[HN Gopher] Officials put the wrong man in a mental facility for...
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Officials put the wrong man in a mental facility for two years
Author : jbegley
Score : 265 points
Date : 2021-08-05 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| eth0up wrote:
| I've had the honor of knowing someone - someone rather
| extraordinary - once dubiously confined to Marcy State Hospital.
| The stories I've heard influenced a bit of feeble research on my
| part which chanced upon James Bailey Silkman, a prisoner of the
| closely related Utica Asylum. Depending on one's perception (or
| fetish) of one's domination over another, the story is a rare
| victory over such a terrible nightmare. Silkman went on, after
| his liberation from that hive of arbitrary illness, to apply his
| legal talents toward freeing others wrongfully held captive
| there.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bailey_Silkman
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed "problematic" and
| given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him
| despondent and catatonic."
|
| My best friend's father was a guard at Folsom prison. When I was
| a kid he would always remind us that the worse prisoners were the
| truly innocent ones. All the old timer guards knew which
| prisoners were innocent just based on their mannerisms.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| https://archive.is/Rg64w
| Svperstar wrote:
| My degree is in Psychology and I worked in the mental health
| field for years before switching to IT full time. The system is
| broken in many ways. Basically both Republican and Democrat
| parties fund the absolute federal bare minimums. In those jobs
| you are supposed to document every last minute of your 9/5 job
| and if you can't prove you are active 75% of the
| time("productivity rating") your ass is out of the door. My
| current IT job where I keep a business making millions of dollars
| running I don't have to justify my time at all.
|
| I'm so glad I don't work in mental health anymore. Driving people
| out of the industry is a goal of the regulations IMO.
| [deleted]
| helipad wrote:
| This is my biggest irrational fear. That one day I'll get locked
| up and everything I say and do will only convince them more that
| they're right. Jon Ronson meets Kafka.
| danesparza wrote:
| We need to take away qualified immunity (which incorrectly
| protects the police officer involved from any kind of
| prosecution).
|
| Next, the police officer needs to face charges for his role in
| this. He failed in his duty to the community.
|
| Finally, the police department needs to be held accountable for
| their role and pay damages to this man.
| pempem wrote:
| And his lawyer, the judge, the mental institution and doctors
| in it.
| dghf wrote:
| > We need to take away qualified immunity (which incorrectly
| protects the police officer involved from any kind of
| prosecution).
|
| Not a lawyer, but I thought qualified immunity gave protection
| from civil liability, not criminal.
| btilly wrote:
| Qualified immunity does only give protection from civil
| liability, not criminal.
|
| However civil lawsuits can be brought by the victim. Criminal
| lawsuits have to be brought by the state. Which usually will
| mean the District Attorney. Who normally has a close
| relationship with the police and should be assumed to be
| reluctant to bring cases against them.
|
| Therefore, in practice, civil law is the only meaningful
| remedy. So qualified immunity has been a huge civil rights
| problem since it was invented in 1982.
|
| (Not a lawyer, but I like to read. BTW it could be worse -
| look up judicial immunity some time. Corrupt judges truly
| have nothing to fear from their corruption.)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Civil is a lower bar than criminal so removing QI and and
| making the officers personally (in reality they'll all just
| buy insurance like doctors do, some do this already) is
| simply a step in the right direction (equality under law
| being said direction).
|
| If you aren't found to be on the hook by a civil court you
| basically can't be found guilty by a criminal one (barring
| very specific statutes or legal precedents that are relevant
| to the facts in question).
| papercrane wrote:
| You're talking about two different things. QI has nothing
| to do with the level of proof needed (preponderance of
| evidence vs. reasonable doubt.) Qualified Immunity only
| exists in civil litigation and has no bearing on criminal
| cases.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Correct. But if you can't even take someone to civil
| court you have no chance of criminal charges sticking
| (barring some specific statute or precedent to the
| contrary)
| papercrane wrote:
| They are completely different things.
|
| People can sue each other for things that are not crimes,
| and you can go to criminal court over things you can't be
| sued for. Qualified immunity has no bearing on criminal
| proceedings. For example, if George Floyd's estate sued
| Chauvin directly I wouldn't be surprised if they lost
| because of QI, even though Chauvin was charged and
| convicted for murder.
| derefr wrote:
| I'm less keen on prosecuting the police here; they are, in this
| case, just cogs taught to follow small parts of a very complex
| multi-person process for arresting/booking/jailing someone--a
| process where no single person has the sort of full top-down
| view that would allow them to realize that their output is
| causing a bad overall result.
|
| I'd be more keen here in prosecuting the people who _devised_
| the flowchart that the police are following, for not
| engineering it to be robust against this failure mode. We
| shouldn't expect humans to do an extra non-obvious step
| (checking the criminal's file against the fingerprints they
| took) if the flowchart doesn't require it, especially under
| time-pressure to "get the job done"; instead, we should _make_
| the flowchart require it.
|
| When you've devised a system such that the human "components"
| of your system don't have the necessary information from their
| vantage-point to correct the behaviour of the system, the
| system itself _must_ be designed to be self-correcting.
| Because, at that point, that's the only kind of correction it
| _can_ have.
|
| This is how we do modern medicine: a given doctor or nurse or
| specialist has no idea who you are or what your story is,
| outside of the small window they are told to see you in.
| They're also just cogs in their machine. But the process itself
| -- run mostly through medical charts -- drives patients toward
| the treatment they need nevertheless; and there are many checks
| and fallback cases built into both the trained human processes,
| and the automated processes, to get patients who fall through
| one crack back on track toward treatment/good health outcomes.
|
| ----------
|
| Also, a tangent re: prosecuting those responsible for
| engineering the process:
|
| Back in Ancient Greece, the Lottery system of electing a leader
| had one important feature not oft-mentioned in modern
| discourse, but which was perhaps the keystone to understanding
| the Lottery system as a whole: if the polity didn't like a
| leader's policies, they'd drag them out and lynch them (or
| whatever the Ancient Greek equivalent of lynching was.) There
| was no concept of "impeachment"; it was just a question of
| _surviving_ your term, by doing things that don't anger your
| polity too much. (And as such, probably the whole reason for
| electing a leader by sortition in the first place, would have
| been that nobody _wants_ to go into politics if you're only one
| misstep away from a lynching at all times. So you have to force
| people to do the job; and if you're forcing people to do a job
| that's net-negative for them, you should at least be fair in
| your selection process by making it random.)
|
| In modern times, capital-E Engineers already have to sign off
| on the designs that pass through their hands; and they can then
| be held criminally liable if those things fail for reasons they
| should have been able to foresee. This rarely happens, though,
| because Engineers, out of equal parts conscientiousness and
| self-interest, have built up a large body of best-practices, of
| meta rules and guidelines to follow when _defining_ domain
| rules and guidelines, that either avoid failures, or at least
| outright reject "impossible to make sound" designs.
|
| What I'm saying is: legislators and (especially) regulators
| really need to hold the burden of ultimate responsibility --
| criminal liability, even -- when a defined-by-regulation
| process fails. They should be "signing off on" processes and
| workflows they define, the same way a civil Engineer would sign
| off on a bridge design. We probably shouldn't be lynching them,
| but we should at least be taking all those civil suits over
| wrongful imprisonment, and targeting them directly at these
| policy-makers. Being a policy-maker should be a duty, not a
| privilege: something with perhaps more down-side than up-side.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" I'd be more keen here in prosecuting the people who
| devised the flowchart that the police are following, for not
| engineering it to be robust against this failure mode."_
|
| In my post above I've suggested that police and public
| officials be prosecuted but I'll nuance that by saying that
| ought to be in cases of exceptional negligence. Moreover, if
| the granularity isn't right the law wouldn't be effective,
| either it would be ignored and the status quo remain, or
| public servants would become too timid to do their work
| effectively.
|
| You are right, much of the problem lies with those hidden and
| unknown gnomes who draft the laws that politicians often
| blindly pass and also those who 'engineer' the way the police
| work (and/or the way the law is administered). As I've said
| in my post it's time these people were brought to account.
| For starters, their names ought to adorn all draft laws,
| briefing/organizational documents, etc. Unfortunately,
| there's a snowball's chance of it ever happening.
| SerLava wrote:
| ANY time a supposedly insane person claims they were
| misidentified, it should AUTOMATICALLY trigger a detailed
| investigation, and I don't care at all if that is burdensome
| to the hospitals or police.
