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

#221

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 3:09 AM UTC

simonbarker87 wrote: post #27

psionski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not punishment, this is revenge. Punishment is a corrective action, this breaks them even more. By the way, this is extremely dangerous - to paraphrase Nietzsche: in solitude, whatever you bring with you grows. Do we really want whatever they're bringing to grow?

Good point, I wasn't thinking of the revenge aspect. I guess the system in this case feels like it's purpose is to exact revenge on behalf of society

I don't really buy revenge as a distinct thing from punishment. Revenge is just the lizard brain's conception of punishment as a general method for social behavior modification without the benefit of statistics or specific evidence. Which is the reason why it isn't a legitimate goal. Punishment in proportion to the offense and targeted using evidence to achieve the desired results can be socially beneficial. Revenge is nothing but undirected violence rooted in irrational anger and fear.

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

#222

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 3:20 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #210

mynameishere wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Amer…

I've actually been waiting for the Stockholm riots to settle down a little before I analyzed them, but the results I'm expecting is a disproportionate amount of immigrant participants.

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

#223

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 3:35 AM UTC

saraid216 wrote: post #222

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Amer…

I've actually been waiting for the Stockholm riots to settle down a little before I analyzed them, but the results I'm expecting is a disproportionate amount of immigrant participants.

Do you expect that to still hold if you account for income level?

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

#224

Post by edyoung » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 4:35 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #155

After reading this article, keep in mind that Andrew Auernheimer is also in a SHU, for having someone update his twitter account on his behalf. And the reason he is in prison in the first place is for changing an integer on the end of a URL. Do these punishments make sense to anyone?

The punishments make sense to the people meting them out.

The prison authorities transparently use isolation in an SHU as punishment for making them look bad or for inconveniencing them. The two inmates mentioned in the article who acted as 'jailhouse lawyers' seem like good examples of this. Anyone in prison who offers any resistance to the power of the authorities is very likely to be treated this way, even if they are merely requesting legally-guaranteed rights or marginally better treatment, because doing so acts as an example to others.

Auernheimer was imprisoned, it seems to me, primarily for unrepentantly embarrassing those in positions of power, and later transferred to the SHU for the same reason.

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

#225

Post by queery » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 4:38 AM UTC

csense wrote: post #212

dasil003 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare recidivism rates between a 300M nation of immigrants a 5M nation with an extremely homogenous culture. The US has social problems that are worse than Norway's worst nightmares. Prisons are just the tip of the iceberg.

> Prisons are just the tip of the iceberg. Some of this has to do with African-Americans who have been living in poverty for generations stretching all the way back to slavery -- a situation which doesn't exist in Iceland. It also has to do with the US economic policies which promote the flight of low-skill jobs overseas. Not everyone has the intellectual ability to be a doctor or a web developer (especially given ou…

> Some of this has to do with African-Americans

You could've stopped there. Black people as a race generally ruin every society they inhabit. If you haven't put your hands over your ears at this point and yelled "la la la!" you know it's true.

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

#226

Post by sliverstorm » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 4:38 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #220

sliverstorm wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I've just been wholly indoctrinated, but I don't see how laws are the sort of thing that wouldn't have been created. From what I can tell, any group of humans stuck together for a time comes up with rules, and laws are simply the codification of these rules.

I think you can reasonably distinguish between having laws and having a criminal justice system as currently implemented. For example, you can have laws without having police officers or prosecutors or prisons. This is effectively what the civil court system does. That does leave the question of what to do with those who commit the most serious crimes like rape and murder, but those are a small minority of the crimes…

you can have laws without having police officers or prosecutors or prisons

How do you enforce laws without enforcers?

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

#227

Post by danbmil99 » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:05 AM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #86

scrapcode wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of glad that this is your perception. This should be everyone's perception of prison. You should have an extreme necessity to keep your ass out of prison. You should be scared absolutely shitless of prison, so much that you play exactly by the rules to keep yourself from ever going there. Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home. Prison is not a rehabilitation center. If it we…

Obviously the thought of prison doesn't in fact stop people from breaking the rules. The prison population is in fact growing. Similarly many places have prisons that are very unlike the US prisons, and yet they have lower crime rates. So the evidence against the core of your argument is pretty strong. At some point, when the punishment for minor offenses is extreme, the difference between minor offenses and major of…

> Obviously the thought of prison doesn't in fact stop people from breaking the rules

Speak for yourself. Articles like this one sure as fuck make me think twice about doing anything even remotely likely to get me into prison. Punishment as deterrence is a legitimate policy within reason.

That said, torturing someone with forced isolation until they are completely insane, especially if they are ever getting out, seems counterproductive.

[edit: re-read the post I'm replying to and I agree, random irrational punishment is a lousy deterrent. For deterrence to work the system has to be at least nominally fair, and punishment meted out needs to be proportional to the degree of misbehavior. That is clearly not the case with the US justice system, and as the article points out, inside the prison the rules are applied with astonishing caprice and unfairness.]

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

#228

Post by eropple » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:30 AM UTC

cobrausn wrote: post #167

Camillo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is.

If you are going to level an accusation like 'the majority of Americans think prisoner-on-prisoner rape is a-ok', then the burden of proof is on you. I won't even say that nobody thinks that way, I just want proof that this is the prevailing mindset.

The topic of prison rape is a joke that people as a whole feel comfortable laughing about in public.

It is undeniably normative.

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

#229

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:31 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #223

saraid216 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually been waiting for the Stockholm riots to settle down a little before I analyzed them, but the results I'm expecting is a disproportionate amount of immigrant participants.

Do you expect that to still hold if you account for income level?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, since immigrants would tend to have a lower income level,

But I think my answer is yes, if you factor out middle-to-high income rioters, you would still see a disproportionate representation of immigrants to natives.

My theory is fairly simple: it's about incomplete integration. If natives fail to identify immigrants as accepted natives, there will be conflicts that regularly break out into anything from racial profiling to riots (such as the famous LA riots) to civil wars to secessions (such as South Sudan).

I could also be completely crazy in seeing this pattern, though; I'm not an expert in this area by any means.

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

#230

Post by eropple » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 5:36 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #217

ceautery wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>fixing the root problem in the criminals The root problem is the xenophobia of old white men. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html

Here's the problem with your conclusion. 2010 median income: White: $54,620 Hispanic: $37,759 Black: $32,068 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104552.html You have to account for poverty before you jump to racism.

What about when the socioeconomic game is rigged against you and has been for most of the last 400 years of American history?

I mean, yeah, poverty is without question a factor--but stopping there feels disingenuous to me. Why are they poor? is then a relevant question, and I think that "because of the racism of old white men" is not the worst explanation I've heard.