26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#111

Post by _delirium » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #75

splitrocket wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study indicates that incarceration, at least as it is currently implemented, is emphatically not a deterrent for repeat violent offenders. As for the public safety element, yes, but these people mostly weren’t locked up for life. What this shows, at least, in my opinion, is that much more intensive psychological and therapeutic interventions are needed, because if anything, incarceration as it currently exists w…

Or, more simply, you could incarcerate repeat offenders for longer periods of time.

I guess you could lock up ~1% of the population indefinitely, but by the time you've gotten to that point something else has clearly gone wrong, since most affluent countries are able to achieve relatively low violent crime rates without such widespread use of incarceration. If we were talking about 0.01% hard-core violent criminals then sure, just incarcerate them, but 3m+ people?

As far as I'm able to find, only two large countries in history have ever locked up more than even 0.5% of their population for extended periods of time: the USSR for approximately 15 years during the height of the Stalinist period (late 1930s to early 1950s), and the USA for about 30 years, from the late 1980s to present. So I wouldn't consider that a "normal" approach to managing crime.

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#112

Post by bradknowles » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #72

weberc2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More like the people who designed and operate the system consider everything they do legal This is true by definition. Anyway, what sort of violent crime do you propose to legalize?

Here is one that is fraught where I live - disciplining children with a smack. Many people think hitting children in a disciplinary context should be legal.

How do you define a “smack” versus a “hit”?

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#113

Post by pron » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #87

pron wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is troubling because it shows that many people really don't understand what it is that we call racist -- and it's not studies like these. I am a radical leftist (and a radical feminist) and I do not consider a statistical assertion such as "black people in the US are significantly overrepresented among those who commit violent crimes" at all as racist. What is racist (not just "labeled" racist; we…

> What you are saying is troubling because it shows that many people really don't understand what it is that we call racist -- and it's not studies like these. I am a radical leftist (and a radical feminist) and I do not consider a statistical assertion such as "black people in the US are significantly overrepresented among those who commit violent crimes" at all as racist. You might not, but lots of people do -- and…

Not true, and this is precisely what I find troubling -- that you misunderstand them and miss the actual problem they point out.

Obviously, I can't vouch for everyone, but since I haven't seen any behavior of the kind you refer to (certainly not among more-or-less mainstream figure), I can safely assume it's not done by "lots of people".

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#114

Post by bradknowles » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

WhitneyLand wrote: post #66

splitrocket wrote: post #12

Humans consistently make the same mistake about understand the motivations, the inhibiting and promoting pressures of other people. We assume that everyone else is exactly like us. Therefore, when we build systems and institutions that attempt to alter behavior, we encode our own motivations and desires as the impetus. I.E. why we have UX researchers, do user testing, A/B testing etc when we develop products. Our ins…

>we encode our own motivations and desires as the impetus I don’t see how that’s true. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say, the system was encoded based on what the designers knew about motivation and desires at the time? The fact that what they knew was based on their own motivations seems incidental. I doubt if they had the perfect formula evidenced and understandable to them at the time, that they would have inten…

Okay, so they didn’t understand.

Does that preclude us from trying to fix the problem?

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#115

Post by dsacco » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

WhitneyLand wrote: post #95

dsacco wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that what they knew was based on their own motivations seems incidental. I doubt if they had the perfect formula evidenced and understandable to them at the time, that they would have intentionally ignored it to still encode it in their own image. My understanding of the comment you’re responding to is that the nature of human experience precludes that ideal understanding, not that people would purposely i…

I certainly disagree the nature of human experience precludes ideal understanding. My point is the comment suggests almost an egocentric process, i.e. modeling a system in our own image, when actually it’s explained by simple ignorance.

Right, I follow what you’re saying. My followup to that is that I think (personally, and what the commenter is saying) that ignorance in the modeling of human behavior both causes and is caused by egocentrism in a feedback loop.

In any case, you disagree with that, so I suppose you are disagreeing with the parent; my interpretation of the parent commenter’s point was that this ignorance you speak of is pretty tightly coupled with innate egocentrism. I don’t think they’d consider that necessarily malicious if they consider it from that framework, whereas you might consider it malicious if the process is egocentric because you disagree with the same relationship; vis-a-vis ignorance and egocentrism.

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#116

Post by mannykannot » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

splitrocket wrote: post #104

dsacco wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hope that’s not what the commenter is saying, but what is your proposal instead? We can put significant effort into understanding criminals, for the purposes of both preemptive treatment and reactive rehabilitation, but this is not likely to eradicate crime. What do you suppose we should do with criminals who continue to commit violent or disruptive crimes in perpetuity? To clarify, I think the system could impro…

http://www.swiftcertainfair.com Been studied, replicated, and thoroughly tested. It’s just one option as well. There are many many more.