| corndoge wrote:
| How easy it is to not care about things when they don't
| affect you.
| derefr wrote:
| But what if 100% of criminally-insane people realize the
| "trick" and claim to be misidentified? There literally
| aren't all the resources on Earth to do "detailed
| investigations" about every one of them.
|
| (To be clear, even without such a policy in place, a large
| number of criminally-insane people already do claim to be
| misidentified because "they're not John Smith, they're
| Jesus Christ!" And these people do tend to really _believe_
| that, to the point where their behaviour isn't all that
| different from someone who's been misidentified. It'd be
| very hard to define a policy that would precisely delineate
| which stories _should_ be looked into, vs. which are
| balderdash.)
|
| We need more simple automated cross-checks to decrease
| false-positive rates. We need scalable solutions.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Fingerprinting a person takes only minutes. Also, I think
| you're wildly overestimating the number of criminally-
| insane people.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > There literally aren't all the resources on Earth to do
| "detailed investigations" about every one of them.
|
| I think you're overestimating the number of people
| incarcerated for criminal insanity and underestimating
| the number of resources available.
| derefr wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the meaning of "detailed
| investigation." A single "detailed investigation" can tie
| up one or more detectives' entire careers. (If you watch
| a lot of true-crime, there's frequent mentions of how the
| case was solved because one detective pursued the same
| cold case, day-in, day-out, for literal decades, as their
| _only_ case.)
|
| But maybe the GP meant a _not_ -so-detailed
| investigation. A regular investigation, per se. A
| _cursory_ investigation, even.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I assumed GP meant the amount of investigation that would
| have been necessary to exonerate the subject of this
| story (which would have been less than a security-
| clearance-style background check).
|
| ... but we have the resources to do a security-clearance-
| style background check on every individual that is
| incarcerated against their will for reason of mental
| illness. I'd consider that sufficient.
| Verdex wrote:
| > There literally aren't all the resources on Earth to do
| "detailed investigations" about every one of them.
|
| If the state (or other organization) doesn't have enough
| resources to do a detailed investigation, then it should
| not be taking away freedoms for whomever it is unable to
| perform the detailed investigation for.
| rebuilder wrote:
| I would worry that penalising policy makers would lead to a
| curtailing of the power of the political system, and a
| corresponding transfer of power to private interests without
| popular oversight.
|
| I'd expect a system where people are forced into roles of
| political power and punished for failing to perform to
| degenerate into a bunch of corrupt policymakers doing what
| their rich patrons tell them to, in exchange for protection
| and wealth.
| Clubber wrote:
| >I'm less keen on prosecuting the police here
|
| It is the police officer's job and duty to do the
| investigation. He was negligent at that duty to the point of
| costing someone dearly. He should be prosecuted. What if a
| truck driver was negligent in driving, causing someone to
| spend 2 years in the hospital, wouldn't they be worthy of
| prosecution?
| voz_ wrote:
| Living in California, you wouldn't know we had mental
| facilities...
| z3t4 wrote:
| Sometimes there is a trouble maker that only make petty crimes.
| Never anything serious enough for jail time, just someone very
| annoying. And when he/she get sent away for something they did
| not do, noone will complain. Not saying he was that guy, but it
| happens frequently.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Kafkaesque.
| openasocket wrote:
| I'm surprised no one is bringing up sanctions for the
| psychologists involved. In the US legal system, you can be found
| unfit to stand trial, as this man was. Which means you are
| involuntarily committed to a mental facility and treated until
| you are deemed fit to stand trial. This is meant to prevent the
| state from prosecuting someone completely incapable of
| understanding what is going on and defending themselves. As a
| result, being found fit to stand trial is a very low bar to
| reach. It essentially means you know what a judge is, what a jury
| is, what a lawyer is, and what you are being charged with. You
| can be found fit to stand trial even with fairly serious
| delusions. I'm shocked he was considered unfit to stand trial
| simply because he claimed to be a different person.
| fencepost wrote:
| If he has an attorney interested he might be able to pursue
| malpractice claims, particularly considering that they
| medicated him against his will.
| gowld wrote:
| How would "sent to jail" (with likely eve _more_ abusive
| "mental health care" for "delusions") be any better than "sent
| to hospital"
| lozenge wrote:
| Was it the drugs that made him genuinely unfit to stand trial?
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| The judge, the doctors, and everyone else that failed to do even
| the most basic searches or confirmations of anyone's identity
| should be put in jail in this case.
|
| I'm also surprised this happened in Hawaii. Are they so overrun
| with crime and cases that they couldn't handle doing their most
| basic duties to confirm identities? Not that they would have any
| excuse.
| unanswered wrote:
| > The judge, the doctors, and everyone else that failed to do
| even the most basic searches or confirmations of anyone's
| identity should be put in jail in this case.
|
| No, they should be put in mental institutions under the name
| Castleberry with strict instructions to the medical staff that
| they are delusional and misstating their own identity.
| charles_f wrote:
| > a "secret meeting" followed. There is no court record of that
| meeting, which Brown said may have been because officials wanted
| to avoid public embarrassment.
|
| And because we surely don't want to be embarrassed, everything
| will be done to forget about it, no change will be made to the
| process, no consequence or probation for the judge or any of the
| doctors.
|
| Without admission of guilt there can be no remission, but that,
| the justice system seems to believe true only for criminals.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I thought this stuff stopped happening in the 1960s.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| Surely this happened in some third world country. right ? No. It
| happened in Hawaii. And the actual person was already in prison
| in Alaska.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| For anyone saying "the system is broken" a challenge:
|
| Provide a design for some system that is _not_ broken and never
| will be. You can 't stop at "at least fix it so this doesn't
| happen."
|
| The most important question for you is: how will this system be
| staffed? Can non-college-educated people be hired? Will it be
| unionized? How much will the staff be paid, and can you attract
| the sort of staff you want with that salary? Or will you get TSA-
| level people?
|
| How will disputes be adjudicated? Via civil lawsuits, arbitration
| boards, or what?
|
| Will the heads of it be elected or appointed?
|
| The point of this is that "the system" doesn't exist as pages in
| a textbook. It also doesn't exist in Denmark. It exists in the
| real US. Some systems work out better than others, but they all
| bear the thumbprints of actual hands.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >Some systems work out better than others, but they all bear
| the thumbprints of actual hands.
|
| Yep, ultimately any system will be only as good as the people
| manning it. No amount or reworking a "system" will help it
| beyond a point.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| No one needs all of this. The man's fingerprints didn't match
| and it would have been easy to verify. They chose not to.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| OK. So if he gets paid a very large cash settlement, and
| maybe the people responsible for his case are disciplined or
| fired or sent to jail, then that solves the problem?
|
| Or are you asking for something more general?
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "The system should be better" can coexist with "the system
| cannot be perfect".
| aaron-santos wrote:
| As much as it's nice to provide a solution along with evidence
| that something's broken, it isn't a requirement. Knowing
| something is broken is a different skill than fixing it. It's
| the reason we have mechanics, doctors, and QA to name a few.
| I'm willing to bet there are much more socio-political creative
| types that can imagine systems much better than I can. After
| all, I'm just a layperson in that domain. Challenging lay
| people is exactly as absurd as challenging them to come up with
| a fix for their join pain before consulting a doctor.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| No, actually, it isn't. It's more like "I assert that my
| joint was badly designed by evolution and a competent human
| could make it better" without having any actual ideas _how_
| it might be better.
|
| Your examples are also flawed. Mechanics and doctors fix
| _one_ instance of a system. They are not charged with fixing
| all of them.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Knowing something is broken is a different skill than
| fixing it._
|
| This is a fair point. But I think many people saying "the
| system is broken" implicitly or explicitly advocate a fix by
| throwing out the entire system.
|
| Those people often don't seem to realize that "no system" is
| a system too, and you need to compare that system's emergent
| behavior to the current system before you can make a wise
| choice.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Exactly. It's fair to propose minor tweaks to a system
| while (implicitly) admitting that it's fine otherwise.
|
| It's quite something else to say "the system is broken"
| while having no idea whatsoever how some new system would
| avoid all those problems.
| JackFr wrote:
| Lawyers of HN, what is the standard to establish a person is who
| they say are (or who the police say they are?). How is it
| possible that this guy wouldn't be able to cash a check or get a
| document notarized yet is jailed on the basis of one guy going
| "yeah, that's him."
