371–380 of 457 posts
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The thing is that then the warden sells of the inmates to make money on himself or through the state. California paid inmates fighting fires a dollar an hour.
this is a non sequitur to my post. I asked a pretty specific question that you have not answered in your reply.
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Yes, you cant pre-pay specific people not to commit a crime. I do think a UBI (basic income) would reduce crime enormously, if it were confiscated when they are in prison. It would be a powerful economic incentive.
I have no doubt it would be used to "pay" for ones incarceration. Thus adding more fuel to the dumpster fire that is the for-profit prison system in the US. Done properly, it could provide a strong incentive not to commit crimes. I have little faith that it would ever be done properly.
Remember most petty criminals make less than minimum wage.
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Also much lower IQs in the US prison population compared to Norway's. Combine that with the gangs in the US that effectively rule the prison system - is there such a thing as a shot caller in Norway ? - and there is no hope for any sort of rehabilitation to take place.
Maybe if we actually took care of people ant taught them how to make a living on their own, they wouldn't have to rely on gangs for protection.
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By "an activist group" do you mean "people against actual slavery"?
most people rightly oppose slavery. but confining people to cages for years at a time is pretty bad too. if it's possible to justify imprisonment in the first place, are all forms of forced labor significantly worse? what if the prisoners get training as webdevs and have to spend 6-8 hours on weekdays improving the UI of government websites. they get an aeron chair, free coffee, ping pong, etc., and when they get rel…
It depends on your definition of immoral...
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> Their recidivism and overall crime-rates rates are significantly lower than in the US... Not really true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ Totally comparable to the US, Norway being an exception (as usual). > They blow the US out of the water on every metric. The US is a very large and diverse country and it's not structurally comparable to Germany, Netherlands and much less Norway (with 22% of…
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/ Let's fact-check some of their numbers. Spoiler Alert: Their cited sources have completely different numbers. EDIT: I removed some examples that are probably correct according to their definition of recidivism (they only looked at prisoners -> offenders). Table 2. Germany 35% (them) vs 23% (source) They may have linked the wrong source here, since the source the…
> Netherlands 48% (them) vs 27.6% (source): Fact Check Failed
They picked the number of "ex-prisoners" that become prisoners again (i.e. actual reconviction), you picked the number of "adult offenders" that become prisoners for the first time. You literally just picked the lowest number in the table without comprehending it. The correct number (48.5%) was right above.
> Germany 48% (them) vs 35% (source): Fact Check Failed
35% is the average including fines (recidivism: 29%) which make up for the vast majority of sentences. For adult prison sentences the recidivism rate is 45%/39% and for youth prison sentences it is 64%/62% (without/with parole).
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> I think it's debatable, after generations of experience, that prisons make people more criminal. At the very least, rehabilitation doesn't work very well I agree until this point you made. We know the "modern prison system" is a very loose term dictated by "where" much more than just an abstract idea. In places like the Netherlands they have so few prisoners they had to close down prisons. There are certainly a gro…
I think I may have worded that poorly. I'd didn't mean to imply rehabilitation is impossible . I meant that, in broad strokes, taking the last 200 years of experience on earth, successes have been few an far between. On average, prison time may have even increased future criminality. Even the best examples aren't great. From random study I just googled: The 2-year re-arrest rates ranged from 26% (Singapore) to 60% (U…
most people committing murder fall in the following categories:
- they premeditated and thought they were NOT going to be caught, so prison isn't a deterrent. They thought they were smarter than forensics.
- they were in a situation and had to kill someone due to circumstances of the other crime. Such as robbing a store, the clerk pulls a gun, now you gotta shoot them before you die. This was a massive lack of foresight and thus again punishment isn't a deterrent because they don't think things though.
- they were angry and it got out of hand. No foresight, they acted on pure emotion. This may be anger issues or other reasons. There is no deterrent here, only rehabilitation.
- political / hate-based killings. These people feel they are doing society a favor, they feel RIGHT to do this killing. Deterrent doesn't help if the political climate is empowering them and making their message amplified.
Now just imagine how much crime is in similar categories as above. The same logic applies.
So basically we need to focus entirely on prison time being a rehabilitation to: make the person understand and accept what they have done. make the person feel genuine remorse. make sure the person has alternatives in life to doing what caused the problem to begin with. Most places in the world focus more on "remove the undesireables" and "punishment is future deterrent". So really we're doing literally the opposite.
US's 60% re-arrest rate is very telling.
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> By "an activist group" I mean people who confuse work with slavery. You mean, people who confuse forced work with slavery.
I think that depends on definition of "forced". If I stop working, I'll get kicked out of my house and will probably die of hunger. Does it mean I am forced to work?
This is such a bad argument in my opinion...living is working...it might not be at a job in an office, but if you want to eat/drink/shelter, you're going to have to work one way or the other...your question kinda seems like complaining about the fact that consuming calories and water and making shelter to live is not forced already, when it is by nature...
I have a cousin 2 years younger than me who's getting out of prison today . He just finished a 2 year stint for violating probation. When you get caught drunk driving with a gun in the car, then tend to send you back behind bars. In reality, he had two other offenses in the time before that, which should have been enough. His first sentence was 7 years for theft. He was part of a group of ~ 20 year olds that were bre…
7 years for something that would have probably gotten him 6-12 months in Europe/Canada. When are the Americans going to realise you can't punitively punish someone and not reap of profound negative consequences (re-offending, home-breaking etc.).
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What does homogeneous have to do with prison rehabilitation? I'm not attacking you, genuinely curious.
The unstated argument to all the homogeneity arguments I've come across (intended or not) is: "We are too bigoted for that to work here, we'd never allow the $OUTGROUP to have it that good", with a side-dish of "they'd be bigoted too, if they weren't homogeneous". When laid bare, it's an appeal to ignorance.
Or you could say that it's an appeal to numerous studies (psychological and sociological), most of human history, and prudence...
Might as well just give people the money as long as they don't re-offend?
But the reason most of these people are in prison in the first place is they don't have a good track record of controlling their behavior. So this idea seems predicated on their doing something that we already have good reason to believe they won't.