Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

Citation needed.

How can one choose to not have a cop plant evidence on you? Or lie during trial, or choose to not get strong armed into pleading guilty because you can't afford bail and they're threatening you with even worse consequences if you don't plead out early? Or not have a law about drug usage enforced selectively against you and not against others? These are things that happen each and every day in this country, to paint that as a choice on the part of everyone is actually kind of insulting.

Even for those who did commit crimes and got thrown in jail, what exactly do you expect them to do when they get out and can't get a job? Recidivism is very high in this country, higher than our peers. Either you've got to conjure up something about American criminals that makes them permanently criminally, in which case I will just assume that you're two steps away from getting out the skull calipers, or you're forced to come to the conclusion that we've decided to arrange our society in a way that makes this a likely outcome.

Yes, some individuals do escape the cycle, and that is both good for them and good for society. But given the strong trend, one has to ask why.

> stay addicted to drugs, sex, and violence, and keep coming to prison over and over

See, there's a funny thing that happens here. This logic is only ever applied to some people. Poor, black, and addicted to crack? Criminal, straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect any help. Rural white and addicted to opioids? Well by god they're a victim who needs help!

Now to be honest, I think that both of those groups need help, and should be treated far, far better. But the selective nature of who gets sympathy and treatment and who gets steel bracelets is pretty core to my argument.

> There are some skinheads that blame racial preferences for their own failures in life, lest anyone think that I'm naming SJWs facetiously

I still think you're bringing up SJWs facetiously.

> Stop telling people that they have no control over their lives.

Stop making up my point. It's annoying.

Every single person's outcome is a mixture of their own choices, luck, and society. Individual choices matter, I never claimed to the contrary. The question is not "do individual choices matter" but rather "is the playing field setup in such a way that some people's choices are more likely to result in negative outcomes than other people's?" > those are the people that I see coming back to prison on their 8th or 9th sentence. Those are the guys with 8 kids, most of whom will also end up dead or in prison.

Gee, I wonder why that seems to happen so often? Obviously it's people on the internet worried about the US criminal system's fault, because that obviously makes sense.

Not saying their QA is useful, but it's not tough to imagine their QA being many layers removed from decision making. ie: Program Manager -> Product Owner -> Project Manager -> Business Analyst -> QA -- not even mentioning reporting lines.

That person in QA at the end of the chain is likely following a script written & approved by the layers above them to a T. It's highly unlikely that they are empowered to go off script or raise tangential issues. Doing so may even cost them their job.

The idea that someone in authority, on being reminded that they're wrong, will turn around and do what's being asked by their subject is contrary to virtually every study on authority and, indeed, daily experience.

This entire discussion is in response to an article highlighting the prison system's refusal to update a system to provide inmates with their guaranteed rights.

Of course the state, in principle, makes such exceptions. The question is whether those exceptions are respected. And especially in light of the context in which we're debating (the article), yours and not the parent's seems the extraordinary claim.