Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 264 posts

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#231

Post by drewzero1 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #131
drewzero1 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but my bank keeps pushing me to get their app to deposit checks. My phone doesn't do apps and I don't feel like taking up space on my tablet. Besides, there's a branch with a drive-through three minutes away from my house and another one a block away from work, so it's not that much time or travel and I get to talk to somebody outside of home or work for a few minutes. (Even if some of that time is spent decl…

Wait, your bank's drive-through is staffed ? Every drive-through at a bank I've seen is just an ATM.

Yeah, the ones here have multiple lanes with pneumatic tubes to transfer stuff to and from cars, and one of the tellers wears a headset like a fast food drive through. When a car pulls up, they step away from the counter and serve the drive-through window, often multiplexing to assist multiple cars. It's kind of interesting to watch, and can be (or at least feel) more efficient than going inside.

They typically only staff the drive-through when the bank lobby is also open, or a half-hour later. One of the lanes will also usually have an ATM and a dropbox for after-hours service.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#232

Post by TimothyBJacobs »

meowster wrote: post #183
FpUser wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Not sure why you got downvoted here" Some patriots probably got offended.

Please don't unnecessarily bring politics into the discussion. (It wasn't me, I don't have enough karma to downvote.)

Do you think prison reform is not a political topic?

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#233

Post by b_t_s »

HenryBemis wrote: post #6
tyingq wrote: post #2

30 years, so he would have went into prison in 1991. Wow, yeah, I can imagine getting out would have been a surreal experience.

To that point, I was thinking that.. in some countries, even if you are jailed for murder, after some time served, you may request and can be allowed to take some 'leave' (24/48h). Didn't he get the chance to take any such 'leaves' in the US? I honestly don't know US Justice system. Would there be the chance that his crime was so severe to not be allowed to get a leave at all for 30 years?

From an American perspective that's like giving the lion at the zoo a 24 hour leave to stroll around the city. It's so obviously absurd almost nobody would ever think of it unprompted. Many of the higher security prisons here are brutal dangerous paces. Sentences are long, often lifelong. Surviving a 30 year sentence without committing further crimes in prison that add to your sentence isn't so easy. Anybody with significant time left on their 30 year sentence would be a fool not to flee if given a 24 hour leave. Some of the low security prisons do have some resources focused on rehabilitation. But a lot of the higher security ones where most serious/violent/drug convicts end up are essentially warehouses for storing people who can't legally be executed until they're old and feeble enough to be released "safely" as pensioners/disabled/homeless. There's a reason criminal justice reform is such a big deal. Much of the country wishes we could dispense with the warehousing and just execute them all. While another contingent is very much tired of being thrown into those warehouses to rot based on race/socioeconomic status/the size of their bag of weed or a variety of other relatively harmless infractions.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#234

Post by lozaning »

blktiger wrote: post #214
taxidump wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, I was in a government office a few days ago because I was told that if instead of uploaded documents via a website and waiting 10-45 days to have them reviewed I could go into a local office and provide these documents and they would review them on-site. So I set off on a 35 minute drive to the local office. While the wait times were shorter in the physical building I had to chuckle when I thought they wer…

Be glad they don't allow emailing important documents, they certainly wouldn't encrypt them if they did.

I had to drop off a bunch of property tax documents for the city assessor in a tier 1 city. There was just a cardbox box in a hallway with a sign taped to it 'Homestead Applications'. I could have taken all the other applications out of the box when I put mine in if i wanted to.

Emailing unencrypted documents honestly sounds a bit better to me then leaving all my info in a publicly accessible box.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#235

Post by bluSCALE4 »

ballenf wrote: post #48

Unpopular opinion: I think government services and offices should remain offline-first forever. They should offer online equivalents, but they should never assume or require digital adoption. I think this has two big benefits: - Minor point: Greater resilience to downtime, interruptions to service - Major point: a check on becoming a faceless entity with no exposure to the public. Think Google or FB if you get flagge…

I've found that the govt can get away with your second major point regardless of an online presence. My example is property taxes in Cook County, IL. Biggest shit show you'll ever experience. I had the board side with me and it took 3 years to get the money back. Keyword is back, money already paid. No number of calls, in person meetings helped. I must have gone there about 6-7 times and nothing.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#236

Post by Zelphyr »

My uncle spent some time in prison in the late 80's and early 90's and was able to learn FoxPro while there. In addition to it being hard to find work having a criminal record, by the time he got out, everybody was transitioning away from FoxPro.

