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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

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Re: School or Prison

#371

Post by KittenInABox »

Merman_Mike wrote: post #348
throwaway998662 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who end up in prisoners in the USA are reoffenders. The USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world and very high crime rates. So when I talk about deterrence I'm mostly talking about reoffenders. I.e, the prisoners I talked to coming back. I think they're more likely to commit crimes after prison, not less!! Do you think people would lie, in a heavily monitored prison, about wanting to never come…

Thanks for posting in this thread. I've read all of your comments. If prison is as horrible as you describe, why do you think it's not much of a deterrent?

Generally, deterrents such as extremely harsh prison sentences have no evidence that they're actually effective. Many nonviolent crimes such as the kind associated with addiction will occur as a result the illness. Other violent crimes such as murder occur compulsively, and therefore do not respond to rational thinking such as "jail really sucks bro".

Think of it like this though: If harsh, dehumanizing punishments were an effective deterrent, crimes would've gone up when we stopped chopping off people's limbs for stealing, and in fact we'd have more stealing in modern day than at any time in history because public mutilation is not an acceptable punishment now.

Re: School or Prison

#372

Post by jollofricepeas »

nolongerlowres wrote: post #276
throwaway998662 wrote: post #266

As someone who's been to prison and school, lots of comments here sound pretty tone deaf. Prison in the USA is really bad. Yes school is authoritarian, but most popular entertainment on prisons downplays how bad it really gets. Watch some interviews of people who have actually been to prison. Murder and rape is common (I saw it happen), you will get your possessions stolen under the threat of murder/rape, you'll prob…

Thank you for posting this. I couldn’t believe the other comments trying to equate schools with prison. It’s unbelievable how we treat prisoners in the US. I wish there was more I could do than vote and donate to causes like the ACLU. Starting to realize that my beliefs are in the minority re: how to treat fellow countrymen, even those who have committed crimes.

For those who were wondering here’s the US recidivism rates as of 2018.

Smells like success...

„- An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.

- Almost half (47%) of prisoners who did not have an arrest within 3 years of release were arrested during years 4 through 9.

- More than three-quarters (77%) of released drug ofenders were arrested for a non-drug crime within 9 years.

„- Forty-four percent of released prisoners were arrested during the frst year following release, while 24% were arrested during year-9.

- Eighty-two percent of prisoners arrested during the 9-year period were arrested within the frst 3 years.

Source: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf

„

Re: School or Prison

#373

Post by philwelch »

joe_the_user wrote: post #116
hndudette2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the distinctness and uniqueness of those examples, as well as that they're surrounded by trees/nature, that make them so beautiful. Brutalism as intentional art, not as an unintended byproduct of cost-saving or simply not caring. The depressing nature of a lot of brutalist architecture (especially that created by governments) is the uniformity, homogeneity and the mass-produced faux-utilitarian feeling it evokes…

Brutalism is simply an architectural style characterized by the use of raw concrete. It can be done well in various ways and badly in various ways, like virtually any style. It's worth noting that Phil is not just wrong about brutalism but also wrong about these examples being (primarily) brutalist. Not generally using raw concrete, they would not be considered brutalist. The modern "box" has been largely discarded b…

To my aesthetic sense, virtually every “brutalist” structure feels authoritarian and dystopian to me. It is not only a good architectural style for prisons, but for any other building that is built with the intention of resembling a prison, which is what makes it so useful for government offices and the like.

Re: School or Prison

#374

Post by KittenInABox »

Bostonian wrote: post #329
tolbish wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't we have more outrage against this outdated institution created out of 1600 era values? Americans with nice lives, particularly the types to frequent HN, are insulated from the effects of our criminal justice system. Concern for schooling takes precedence.

Americans who live in low-crime areas are somewhat insulated from criminal justice "reform" that sets criminals free and increases crime rates.

[This comment previously contained an assumption that reducing poverty reduces crime rates. A poster commented that there isn't as much of a correlation as this comment stated so I removed it.]

Re: School or Prison

#375

Post by leephillips »

jolux wrote: post #333
leephillips wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I’m with you (although nothing can be “centered around” anything). But most schools are not organized that way, and there’s only so much one teacher can do to buck the system. As it was, I got fired from that particular job after two years, and it wasn’t because I was too strict, certainly.

