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Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

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Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#81

Post by CydeWeys »

ams6110 wrote: post #49
yardie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add it to the long list of shit taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for, except prison. Incarceration costs $70-120k/pp/year. Keeping someone in custody for 10-20 years vs paying to learn a trade seems no nsensical. But that’s what the voters and politicians want.

The counter argument would be we should spend less on prisons, not more on other stuff. People who struggle to make ends meet within the confines of social norms and laws would say lock them up six to a cell and feed them rice and beans.

It is inherently expensive to lock people up. It costs food, room, board, building maintenance, and labor (in the form of guards), all of it 24/7. None of this is cheap.

It's also unconstitutional to lock up people inhumanely.

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#82

Post by crooked-v »

ams6110 wrote: post #49
yardie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add it to the long list of shit taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for, except prison. Incarceration costs $70-120k/pp/year. Keeping someone in custody for 10-20 years vs paying to learn a trade seems no nsensical. But that’s what the voters and politicians want.

The counter argument would be we should spend less on prisons, not more on other stuff. People who struggle to make ends meet within the confines of social norms and laws would say lock them up six to a cell and feed them rice and beans.

People who advocate for inhumane confinment should be ignored.

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#83

Post by V-2 »

gowld wrote: post #69
SubiculumCode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love the Wire, it should have mentioned that collectively pawns are the most powerful. A good pawn structure controls the center and the game.

... if they don't get capped early. In a less-positional game, the players are going to capture pawns to build an edge, not attack the queen immediately.

The objective is to attack the king, not the queen.

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#84

Post by yardie »

yardie wrote: post #48
J-dawg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed people often object to these types of schemes because they see them as rewarding people for bad behaviour. I'm not usually one of those people (If it works, it works, right?). But I feel like giving out flying lessons (a lifelong and unaffordable goal for many people) would be a pretty tough idea to sell to the tax paying public.

Add it to the long list of shit taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for, except prison. Incarceration costs $70-120k/pp/year. Keeping someone in custody for 10-20 years vs paying to learn a trade seems no nsensical. But that’s what the voters and politicians want.

Yes, just torture them a little bit. Then when they eventually serve their term and are let free (Amendment 8) we'll wonder how they ended up more violent and mentally broken. And when they recede we'll double down on the violence.

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#85

Post by simplify »

omeid2 wrote: post #3

Slightly off topic but I would like to mention that if you play chess online, the best one is lichess.org. It is free and opensource: https://github.com/ornicar/lila . I am unaffiliated but really like lichess.

And written in mithril.js, no less! :)

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#86

Post by pasbesoin »

ada1981 wrote: post #76
ramblerman wrote: post #8

> In life, like chess, every move has a consequence. This is all pretty hyperbolic post-hoc reasoning. My guess is that against the alternative of juveniles just sitting in a cell and being neglected any program that stimulates them, invests time and effort into them, and gets them passionate is going to have promising results. disclaimer: I think this is a great result, and should be promoted but the pseudo-scientif…

I’ve been exploring the idea of an alt-prison startup. I imagine things like nature, skills, community, art, trauma healing, etc. could all be a big part of it.

I've thought about these ideas, as well.

One concern I've had to add to my thinking: That non-incarcerated people also have access to these things. Nature, and all the rest. And simply time to seek them out and take advantage of them.

We shouldn't get to the point, where incarceration is the means by which such things become accessible.

Making sure they're accessible, outside of incarceration, might help to prevent incarceration in the first place.

I'm all for rehabilitation. Just, it should start before things come to law-breaking. In other words, focus on quality of life as a primary "deterrent".

Quality of environment seems a fundamental part of that.

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#87

Post by toomanybeersies »

sandworm101 wrote: post #77
toomanybeersies wrote: post #20

In Australia, they have (or were) using flying lessons to try and rehabilitate drug addicts [1]. Apparently the idea was to stall the plane and have the patients recover from the stall, as a way of teaching them about taking control of their own life. I don't know what the long term results are, and it's part of a longer term rehab program so it would be hard to narrow it down specifically. Regardless, it's an intere…

Having stalled aircraft many times, I don't see how this would be linked. Un-stalling is the easiest thing in the world (assuming you aren't close to the ground). Doing it perfectly to military standards takes practice, but simple recovery is a nothing task. Either way, it is done and over in seconds. It's a little scary if you haven't done it before, but after the first time it's nothing. Recovery from drug addictio…

If you've possibly never even been in a plane before, let alone flown one, it would be a pretty wild experience.

It's a single tool in a box of tools towards recovery. I don't think it was meant to be the adrenaline rush that's meant to be helpful, but rather giving them an experience to hold on to, and to try and teach them to take control of their destiny. At least that's what the video says.

I'm also skeptical as to its benefits. But anything is better than locking addicts in a box and expecting them to be magically cured. In my experience, it's a lack of support networks and associating with the wrong people that keeps most people locked in a cycle of crime, addiction, and poverty. There are a lot of people who are "rehabilitated" and full of optimism, but then they go back home, to the same toxic environment and fall back into the same cycle.

Re: Judges sentence youth offenders to chess, with promising results

#88

Post by ada1981 »

pasbesoin wrote: post #86
ada1981 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been exploring the idea of an alt-prison startup. I imagine things like nature, skills, community, art, trauma healing, etc. could all be a big part of it.

I've thought about these ideas, as well. One concern I've had to add to my thinking: That non-incarcerated people also have access to these things. Nature, and all the rest. And simply time to seek them out and take advantage of them. We shouldn't get to the point, where incarceration is the means by which such things become accessible. Making sure they're accessible, outside of incarceration, might help to prevent i…

I agree with this of course.

I’d want our education system to be modeled after these ideas as well.

Ironically, many schools look and function a lot like prisons.

It’s been said the way a society treats it’s prisoners is a bellweather of its health.

Perhaps by bringing cutting edge practices to prison we can lift the entire society.

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