Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

harvardlawreview.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 326 posts

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#141

Post by millermp12 »

rmxt wrote: post #122
ChrisArgyle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way to advance a discussion by simply stating there is a correlation between crime and race. What solutions come from that? Genocide? Internment? Crime is a complex system that involves more than just the two axes race and violence.

The racists and/or "human biodiversity" types have come out to play. Better to ignore the disingenuous comments and move on, as they tend not to be here for discussion. Articles on race and crime often draw out these sorts of "arguments". For those that actually believe the GP might have some ground to stand on, the least they could do is to link to some sources or resources.

I would be genuinely interested in a rebuttal to elevated testosterone levels (the linked National Cancer Institute abstract).

I almost always provide links to sources that provide a reasonably analytic angle.

They are generally ignored or misunderstood. Because, you know, (structural) racism.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#142

Post by millermp12 »

mineshaftgap wrote: post #95
Zigurd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maintain order?" After the violence and racism, a big problem with police is the crappy solution rates to violent and serious property crimes. The Drug War just masks that lack of effectiveness.

Is it your contention that the black cops in Baltimore are racist against black people?

That's where structural racism comes in, i.e. there is no shortcoming, no defect, no flaw in the black community (i.e. that Orwellian term People of Color to describe a pretty much monochromatic phenomenon) that can't be attributed to whites/racism.

Get with the program, please.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#143

Post by nmrm2 »

millermp12 wrote: post #133
smtddr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>But people are not being locked up just because they are black, or poor. They are committing crimes, and pleading or being found guilty. I'd say that institutionalize/systemic racism in America makes it exceedingly more likely that a minority will end up poor and exceedingly more difficult to get out of ---> poor neighborhoods --> more crime ---> broken window policy ---> problems we've been seeing recently. Conver…

Can we dispense with "minority" and "people of color" when we're talking really about blacks and to a lesser extent hispanics? This kind of intellectual forgery is why the left (and it's prescriptions) are increasingly viewed with suspicion. Bring yourself to be honest with your words and assessments. Make sure what you say passes the smell test. Otherwise you're just preaching to the converted.

It's not just blacks and hispanics. It's a lot of other hues as well. And that's before asking what "black" and "hispanic" even mean, which is highly contextual to culture.

And anyways, "white" isn't even a color -- which is kind of obvious if you think about it for a second because a dark white person and a fair-skinned white person can be as far apart as a dark white person and a latino person. Rather, white is a collection of socio-economic attributes and their indicators, of which color and other physical indicators are only the most obvious/visible. And not all white people have always been white. See e.g. "How the Irish Became White".

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#144

Post by panzagl »

anon3_ wrote: post #40
neverminder wrote: post #6

> The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. This sums it up for me.

In my opinion, it's about drugs and cultural undertones that drugs are permissive, that you can be the "druggie guy", and to some, it's hip and cool. I blame the intelligentsia. Try the scenario when you're in a low income family with an addict. This very easily leads to a vicious cycle - eventual arrest and incarceration. That's one less person coming home with a paycheck. That's a family growing up a generation wit…

I do wonder how and why we're supposed to get people into treatment if drugs aren't illegal- "Hi citizen I noticed you're enjoying a legal activity with deleterious long term effects. Please take this pamphlet with a list of treatment centers and voluntarily enroll." It's worked so well with tobacco and alcohol.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#145

Post by millermp12 »

pjc50 wrote: post #54
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #35

I completely agree that we overcriminalize things and imprison far too many people in the U.S. I'm 100% on-board with this. It's our shame the way we treat non-violent offenders. A disgrace. But guys, nothing is ever 100% one way or the other, no matter how much you support it. So you have to look at differing points of view -- unless the objective is just to have a good rant. Here are the things that come to mind re…

The racism is not a red herring, it's the primary driver for the electorate demanding that the system be broken in the ways it is. It's used to argue that the victims of the system deserve it, and thereby to prevent change.

The problem is, a substantial (and potentially growing) segment of the population doesn't agree with you.

If racism is _the_ problem, why does it produce perfectly antipodal outcomes for different "people of color"? i.e. Asians are economically ascendant (surpassing whites on most metric), while blacks, well... you get the idea.