>nothing can be “centered around” anything Not quite sure what you're getting at here but insofar as progressive education was an explicit philosophy reflected in policies and actions, it was centered. >But most schools are not organized that way, and there’s only so much one teacher can do to buck the system. As it was, I got fired from that particular job after two years, and it wasn’t because I was too strict, cer…

It was “centered on” those things, not “around”.

Re: School or Prison

#376

Post by justinclift »

escape_goat wrote: post #362
justinclift wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you do not understand that then consider that perhaps a life in which most problems are inherently tractable, [...] does not actually leave you with a correct understanding of your ability to understand or solve complex problems in the world. Ugh. That's not really any better. You're still effectively saying the person is an idiot / incapable of reasonable thinking. :(

Okay, assuming that you understand my point, how would you restate it in a way that didn't imply that a person who engaged in that sort of response was an idiot or capable of reasonable thought? I don't actually have a problem with people being wrong or not very bright in the comments they make. I have a problem with the arrogance and self-involvement that I feel responding to someone like this — someone who has lite…

> someone who has literally signed up to HN so that they could share a few paragraphs about their life

Hmmm, I think we're coming at this from different places.

Personally, I have no problem at all with people coming to HN to share their life experiences. For me, that helps my understanding of the world. :)

Re: School or Prison

#377

Post by ModernMech »

throwaway998662 wrote: post #266

As someone who's been to prison and school, lots of comments here sound pretty tone deaf. Prison in the USA is really bad. Yes school is authoritarian, but most popular entertainment on prisons downplays how bad it really gets. Watch some interviews of people who have actually been to prison. Murder and rape is common (I saw it happen), you will get your possessions stolen under the threat of murder/rape, you'll prob…

> The whole thing is an abomination. It serves no useful purpose to society to subject most criminals to prison

The purpose of prison is not reform. It's not even punishment or deterrence. The purpose of prison in the US is:

1) First and foremost it is a profit center. Caging human beings is a multi billion dollar industry in the US.

2) A storage facility for political dissidents and out groups. We just make up laws to target certain groups we don't like, and use that as pretext to lock them away (you know, that pesky first amendment always getting in the way).

3) To reify the carve out in the 13th Amendment which states:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Gotta keep slavery alive and well in the USA.

Re: School or Prison

#379

Post by centimeter »

kristopolous wrote: post #198
pavel_lishin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our principal refused to let students leave campus, as a student had gotten in a car wreck over lunch and died at a previous school. So, there's some logic there. They are nominally responsible for you during school hours.

I call this "outlier driven policy"; one single instance of some thing happening some where at some time within the past 100 years means that everyone for perpetuity has to follow some new rule because the lim(x -> 0) risk is simply too much . For instance, there was one person, 2 decades ago, flying out of france, who hid a bomb in his shoes so today we are all still taking off our shoes, all of us, each time, on ev…

I bet a lot of people on this website will nod their head and think to themselves that they agree with your comment (because of the specific examples you gave), but in my experience fewer than 1% of the general population and probably fewer than 5% of people on HN today are capable of actually thinking in a utilitarian manner. Even my smartest and most numerate acquaintances (let’s say +2-4 stddev, mostly scientists and engineers) have to be pushed to thinking this way about specific issues unless they have a background in economics or something. The concept of making decisions as part of an explicit optimization strategy, rather than as a result of applying a set of heuristics, is completely foreign to most people. Giving specific examples almost invariably pisses people off, because they’re emotionally invested in the heuristics being accurate. They would probably be fine in a tribal group of ~100 people with no out-group communication, but they scale very poorly to billions of people with an internet connection.

Re: School or Prison

#380

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

S_A_P wrote: post #359
throwaway998662 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who end up in prisoners in the USA are reoffenders. The USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world and very high crime rates. So when I talk about deterrence I'm mostly talking about reoffenders. I.e, the prisoners I talked to coming back. I think they're more likely to commit crimes after prison, not less!! Do you think people would lie, in a heavily monitored prison, about wanting to never come…

The problem as I see it is politicians don’t want to be the person legislating prison reform when it is so easy for their opponents to blame a horrendous crime on their “soft on crime” stance. I do think prison is at least a partial deterrent for me and my actions but it’s certainly not my main motivation for my actions. The problem with prison is the permanent stigma and lack of options for those with criminal recor…

On the other hand, a lot of the "tough on crime" messaging comes from the unique context of the 70s and 80s, when crime was much higher than today and continually rising. I'm hopeful that prison reform is a much more politically palatable message now that crime has been trending down for decades.
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