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Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

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Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#31

Post by watwut »

gabereiser wrote: post #17
throw1234651234 wrote: post #3

98. In prison. I imagine there is some theme about how luck and genetics still play a much larger role in health than stuff like sleep, diet, and fitness that I comfort myself with. No idea who this guy is btw, but back to the basics. 98. In prison - pretty amazing.

The system is designed to “rehabilitate” you. That is, to make it so you’re dependent on the system to live. Most offenders, repeat, sending them back to jail. Some have argued because it’s easier than out on the streets trying to survive. In prison you have a bed, food, shelter (though not from others). On the outside, you had to provide that. Shawshank redemption talked about this a bit when Brooks (the librarian a…

Shawshank redemption is a movie, a fiction. It never happened and characters are made up.

That being said USA have rather high reoffending rates while Norway has a low one. And Norway has more pleasant prisons (and makes it easier to find a job after you have been in prison).

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#32

Post by Clubber »

hgsgm wrote: post #11
trc001 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there must be a better source for this information

Because you are offended by Cracked's font? They have a long reputation of good research.

>They have a long reputation of good research.

They had good writers at one time, but that time has long passed.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#33

Post by goodpoint »

nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

> if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment?

It's only punishment, there is no correction at all.

> if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money?

Can we please not value people's life in money? Because if we can then slavery would be justified.

> what meaningful value was extracted from his slave labor? was it enough to offset even a fraction of the internment cost?

Ditto.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#34

Post by lyu07282 »

there is a real problem with the elderly in american prisons, they sentenced so many people to absurdly high sentences in the 80s/90s that they basically ended up with nursing homes for the elderly except they are prisoners.

https://www.aclu.org/report/americas-expense-mass-incarcerat...

Its just the punitive culture that is deeply rooted in american society. Its one of the more depressing subjects in sociology when you learn about the culture of Scandinavian people and their emphasis on rehabilitation, reintegration, and addressing the root causes of criminal behavior.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#35

Post by ansible »

habitue wrote: post #30
nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

> rehabilitation ... That's politically pretty unappealing

Here in the USA, yes. Some EU countries take this quite a bit more seriously, to good effect.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#36

Post by RheingoldRiver »

habitue wrote: post #30
nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

> but we'd have to spend a lot more tax dollars on prisoners to actually rehabilitate anything. That's politically pretty unappealing

I don't have a source for this but I thought the opposite was true? That the general consensus was we'd end up spending less because the recidivism rate would go down?

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#37

Post by ceejayoz »

habitue wrote: post #30
nimbius wrote: post #16

what it means is less important than the real questions it raises. - if in the united states we refer to our prisons as 'correctional' facilities, what quantitative correction could require nearly a century of internment? - if by any study it costs nearly 40,000 dollars to house a prisoner for one (1) year, was the night watchmans life truly worth 3.2 million dollars of Connecticut taxpayers money? - what meaningful…

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

> we'd have to spend a lot more tax dollars on prisoners to actually rehabilitate anything

Not necessarily. Recidivism costs a lot, too. Norway spends over $100k/inmate, to the US's $25k/inmate (https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2022/10/25/what-can-we-learn-from-t...), but only 20% reoffend versus 2/3 of American inmates. (Resulting in 70/100k incarcerated versus the US's 700/100k; that $100k/year starts to look like $10k/year now.)

Here in NY, there was a big political fuss over free community college for prisoners a few years back (pre-pandemic); Cuomo wound up killing it. I suspect helping inmates get associates degrees to use when they got out would've wound up saving money, but that's not how it played in the PR realm.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#38

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

mejutoco wrote: post #18
ak_111 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet are also one of those outliers in terms of diet, exercising and work rate. Granted they receive the best medical support money can buy, but they are on record saying how much they binge on fast food, and Munger in particular mentioned on several occasions how he never intentionally did any exercise (no cardio or weightlifting) since he was a teenager. They are both also crazy workahol…

About the one burger a day I think from Buffet, I always wondered if it was something they said to be more relatable, or if it true.

From what I remember in Snowball, it's true. He really doesn't like unusual food and sticks to the familiar, which generally means burgers and soda.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#39

Post by mongol »

lyu07282 wrote: post #34

there is a real problem with the elderly in american prisons, they sentenced so many people to absurdly high sentences in the 80s/90s that they basically ended up with nursing homes for the elderly except they are prisoners. https://www.aclu.org/report/americas-expense-mass-incarcerat... Its just the punitive culture that is deeply rooted in american society. Its one of the more depressing subjects in sociology when…

Let me tell you that it can go much too far in that direction too. We have repulsing examples of especially young criminals that get off very serious crimes with not much more than a slap on the wrist.

Re: Frank Smith was locked up for 8 decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free?

#40

Post by lolinder »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #36
habitue wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison has multiple purposes: retribution, incapacitance, deterrence, and rehabilitation. - retribution: gives victims and families of the victim retribution. This one doesn't seem important in the modern day, but if you ignore it you get vigilante revenge, blood feuds, honor culture etc. Having the state take on "revenge" kills these cycles. - incapacitance: straight up preventing dangerous people from being out and…

> but we'd have to spend a lot more tax dollars on prisoners to actually rehabilitate anything. That's politically pretty unappealing I don't have a source for this but I thought the opposite was true? That the general consensus was we'd end up spending less because the recidivism rate would go down?

I think they mean more per prisoner per year, which is immediately measurable. It'd be done in the hope that total costs would go down over decades, but in our current political climate it's hard to sell improvements that take decades to manifest.
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