Do any among the "many more" studies address the recidivist, violent 1% who are the issue here? This one does not, and what this discussion needs is more relevant information.

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#117

Post by derekdahmer » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #75

splitrocket wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study indicates that incarceration, at least as it is currently implemented, is emphatically not a deterrent for repeat violent offenders. As for the public safety element, yes, but these people mostly weren’t locked up for life. What this shows, at least, in my opinion, is that much more intensive psychological and therapeutic interventions are needed, because if anything, incarceration as it currently exists w…

Or, more simply, you could incarcerate repeat offenders for longer periods of time.

That would work but incarceration is an unscalable solution. Some CA stats:

  - $71k/person/year
  - 130,000 inmates
  - 135% of capacity 
  - highest rate of incarceration in the world

We're maxed out - and all this doesn't even solve the root issues of mental illness and poverty. We need alternative ideas with better ROI.

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#118

Post by nofilter » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

splitrocket wrote: post #16

kelukelugames wrote: post #6

>Persistence in violence was associated with male sex (OR 2.5), personality disorder (OR 2.3), violent crime conviction before age 19 (OR 2.0), drug-related offenses (OR 1.9), nonviolent criminality (OR 1.9), substance use disorder (OR 1.9), and major mental disorder (OR 1.3). It sounds like we need to invest more in mental health.

And perhaps divest ourselves of the idea that putting one time violent offenders in a building full of other violent offenders will somehow reduce the likelihood of future offense.

Yea but we don't put them in a building full of other violent offenders to rehabilitate them. We do that to get rid of them with zero care for whatever they will do once they serve their sentence because, yet again, we can get rid of them and whatever damage they do while they are outside of the prison is considered unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Siderant: I find it funny how humans work. On a very personal level, we love each other (you your parents or significant other), but the further the connection goes to other people the less we care. Whereas if we cared about everyone in a very loving way, we would probably not get rid of people we don't like.

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#119

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #75

splitrocket wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study indicates that incarceration, at least as it is currently implemented, is emphatically not a deterrent for repeat violent offenders. As for the public safety element, yes, but these people mostly weren’t locked up for life. What this shows, at least, in my opinion, is that much more intensive psychological and therapeutic interventions are needed, because if anything, incarceration as it currently exists w…

Or, more simply, you could incarcerate repeat offenders for longer periods of time.

[deleted]

Re: 26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)

#120

Post by rocqua » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #110

splitrocket wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.swiftcertainfair.com Been studied, replicated, and thoroughly tested. It’s just one option as well. There are many many more.

Do you mind summarizing what that is a bit? I’d like to read about it, but either the link isn’t working for me (I’m on mobile) or it doesn’t contain much information aside from the homepage.

Copy pasting from their website:

About one-third of probationers and parolees fail the terms of their supervision. Over three-quarters of parolees are re-arrested within five years, and over half return to prison. High failure rates for people on probation and parole—whether for new offenses, revocations, or individuals who abscond from supervision—result in increased crime, crowded prisons and jails, and strained public budgets. Indeed, every single one of the seventeen states that have undertaken justice reinvestment since 2010 has found probation or parole revocations to be an important driver of their growing prison populations. And despite a variety of local, state, and Federal initiatives over the last two decades, failure rates for supervised individuals have not meaningfully fallen.

Why Swift Certain and Fair? Because—if the conditions are right—a SCF program can take high-risk individuals in your jurisdiction and substantially reduce their drug use, revocation and re-arrest rates, and the subsequent reliance on incarceration.

Swift: SCF programs deliver a sanction immediately upon detection of a violation, which is critical in changing behavior. Responding swiftly also supports perceptions of the fairness of the program, reinforcing that element of SCF programs.

Certain: The consistency and predictability of punishments make the consequences of bad behavior clear to the offender, reinforcing the need to make better decisions and change behavior. An essential role is played by the clearly-defined behavioral contract with the offender—a tool that has repeatedly been proven to increase perceptions about the certainty of punishment.

Fair: The clear demarcation of the offenders’ new supervision conditions and the opportunity for a fresh start allow the offender to regain their sense of self-control. The contract enhances the perceived fairness of any subsequent punishment; this perception of fairness is further supplemented by the sparing rather than harsh level of punishment upon violation, which additionally limits disruption of employment and other non-criminal routines and relationships.