| CivBase wrote:
| > For speaking out, Spriestersbach was deemed "problematic" and
| given antipsychotic medications, including Haldol, which made him
| despondent and catatonic.
|
| > The doctor concluded the amount of psychiatric medications he
| was on was "well beyond therapeutic levels, which is why he was
| acting catatonic and his expressions vacant," Dumas-Griffith said
| in a sworn statement to the court.
|
| > Spriestersbach was prescribed powerful drugs, the doctor added,
| in "an effort to make him 'competent' when in reality he had
| always been competent."
|
| This may be a bit of a tangent, but the willingness of many
| medical professionals to prescribe mentally altering drugs is
| extremely alarming to me and it only seems to be getting worse.
| Even outside the prison system it seems trivial to convince a
| doctor you have a mental disorder - especially if you're
| convinced of it yourself. I know several people who went through
| hell because they were misdiagnosed with a mental disorder or
| prescribed far more than what was appropriate. Pills are such a
| convenient solution for everyone involved; it's easy to see why
| they're abused. Of course I recognize that many people actually
| do suffer from such disorders and I want them to receive whatever
| treatment they need, but it's important to remember mentally
| altering drugs are very dangerous and their use should not be
| taken lightly.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _Nevertheless, the officer insisted that Spriestersbach was
| actually Castleberry and took him to jail. He was fingerprinted
| and had his photo taken, generating records that could have been
| used to prove he wasn't Castleberry, the Innocence Project
| asserts._
|
| It's beyond me how anyone has one iota of faith in the US
| judicial system anymore.
| slackfan wrote:
| This could have happened anywhere in the world, the US is
| hardly unique.
| pempem wrote:
| Then really its a global problem we need to figure out.
|
| Every day on HN we have debates about the trading of privacy
| for data for a more secure world. This is an indication that
| our efforts are broken, because people. But also that those
| people held a lot of different roles, in a diversity of
| offices across our judicial system.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The US is definitely unique in that it confines the largest
| number people against their will in the world, in terms of
| both per capita and raw population numbers. That context
| cannot be lost when examining the cruelty of the system. It's
| obviously at an extreme end of the spectrum, so treating it
| like "any other country" doesn't hold up.
|
| The system is designed to target and exploit vulnerable, poor
| people and turn them into productive assets. Once it has
| them, getting them out can be incredibly difficult because
| they become so profitable. Our penal system is not designed
| for rehabilitation but for profit generation.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| How can you possibly make such a claim with any supporting
| evidence that it could be "anywhere"?
|
| EDIT: Confused "anywhere" with "everywhere". I'll take my F
| in logic today and show myself out.
| sophacles wrote:
| Actually, I think your doubt needs some sources. The
| foundational principle is that there exists at least one
| of:
|
| * a human that has never once made any mistake whatsoever
|
| * a system composed of humans who are mistake capable but
| the system itself actually makes no mistakes.
|
| Such a thing seems impossible - if you can point to the
| existence of such a thing, your doubt is worth
| entertaining, otherwise it's just contrarianism.
| TheFreim wrote:
| Does someone need to provide a source proving that mistakes
| happen outside the United States?
| lozenge wrote:
| Here's one (sort of) from the UK.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
|
| Hundreds jailed or fined due to a faulty computer system
| blaming them - no other evidence - Post Office covered it up
| repeatedly - victims still not fully compensated.
| DecoPerson wrote:
| I have faith in a situation like this being far less likely
| to occur in Australia.
| satori99 wrote:
| Don't be too sure. Very similar things have happened in
| Australia before, and no doubt will again
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-
| th...
|
| There isn't a large Innocence Project (though a small one
| has popped up and should be supported) in Australia and
| there are overzealous prosecutors in Australia, just as in
| a lot of places (though the competition in America seems to
| be exceptionally strong). Faith is nice and all, but it
| doesn't free the innocent. There's a link to support
| Australia's innocence project, maybe tithe.
| wil421 wrote:
| Here you go. IIRC Australia hasn't been side kind to it's
| Indigenous population.
|
| https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-
| impris...
| zepto wrote:
| Why? I see no reason to believe Australia's social problems
| aren't as bad as as the US.
| drno123 wrote:
| With the current lockdown and incoming martial law, it
| seems that you already live in a dystopian universe.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| It's not yet as bad but it's becoming more and more like
| the US every day. Australian politicians rarely create
| original law, they either ape laws from elsewhere or are
| forced into copying laws from the country they're trying to
| do trade deals with. Thus Australian law is becoming more
| and more like that of the US.
|
| For that matter, things won't improve in any anglophone
| country until they ditch the adversarial system for the
| inquisitorial one that has a better chance of getting to
| the truth of a case. But don't hold your breath, that won't
| happen anytime soon.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Here's, among others, one of the absolutely wild examples
| from Canada: https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/
| en_CA/Resear...
|
| Multiple people convicted by evidence provided by a quack of
| a doctor used as an Expert Witness by the crown.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Therefore what? Bad thing happens in the US, yes that's true,
| but well, that same bad thing happens in other places too, so
| therefore.... what?
| staticman2 wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, i find this story outrageous, but
| whether our system is doing comparatively well or
| comparatively poor seems like useful empirical information.
|
| For one thing, if another country handles things better,
| that shows humans are capable of improving their system.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Ah yes, that does help. Too often I see people make
| statements like that and it just comes across as
| fatalistic, like an attempt to dissipate the will of
| others to do anything about it at all.
|
| I wonder what the other countries are that do better, and
| what they do differently. Maybe there should be a
| mandated evidence review every x years, irrespective of
| sentence.
| mucholove wrote:
| I love this attitude. In life, so many people are happy to
| reference themselves to a very poor standard. For mang
| Dominicans, it's OK in the case of Dominican Republic to be
| the third country in Latin America for so many statistic--
| automobile accidents, coronavirus deaths, you name it. This
| is unacceptable to me. Pick the highest bar--and if the
| highest bar isn't good enough--set a new standard.
|
| Sure, we will have failures--but we need to push the
| envelope and do "good" not "better than worse".
| jimothyjames wrote:
| because it's the only one we got
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN
| can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work.
|
| The justice system mostly works (relative to what its designed
| to do and the system it evolved out of, which you might both
| disagree with, but let's not complicate this). By the nature of
| what it handles (humans) and what you are (human) it will look
| abhorrently cruel when it fails. And, as with any system, it
| will definitely continue to fail as long as it is in place.
|
| Assessing an acceptable failure rate is kinda hard - but
| realistically there has to be one or you will just have to do
| without any system at all.
|
| So, more interestingly, the thing to look out for is whether a)
| there are institutions that report on system failures and b) we
| learn from those failures and correct them _at all_. As far as
| I can tell that generally happens in democratic countries.
|
| The next thing to look at is the speed in which we do those
| corrections. Could they be quicker? Sure. However, it seems
| like democracies are a tad slow about everything to people
| everywhere. Or, put differently, we are all wired a little bit
| too impatiently for how our democracies are currently designed.
|
| I feel that's good thing, constantly scrutinising our systems,
| keeping them on their toes and improving as we go.
| bendbro wrote:
| > It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang
| around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems
| work
|
| I think this is my largest hatred. People's first action
| after something bad happens is not to discover why it
| happened, but rather to express outrage that it happened. In
| my ideal society they would be excluded.
| manmal wrote:
| Get ready to exclude 90% or so of the general population
| then?
| mLuby wrote:
| Outrage is fine as a motivator if it leads to
| investigation, and that investigation may lead to action.
|
| What's not okay is skipping the investigation step, to jump
| straight from outrage to action.
| RIMR wrote:
| They failed him repeatedly. This wasn't a one-time screwup,
| this was a systemic failure across multiple organizations.
|
| And when they realized they had wronged this man, they did
| whatever they could to sweep it under the rug and avoid
| consequences, or reparations for their actions.
|
| The system doesn't just "look abhorrently cruel", it IS
| abhorrently cruel, and this incident is a clear example of
| that.
| majormajor wrote:
| So let's look at this. There were people who screwed up.
| Then they covered it up.
|
| The key question is "what sort of system makes it harder to
| cover things up?" because the people element of people not
| wanting to get in trouble or have their mistakes visible
| isn't going to go anywhere.
|
| You also need to have the non-mistake, non-cruel cases
| visible, to see if things are changing for the better or
| worse, rate-wise.
