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How I got here

pthorpe92.github.io

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Re: How I got here

#21

Post by RandomLensman »

edgyquant wrote: post #18
causality0 wrote: post #10

I don't at all care for the way in which he mentions his crimes were nonviolent and tells us about being arrested for dealing ecstasy (a drug with little taboo associated with it) while skipping over the fact he's currently in prison for dealing choke-on-your-own-vomit synthetic opiods, not cute party drugs. That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in his own recliner.

Yeah this guy belongs in jail and clearly doesn’t think what he did was a problem at all. In the midst of an epidemic that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year the dealers of these drugs make the front page and are cheered on as “victims.” The victims here are the families and children of the people whose abuse he profited greatly off of.

The guy is in jail and is serving his sentence. I could understand given recent scandals with opioids that people view perhaps justice in this area as "patchy", though.

Re: How I got here

#22

Post by [deleted] »

admissionsguy wrote: post #12

> particularly those affected by the war on drugs, like myself, who has spent 1/3 of his life imprisoned for non-violent drug crimes Still not quite ready to take responsibility for his actions... You weren't magically "affected" by the war on drugs. You went into crime for the easy money, but found out you weren't very good at avoiding getting caught.

[deleted]

Re: How I got here

#23

Post by causality0 »

gavinray wrote: post #20
causality0 wrote: post #10

I don't at all care for the way in which he mentions his crimes were nonviolent and tells us about being arrested for dealing ecstasy (a drug with little taboo associated with it) while skipping over the fact he's currently in prison for dealing choke-on-your-own-vomit synthetic opiods, not cute party drugs. That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in his own recliner.

People do things they're not proud of in desperate situations. Also, everyone was 18-21 once. Speaking as someone who (barely) survived an unintentional acetyl-fentanyl overdose that hospitalized me with rhabdo and almost killed my then-fiance -- him dealing this stuff is not the end of the world. I think a lot of people on HN don't know what it's like to be someone below the poverty line who is also entangled with t…

He was 24.

People do things they're not proud of in desperate situations

See that's the thing. Did you read one word in the post about him being remorseful or apologetic to the people he might've killed by selling them U-47700, a drug that's essentially unstudied in humans? I didn't.

Re: How I got here

#24

Post by karaterobot »

causality0 wrote: post #10

I don't at all care for the way in which he mentions his crimes were nonviolent and tells us about being arrested for dealing ecstasy (a drug with little taboo associated with it) while skipping over the fact he's currently in prison for dealing choke-on-your-own-vomit synthetic opiods, not cute party drugs. That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in his own recliner.

Indeed. He had an ounce of U-47700, a synthetic opioid equivalent to about half a pound of morphine. With intent to distribute. And this is not his first prison sentence for distribution. I think opioid dealers are a different and worse class of dealers compared to, say, MDMA. That's a personal opinion. At any rate, he's paying for that crime, and when he's done he'll return to a normal life, hopefully, and I'll wish him well. Until then, he should be honest about who he is—or was—before his supposed epiphany.

https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-sen...

Re: How I got here

#25

Post by simbolit »

k1ns wrote: post #4
macintux wrote: post #2

I hate to quote so much of the post—it's well worth a read—but I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that convey so much about the U.S. prison system. > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officer…

Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises that rely on a consistent population. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact it's the opposite. What I don't understand is how a country with so many advantages like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world. As a citizen, it's embarrassing that this is accepted by those in power as a good solution.

> how a country ... like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world

I will leave you with this quote by John Erlichman:

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, (...) We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Source: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman

And, because everything is complicated, the family denies it all:

The 1994 alleged ‘quote’ we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him,” the Ehrlichman family wrote. “We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father’s death, when dad can no longer respond. None of us have raised our kids that way, and that’s because we were not raised that way.”

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...

Re: How I got here

#26

Post by throwaway626 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #21
edgyquant wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this guy belongs in jail and clearly doesn’t think what he did was a problem at all. In the midst of an epidemic that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year the dealers of these drugs make the front page and are cheered on as “victims.” The victims here are the families and children of the people whose abuse he profited greatly off of.

The guy is in jail and is serving his sentence. I could understand given recent scandals with opioids that people view perhaps justice in this area as "patchy", though.

