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A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

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Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#241

Post by zurn »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #47

My thoughts on the best and the worst: > Anthony Jackson has a sixth-grade education and worked as a cook. He was convicted of burglary for stealing a wallet from a Myrtle Beach hotel room when he was 44 years old. According to prosecutors, he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away. Police arrested him when he tried to use the stolen…

> What would be the point of letting him out? He knew he wasn't supposed to walk into other people's hotel rooms and take their wallets.

How do you end up concluding that petty theft is a good reason to torture this guy for the rest of his life? People do things they're not supposed to all the time.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#242

Post by thaumasiotes »

fallinghawks wrote: post #234
thaumasiotes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not just give him $40,000 per year and let him be free? He'd probably not need to burgle anymore. If we did this, I suspect we'd see a sharp rise in burglaries. As to the figure itself, another commenter noted that the low end of prison costs seemed to be Lousisiana, in which operating a prison cost $13K / year. That would make the per-prisoner cost much, much lower than that.

I may be missing something as I've just skimmed this thread, but 13K has got to be referring to the per-prisoner cost. Unless the prison has no utility consumption, no services, no food, and has one employee who's a part-time janitor.

Plausible. The other comment doesn't actually specify what kind of costs it's referring to; I initially thought it was per-prisoner costs and decided on second thought that $167k per prisoner per year in new york made no sense at all.

Food for a year is barely even noticeable in $13K; if they cost $5 / day to feed that would come in under $2K / year. Where's all the money going?

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#243

Post by lowkeykiwi »

latch wrote: post #125
lostlogin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure to sign the Ottawa treaty (anti landmine) and the international criminal court agreements, execution of minors (and execution at all), assassination of opponents even if citizens (via drones), torture, war crimes, illegal invasions, use of phosphorus (probably comes under war crimes), continual killing of civilians in non declared wars, massive prison population, secret prisons, outsourcing torture, supportin…

It's easy to distill these issues and hold a self-righteous opinion, but I personally find most too complex to form anything resembling an educated opinion. Take land mines. I've heard that they play a critical role in South Korea's defense, which was a major reason Clinton didn't sign. Military experts talk about how it's an effective tool that, when used responsibly, can benefit civilians more than harm them. They…

That seems like a weak reason. The US and South Korean militaries could surely defend South Korea without mines.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#244

Post by yummyfajitas »

joshfraser wrote: post #27

There is so much injustice with our prison system right now. There are countless people being locked up for their entire lives over petty crimes -- the same crimes that relatively comfortable white boys like me could easily get away with because I can afford a decent lawyer. It's racism and wealth discrimination disguised as justice. The US is leading the world in incarceration and the privatization of prisons is a b…

Privatizing prisons generally reduce the financial incentive to incarcerate more people.

In non-privatized states, you generally have a prison guard union. The prison guard union lobbies for more prisoners and gets more money. Simple as that. A non-monopolistic prison corporation spends their own money lobbying, and all the other prison corporations get to reap the benefits. Classic collective action problem.

http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/10/the-effect-of-privatization...

http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/11/the-effect-of-privatization...

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#245

Post by mercurial »

It's pretty disappointing to see so many comments praising what most people here would describe as "absurdly disproportionate sentences" and "probably something out of North Korea". Especially when the same people were up in arms not long ago about Aaron Schwartz.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#246

Post by chc »

collyw wrote: post #187
chc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, human rights matter to everyone. So do urination and defecation — we quite literally could not live without them — but those aren't appropriate in all situations either. When I say something doesn't belong on Hacker News, I don't mean it's unimportant or doesn't matter. I just mean that it isn't what this site is for. There are many, many stories that are relevant and important to me personally that are still no…

I read political stories here, as the responses are generally a lot better thought out than the kind you will get on Reddit. (To be fair you get decent responses on Reddit, but they are tucked away amongst a lot more noise).

I don't doubt it. A lot of people obviously do. My point is that it is not desirable for people to want to come to Hacker News to talk about politics.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#247

Post by mschuster91 »

collyw wrote: post #187
chc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, human rights matter to everyone. So do urination and defecation — we quite literally could not live without them — but those aren't appropriate in all situations either. When I say something doesn't belong on Hacker News, I don't mean it's unimportant or doesn't matter. I just mean that it isn't what this site is for. There are many, many stories that are relevant and important to me personally that are still no…

I read political stories here, as the responses are generally a lot better thought out than the kind you will get on Reddit. (To be fair you get decent responses on Reddit, but they are tucked away amongst a lot more noise).

I believe this is because Reddit is like 4chan... everyone knows it, everyone uses it - including those who are just plain stupid.

HN, in contrast, is mostly known in educated circles and so does not attract as many trolls and idiots as Reddit does.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#248

Post by thaumasiotes »

fallinghawks wrote: post #234
thaumasiotes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not just give him $40,000 per year and let him be free? He'd probably not need to burgle anymore. If we did this, I suspect we'd see a sharp rise in burglaries. As to the figure itself, another commenter noted that the low end of prison costs seemed to be Lousisiana, in which operating a prison cost $13K / year. That would make the per-prisoner cost much, much lower than that.

I may be missing something as I've just skimmed this thread, but 13K has got to be referring to the per-prisoner cost. Unless the prison has no utility consumption, no services, no food, and has one employee who's a part-time janitor.

As a second point, and speaking without knowledge, it's conceivable for a prison to be bringing in revenue such that it only operates at a loss of (for example) $13K annually.

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#249

Post by lawnchair_larry »

fleitz wrote: post #175
cbaker wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the US, we're allowed to criticize the government. If you're unhappy with that, maybe you'd like to move to North Korea, China, or any of those other countries where people like you are allowed to shut down critical thinking.

Didn't Snowden have to flee to China and then Russia so he could criticize his government with out fear of summary execution?

No

Re: A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

#250

Post by ohwp »

beloch wrote: post #149

The U.S. and Canada have very similar cultures, so comparisons here have some meaning. The U.S.'s per capita incarceration rate is 6.28 times Canada's [1] and the per capita number of police officers is 1.26 times higher in the U.S.[2]. However, the intentional homicide rate of the U.S. is 2.94 times that of Canada[3]. Certain types of offenses (e.g. drug offenses) are higher in Canada, but the violent crime rate is…

The prison industry is what's wrong in the US. Most countries like to keep prisons empty, in the US some prisons like to keep all cells occupied.

Keeping prisons empty means that you educate prisoners about what they did wrong and how they can change there behavior.

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