|
| A "less cruel" system isn't a particularly specific or
| well-defined thing to strive for if it's not specifically
| trying to address those human failings, since people can
| still be cruel.
| satellite2 wrote:
| I assume the shame would be proportional to the cruelty
| inflicted to the wrongly incarcerated, and in the US
| public figures love to show how cruel they are with
| deviant people.
| Retric wrote:
| The US uniquely shields officials in these cases which
| promotes coverups. That's a specific, systematic, and
| correctable failing of the US justice system not simply
| normal human issues.
|
| How hard it is for the coverup to work is largely
| irrelevant IMO.
| pas wrote:
| Not uniquely. It's not uncommon for people in official
| capacity to have immunity from lawsuits relating to their
| work.
| Retric wrote:
| Usually it's protection from the initial mistake not the
| coverup, the US protects both.
|
| Though I am interested if you have some other examples.
| 8note wrote:
| Wouldn't a lack of shield promote coverups?
|
| The only loss for the officials here is embarassment
| Retric wrote:
| You can shield people from a mistake without also
| shielding them from a coverup.
| majormajor wrote:
| What's unique about it?
|
| The incentive also seems backward here: if there's a
| shield protecting you even in case of screwup, you are
| incentivized to cover things up less than otherwise.
|
| Protection from initial mistakes, like "blame free
| retros," is generally heralded as a way to promote fixing
| root causes and reduce political coverups.
| Retric wrote:
| Protecting an initial screwup is fine, protecting the
| _coverup_ is what I take issue with.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| We don't have a US justice system.
|
| We have a US legal system.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Or a "punishment" system, given the elected sheriff/DA
| motivation to be "tough on crime".
| eptcyka wrote:
| Maybe a better fix would to make admitting and fixing
| mistakes was cheap and relatively cheerful?
| rabboRubble wrote:
| the issue for me isn't that a mistake was made, the issue is
| that the parties responsible for the mistake conspired in
| secret without official record to cover up their error, and
| left the man dumped in a homeless shelter with fifty cents.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Agreed. What happened here is absolutely horrific.
| pas wrote:
| This happens "all the time". Taking responsibility is not
| 'in vogue' nowadays. (Prime examples are the lasts
| president. Obama was big on cracking down on
| whistleblowers. Orange explicitly claimed many times that
| managing stuff is not his responsibility, he has people for
| that.)
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around
| HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work.
|
| It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his cheap internet virtue points depend on his not
| understanding it.
| pstuart wrote:
| It's a legal system, not a justice system.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| As one is taught in philosophy 101 the Law and Justice are
| _not_ the same and it 's always been thus.
|
| One way of at least improving the situation would be for laws
| that would allow for the victim to sue both the State and
| public officials separately. If police and other public
| servants could not hide behind the protection of State and
| could easily be sued for negligence then they'd be much more
| diligent. It wouldn't make things perfect but it'd only take
| a few instances of public servants finding themselves out of
| pocket to the tune of their life savings for things to
| improve significantly for the better.
|
| There's no doubt that democracy is badly impacted by such
| events, and it's little wonder that people continue to lose
| faith in their governance whenever this happens. Anyway, I
| hope some smart lawyer will make the State pay very early for
| its irresponsible and horrendous error and that
| Spriestersbach is awarded the large compensation that he
| deserves.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that
| statement.
|
| I think justice should be considered the entire purpose of a
| legal system. And if it isn't working, it should be fixed.
|
| Accountability sounds like a good place to start. If an
| official causes harm to another person through negligence or
| otherwise they should be held accountable to the same
| standards as anyone else.
| SerLava wrote:
| They're just saying our legal system doesn't try to
| consistently create justice.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it).
|
| ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons.
| One of the most common being that it's not always
| possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts
| have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost
| will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without
| constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions
| of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in
| emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even
| logically possible to grant all parties justice.
|
| The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal
| system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of
| that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a
| measurable concept.
| samatman wrote:
| > _It definintely tries (that 's sort of the point of
| it)_
|
| This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but
| in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up.
|
| To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the
| Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested
| in justice.
|
| It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court
| system align with justice more than accidentally. As in,
| sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of
| the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and
| present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very
| occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and
| even more occasionally than that their lives aren't
| ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look
| good as well.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I think it's more valid than an argument from definition.
| At its most cynical, a legal system is at least an
| _attempt_ to disguise brute power as reason. So even then
| there 's an allowance that reason and fairness should
| have precedence over brute power - they just try to dress
| it up. So if that concept of reason and fairness being
| important didn't exist, they would just do away with the
| song and dance.
| munificent wrote:
| _> the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn 't at all
| interested in justice._
|
| And, to play Devil's advocate, most of those in power
| under Stalin would likely have claimed and honestly
| believed that it _was_ a justice system and that it was
| using its might for the greater good.
|
| Outright sociopaths who simply don't care about harm are
| rare. When systems cause more harm than good, it's
| usually because well-intentioned participants fall prey
| to other human flaws:
|
| * Dehumanizing and believing that some groups are simply
| less worthy of care than others.
|
| * Biased data or beliefs about who is harmed and who is
| helped.
|
| * Principle-agent problems where the ones making the
| decisions don't see or own the consequences of them.
|
| * Emergent properties where no individual member of the
| system wants a result, but the system as a whole ends up
| producing it because of its structure. Sort of the
| beauracratic equivalent of crowd crush.
|
| The reason I'm pointing this out is because I think when
| _non_ -totalitarian systems fail to help, it's usually
| for the same reasons. It's not because of psychopathic
| monsters. It's mostly that primate brains were never
| designed to operate at the organizational and power scale
| we have created. The fact that it works at all is a
| miracle.
| pjbeam wrote:
| I think that's the point of the above comment.
| Clubber wrote:
| The worst part is it took 2 years and outside lawyers to
| rectify the situation. It's as if the justice system doesn't
| even care if it gets it right or wrong, it's just a mindless
| machine. "I don't care, not my job."
| tartoran wrote:
| This could be fixed with punishment for the responsible
| party.
| smachiz wrote:
| If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was
| freed because one of the doctors in the mental facility (who
| originally declared him incompetent) had a change of opinion
| and actually tried to verify his claims and realized he was
| telling the truth.
|
| The innocence project is just trying to clear his name, after
| he went to live with his sister in Vermont.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Mostly because these stories are incredibly rare. The Innocence
| Project does excellent work to try and prevent people like this
| from falling through the cracks.
| Causality1 wrote:
| The stories are rare. We don't know how rare the events are.
| What percentage of people do the Innocence Project manage to
| review? It's certainly not everyone.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Absolutely not. The high imprisonment rate and the number
| of people imprisoned without a process is a clear symptom.
| KerryJones wrote:
| There are organizations dedicated to handling the repeated
| abuse of mental health facilities in similar ways here -- not
| the legal aspect, but the mental health. "Incredibly rare"
| feels like it's playing into the narrative of "oops, this is
| rare".
|
| So, I would argue, "one of many":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
| dehrmann wrote:
| And if everyone who dropped the ball on this got a year in
| prison for it, they'd be even more rare.
| mekoka wrote:
| Once you start punishing players for dropping the ball, the
| game becomes to not receive the pass.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| We never seem to have this problem for any field other
| than law enforcement or military. In other professions,
| if you mess up aggressively, there are repercussions
| professionally.
| luckylion wrote:
| There are? Like when Goldman Sachs needed a bailout ...
| and then used half of it to pay bonuses to their execs
| that had gotten them into the mess in the first place? Or
| politicians mismanaging things, only to be re-elected or,
| worst case, switch to a cushy job on the board of some
| corporation?
|
| I'm not sure there are that many professions where you
| get exiled or go to jail for failure.
| slapfrog wrote:
| If doctors or lawyers fuck up bad enough, losing their
| license is one possible, if rare, outcome. Those
| professions are still very popular.
| pempem wrote:
| I hear you but I also feel like this is already
| happening. Not only did everyone in this chain, for 2
| years, say "its not my problem, I'll push it forward",
| when it had to be reviewed they did it secretly without
| recompense for the harm caused.
|
| They received the pass and then pretended it never
| happened
| toiletaccount wrote:
| thats a good way to gum up the system so nothing ever gets
| done.
| gowld wrote:
| Then people will be empowered to enforce community
| standards instead of being held back by a State force
| that doesn't do its job but prevents them from doing
| theirs.
