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How I got here

pthorpe92.github.io

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Re: How I got here

#41

Post by otteromkram »

k1ns wrote: post #4
macintux wrote: post #2

I hate to quote so much of the post—it's well worth a read—but I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that convey so much about the U.S. prison system. > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officer…

Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises that rely on a consistent population. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact it's the opposite. What I don't understand is how a country with so many advantages like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world. As a citizen, it's embarrassing that this is accepted by those in power as a good solution.

> As a citizen

Of where?

I, as a lawful citizen of the United States of America, am not embarrassed by the prison system.

I am embarrassed, however, by folks who use hyperbole without merit to try and appease the masses without having the courage to go against the grain for fear of getting "downvoted" and losing faked internet points.

The fact that you believe the USA has the worst prison system in the world, compared to somewhere like, I dunno, Venezuela, supports my prior point.

Re: How I got here

#42

Post by k1ns »

chroma wrote: post #37
k1ns wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "prisons...are for-profit enterprises", not "prisons are privately owned". Government-owned prisons still rely on, and provide revenue to, companies specifically designed to profit from the prison population.

That’s true of everything in an economy. It’s also true that Norway’s prisons rely on, and provide revenue to, companies specifically designed to profit from the prison population. Is a prison suddenly better if a government worker builds the bars rather than a contractor?

I agree with your one example and disagree with the thousands of others designed to profit off of incarcerated individuals instead of rehabilitate them.

Re: How I got here

#43

Post by RecycledEle »

The apparent lack of opportunities for anyone is easy to solve with Dorm Room Welfare:

Open free dorms next to the campuses of community colleges. Anyone who is physically able to live on their own, but who can not afford to live on their own can move in and live there as long as they are working towards being economically self sufficient.

Working towards being economically self sufficient can mean passing academic classes, passing career and technical education classes, taking remedial classes, completing a high school equivalency degree, passing K-12 classes online, earning certifications, working in internships, working jobs at a training wage, or other things

I suggest we replace all other welfare programs with drom room welfare.

This does not solve the problem that many of us do not want to hire convicted criminals.

Re: How I got here

#44

Post by Karellen »

oooyay wrote: post #6
k1ns wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises that rely on a consistent population. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact it's the opposite. What I don't understand is how a country with so many advantages like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world. As a citizen, it's embarrassing that this is accepted by those in power as a good solution.

Private prisons are problematic in their own right, but they only make up 8% of the total prison population at the state and federal level. imo, we (the citizens) are to blame for constantly championing a system of accountability that believes accountability is putting a man in a box and taking every future opportunity he doesn't know yet away from him. You can certainly blame those in power, and they share some blam…

> Private prisons are problematic in their own right, but they only make up 8% of the total prison population

It's not how many people they are in charge of that matters, but how much money they donate to politicians to be be "tough on crime", and how much other soft money influence they have to make citizens think that crime is a problem that politicians need to be tough on, and to demonise politicians who aren't (which right-wing media is all too happy to help with).

Even if private prisons only have a small slice of the prison pie, they still work hard to make the pie as big as possible.

Re: How I got here

#45

Post by Nursie »

chroma wrote: post #27
macintux wrote: post #2

I hate to quote so much of the post—it's well worth a read—but I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that convey so much about the U.S. prison system. > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officer…

He was convicted of possessing 30 grams of carfentanil while on parole for his previous conviction. A lethal dose of carfentanil is 2mg, so it was at least 15,000 doses. 1. https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-sen...

Fuck me, carfentanil is one of those things I read about years ago, that seemed like it would never get anywhere near the recreational drug market, because it’s just too potent and too dangerous to handle safely…

Ah, I see from your link it was u-47700 he was arrested with. Certainly a potent and potentially lethal substance, but not exactly on the same scale as carfentanil. U-47700 is quoted as 7.5x the potency of morphine, fentanyl at 50-100x and carfentanil around 4000

Re: How I got here

#46

Post by junofan »

kelnos wrote: post #29
edgyquant wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he chose to go back to a life of crime and we’re supposed to feel bad for him? There’s a reason he was able to make 20k in a weekend, it’s a high risk high reward business and I have no sympathy for someone who skirts societal norms and makes a shit ton of money in the process while plenty of people suck it up and earn the 10.50 until they can get back out in their own. This guy and his entire post reeks of entitl…

I don't think it really matters if you feel bad for him or not, and focusing on that aspect does more harm than good. I think, given a choice between living in a fucked-up halfway house with your only prospect for the future being a shitty minimum-wage job, or falling back into your old crimes where you can make pretty solid bank doing illegal things (yes, with high risk)... most people would probably pick the latter…

You’re saying if only we’d given this particular guy more free stuff he wouldn’t have gone back to flipping carfentanil for $20k a weekend? That seems pretty far-fetched.

