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My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

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Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#411

Post by vector_spaces »

Dahoon wrote: post #390
oaiey wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals. Fyodor Dostoyevsky There is nothing more to say, than this also applies to ex-felons.

>The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. - Ghandi

Not to disparage this sentiment, but

> Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

- Gandhi

(Kaffir was a slur used against black South Africans more or less equivalent to the n-word)

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#412

Post by bastawhiz »

Jackypot wrote: post #400

I do wonder why people are so motivated to help the perpetrators of violent crimes. You could take that same energy and help the victims instead. I doubt whoever suffered whatever violence it was that merited 13 years has forgotten the whole thing by now. I doubt they're stoked to see their attacker off to start a cushy new job. You don't get 13 years for something trivial.* If after that time you find it to get a jo…

There's no shortage of jobs for both groups. It's never been one-or-the-other.

We can either admit that prison sentences aren't actually meant to rehabilitate criminals and they exist solely as a way of inflicting punishment (as you imply), or we can take the folks coming out the back end of that system and give them opportunities to rejoin society as a productive citizen. The attitude of "you made a bad choice, therefore you're no longer worthy of opportunity" is exactly why the United States has the highest imprisonment rates in the world: when folks come out of prison and have every door to rebuilding their life shut, what do you expect is going to happen? That they move away to become a monk in a cave somewhere?

It's funny to me to see HN comments so strongly opposed to "cancel culture" but then as soon as someone talks about folks being released from prison, it's "If after that time you find it to get a job, well, you kinda have to wear that."

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#413

Post by dbmikus »

hash872 wrote: post #109

Using the logic of some people in this thread, the day after a convinced child molester gets out of prison, he should be able to start working at a day care. Why not? He served his time- you don't want to punish him indefinitely, right? Also a convicted fraudster can start working again immediately in a bank, or as a financial advisor for your parents- after all, he served his time, right? And a convicted Mafioso or…

If someone committed a violent crime and we were worried about them behaving violently again, I would NOT hire them for retail. You have to deal with some real assholes as a retail employee. Sitting at a computer programming is much less infuriating than someone yelling at you about their food order being late.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#414

Post by batt4good »

nexuist wrote: post #188
batt4good wrote: post #104

This is an interesting story, but if I had the choice to hire a felon (yes, once you commit a felony, even after serving time you are still a felon) or a scrappy coding bootcamp grad I'd take the bootcamp grad every time. Especially if I'm a founder with significant skin in the game, why would I risk my money, time and hard work on someone with a recorded record of making poor choices when there are hoards of others…

> why would I risk my money, time and hard work on someone with a recorded record of making poor choices when there are hoards of others who haven't broken the law? This assumes that your scrappy bootcamp grad hasn't broken the law. In fact the more likely scenario is that they have broken the law multiple times, they just were never caught and charged for it. Unless we are suddenly going to believe that young adults…

Even if you've "reformed your past ways of crime" after serving jail time and "learned your lessons":

non-felon > felon

Especially in terms of potential risks to my staff or property. Basically, would you hire a babysitter with a criminal record or one without a criminal record and good references?

Maybe my employees break the law when they're not at work, but that's none of my business. If one of my employees is indicted or cited for rioting / DUI, welp I'll fire them on the spot.

Also, re "all crimes are behind you once you leave prison" - how would you explain repeat offenders? At this point I'm trusting my business against statistics of a felon committing a crime again lmao.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#415

Post by [deleted] »

dfxm12 wrote: post #148
caseyscottmckay wrote: post #8

We need more of this. A criminal record in the US is a curse for life, leaving former criminals with little chance at success and little to live for. People without much to live for are dangerous. We should help our former criminals rather than condemn them for life--it benefits us all.

leaving former criminals with little chance at success It's worth noting that it also leaves their children a smaller chance at success as well[0], and then the cycle continues. When you add this to the fact that Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders [1], this adds up to one aspect of systemic racism in America. 0 - https://projects.sfchron…

[deleted]

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#416

Post by klyrs »

alexashka wrote: post #392
Igelau wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this account is really going to invoke the celestial teapot as a defense against accepting that there are ex-cons who want to have a normal life, its handlers should shut it down and retrain the algorithm.

Celestial teapot is a defense against people making claims without providing sufficient evidence to support it. By invoking the celestial teapot, I am not taking the opposite position of the one being made, I am taking the position of a rationalist who only accepts claims when sufficient evidence is presented. Let me illustrate with an example: A: Elephants are pink. B: What makes you say they're pink? A: How can you…

Only you're claiming that past criminals don't want to be productive members of society on a thread wherein multiple people with criminal pasts are demonstrably productive members of society, damn the hurdles they faced from society in achieving that. This isn't a teapot situation, this is you ignoring the evidence at hand and whinging about the color of elephants.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#417

Post by watwut »

lostlogin wrote: post #230
throwaway894345 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very interested in understanding how much of that recidivism rate is attributable to "ex-felon discrimination" or whatever we might call it as opposed to other variables.

It gets very philosophical fast. Prison is for punishment, rehabilitation, protection of society and is there to serve as a deterrent. Over emphasis on the need to punish seems to cause a lot of long term harm.

Afaik, obstacles are not just prison. It is how ex prisoners have much limited housing options, employment options. And how those living with them (like family) have them limited housing options too.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#418

Post by samatman »

sokoloff wrote: post #381
samatman wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have reason to believe that the sentencing disparity is like the gender pay gap: easy to prove, if that helps your political goals, and also easy to disprove, if that suits you better. Statistics is hard, and the entire reason there's leeway in sentencing is to account for situations which are resistant to statistical regularity. There is, or was, a pretty obvious source of disparity in US law: freebase cocaine was…

I'm fairly convinced that the fact that marijuana is illegal (federally) and alcohol/tobacco are legal without a prescription has more to do with the populations who typically used them than with any medical or scientific basis on dangerousness. https://www.businessinsider.com/racist-origins-marijuana-pro...

Sure, and that's another thing that wouldn't show up in statistics directly.

Although it's important to note that alcohol was illegal, and tobacco is becoming increasingly low-status and accordingly restricted.

The end of Prohibition meant that the enforcement apparatus for it needed something new to do. I believe this was another contributing factor to continuing the broken logic of Prohibition with new substances.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#419

Post by chickenpotpie »

Jackypot wrote: post #400

I do wonder why people are so motivated to help the perpetrators of violent crimes. You could take that same energy and help the victims instead. I doubt whoever suffered whatever violence it was that merited 13 years has forgotten the whole thing by now. I doubt they're stoked to see their attacker off to start a cushy new job. You don't get 13 years for something trivial.* If after that time you find it to get a jo…

We Americans are bad at forgiving. If someone commits a crime we think they should get whatever comes their way, but people make mistakes and I want to live in a society where someone can screw up, but work hard to improve themselves and become a productive member of society. If you have two children and one is constantly bullying the other, you dont take the bullied child out for icecream everytime because that doesn’t improve the situation in the long term. You put the time and energy into the misbehaving one to correct the situation forever.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#420

Post by arolihas »

vector_spaces wrote: post #411
Dahoon wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. - Ghandi

Not to disparage this sentiment, but > Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness. - Gandhi (Kaffir was a slur used against black South Afri…

What was the purpose of sharing that quote then, if not to disparage the sentiment? To disparage whoever said it? Do you know when that quote was made, as Gandhi’s views (which were a product of his time and upbringing) evolved over the span of his life?
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