As is too often the case, the lure of money from selling drugs combined with not being able to find work meant he returned to prison. He got out again in the early-mid 2000's and this time around, there were no courses offered for study. When he got out that time, he didn't even know how to use the TV remote.

One day, history will look back on how we treat our prisoners with immense shame. Instead of trying to rehabilitate them, we leave them to rot, and politicians never shy away from an opportunity to make the lives of prisoners more miserable, lest they risk being called "soft" on crime.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#237

Post by [deleted] »

FpUser wrote: post #39
trymas wrote: post #18

Clearly wherever this is (US?) prisons are not about rehabilitation and inclusion back into society. Weren't there any classes? Books? Library? Computer rooms? It's complete failure of a justice system if person comes out of prison like from a time capsule. IMHO it may just increase recidivism - what can a person do in a "free" world if he/she were not let to know about the world outside prison walls?

>"IMHO it may just increase recidivism" Keeping people in prisons might be just what the US prison industrial complex wants.

[deleted]

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#238

Post by notJim »

flohofwoe wrote: post #194
notJim wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has never really done "offline banking", I don't really understand how this works? Do you maintain your own ledger of all your accounts and their balances? Or are you driving over to the bank to check on things once or twice a month? If you have to transfer between accounts, do you go to one bank, get a check, then go to another bank? And this means you're entirely excluded from low-cost banks that don…

Honestly, I'm not sure if you're trolling or not :) But in case not: I have one account at one bank. I think there's a monthly fee on the account, but TBH I don't know how much, in any case it's not nearly enough to consider changing to other banks. Recurring payments (e.g. rent, internet, power etc...) are handled through automatic orders which I had setup once. For the very rare cases where I need to pay a bill "ma…

Not at all trolling :). Your setup sounds like it would be unusual in my spheres, where most people have probably close to a dozen different accounts (credit cards, retirement accounts, investments, mortgages, etc.) Online banking is very convenient for managing all this info.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#239

Post by kyooyk »

kayfox wrote: post #230
kyooyk wrote: post #113

I really think the point is not how long it might take someone to learn how to use tools, but the impacts of prison. I work with these folks through my company to help them become employed upon release. A few things, it is astounding but believable that when people are released they enter a world that is entirely unknown to them. Not only technology but their relationships and neighborhoods are completely different.…

The two prison reforms I want to see the most: 1. Education programs that actually mean something and actually are adequately funded. 2. Retaining prison work, but requiring that prisoners who are not paid minimum wage where they are be paid the difference on release. (The Federal government may need to make this a protected fund or trust to make sure its not use as a fund to raid by lower governments and administrat…

They have some education programs, they just are always not focused on skills that are valuable outside. There’s also issues, believe it or not, about people not knowing these programs are avail. What we are doing is trying to create Edu programs for in demand skills and bring in a dif local business to teach each course. This way it breaks down the stigma for these businesses about hiring justice involved individuals, trains these individuals at a skill, and helps them get hired by these businesses after. And this is not training to work in fast food chains.

There’s also work release where certain members can go off location to work when they’re getting close to release. In addition there stuff like unicore https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor.jsp Unicore pays pennies on the dollar though. But this money helps people upon release have enough maybe to get an apartment for their first month out - which most cant afford.

Some cool organizations trying to help, just as examples off the top of my head in case you are interested in looking further about solutions include:

-remerg https://remerg.com/

-KOBEYO https://www.kobeyo.com/

-Justice reskill https://justicereskill.com/

But main point is really these individuals that have served their time are not adequately given the resources they need to succeed. Tons of opportunities to contribute though - as with any u underserved demographic.

Re: Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web

#240

Post by alibarber »

jbay808 wrote: post #157
alibarber wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the case for other embassies of other nations too (I am an expat). But I do get the feeling that if you have moved to another country then you probably are more able to access services online (buying the ticket to get there in the first place is a start) than some 90 year old 'back home' who's never left the village. I guess the flipside is your needs may be more complex (passport / family / citizens…

Landing in another country is one of the scenarios where you're most likely to be unable to access telecommunications. For example, you find your internet provider doesn't work internationally, you can't enable roaming without visiting their website, your phone isn't compatible with the local spectrum, your credit card gets fraud-flagged when you try to buy a local sim card because you forgot to tell Visa you'd be tr…

Yes that is unfortunate - but all out of the remit of what an embassy will help you with. Maybe if things have gone so wrong for you that you throw loosing your passport into the mix, or being physically detained by the police in the host nation then perhaps they'll help out.

But, at least for my own country, they're definitely not there to help you with connectivity issues.

Post reply on HN