| vmception wrote:
| Although this _could_ happen elsewhere in the US, as it has
| before, people should really take a closer look at Hawaii. The
| standards of legal review are primitive, along side many other
| administrative aspects, no matter how much residents will try to
| convince you otherwise. One should also not discount prejudice as
| a factor here in the treatment, specifically towards the dominant
| groups from US /Asia mainlands.
| mabbo wrote:
| This entire story is so crazy it sounds like it could only be
| fiction.
|
| Actually, this would make an incredible plot for an episode of
| 'Law and Order' or whatever today's clone of that show is.
|
| "But how could the murder weapon have Castleberry's fingerprints
| on it when we know he's been in a psychiatric hospital for the
| last 2 years?"
|
| "Maybe he snuck out, and in his psychotic state killed someone.
| He wouldn't be criminally culpable, but the hospital might be."
|
| "What, then he crossed the entire city undetected, killed the
| victim, and got back into the hospital all without being noticed?
| I don't buy it. And besides, he's so doped up on that Haldol
| stuff, he doesn't even know his own name. He was catatonic when
| saw him."
| KerryJones wrote:
| I think these things happen more frequently than we like to
| imagine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
| tallies wrote:
| Similar to the plot of the Swedish film 'The Night Visitor'
| with Max von Sydow
| macintux wrote:
| Kevin Strickland has been in prison for _43 years_ for a crime he
| didn't commit. Our justice system is simply broken.
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/man-imprisoned-43-years-for-tr...
| tines wrote:
| I don't think individual cases like these prove anything about
| the American justice system at large. In any system run by
| humans that is large enough, there will be mistakes or abuses
| committed by individuals or small groups, but this doesn't make
| any strong implications about the design of the system overall.
|
| (Of course, it may really be broken like you're saying, it's
| just that I don't think a few cases like these prove it.)
| elliekelly wrote:
| Our "justice" system was arguably designed to allow _some_
| guilty people go free in order to prevent innocent people
| from wrongfully being robbed of their liberty.
| tines wrote:
| Sure, but this doesn't impact my point, which is that
| relatively few mistakes don't impugn the design system.
| Other things might impugn it, but a few mistakes don't,
| that's all I'm saying.
| SerLava wrote:
| You're right that a few mistakes wouldn't impugn the
| design of the system, but in this case there is no
| ambiguity- the US justice system is intentionally evil.
| tines wrote:
| I wasn't arguing that there is ambiguity. Not sure how
| many times I have to say that in this thread.
| ursugardaddy wrote:
| that's what they teach, in reality it's a bit different
| pempem wrote:
| (Unless you're the one robbed of your 43 years or 2 years of
| life while continuously claiming - correctly - your
| innocence).
|
| Its beyond Kafkaesque.
| tines wrote:
| So a system has to be perfect or else it is Kafkaesque?
| Isn't there a gradient between them?
| SerLava wrote:
| You're the only one inventing a false binary. The US
| legal system locks up more people than any country on
| earth, and the majority of its prisoners did not do
| anything morally wrong. Most of them didn't even go to
| trial, and a huge number have not even been charged.
|
| It is so blatantly corrupt and psychotic a system, it's
| quite honestly ignorant to even compare it to any notion
| of "perfect".
|
| "Kafkaesque" is going easy on it. It's objectively the
| extension of chattel slavery in this country. It's a
| crime against humanity.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > the majority of its prisoners did not do anything
| morally wrong
|
| Are you suggesting that the prisoners who did nothing
| morally wrong are the ones convicted of drug-related
| offenses?
|
| Honestly, while the fraction is large, it hardly looks
| like a majority (1 in 5 apparently):
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
|
| And it is not broken down to users vs dealers. The former
| may have a claim to having done nothing morally wrong,
| but the latter certainly do not.
|
| > Most of them didn't even go to trial
|
| This is arguably a problem, but not unique to the US.
| Other places also do a majority of convictions via plea
| bargain:
| https://www.economist.com/international/2017/11/09/the-
| troub...
| tines wrote:
| Again, I'm not arguing that the system isn't broken or
| defending it in any way, I'm only saying that the
| original post didn't offer evidence in that direction.
| The things you're talking about may indeed be evidence,
| but they're not what I was talking about.
| macintux wrote:
| The evidence is not exactly in short supply, but I was
| not writing an essay intending to prove my case beyond a
| reasonable doubt.
| vajrabum wrote:
| What do you mean that the US legal systems has locked up
| a huge number that have not even been charged? That
| doesn't pass the sniff test. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting
| what you're saying.
| Clubber wrote:
| Most cases are pled out of court. So the dilemma is you
| are innocent, the prosecutor is asking 20 years for the
| crime you didn't commit. If you plea guilty to the crime
| you didn't commit, you get 5 years. Your public defender
| probably has 40 other ongoing cases, so he is an expert
| at plea deals but who knows about his trial skills. He
| recommends you take the plea deal. Do you trust the jury
| to find you rightfully innocent?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| The radically disproportionate ratio of blacks in prison vs
| whites in prison compared to their population percentage
| would like to have a word with you.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-g...
| exolymph wrote:
| There are more black criminals (who get caught, insert
| caveat about financial crime here). _Why_ is a contentious
| question, personally I think economics and culture pretty
| much explain it, and those aren 't easy things to change
| overnight.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| There is also a radically disproportionate amount of men
| imprisoned compared to their population percentage. Does
| this indicate the legal system is biased against men?
| tines wrote:
| I'd say that the laws are mostly fair, but the enforcement
| isn't. The fact you cite is an indictment of the people in
| charge, not of the system (which allows those people to be
| replaced by voting).
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > I'd say that the laws are mostly fair, but the
| enforcement isn't.
|
| Yes, exactly.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Correlation is not causation.
|
| This unfortunately demonstrates a common misunderstanding
| of how to interpret data; if there are more left-handed
| people compared to the general population in prison, does
| it mean that the justice system is biased against people
| who are left-handed?
|
| That may still be true, but you simply cannot draw a
| correct conclusion without additional data along a
| different axis.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > does it mean that the justice system is biased against
| people who are left-handed?
|
| Yes. That is literally the definition of a statistical
| bias.
|
| From wikipedia:
|
| Statistical bias is a feature of a statistical technique
| or of its results whereby the expected value of the
| results differs from the true underlying quantitative
| parameter being estimated.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| You are misinterpreting a small slice of the data,
| perhaps deliberately, or perhaps based on your biases
| based on things you are certain are true, but might not
| actually be true.
|
| There are a number of possibilities aside from the
| justice system being biased against these particular
| left-handed defendants. Note that the lefties still might
| be biased against within the justice system, but the
| incarceration statistic alone is not enough to prove that
| conclusion.
|
| Here's a couple of possibilities:
|
| 1) the left-handed people are more likely to be caught,
| even though both right- and left- handed people are
| equally effective at committing crimes. It's even
| possible that right-handed are even MORE effective at
| committing crimes, but perhaps right-handed people can
| escape the scene faster than left-handed people.
|
| 2) even if enforcement was perfectly equal and without
| any bias in the justice system at all, left-handed people
| might come from a location or environment that offers an
| opportunity to commit crimes more often than the general
| population.
|
| There are other possibilities, but the data that you have
| shared, even if it had perfect accuracy and precision,
| doesn't actually prove causality. It doesn't even come
| close, except to uncritical journalists who don't really
| understand data science or researchers who let their own
| agenda or biases drive their science.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwaway8582 wrote:
| There's also a higher percentage of whites vs Asians in
| prison, and of men vs women. I guess that proves the
| justice system is biased against white men.
| yardie wrote:
| If it was an isolated incident, mistake, or abuse surely the
| powers that be would want it corrected immediately when
| brought to light?
|
| Well, look here [0], it isn't a priority. The people in
| charge of the system have no interest in fixing anything.
|
| [0] https://www.chicagotribune.com/midwest/ct-aud-nw-
| missouri-go...
| tines wrote:
| I agree, that is pretty terrible. But the system is
| designed so that this guy can be voted out. Again, I'd say
| it's the people, not the design of the system, that is the
| problem.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| The design of the system allows people to be lax and make
| mistakes, the system could be designed with more
| accountability. However, people designed the system and
| people make mistakes
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| And another flaw in the system highlighted by this case,
|
| >If Strickland is released, he will not be eligible for
| compensation from the state. Missouri compensates only
| inmates who are exonerated through DNA evidence
|
| It's also worth noting that despite this issue not being a
| priority for the governor of missouri, he did find the time
| to pardon two individuals fined after pleading guilty over
| pointing firearms at protestors from their property.[0]
|
| [0]https://www.khou.com/article/news/politics/gov-parson-
| pardon...
| fencepost wrote:
| It really does seem that there should be mandatory
| minimums for compensation, at least in cases involving
| prosecutorial misconduct.
|
| The math for a bare minimum amount should be easy: How
| much would a person with that skill level have made hired
| into a position at the prosecutor's office in the year of
| imprisonment? Now run that out for the duration of
| imprisonment, including generous allowances for overtime,
| raises, promotions, etc. using percentages taken directly
| from the salary histories of the office involved.
|
| This doesn't mean the money has to come out of the budget
| of the prosecutor's office, this is just a way to address
| arguments over "How much is fair? That's too generous!
| That's too cheap!" If the situation is such that the
| minimum amount seems unacceptably low, judges or juries
| can depart upward. If everyone agrees that the minimum is
| too high, that's easy to address as well - go claw back
| some of the overly-generous salaries paid to people in
| the prosecutor's office, then adjust the calculation
| using the new numbers.
