

[0] http://macklawpa.com/criminal-defense/felony-score-sheet/

[1] http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/sen_cpcm/cpc_manual.pdf

[edits]

Re: Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard

#420

Post by elif »

sedachv wrote: post #418
lordlimecat wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point blaming administrations 30 years ago for practices continued by subsequent administrations becomes deeply dishonest. California for instance (referenced multiple times here) has had many governors since the Reagan days and could have ended the practice on a state level, and at a federal level the pendulum has swung to both sides on multiple occasions. Any of these administrations could have made it a pr…

> At some point blaming administrations 30 years ago for practices continued by subsequent administrations becomes deeply dishonest. That statement is nonsensical. Who else is to blame for originating these policies?

Choosing to maintain the status quo is still a choice. The blame lies most importantly with those who, today, could change this policy.

otherwise.. why not blame the romans?

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