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

At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 374 posts

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#121

Post by culi »

Akronymus wrote: post #109
xfitm3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portugal is an excellent role model, there are numerous studies on their approach to drugs[0]. While I am not an expert on the subject the model is morally appealing to me, and I believe public order is maintained. Begin researching on your own if you're interested in this subject. I feel for anyone who loves a drug user. Separately I just learned fentanyl test strips are not legal in all 50 states. Given that fentan…

Quoted post unavailable.

> [Fentanyl contributed] to some of the worst riots in recent history

is this satire?

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#122

Post by wombat-man »

shakezula wrote: post #110
voisin wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that was unaware that charging inmates for jail was a thing?

You're certainly not alone, but it was eye-opening as fuck for me getting arrested at 25 and finding out I was about to be charged thousands of dollars for a single night stay in the county jail.

Must have been a real classy place.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#123

Post by bobthepanda »

shakezula wrote: post #100
yeeyeeyee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Supporters say the collections are a legitimate way for states to recoup millions of taxpayer dollars spent on prisons and jails. Wait there are supporters of this? You're telling me if I asked 100 people on the street, there'd be someone that said "oh yeah this is a pretty fair and reasonable law to charge the inmates 5-star hotel prices"??

This is a problem of Stated preference vs. Revealed preference. You ask them what they think and they'd tell you "that's awful, I can't believe that, that's so unfair" but you put them up on the ballot at the midterms and get them to repeal it and all of a sudden it's about being "tough on crime" and "keeping our streets clean".

Also, prisons are often located in depressed small town as a stable source of government jobs. Those people don’t want to go back to being in a depressed economy.

The most extreme example of this is that the site of the 1970 Lake Placid Winter Olympics was designed to be used post games as a prison, which it is today.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#124

Post by culi »

tmpz22 wrote: post #40
standardUser wrote: post #13

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

There are over 2 MILLION prisoners in the US prison population of a population of 330M. This gives the USA the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The next four? * Rwanda * Turkmenistan * El Salvador * Cuba [1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

25% of the world's prison population is in the US, a country that makes up 4.25% of the world's population

Land of the free

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#125

Post by standardUser »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #60
standardUser wrote: post #13

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

Swap “drugs” for “guns” and you’d have the majority of HN flip out. The Government isn’t a magical entity of absolute perfection. Large classes of banned substances are indeed banned for good reason. Their effects on individual/societal well being documented quite heavily. Two things can be true at the same time: 1. Some substances that are detrimental to human health need to be controlled. 2. The US government and i…

Using a gun often has a victim. A seriously injured or dead victim. Getting high does not. That difference cannot be overstated.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#126

Post by ryan93 »

standardUser wrote: post #98
ryan93 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats one of the worst things about these criminals. If there were dramatically fewer crimes it'd be easier to find out who is innocent. Or devote more resources to it.

Imagine if we decriminalized every "crime" that didn't have a victim. We might actually be able to prevent more real crime, like violent crime and sexual assault and large-scale theft and fraud!

A majority of prisoners are in for violent crime; or committed a violent crime and pled down. IF more resources were devoted to fighting heinous crimes prison populations would increase since many murders and to a much larger extent rape go unsolved. Not to mention fraud and child abuse.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#127

Post by yywwbbn »

everfree wrote: post #35
ryan93 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Hmm... The USA has a six times higher incarceration rate than Canada or the UK. Are violent crime rates really six times higher there?

Actually almost... E.g. the murder rate in the US is about 5x higher than in the UK, in Canada it’s “only” 2.5x lower, though.

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#128

Post by culi »

wizofaus wrote: post #99
metadat wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It's a statistic many people are not aware of. Additionally, if you look at the racial breakdown of who's incarcerated in the USA, it's disproportionately black relative to number of blacks per capita residing in the country. Blacks are incarcerated at 5x the rate of whites, and make up 40% of all incarcerated individuals. This is insane.

Sadly it's even worse in Australia, where it's closer to 10x the rate for indigenous vs non-indigenous. I'd be horrified to find out they were expected to pay for their time behind bars though.

Also important to note that indigenous people in the US are also often disproportionately affect by these policies. Oftentimes at even higher rates than Black Americans

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#129

Post by ben_w »

hollywood_court wrote: post #71
sh4rks wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised if it was more than 1%. But getting actual data is impossible of course.

You’d be surprised if more than 1% of the US’s prison population is innocent?

Given what I keep hearing about laws in general, I assume almost everyone is guilty of enough stuff that if you could prove it and the sentences were consecutive, they'd die in prison.

But at the same time, I'd be surprised if less than 5% of convicts had done the specific crime they were sentenced for even under the assumption of the entire law and justice system being fair, impartial, and skilled.

(I don't have a word for what I am: I don't believe in anarchy, but I would radically liberalise as much as possible. I would also wildly reduce the punishments for most of the remaining laws are enforced so that perfect enforcement wasn't completely bonkers, and then make enforcement perfect. Normally I see people aiming for one or the other, perfect enforcement or liberalisation, not both).

Re: At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt

#130

Post by superchroma »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #94
standardUser wrote: post #13

What drives me absolutely insane about stories like this is that so many of the people suffering under these policies are guilty of little more than market participation. The government strains, at extraordinary expense, to pretend they can stop drugs from being made, bought and sold, but they can't. They simply can't. Countless laws, countless billions of dollars and countless ruined lives later, drugs are no less p…

Plenty of countries, especially in Asia, but also the UAE and possibly others, have successfully stopped nearly all drug use and trade with heavy-handed policies. You may not like what it took to get done, but it did work. I'm not advocating for the heavy-handed approach, but it's intellectually dishonest to say that it can't work. Also, the other countries have done it with a much smaller imprisonment per capita.

It can't work. Prisons in places like Indonesia and the Philippines are objectively degrading and inhumane. That's not winning, and that's not a working system. That's focusing on one aspect of a greater whole at the expense of our humanity.

America has had more than a fair go at a heavy handed anti-drug policy and it was and continues to be a spectacular failure. To sit here at the end of it and say that they didn't go hard enough, (particularly after horrific actions such as poisoning marijuana and therefore smokers with paraquat) is monstrous.

Post reply on HN