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| The US has more people in in prison than anywhere in the
| world. It is broken.
| plibither8 wrote:
| > _That led the state hospital's attorney to have a police
| detective take Spriestersbach's fingerprints. They didn't match
| the ones they had on file for Castleberry. Officials also
| compared photos of the two men -- again, not a match._
|
| This is more than infuriating, that in the two years that
| Spriestersbach was wrongfully held, they never thought of
| matching fingerprints, or even _photos_? IANAL but the lack of
| such a basic level of background check like this is criminal.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Kind of thing that happens when you let people do what they
| want without reprecussions.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| This is also peculiar because they could have rubbed his nose
| in it after hearing him saying he was the wrong guy for the
| hundredth time with, "See this photo, this is you!" "Oh, wait.
| Shit!"
|
| I'm guessing this did occur at some point behind the scenes and
| it caused them to cover it up even more.
| opdahl wrote:
| The last line in this article is the most insane one of them all.
|
| > ... Bento, who did not respond to a request for comment, said
| officials in that office had instructed him not to hand over any
| documents related to Castleberry's 2006 drug case, including all
| records filed after May 2017 that actually pertained to
| Spriestersbach.
|
| > Spriestersbach was not entitled to the documents, officials
| said.
|
| > _The reason: He was not the defendant in that case. He was not
| Thomas Castleberry._
|
| They are saying he is not allowed to get the documents for the
| case _which he was the main suspect and subsequently hospitalized
| for_ since the documents for the case is for the other person.
| Even though it happened to him and not the other person. I 'm
| dumbfounded.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I had a Verizon identity theft issue a year ago, where someone
| on the other side of the country opened a wireless account at a
| rural Walmart store.
|
| The number of hoops VZW made me jump through was stupefying.
| Multiple notarized documents, utility bills, property tax
| records, as well as the police report.
|
| And then they said "Our initial review says that the account
| stands as-is, that we are satisfied that it was in fact you
| that opened the accounts, based on the documentation you
| provided, and the documentation that was provided on account
| opening".
|
| Great (not really), I say, in that case, "I want to see the
| documentation 'I' used to open the account."
|
| "We can't do that, for customer privacy reasons."
|
| "You just told me that you determined -I- am the customer. Are
| you telling me it's a breach of my privacy to supply documents
| you've stated on the record -I- supplied you, to me?!?"
|
| "Well, you may not have opened the account..."
|
| Apparently, Schrodinger's cell phone account. Mine when they
| need the bill paid or sent to collections, and "possibly not
| mine" when it comes to them revealing what crap they accepted
| in order to open the account in the first place.
|
| It finally got sorted out, but took a lot more back and forth.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The most mind-boggling thing here is that they are the ones
| that screwed up by opening the account with bad information,
| but they're making it look like it's your problem to prove to
| them that they screwed up, and they are surely not going to
| make it easy to you to clean up their screw-up.
| scruple wrote:
| I experienced identity theft with Verizon, too. Way back in
| 2000. It was taken care of almost immediately with a single
| phone call. I had to mail in some proof of identity
| (photocopy of my water bill, IIRC) to verify that I did not
| in fact live in whatever place the account had been opened
| and that was that.
|
| I get the sense that a lot of things that used to be easy to
| resolve, easy to deal with, easy in general, are actually
| quite painful and difficult today.
| cududa wrote:
| Wait to have your mind blown further. In Missouri if you're
| exonerated for a crime via someone else pleading guilty, DNA,
| etc and have used up all your appeals you still have to serve
| out your sentence, even if it's life in prison
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-wrongly-convicted-peopl...
| plutonorm wrote:
| Humans deserve to go extinct.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| We probably will. Obviously we don't always act in the most
| logical fashion. Long term, that's not a good trait.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Humans as a species have had the best track record for
| acting in a logical fashion on earth. Logic has it's
| limits.
| bserge wrote:
| Tbf, every major conflict the warmongers seem to be dying
| off.
|
| Just a few hundred years ago people were burned at the
| stake, impaled, cut open alive in front of a crowd.
|
| Every war kills off the most violent and aggressive. The
| next big one should wipe a lot of them.
|
| Then again, push someone hard enough and they'll turn
| against you. Don't even need violence and death, a
| miserable existence in fear and doubt can be a way better
| punishment. The sociopathic rich prove it works.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Nobody thinks that, not even you.
| javiramos wrote:
| Heartbreaking. The US criminal justice system is a shame.
| oblio wrote:
| I don't think it's a shame. It's intentional.
|
| Considering the fact that the US prison population is
| heavily skewed in one direction, that the US has the
| highest per capita prison population, that prison
| populations are used as forced labor, I'm quite convinced
| it's intentional. The small number of people that are
| accidentally targeted unintentionally are just collateral
| damage nobody really cares about.
| cronix wrote:
| > that prison populations are used as forced labor
|
| I was recently reminded of this due to a strange story
| having to do with covid and a shortage of license plates
| in Washington state, due to "social distancing" in the
| DOC. So that state contracted with another state whose
| prisoners were still incarcerated and still hard at work
| making license plates.
|
| > The DOC has experienced issues since last summer, when
| compliance with social-distancing requirements slowed
| production, according to spokesperson Rachel Ericson. To
| address the issue, the agency has increased staffing and
| started outsourcing some production on July 31.
|
| > License plates first began to be manufactured by
| individuals incarcerated at the Washington State
| Penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1923. It's now one of 43
| prison factories around the country that produce plates
| for 40 states and the federal government.
|
| Original: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
| news/washington-state-g...
|
| Outline (no paywall): https://outline.com/YnDVG6
| okprod wrote:
| Companies that own and operate prisons in the US are big
| business
| Arrath wrote:
| Unfortunately. That very much should not be a business at
| all.
| sodality2 wrote:
| It's a shame that it's intentional, and it's a failure of
| what a good prison system should be like.
|
| I often hear "oh well {criminal justice system,
| healthcare, insert other bad industry} is not a failure
| because it's doing its intended purpose, which is
| profit". No, that's the current goal of the system
| running it. The actual, intended purpose, in a
| functioning society, is to {serve fair punishments and
| rehabilitate, enhance quality of health, etc}.
| smhost wrote:
| > The actual, intended purpose, in a functioning society,
| is to {serve fair punishments and rehabilitate, enhance
| quality of health, etc}.
|
| I'm not sure which history books you've been reading, but
| modern police were invented in the 17th and 18th
| centuries as brutal forms of population control. In
| America, the "actual, intended purpose" was to be a
| genocidal force that clears the land of Amerindians, to
| patrol the slaves, to terrorize the workers, and so on.
| In the South, you can trace the history of police
| departments directly to Confederate troops, who,
| immediately after losing the war, rounded up people and
| threw them in prison on fabricated charges. To a lot of
| people, it was as if the war never happened. The fact
| that there was no reign of terror in the south tells you
| everything you need to know. And the slavery continues to
| this day. So I have no idea what you mean when you talk
| about this fantastical "intended purpose".
| sodality2 wrote:
| By "actual, intended" purpose, I do not mean original. I
| mean commonly agreed upon purpose, that almost all would
| agree is the true goal to strive for in a {criminal
| justice system, healthcare, etc}. I specified "current"
| to differentiate it between the current purpose, and a
| hopeful future purpose, not a past one. I don't mean to
| imply that these systems have been "corrupted" from a
| virtuous initial state (because like you say, they have
| some dark origins). Though they certainly are corrupt.
