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Prison Map

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Re: Prison Map

#31

I am not sure how many HNers have watched The Interview. But at point Kim John Un points that that America has an higher incarnation rate than North Korea - They brushed it off in the movie But I still think about it. How can the world's proudest democracy answer the simple question that Kim John Un poised ?

North Korea's incarceration rate is not exactly a matter of public record, but don't take fictional Kim's word for it - two attempts to estimate it puts it higher than the US:

http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2013/jan/14/han...

Re: Prison Map

#32

I am not sure how many HNers have watched The Interview. But at point Kim John Un points that that America has an higher incarnation rate than North Korea - They brushed it off in the movie But I still think about it. How can the world's proudest democracy answer the simple question that Kim John Un poised ?

Well to start with, it's a very misleading comparison. Every single person in North Korea is in prison. Just because most of them are not behind bars doesn't mean they are not prisoners. By contrast, Americans only (largely, overwhelmingly) end up in prison if they break laws (false convictions are statistically rare). We have too many laws, to be sure, and that is a problem we need to address, but no one would serio…

Of course, USA is far better in every way than North Korea ! I am not confused about that part.

The reason why this question is important is because We generally do not recognize North Korea's sovereignty. We have this notion that we are orders of magnitude more advanced then them.

What I think Kim-John-Un means is we cannot pass value judgement on him. Yes he kills a lot of people but we can judge him for his actions at killing a lot of people. We can even get rid of him because of that. But we cannot make the argument that our way and implementation of governance is way superior to his.

Re: Prison Map

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen, but I was under the impression that the "War on Drugs" was another major contributor to incarceration. Intent to sell (bad) and indeed even possession (harmless?) of marijuana could land you in jail, correct?

Yes. Drugs, at least the illegal ones, can/do/will land you in jail and eventually prison. Marijuana possession alone is enough, depending on how much you have and/or how it is packages (ie "with intent to distribute"). This depends on which state you are in, whether you are caught while crossing a state line (air travel) and the colour of the uniform on the officer who catches you (federal v. state). Some states hav…

Thank you for that last part. As a non US citizen i never knew there even was a difference between jails and prisons. Interesting :)

Re: Prison Map

#34
post #15

Probably should have posted this link instead: http://prisonmap.com/ Edit: Pretty cool why/how he got satellite imagery of all 4,916 facilities ( http://prisonmap.com/about )

Thanks, we changed the url to that from http://www.wired.com/2015/01/josh-begley-prison-map/ . It was posted 4 times previously to HN, including twice 3 years ago, but has not had significant attention.

Yeah, I posted this a couple months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8565019), and it got very little traction. Glad it is this time around!

Re: Prison Map

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop encouraging people to use infinite scroll, it is a scourge to be eradicated. In any case you think infinite scroll would be useful, what you really want is a link at the bottom of the page that says "elements per page: 25 | 50 | 250 | unlimited". Infinite scroll makes it painful to reach the end of a large list on a machine with low memory. It deprives the user of the ability to record your place in the l…

It deprives the user of the ability to record your place in the list if you want to come back tomorrow (or switch to another device or restart your computer etc. etc.), or send a link to someone else. Technically, you can use history.pushState & replaceState to automatically update the URL to the current position without having to reload the page. Demo: http://scrollsample.appspot.com/items

[deleted]

Re: Prison Map

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen, but I was under the impression that the "War on Drugs" was another major contributor to incarceration. Intent to sell (bad) and indeed even possession (harmless?) of marijuana could land you in jail, correct?

While simple possession could land you in jail, it's very rare for that to happen. There are 750,000 weed arrests in the US and maybe 500 people are in jail for simple possession only. The big way weed gets you to jail is because it's a conviction that breaks your parole and you get sent back for your previous crime.

Backed up by Rolling Stone at http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m...

Re: Prison Map

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While simple possession could land you in jail, it's very rare for that to happen. There are 750,000 weed arrests in the US and maybe 500 people are in jail for simple possession only. The big way weed gets you to jail is because it's a conviction that breaks your parole and you get sent back for your previous crime.

Please do some research on this. I guarantee you there are more than 500 people in jail at any given time for possession of weed. At least two out of roughly 40 people in my pod when I spent a week in jail were there for possession of marijuana alone.

Actually, I just remembered, one of those was in jail for possession of marijuana paraphernalia not even marijuana.

Re: Prison Map

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While simple possession could land you in jail, it's very rare for that to happen. There are 750,000 weed arrests in the US and maybe 500 people are in jail for simple possession only. The big way weed gets you to jail is because it's a conviction that breaks your parole and you get sent back for your previous crime.

I know a guy who went to the Midwest to sell small amounts of weed. Some "Silm Shady" type bought from said friend. Slim Shady decided to shoot someone over a bag. Said friend is in jail for 20 years. Said friend knew nothing of the murder, but the judge felt said friend should be punished--because he supplied an Idiot with weed, and broke federal and state law. The sad part is somehow he talked his brother into join…

> I know a guy who went to the Midwest to sell small amounts of weed. ... we can live comfortably, with low risk

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, as they say.

I find it really hard to feel sorry for criminals that are selling so much drugs that they can live comfortably on drug money. That's a significant amount of illegal activity.

They knew about the risk, and they took it. Now they have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

Re: Prison Map

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen, but I was under the impression that the "War on Drugs" was another major contributor to incarceration. Intent to sell (bad) and indeed even possession (harmless?) of marijuana could land you in jail, correct?

Yes. Drugs, at least the illegal ones, can/do/will land you in jail and eventually prison. Marijuana possession alone is enough, depending on how much you have and/or how it is packages (ie "with intent to distribute"). This depends on which state you are in, whether you are caught while crossing a state line (air travel) and the colour of the uniform on the officer who catches you (federal v. state). Some states hav…

"Prisons are generally much nicer places than jails"

If this piqued anyone's interest, you can see this in a little more detail in Louix Theroux's "Miami Mega Jail" two-part documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSM_UvZ-Jic (part 1 only, if you enjoy you should be able to find part 2). Like the GP I originally thought jail = prison, but it's definitely not and could even be a good deal worse in some cases.

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