Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons • Hacker News Board

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#201

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 12:59 AM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #60

yardie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you fail to grasp what solitary actually means in the prison tense. It's not a few hours of sitting on the floor meditating. It is 1 hour of sunlight, you don't go anywhere, there are no computers. I used to think like that when I was younger, "going to prison getting raped?! I'll take solitary." Then someone that was released spoke at our college about what solitary really meant. I'll take my chances with th…

Well, do you get books? I think books can get you a long way. The prison system we have around the world stimulates creating "professional" criminals by placing criminals among themselves. If we to break this cycle, we should get everyone a prison cell without inmates but with a window and books they can read.

If you do get books, you'll get them from the prison library, which isn't going to be well-stocked and up-to-date. I've known a few ardent readers in my time and live with one - she reads with breakfast, when commuting to and fro, before dinner, after dinner, in bed... but even she couldn't consider a life that was nothing but reading books (particularly from a highly-limited library). And she loves reading. Not everyone does.

And for those who don't have an expansive vocabulary, what do you do when you read a word you don't understand in one of these books?

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#202

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:05 AM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #150

honzzz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT: I remember being in the USA after those 9/11 terrorist attacks an they aired those "proud to be an American" commercials all the time... like they assume it's a good thing to be proud that you are a national of a certain nation. And maybe it is a good thing - I don't know. It just seemed strange to me. And all those American flags in front of regular family homes... do you still have those? You don't see that in…

If it weren't for some sense of pride, things would never be fixed. Think about your technology work -- you do a good job because you take some pride in it. American patriotism is the most public, but every country's citizens take some measure of pride in their country. We're the most public about everything (the home of myspace/facebook/twitter/instagram/the internet generally) so it makes sense to me that we're rea…

American patriotism related to the wake of the 9/11 attacks seem to have broken more things than it fixed, both internally (eg TSA) and externally (eg the pride-wounded initiation of the Iraq war). It doesn't seem to have actually fixed much.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#203

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:09 AM UTC

honzzz wrote: post #131

peteretep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do other nations with stable democracies use solitary confinement in a similar way Other countries with stable democracies have universal health care, don't incarcerate almost 1% of the population, have never landed people on the moon, don't spend 5% of their GDP on the military, aren't the home of Apple, Microsoft, and IBM, and so on. America has always been (and will probably always be) an edge case.

I am not sure I fully understand what you mean but it seems to imply that US is an outlier in both 'good' and 'bad'. What seems to be problematic to me is that the bad ones seem to be on different abstraction level than the good ones. Other countries might not have Apple, Microsoft, and IBM but they certainly have huge globally successful companies. They never landed on the moon but they have explored space and achie…

Landing on the moon was certainly quite an achievement, but it should also be noted that it is kind of pointless - the reason why no-one else has bothered is the same as the reason why the US doesn't return there.

Similarly, the argument that "we have high highs, therefore it's reasonable to have low lows" really doesn't do the complexity of human nature any justice, instead treating it as a simple see-saw.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#204

Post by youngerdryas » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:14 AM UTC

lars wrote: post #177

roc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Our prison system is probably near the top of that list," If by "our" you mean "the US" then I'm already of the mind that it's bizarre and barbaric and I doubt I'm alone. In many ways it strikes me as suffering from problems similar to those in our older (now largely dismantled) system of insane asylums. Both sought to address a very serious problem, for which we only have flawed solutions to choose from. And whil…

> And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise Oh please. The US has a recidivism rate within 3 years of 67.5%. Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% within 2 years. There are proven-better alternatives, but your society has decided not to implement them.