| akomtu wrote:
| We can trace the history of police all the way back to
| vikings, neanderthals or even to single celled organisms,
| but all that would be of little use to deal with the
| today's prison system.
| smhost wrote:
| I'm not naturalizing organized violence, you are. I'm
| talking about the history of one institution and its
| forms of reproduction. How are you going to "deal" with
| today's prison system without understanding how it
| reproduces itself (through the law, through the
| indoctrination of people such as yourself, etc)?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There are several lines of evolution for modern policing.
|
| The US instance is one.
|
| Robbert Peele's "Peelian Principles" (UK) are another,
| which is how the UK ended up with a largely unarmed and
| civillian institution "policing by consent". (It also has
| its darker elements, but that's the thumbnail sketch.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
|
| A French "gendarme" is literally a "man at arms", and is
| derived from military forces, representing a third
| tradition.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie
| smhost wrote:
| There are no "lines of evolution" like carcinization for
| modern policing. They were caused by the same social and
| political necessities and they serve the same function.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Hey amigo, looks like you're confusing "shame" and
| "unintentional" because you have a habit of conversing in
| the tone of disputation.
|
| No judgements! I only mention because it was a boon when
| someone pointed out i had a similar habit
| slapfrog wrote:
| > _a habit of conversing in the tone of disputation._
|
| Thank you for putting words to this. I think it's
| something I've struggled with as well.
| philwelch wrote:
| This conspiracy theory doesn't really check out. Private
| prisons exist, but only account for 8% of the US prison
| population. There's probably a larger vested interest
| from corrections officer unions than from private prison
| contractors.
|
| Regardless, there isn't even a need to find some shadowy
| special interest to explain the high incarceration rates
| in the US, when the laws that led to those high
| incarceration rates were passed very publicly for very
| straightforward reasons: to curb the late-20th-century
| crime wave of the 1970's-1990's. This was a major, high-
| profile political issue, and the majority of voters at
| the time favored "tough-on-crime" measures that led to
| mandatory sentences, longer sentences, three-strikes
| laws, and fewer judicial prerogatives. That's why they
| elected the people who promised to pass those laws before
| getting elected and kept those promises after being
| elected. And just like every other well-intended law
| that's ever been passed, there were unintended
| consequences that we can and should fix.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Right, it's outrageously absurd Moriarty asked, "How old
| was your daughter when you came in here?"
|
| "Seven weeks old," he replied.
|
| "So, you've missed watching her grow up?"
|
| "Every bit of it."
|
| "How old is she now?"
|
| "She just turned 43."
|
| But an apology, even from the prosecutor, is all he gets,
| Strickland is still in prison."_
|
| This is fucking terrible. It brought tears to my eyes as it's
| both horrific and so tragic. It's no wonder that much of the
| world looks on _American Justice_ with much askance and
| suspicion in that its implementation of 'justice' is so
| hypocritically at odds with stated American values--and even
| the Constitution. One wonders why so many American citizens
| actually tolerate this situation and do so little about it.
|
| For heaven's sake why aren't people on the streets protesting
| for change?
| thesagan wrote:
| There's so much to protest and so many are crushed that
| many Americans have resigned hope for change.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| So what do citizens do short of a revolution (no sensible
| person ever wants that)?
|
| I wonder if returning soldiers from D-Day and Iwo Jima
| would have allowed themselves to be crushed in similar
| circumstances. I doubt it very much.
|
| (Seems to me both the zeitgeist and ethics have changed
| greatly in the past 75 years. The question is why.)
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| WTF.
| mcguire wrote:
| That is, I believe, true in most states, if not all. The
| response is to appeal to the governor for a pardon.
| gowld wrote:
| "Computer says No."
| user982 wrote:
| That's quite the punchline in the article.
|
| For a more malicious case, read about Adrian Schoolcraft
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft) who, as
| retaliation for blowing the whistle on NYPD malfeasance, was
| raided, abducted, and forcibly committed/restrained in a
| psychiatric facility.
| sdunwoody wrote:
| This whole thing is pretty depressing (and would make me pretty
| angry if I lived in the USA).
|
| But I was even a bit shocked in the first paragraph:
|
| >He woke up to a police officer arresting him for violating the
| city's ban on lying down in public places.
|
| Is that legitimately something that can happen? If so, find it
| mind boggling that you could be arrested in America for falling
| asleep on the pavement/sidewalk!?
| JohnClark1337 wrote:
| Depends on the state or even the county or city
| Clubber wrote:
| Behind the veneer of what Hollywood wants you to believe, the
| US is an extremely cruel place.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The US is not a Hollywood movie, sure, but neither is it
| anything like how foreigners on HN portray it. And for a
| supposedly 'extremely cruel' place, the US has by far the
| highest rate of charity in the world.
| Clubber wrote:
| So here's some of the ways it's cruel. I assume you don't
| live here, or you are pretty well off:
|
| 1. Largest incarcerated population on earth. 2. No public
| health system until Medicare (60s). 3. Very difficult to
| discharge debt, for citizens, easy for business. 4.
| Impossible to discharge student loan debt. 5. Allowing of
| predatory loan practices to incur this debt. 6. Many public
| schools are absolutely horrible. 7. Mostly no recourse for
| violent and corrupt police. 8. Most if not all of the
| federal policies go to help the donor class at the expense
| of the citizenry. On the occasion where policies help the
| citizenry, it's a coincidence. 9. Systemic racism in many
| aspects of the government, particularly the justice system.
| 10. Very little social safety net for the poor. In fact,
| many poor are incarcerated. 11. Very strict justice system
| where just about anything is a felony. 12. No voting rights
| for felons. 13. Vicious drug war. 14. Patriot act. 15.
| Skyrocketing healthcare costs. 16. Skyrocketing educational
| costs. 17. MANY charities have a 90+% administration fee
| (meaning only 10% goes to the actual group in need). This
| is perfectly legal. 18. Many regressive taxes (gasoline,
| cigarettes, alcohol, groceries). 19. Many instances where
| regulation isn't even done, or done so poorly, companies
| can do whatever they want (see nutrition labels for an
| example). 20. Not much done in anti-trust laws. 21. An
| insane amount of tax dollars goes to the war machine and
| soldiers get a minuscule amount. They are treated pretty
| horribly afterwards. 22. Government fully supports
| offshoring of jobs to slave-like conditions in China and
| elsewhere. 23. Loophole system where the well off pay very
| little taxes while the majority of the tax burden goes to
| the middle class (by income). 24. Massive income inequality
| and therefore political power and influence. 25. The amount
| of state funding for prosecution dwarfs the amount of
| funding for defense in most states.
|
| These are just off the top of my head. I could probably do
| 20 more pretty easily.
|
| Regarding charity, that's the citizenry. By and far the
| citizenry are decent people, it's the state that's cruel.
| Also we aren't "by far the most charitable country on
| earth," we're slightly about Myanmar, but we are still the
| top. In really poor states like West Virginia, the citizens
| are extremely charitable to each other. I would guess
| because they all need it desperately. Perhaps being so
| charitable is actually a symptom of the widespread cruelty
| of the state's policies.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-
| char...
| meowster wrote:
| I'm not discounting the other issues, but FYI #4 is
| incorrect.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > And for a supposedly 'extremely cruel' place, the US has
| by far the highest rate of charity in the world.
|
| Only if you count religious giving.
|
| And why wouldn't you, you ask?
|
| Well, even churches themselves say that six per cent or
| less of religious giving goes to 'charity'. The rest goes
| to church upkeep and events, church childcare, etc.
|
| In fact, an ECCU study (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019
| 033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that "local and
| national benevolence" receives 1 per cent of religious
| givings (2% going to church adult programs, bible study,
| etc, and 3% to youth programs and evangelization).
