421–430 of 497 posts
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I mean, speaking of the shoes, yes it was one time. But once it was shown to work, there would probably have been many copycats without a countermeasure.
Few other countries make people take off their shoes through airport security... we haven’t had any copycat attacks.
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I'd like to express a controversial opinion. I am totally indifferent to the suffering of violent criminals. If you have consciously used violence against innocent people - if you have broken into an occupied home, if you have accosted people with weapons, committed sexual violence, or given drugs to children - then I would not object to your summary execution. In my eyes, the lives of people who make such choices ar…
Please don't post this sort of internet cowboy comment here. "I would not object to your summary execution" is not curious conversation, it's inflated rhetoric that will only provoke worse from others. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: Also, it looks like you've only been commenting on HN for the purposes of ideological battle. That's not what this site is for, it's against the rules, and we ban…
Edit: I go on to elaborate that I see their value as lower than that of pets and farm animals, whom we summarily execute all the time.
Edit: I should clarify that I was using "you" in the general sense, not referring to the parent specifically.
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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-…
I recall there was a study a few years back that claimed real recidivism rates were actually much lower than commonly stated due to a selection bias effect. Here are the slides: https://www.bgcheckinfo.org/sites/default/files/public/5thMt...
"When criminologists examine prison populations, they see a concentration of repeat offenders, most of whom will recidivate. Low-risk offenders enter and exit prison once, so in any survey of a prison stock, low-risk offenders are underrepresented as a proportion of the offender population.
An analogy is helpful: A Mall Exit Survey
Survey researchers sometimes use mall exit surveys to estimate shoppers’ purchasing habits.
Suppose that:
•25% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day.
•25% go once per week.
•25% go once per month.
•25% go once per year.
A naïve one week exit survey of visitors exiting the mall will find that:
•85% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day.
•12% go once per week.
•3% go once per month.
•Fewer than 1% go once per year.
The problem is that high-rate mall visitors churn, leaving an impression that most shoppers are frequent visitors."
Quoted from "Criminal Recidivism: Most Incarcerated Offenders do not Return to Prison", by William Rhodes, from the link in parent
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You can test that by looking at data from countries with less abusive prison systems. IIRC, they typically have much lower recidivism rates.
That 100% ignores cultural, education, diversity, and tons of other issues. Yea, I bet recidivism is low in Norway, who also has a very small chapter of MS13 or whatever gang you like, coincidentally. I disagree you can look to some other country and make a fair comparison. The only way to do it would be to look at rates before and after some policy change.
There’s a reason we have so many violent gangs in the US. We don’t take care of people the way other countries do, and we take advantage of every marginalized population we can.
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What we call “lived experience” today used to be called, “an anecdote,” and what brought me to places like HN, actually, is that the kind of people who came here understood why we distinguish such statements from data. (There’s a pithy aphorism to this effect, which you may be familiar with.) The grandparent comment here is very good and I agree with all of it — comparing prison to high school is risible, at best — b…
Look, I like data — meaningful data — just as much as the next person here, but this is a little bit of a strawman argument, isn't it. You're not defending a comment that was based on any data, you're defending the a priori reasoning with which someone decided to rebut someone's reportage of own experience. I do not think you would stand for that for one second if the topic was operating system development or databas…
an·ec·dote
/ˈanəkˌdōt/
noun
a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.
Your key word in that definition is "real".
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…
I'd like to express a controversial opinion. I am totally indifferent to the suffering of violent criminals. If you have consciously used violence against innocent people - if you have broken into an occupied home, if you have accosted people with weapons, committed sexual violence, or given drugs to children - then I would not object to your summary execution. In my eyes, the lives of people who make such choices ar…
> I'd like to express a controversial opinion.
The opinion that follows this line is basically the fundamental guiding principle of the US's undeniably beyond broken justice system.
Outside of extremely liberal social enclaves the view that violent criminals should be locked up is probably one of the least controversial views on US criminal justice reform.
The view that violent criminals are not worth defending is so uncontroversial that even prison reform activists almost always preface their appeals with statistics about the huge number of non-violent offenders, as if to say: "yes, we at least aren't breaking the conventional view that Violent Offenders Are Bad".
> And in my eyes it is these choices which dehumanize them.
Bottom line: Does it really matter how you feel? I care about the safety of innocent people, including myself and my family. You can feel like violent prisoners are subhuman, that's fine. But insisting on institutions that net out your retribution -- even at the expense of reducing recidivism and saving future victims of violent crimes -- isn't that a tad selfish?
It's entirely consistent to both feel that violent criminals are subhuman and also realize that crafting institutions which treat them as such is net harmful to the rest of society.
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I think it's because we as people tend to speak from our experiences, and I do agree that school is more authoritarian than it should be. I'm not sure what else you can do :( it's a really big systemic issue. I think we just need more awareness, first? Social life in prison involves having "friends" who can any day decide to try and rob or fight you (both happened to me with my closest "friend"). Nobody has real frie…
> I'm not sure what else you can do :( it's a really big systemic issue. I think we just need more awareness, first? As someone who has gone through the legal system in the US and was illegally detained for activism and then later accused of false charges (with no evidence) and illegally arrested: I don't think awareness alone will do anything. Everyone knows the Police are corrupt and the city will do little to noth…
Reading stories like this just makes me angry.
In one of the largest high schools in Texas, we weren't allowed to leave campus, we couldn't even take our lunch out of the double doors and eat our sandwich outside. It's something I absolutely despise about our contemporary culture. I live in Latin America now and envy the kids for getting 45 minutes free at lunch time to hang out outside, socialize, buy from the street vendors that will gather at that time, maybe…
Anecdotally, I've heard of that more at suburban schools where you pretty much have to access and leave the campus via car. At my high school in Chicago (2003-2007, ~2,000 students) we were free to leave the campus at any time and often spent lunch at a nearby hot dog stand or sitting in the park and hanging out. The only restriction was that you had to re-enter through specific entries so they could check school IDs…
Though I don't think a parking lot traffic jam is a sufficient reason either. There are already repercussions for arriving to school late which is what prevents the morning traffic jam from being a problem. Someone shouldn't be allowed to leave at all just because they would be late if they don't come back in time to park. I don't even understand how that could sound convincing to you.
That's just the type of thinking that gives us zero tolerance policies.
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I'd like to express a controversial opinion. I am totally indifferent to the suffering of violent criminals. If you have consciously used violence against innocent people - if you have broken into an occupied home, if you have accosted people with weapons, committed sexual violence, or given drugs to children - then I would not object to your summary execution. In my eyes, the lives of people who make such choices ar…
Preface: This all seems wildly off-topic since there's absolutely nothing in throwaway998662's post to suggest that he is a violent offender. > I'd like to express a controversial opinion. The opinion that follows this line is basically the fundamental guiding principle of the US's undeniably beyond broken justice system. Outside of extremely liberal social enclaves the view that violent criminals should be locked up…
I did go on to suggest reforms and a model in Japan, which has very low crime and recidivism rates, especially when controlling for population density.
Edit: It seems we agree that the US system is broken. We just disagree on how to fix it. To elaborate, I think the main problem in the penal system is that prisoners are allowed to freely associate, share experiences, and form a culture. This should under no circumstances be permitted. It is this culture which gives people ideas about what sort of criminal they will become once they leave the system. Instead, if we do insist on giving people a second chance, they should effectively be reprogrammed. With every aspect of their routine controlled in such a manner as to produce compliant, law-abiding citizens to re-integrate into society.
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…
Prison was HELL.