Compared to Massachusetts Europe is a shithole. Even if you just compare Norway it still looks bad. Oh well.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#205

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:19 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #103

_account wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that the laws so clearly stated that black people are singled out to be tortured. Can you provide at least one reference to this atrocity? [I'm guessing you can't]

Racism doesn't necessarily entail singling a group out explicitly, especially today where we have a trained smell for racism. If your intent is to single out black people, there are many ways you can target them without spelling out "black people". Specific job categories, specific neighborhoods, specific types of crime (which are hugely lopsided racially), etc etc. The same can be applied to any race. You can effect…

Anecdata on disproportionate searching: I'm a middle-class white guy who's 40. I haven't been pulled over for a "random stop, sir" since I was about 25, and before that I would have been pulled over about a dozen times. The times when I was pulled over, I was a young guy with long hair in a beaten-up car. My mother has never been pulled over. And judging from the general dialogue with friends, this is not an unusual experience. These "random stops" are (almost!) certainly using a different definition of 'random' than the ones we used in statistics class.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#206

Post by BurritoAlPastor » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

Tomis02 wrote: post #29

venomsnake wrote: post #14

That explains why the death sentence is on the books ... these are the lucky ones. That is cruel but sadly not unusual punishment.

"Born in the U.S.A." is ringing in my mind at this point.

I believe the Springsteen song you're thinking of is "Johnny 99":

"Your honor, I do believe I'd be better off dead / So if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head / Sit back in that chair and think it over, Judge, one more time / And have 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line."

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#207

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:23 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #143

grecy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me re-phrase that. What's the longest time you've ever gone without seeing or talking to another human where you can't easily do so? i.e. you can just walk outside and see one, or pickup the phone, or chat on internet. I do remote hiking trips where it would take me 5 days to see another person even if I wanted to. Remove yourself from the world, completely.

Right, 9-10 day backcountry trips which I've done a couple times (although not in the past 8 years). Although probably within 1-2 days of people the whole time. And, I'd certainly take a satphone with me, at least emergency beacon, if I did it today (yay, technology). (This also becomes a philosophical/psychological question: is it more holy to resist sin when surrounded by temptation, or when in a pure environment?…

There's a couple of competing things at play here. You're not seeing people on these trips, but you are being stimulated by the experience you're having.

That being said, some people are hardier to the idea of being in solitude, though it does usually take some training to get there. However most people aren't that hardy, especially in the extreme case of solitary confinement.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#208

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:26 AM UTC

igravious wrote: post #130

rdl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent 6 continuous months on Sealand with one other guy (who I avoided as much as I possibly could, saw him about 3 minutes a day if I didn't correctly time my hallway trip to avoid running into him). Lots of space, and the Internet, though.

> with one other guy so not solitary > Lots of space, and the Internet, though and not (physically or mentally) confinement either --- The only way in which you are an outlier is that you have an inflated sense of your own awesomeness.

rdl may just be unusual in this sense. As for 3min/day, even solitary prisoners have that minimal contact - bare interaction with guards when let out for exercise, or when the meals come.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#209

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:31 AM UTC

_account wrote: post #93

Prison is society's recourse for anti-social behavior. Does it have to be a violent and horrible place? No. The residents tend to make it that. In addition, I am against pampering in anyway, with my tax dollars, people whom I've had to remove from proper society...for anti-social behavior. Prison is supposed to be a deterrent. My biggest gripe is that I have to pay for it at all. I support banishment or death.

Humans make mistakes. Here on HN, it's repeatedly announced that making mistakes is a good thing, as long as you are allowed to learn from them - it makes you a better person/founder/businessperson. Your mindset just doesn't match this - one mistake and you're literally dead. That you consider a few tax dollars so rapaciously important to yourself speaks rather badly of your priorities.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#210

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:43 AM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #198

vacri wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, however, compare to other anglo-centric melting-pot countries, and the US experience is still vastly worse. And no matter which way you carve it, with the rest of the western world having an incarceration rate between 70 and 150/100k, the US is clearly out of order with a rate of 750. In any case, your handwaving away of "we have bad social problems" is missing the point. Norway tries to fix them, using reha…

compare to other anglo-centric melting-pot countries There are no comparable countries. The US is the absolute worst in the West. But just you watch. The UK and Sweden and Norway are importing diversity at an alarming rate. Eventually, their prisons will turn hard, but not through policy. Policy follows reality. California's excessive solitary confinement policies strongly belie its left-leaning government. Get a ste…

Do you have any evidence that immigration or diversity is the cause of social strife? The U.S. prison population is hugely disproportionately African American. The U.S. has not had a large influx of immigrants from Africa in more than a century (for the obvious reason). Our prisoners are by and large not immigrants, or the children of immigrants, or the grandchildren of immigrants. They're the homegrown domestic American poor.