It’s some strange bias that lets people get worked up about this one already-convicted dealer but pass over in silence the pharmaceutical companies that designed these opioids to be so addictive and marketed them so aggressively so that doctors would over-prescribe them.

Re: How I got here

#27

Post by chroma »

macintux wrote: post #2

I hate to quote so much of the post—it's well worth a read—but I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that convey so much about the U.S. prison system. > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officer…

He was convicted of possessing 30 grams of carfentanil while on parole for his previous conviction. A lethal dose of carfentanil is 2mg, so it was at least 15,000 doses.

1. https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-sen...

Re: How I got here

#28

Post by gavinray »

causality0 wrote: post #23
gavinray wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do things they're not proud of in desperate situations. Also, everyone was 18-21 once. Speaking as someone who (barely) survived an unintentional acetyl-fentanyl overdose that hospitalized me with rhabdo and almost killed my then-fiance -- him dealing this stuff is not the end of the world. I think a lot of people on HN don't know what it's like to be someone below the poverty line who is also entangled with t…

He was 24. People do things they're not proud of in desperate situations See that's the thing. Did you read one word in the post about him being remorseful or apologetic to the people he might've killed by selling them U-47700, a drug that's essentially unstudied in humans? I didn't.

The thing about writing public apologies is that there's no way to differentiate them from crocodile tears. You can't tell whether the person posting it genuinely means those things or is saying them because they know other people will read them.

Obviously, anyone who causes damage to another human being, if they aren't a sociopath, feels remorse.

Of the entire post, perhaps 3 sentences talk about the specifics of crimes committed. Every day that one wakes up inside of a prison/jail, is a reminder of exactly what choices you made to get there.

Can you blame him then, for wanting to write a post that isn't focused on the wrongs he did, and rather his hope for his future?

Re: How I got here

#29

Post by kelnos »

edgyquant wrote: post #11
macintux wrote: post #2

I hate to quote so much of the post—it's well worth a read—but I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that convey so much about the U.S. prison system. > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officer…

So he chose to go back to a life of crime and we’re supposed to feel bad for him? There’s a reason he was able to make 20k in a weekend, it’s a high risk high reward business and I have no sympathy for someone who skirts societal norms and makes a shit ton of money in the process while plenty of people suck it up and earn the 10.50 until they can get back out in their own. This guy and his entire post reeks of entitl…

I don't think it really matters if you feel bad for him or not, and focusing on that aspect does more harm than good. I think, given a choice between living in a fucked-up halfway house with your only prospect for the future being a shitty minimum-wage job, or falling back into your old crimes where you can make pretty solid bank doing illegal things (yes, with high risk)... most people would probably pick the latter.

I absolutely agree that "non-violent drug offenses" is a cop-out when describing high-volume drug dealing. Maybe he wasn't directly violent, but dealers like him directly contribute to dragging many more people into addiction, violence, and even death. I don't think people should be jailed (or even punished) for simple possession, but dealing -- especially on a large scale -- well, that's a different matter.

But ultimately what I really care about is outcomes. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what we want someone to choose when they get out of prison. If we don't provide a compelling path for an ex-con to go straight, that's just us shooting ourselves in our feet. If that means spending more time and money housing someone in actually good conditions, and providing them direct access to higher education and better job opportunities, so be it. Ultimately that ends up being a lot cheaper for taxpayers than what we're doing now. And we get a much healthier society in the bargain.

Acting punitive toward convicts and ex-cons doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the person involved, and it especially doesn't help ourselves.

Re: How I got here

#30

Post by k1ns »

oooyay wrote: post #6
k1ns wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises that rely on a consistent population. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact it's the opposite. What I don't understand is how a country with so many advantages like the USA could come up with arguably the worst prison system in the world. As a citizen, it's embarrassing that this is accepted by those in power as a good solution.

Private prisons are problematic in their own right, but they only make up 8% of the total prison population at the state and federal level. imo, we (the citizens) are to blame for constantly championing a system of accountability that believes accountability is putting a man in a box and taking every future opportunity he doesn't know yet away from him. You can certainly blame those in power, and they share some blam…

I said "prisons...are for-profit enterprises", not "prisons are privately owned". Government-owned prisons still rely on, and provide revenue to, companies specifically designed to profit from the prison population.
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