Re: How I got here

#47

Post by Projectiboga »

simbolit wrote: post #25
k1ns wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises that rely on a consistent population. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact it's the opposite. What I don't understand is how a country with so many advantages like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world. As a citizen, it's embarrassing that this is accepted by those in power as a good solution.

> how a country ... like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world I will leave you with this quote by John Erlichman: "We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, (...) We could arrest their lea…

One of the several hundred thousand nazis, erm German refugees, the Eisenhower administration brought here in 1953. This was much larger than operation paperclip. The GOP reloaded with that cohort. Their descendants are still wrecking havoc upon our country. I'm sure some come and have done well for us but many are trouble. That huge S&L scandal back in the late 80s was by some of them.

Re: How I got here

#48

Post by dvektor »

edgyquant wrote: post #18
causality0 wrote: post #10

I don't at all care for the way in which he mentions his crimes were nonviolent and tells us about being arrested for dealing ecstasy (a drug with little taboo associated with it) while skipping over the fact he's currently in prison for dealing choke-on-your-own-vomit synthetic opiods, not cute party drugs. That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in his own recliner.

Yeah this guy belongs in jail and clearly doesn’t think what he did was a problem at all. In the midst of an epidemic that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year the dealers of these drugs make the front page and are cheered on as “victims.” The victims here are the families and children of the people whose abuse he profited greatly off of.

Author, here:

As a severe opioid addict myself for over 10 years, I am absolutely ashamed of having any part in that life. It is a burden that I will have to continue dealing with every day for the rest of my life.

In no way am I trying to say that I did not deserve to go to prison. The focus of this post, was about the facilities made available to those people who do end up in prison, so that they do not return.

As to the references... yes I am a non-violent drug offender. That isn't a label I gave myself, that is a fact: there to let readers know that I am not here for murder or rape or something of that sort. Involvement in opioids and that lifestyle/culture is something that I did not have any contact with UNTIL I was sent to prison. Perhaps we should consider whether 1. Prison is making people worse (that is just an objective fact) 2. We want to be institutionalizing people that clearly are capable of much more, who turn to things like dealing out of their drug habits, or lack of resources/options.

Before anyone wants to go google'ing and coming up with immediate judgements, why don't you look into that there was absolutely zero prosecution of the case being referred to.. They said they found "residue" in my apartment, put out a nationwide manhunt for me, then immediately dropped the case as soon as I was judged by the media and the judge. They couldn't just destroy my apartment and all my stuff and say "we found nothing". Leaving them to prosecute me for 1oz of a synthetic opioid 8x stronger than morphine, that itself, had a potency of roughly 1%. It was almost completely inert. absolutely useless. and this was a completely unrelated case.

To the person who said I sold drugs to kids.. Where exactly do you get off making such horrible claims about me? Do you live in such a bubble that you think that every drug dealer sits around behind dumpsters at high-schools and asks kids if they want to try some 'pot', thats really laced with angel dust? Oh and they all put rainbow fentanyl in your kids halloween candy too right?

Re: How I got here

#49

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

chroma wrote: post #27
macintux wrote: post #2

I hate to quote so much of the post—it's well worth a read—but I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that convey so much about the U.S. prison system. > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officer…

He was convicted of possessing 30 grams of carfentanil while on parole for his previous conviction. A lethal dose of carfentanil is 2mg, so it was at least 15,000 doses. 1. https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-sen...

Did you mean 30 kilograms?

Re: How I got here

#50

Post by sctb »

cvz wrote: post #33
edgyquant wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he chose to go back to a life of crime and we’re supposed to feel bad for him? There’s a reason he was able to make 20k in a weekend, it’s a high risk high reward business and I have no sympathy for someone who skirts societal norms and makes a shit ton of money in the process while plenty of people suck it up and earn the 10.50 until they can get back out in their own. This guy and his entire post reeks of entitl…

He's not asking for sympathy. The entire article is about how he ended up where he is now, how the prison he's at now has saved him from a life of crime by giving him a meaningful chance at a career, that this is an anomaly, and that it shouldn't be.

I'm wondering if one of the factors here is that the public is funding this opportunity, and that many, many non-criminal members of that public are doing the $10.50/h thing with no such support and very limited opportunity.
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