Rubbing the amulet of "structural racism" so much has entirely debased the term.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#146

Post by maxerickson »

panzagl wrote: post #144
anon3_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, it's about drugs and cultural undertones that drugs are permissive, that you can be the "druggie guy", and to some, it's hip and cool. I blame the intelligentsia. Try the scenario when you're in a low income family with an addict. This very easily leads to a vicious cycle - eventual arrest and incarceration. That's one less person coming home with a paycheck. That's a family growing up a generation wit…

I do wonder how and why we're supposed to get people into treatment if drugs aren't illegal- "Hi citizen I noticed you're enjoying a legal activity with deleterious long term effects. Please take this pamphlet with a list of treatment centers and voluntarily enroll." It's worked so well with tobacco and alcohol.

It has worked out with tobacco, quite well.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig...

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#147

Post by twowordbird »

maze-le wrote: post #84
jacquesm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murder rate is that high because of easy access to weapons that make murdering people relatively easy. Shooting someone is a lot easier than knifing someone, point-and-click.

Switzerland for example has liberal gun-ownership laws too, but the murder-rate is by far lower than in the US. This is soley one of many factors...

Switzerland often gets bandied about in these discussions, because people see gun ownership rates and ignore the subtleties. All adult males are required to own and keep a rifle at home (with some minor exceptions). There is no "gun culture" here, people in general are very unenthusiastic and see it as a burden.

In the last 20 years they have stopped giving ammunition to keep with your military rifle, exactly because they started having problems with shootings. Switzerland is the worst possible "example" of gun ownership reducing violent crime.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#148

Post by seiji »

pessimizer wrote: post #28
neverminder wrote: post #6

> The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. This sums it up for me.

African-American males are 0.25% of the world's population, but 10% of the world's prisoners.

White males are [X percent of the world population], but like 99% of the world's billionaires. Success and punishment aren't evenly distributed due to innate corruption/advantages built into The System.

How do we fix inequality? Companies run american prisons now, companies control elected officials, and voters are manipulated by basic psychological tricks to keep voting against their own interests (vote GOD, not basic human rights!). That's just one issue among 50 other giant issues america/world is currently failing at "doing the right thing" towards.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#149

Post by smtddr »

arethuza wrote: post #20
zouhair wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is mostly a for profit business helps a lot.

Only 8.4% of US prisoners are in privately owned prisons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#Development_3 I suspect wider cultural reasons rather than just simple corruption - though that no doubt plays a part.

There's always someone who makes this comment, and I'll say the same thing I said before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8562814

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#150

Post by rmxt »

millermp12 wrote: post #141
rmxt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racists and/or "human biodiversity" types have come out to play. Better to ignore the disingenuous comments and move on, as they tend not to be here for discussion. Articles on race and crime often draw out these sorts of "arguments". For those that actually believe the GP might have some ground to stand on, the least they could do is to link to some sources or resources.

I would be genuinely interested in a rebuttal to elevated testosterone levels (the linked National Cancer Institute abstract). I almost always provide links to sources that provide a reasonably analytic angle. They are generally ignored or misunderstood. Because, you know, (structural) racism.

The testosterone argument is a bullshit one in this context: the article you posted isn't trying to connect the dots in the disingenuous way you are, it's talking about prostate cancer. It does not attempt to suss out whether or not testosterone levels are the cause of crime, period. The misstep you are taking is assuming that testosterone causes crime, rather than correlates with it. Even this article [1], which you will probably salivate over, doesn't suggest that testosterone causes crime, merely that it correlates with misbehavior (in a very particular setting, namely prison). Here's [2] research that suggests that socioeconomic status mitigates the correlation between testosterone and misbehavior. At a minimum, this suggests that we have a chicken-egg dilemma between testosterone and misbehavior. The next question I would ask is: Do troubled settings and poor childhoods engender higher testosterone levels in adulthood?

Lastly, above and beyond any correlation between testosterone and crime, how do you propose to use this information to inform policy decisions? My main gripe in this fantasyland of HBD-speak is that people use this information as "scientific" grounds for enforcing their racist policy predispositions. I'd like to hear where you think you would take this testosterone point, but all too often people (and unfortunately, I get the impression that you are one of them) imply that these few studies are grounds for damning and castigating entire populations because of their perceived inferiority and incorrigibility.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01918869940...

[2] http://pss.sagepub.com/content/1/3/209.short

EDIT for posterity: I would like to point out that you posted your cousin/uncle link upthread after I posted my GP comment above. I wouldn't have made as strong a comment had I seen links or sources.

Post reply on HN