Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons • Hacker News Board

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#211

Post by mc-lovin » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 1:46 AM UTC

_account wrote: post #110

rthomas6 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this view not presuppose that the exhibitors of the anti-social behavior cannot be fixed or remade into useful members of society? If you believe that, fine, but if you think that some could be reformed, why is that not worth the money? "Reform", in my mind, has nothing to do with pampering. It could be even more torturous than now...For example A Clockwork Orange. Not that I'm advocating that. Does this view al…

I suppose that good people can make a[singular and non-violent] mistake or error in judgement which can run them a foul of the law. These people don't require reform. They are typically leaniently sentenced, pay for their mistake and move on. I also suppose that others are more habitually and fundamentally anti-social. These people are not worth the effort of trying to 'save'. The brains have literally been wired for…

You are making a lot of assumptions, which seem taylored to bolster a particular worldview, rather than be based in fact. In particular, you assume

1. People differ vastly in their innate ability to follow societal rules.

2. The justice system is able to distinguish between people who make simple mistakes, and people who are unable to follow society rules.

3. The above is a big factor in sentencing.

While there is evidence that some aspects of behavior are innate, there is also a huge literature linking the environment a person is raised in, and their tendency towards crime. Furthermore, sentencing is generally extremely inconsistent by any standards, so it is very unlikely that sentencing would fit your criteria for being lenient to the right people. Finally, it's hard to think of sentencing criteria that fit the criteria you propose, and are also objective.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#212

Post by csense » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:04 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #188

lars wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise Oh please. The US has a recidivism rate within 3 years of 67.5%. Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% within 2 years. There are proven-better alternatives, but your society has decided not to implement them.

You can't compare recidivism rates between a 300M nation of immigrants a 5M nation with an extremely homogenous culture. The US has social problems that are worse than Norway's worst nightmares. Prisons are just the tip of the iceberg.

> Prisons are just the tip of the iceberg.

Some of this has to do with African-Americans who have been living in poverty for generations stretching all the way back to slavery -- a situation which doesn't exist in Iceland.

It also has to do with the US economic policies which promote the flight of low-skill jobs overseas. Not everyone has the intellectual ability to be a doctor or a web developer (especially given our dismal education system), and there are only a limited number of low-skill non-relocatable jobs like food service or retail. Things were much better for people with limited education when labor unions had a monopoly on many unskilled jobs and could set monopoly pricing on wages. Now, with tariffs and high shipping costs no longer keeping manufacturers from moving overseas, competition from workers in desperately poor countries is forcing wages downward; when the going rate for a given job falls below the US minimum wage, those jobs simply disappear from the US entirely.

Unfortunately, global corporations who benefit from the situation have too much influence over US politics, opponents of this aspect of the status quo are too disorganized, and the analysis I outlined above is not widely enough accepted for change to happen in the near term.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#213

Post by colanderman » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:05 AM UTC

youngerdryas wrote: post #204

lars wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And while we don't have proven-better alternatives for many of the problems that arise Oh please. The US has a recidivism rate within 3 years of 67.5%. Norway has a recidivism rate of 20% within 2 years. There are proven-better alternatives, but your society has decided not to implement them.

Compared to Massachusetts Europe is a shithole. Even if you just compare Norway it still looks bad. Oh well.

As someone who has lived in various cities in Massachussets, and has visited most countries in Europe, I can't say I understand your comment.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#214

Post by mynameishere » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:16 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #210

mynameishere wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

compare to other anglo-centric melting-pot countries There are no comparable countries. The US is the absolute worst in the West. But just you watch. The UK and Sweden and Norway are importing diversity at an alarming rate. Eventually, their prisons will turn hard, but not through policy. Policy follows reality. California's excessive solitary confinement policies strongly belie its left-leaning government. Get a ste…

Do you have any evidence that immigration or diversity is the cause of social strife? The U.S. prison population is hugely disproportionately African American. The U.S. has not had a large influx of immigrants from Africa in more than a century (for the obvious reason). Our prisoners are by and large not immigrants, or the children of immigrants, or the grandchildren of immigrants. They're the homegrown domestic Amer…

Most immigration to the US consists of Hispanics who are relatively mild, only committing about 2x the crimes of the rest of population. I was referring to countries like Sweden which are hell-bent on importing Muslims and Somalians and the like.

As to social strife, this is a standard book, even though written by a leftist, who tries to make the best of it.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

The reality is more simple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden

Immigrants were five times more likely to commit sex crimes

I absolutely do not believe that number. It is almost certainly more like 10 or 15 times. The Swedish government is a pure head-in-ass creature, and almost certainly bending the statistics.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#215

Post by csense » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:17 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #165

skrebbel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted to counter the ridiculous downvote legion. I fully disagree with your point, but it's a fair point worthy of HN, and I applaud you for uttering what is clearly a minority opinion here.

Advocating what amounts to rape and torture just because we don't break it into its components (it's tacitly accepted, after all) is utterly abhorrent and deserves every step closer to invisible that it's getting.

> Rape and torture

The comment you're commenting about doesn't use either of these words. He (or she) merely says that "prisons should be scary" and "the current system does a good job of achieving that."

In fact, I would tend to agree with him: Prisons should be scary. If people have no reason to be scared of prisons, what keeps a huge number of people from just giving up on ever doing anything economically productive and instead just shoplift or burglarize whenever they want/need something and don't have enough money for it, because they know that once they're caught they can just take it easy and sit in jail playing video games all day? If that happens, who will grow and prepare all the food to feed these prisoners, and do the work to maintain the jail facilities (and the supply chain which produces the needed materials)?

A society that doesn't have a punishment that people are afraid of seems to me like it would be on a short road directly to a complete collapse of civilization.

The second point is right on the money as well: The current system does do a good job of being scary. I certainly don't want to go to jail, and I've made a habit of noting gray areas in the law where behavior I intuitively think of as "reasonable" is actually illegal, and how you should conduct yourself around law enforcement officials to minimize your chances of going to prison (in the US, you should never help them in any way, never lie to them or physically resist them in any way, refuse consent to all searches, and decline to speak with them unless you have the advice of a lawyer who represents you and will be present during the questioning.)

Neither he nor I say that rape and torture is the only possible way to make prisons scary. For me, being locked up for years without video games is scary enough by itself.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#216

Post by alexqgb » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:21 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #199

skrebbel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody's stopping anybody from spreading their opinion, last I checked. I said the downvotes were deserved. directly contradicts > [it] deserves every step closer to invisible that it's getting from your previous comment. Also, you know that downvoting something enough hides it from HN. On HN, a downvote doesn't mean "I disagree", because we have comments for that. A downvote means "this comment isn't HN-worthy". A…

On HN, a downvote doesn't mean "I disagree" Actually, it does. pg has said that it is fine to use this way. I think it's stupid, and you'll see in my profile a screed against the braindead moderation style of HN and why I think it's bad. I don't particularly care anymore though - there is no interest from the admins in changing it, so it's pointless to try.

It's possible to disagree with an argument without losing respect for the person making it. You might, for instance, have a rare or specialized experience that would lead you to think differently from another person. Even if you know that person to be wrong, you wouldn't respond with a downvote. Not if their position was intelligent and stated in good faith. Reasonable people disagreeing, and all that.

And then there are the idiots. Here, the downvote is less about disagreement per se, and more about a response to thought that is generally stupid and awful. What it says is that your opinion is so unworthy of consideration that it's simply being removed from circulation.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#217

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

ceautery wrote: post #90

irahul wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom. 1. Prisons as correctional center far outweighs some homeless guy pick-pocketin…

>fixing the root problem in the criminals The root problem is the xenophobia of old white men. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html

Here's the problem with your conclusion. 2010 median income:

White: $54,620 Hispanic: $37,759 Black: $32,068

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104552.html

You have to account for poverty before you jump to racism.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#218

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:28 AM UTC

maeon3 wrote: post #54

InclinedPlane wrote: post #44

People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs. Even more significant is the widespread societal belief that prison experience should be…

If the prisons were focused on fixing the root problem in the criminals, as if they were some sort of refuge for edification, conditioning and correction then a large body of the homeless would commit a strategic crime in order to get there so they can at least get three meals and an opportunity to move up in the world from rock-bottom. Like slavery in the 18th century, prisons are a necessary evil to punish people w…

>Conditions have to be bad enough so that a large segment of the rock-bottom citizens don't commit crime just to get some hope.

The blatantly obvious alternative to this is for the government to provide adequate food assistance and homeless shelters such that you can get the free meals and roof without committing a crime first, in which case there would be no incentive to do this whatsoever.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#219

Post by csense » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #161

scrapcode wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of glad that this is your perception. This should be everyone's perception of prison. You should have an extreme necessity to keep your ass out of prison. You should be scared absolutely shitless of prison, so much that you play exactly by the rules to keep yourself from ever going there. Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home. Prison is not a rehabilitation center. If it we…

Upvoted to counter the ridiculous downvote legion. I fully disagree with your point, but it's a fair point worthy of HN, and I applaud you for uttering what is clearly a minority opinion here.

Downvoting on opinions you disagree with diminishes the value of HN, because then there will be ideas which may have merit, or lead to thoughtful insights, which no one will speak for fear of downvotes.

> I applaud you for uttering what is clearly a minority opinion here

Me too! I think HN can be too much of an echo chamber sometimes, especially when it comes to politics. (Whether articles like this one are HN-relevant material is questionable, but I've found the comments here to be much more well-reasoned than most of the political discourse I've seen on the Internet.)

In fact, I personally do my part to help this by occasionally playing devil's advocate -- saying things I don't necessarily believe, which I know will be controversial, risking downvotes solely for the sake of stimulating a good discussion.

People sometimes find it very difficult to agree to disagree, especially about highly controversial subjects like politics. This has a chilling effect even on me: I try very hard to keep this account separate from my real identity, so people whose opinion I care about won't take one of my devil's advocate comments out of context. (For that matter, I tend not to advertise my actual political views to people unless I know them well and think they will either agree with me, or are intellectually mature enough to accept that sometimes people acting in good faith can have different opinions than they do. And I think that I am so constituted that I would act in this way in the current US political environment no matter what my views actually were.)

I also upvote comments I disagree with, if they're sufficiently well-written and thought-provoking, especially if they seem to have been downvoted solely because people disagree with the opinion.

Re: Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

#220

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 3:03 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #183

chc wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think moxie is suggesting that they are durable because of their origin, but something more along the lines of what you're saying. I think the point is that they aren't the sort of thing a modern democracy would come up with on its own, but they're very hard to get rid of once you've allowed them in. (Not meaning to put words in anyone's mouth — just offering the thought the way my brain processed it.)

Maybe I've just been wholly indoctrinated, but I don't see how laws are the sort of thing that wouldn't have been created. From what I can tell, any group of humans stuck together for a time comes up with rules, and laws are simply the codification of these rules.

I think you can reasonably distinguish between having laws and having a criminal justice system as currently implemented. For example, you can have laws without having police officers or prosecutors or prisons. This is effectively what the civil court system does.

That does leave the question of what to do with those who commit the most serious crimes like rape and murder, but those are a small minority of the crimes currently prosecuted and are generally not the ones that best exemplify the failure of the existing justice system.