|
| So we should probably pump the brakes on patting ourselves
| on the back for "highest rates of charity", considering
| that some of what is characterized as charity is "erecting
| the world's largest cross two miles down the road from the
| church which has the current world's largest cross".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > the US has by far the highest rate of charity in the
| world
|
| How much of this comes from "tithe 10% to your church"?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| About a third of the population claims to go to church
| regularly. The amount who actually do is somewhat less,
| surely. And anecdotally, amongst my churchgoing friends &
| family, especially the non-elderly ones, tithing isn't
| particularly common. It's pretty common with LDS, though,
| I understand.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| You have places like ADX Florence, worst place on Earth,
| you have the highest absolute numbers of prisoners, you
| used to execute children,you still execute people, you have
| long sentences, there are laws like above where even if you
| are exonerated of a crime, you still kept in prison, you
| are cruel and your country home to a literal gulag. Your
| society is merciless, your empathy gone. Please, learn some
| empathy. Please, turn away from your cruelty.
| munificent wrote:
| _> If so, find it mind boggling that you could be arrested in
| America for falling asleep on the pavement /sidewalk!? _
|
| Yes, but it's a little more complex/subtle than that may make
| it seem. Some things to consider:
|
| * Arrested doesn't mean convicted. A cop may take someone in
| ("arrest" them) to get them off the streets and give them a
| night in jail to sober up. Then they get let out without
| pressing charges. In some cases, this may end up being a net
| benefit for the person, in others it obviously isn't. Your
| country probably does the same thing. I assume "drunk tanks"
| are pretty universal.
|
| * Police officers have a lot of discretion on which laws they
| enforce. There is a downside to this in that it lets them use
| that discretion in biased ways, but--ignoring that for the
| moment--it does mean that many times cops are more lenient and
| compassionate than the law implies that they should be. You
| rarely hear about those stories on the news but talk to a cop
| or do a ride-along and you'll see that they spend most of their
| time _not_ arresting people and instead giving them warnings.
|
| * Honolulu has a famously bad homeless problem, while also
| being heavily dependent on tourism for its economy. There are a
| _lot_ of "beach bums" that move to Hawaii without any plan to
| provide for themselves and if Honolulu doesn't do anything
| about them at all, they can end up harming the place's overall
| economy, which would then make it harder for the city to afford
| the services these people need. Doing nothing is not as
| innocuous as it might seem.
|
| * In general, a society must do _some_ enforcement of public
| spaces. Otherwise, they cease to be public spaces. I live in
| Seattle which also has a lot of homeless people. Some of them
| build encampments in public parks. This means that, de facto,
| those are no longer public parks. They 're private property
| because the public no longer has access to them--the squatters
| in the encampment will run them off.
|
| The name for a place where you can choose to be and no one can
| kick you out is "private property". If you don't want all of
| your public spaces to turn into private spaces, then you do
| have to prevent people from unilaterally privatizing them to
| _some_ degree. Of course, it 's not black and white and there
| are good discussions to have about where you draw the line.
| Obviously people need to be able to spend _some_ time in a
| public space. Is napping OK? Sleeping overnight? In a tent? In
| a shelter made from pallets and tarps?
|
| Many of the laws that draw the line harshly are driven by the
| observation that when you give a little, some people (not all)
| will try to take more and more. So it's not so entirely that
| lawmakers are heartless sadists who don't even want to have to
| see a homeless person, so much as a fear that if you let
| someone take a nap, they'll sleep overnight. Let them sleep
| overnight and they'll build a structure. Let them build a
| structure and they'll start fires. And at that point, it
| becomes _really_ hard to keep that place available to the
| public.
|
| It is a hard problem and anyone who thinks it is black and
| white is choosing to not see all of the complexity.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Probably. People don't like to see the homeless around their
| nice little neighborhoods so they come up with all sorts of
| weird laws to harass them with.
| sdunwoody wrote:
| I find it really nasty.
|
| I visited Los Angeles a couple of years back, one of the
| first places we went was a McDonalds. Some guy was dozing sat
| at a table (with a coffee in front of him). A cop came up to
| him and told him he'd be reprimanded if he caught him napping
| like that again.
|
| In all my life living in the UK I've honestly never witnessed
| something like that. It may seem minor, but seeing an armed
| cop come up to someone and reprimand them for dozing off? I
| have no idea why a waiter couldn't have dealt with that. It's
| not like the McDonalds was even full or anything.
|
| On top of this, the advertising boards saying stuff like "No
| homeless shelter in our community, keep it safe!" was just
| completely lacking in compassion.
|
| I think a lot of people out there just don't see homeless
| people as deserving of empathy. At least, that's the
| impression I get.
|
| I also find it profoundly ironic that America is supposedly
| the "land of the free", but you can get arrested/in trouble
| for:
|
| - Drinking in public (even in parks or at the beach) -
| Sleeping in public (apparently) - Jaywalking - Eating on
| public transport
|
| I just don't understand all these weird and arbitrary rules
| they have out there.
| tqi wrote:
| The UK is far from immune to this type of behavior.
|
| "The Vagrancy Act was passed in the summer of 1824, which
| means it is now just shy of its 200th birthday. And if it
| held any relevance then, it certainly doesn't now.
|
| At its core, The Vagrancy Act is a way to punish people "in
| any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or
| under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any
| visible means of subsistence". Essentially, it criminalises
| homelessness. For homeless people, both begging and rough
| sleeping are things out of their control, and the Act does
| little to get to the root of why people are homeless in the
| first place."
|
| https://centrepoint.org.uk/about-us/blog/everything-you-
| need...
|
| Also: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/12/new-
| home-off...
| sdunwoody wrote:
| There's obviously room for improvement here too yes.
|
| Although I really really doubt anyone here would be
| arrested for having a doze on the pavement.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Although I really really doubt anyone here would be
| arrested for having a doze on the pavement.
|
| It seems to be declining, but according to the BBC, as of
| a few years ago there were more than a thousand people
| arrested for just that.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I just don't understand all these weird and arbitrary
| rules they have out there.
|
| But you live in the nation that invented the ASBO.
|
| > - Drinking in public (even in parks or at the beach) -
| Sleeping in public (apparently) - Jaywalking - Eating on
| public transport
|
| These are local laws, not federal, so not universal across
| the US. And in all of the places around the US that I have
| lived, these sorts of laws are rarely enforced (at least
| not as a primary offense).
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Can confirm that the pandemic made laws like drinking in
| public functionally irrelevant where I live, and other
| larger cities across the country.
| lozenge wrote:
| > And in all of the places around the US that I have
| lived, these sorts of laws are rarely enforced [on white
| people]
|
| Fixed that for you.
| vmception wrote:
| The "land of the free, home of the brave" quote came from a
| lawyer moonlighting as a poet watching actual brave people
| fighting in a war. It was catchy enough to become the
| national anthem 120 years later (after being used in the
| military for 30 years or so prior), but don't confuse that
| opportunistic indoctrination with reality.
|
| It has nothing to do with anything, nothing to do with any
| legal reality, nothing to do with the constitution, the
| structure of the government, the declaration of
| independence from the UK, life in practice within the US,
| or any comparison to any other developed nation at the time
| it was written (1812) or now (2021). American
| exceptionalism relies on completely ignoring countries with
| Human Development Index or rights that are at parity or
| better, and relies on hyperbolic comparisons to the worst
| countries in the world.
|
| Hope that helps you understand your experiences here!
| Without context, the cognitive dissonance (confusion from
| competing ideas and observations) can be very confusing!
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Also a slaveholder, which came through in the anthem as
| well
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not really that shocking. In Austin Texas a little over
| two years ago the city council removed the ban on lying and
| camping in public places. The result was an explosion of tent
| encampments all over the city, so much so that just a couple
| months ago city voters reversed the decision in a referendum.
|
| There are certainly valid points on all sides of the debate,
| and "lying in public" laws can definitely be abused to harass
| individuals, but there are also some valid rationale for why
| they exist in the first place.
| sdunwoody wrote:
| So I think the problem there is that the root causes of
| homelessness need addressing.
|
| Moving all these people to a different city/town/location is
| not "solving" the issue.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Encampment is quite different from falling asleep... And even
| then it should be enough to tell the person to move on, not
| to arrest them.
| ProAm wrote:
| Move on to where?
| gowld wrote:
| To a different jurisdiction where it's someone else's
| problem.
| pas wrote:
| Home, friends, family, shelter.
|
| I mean if someone gets drunk and falls asleep they are
| not necessarily homeless.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Where can people who have no home, friends, family or
| income shelter?
| newsyyswen wrote:
| The park services have a similar problem, but the solution is
| simple:
|
| * No permanent structures.
|
| * You need to move every X days.
|
| * You cannot stay in the park/forest/etc for more than Y
| days/month.
|
| Cities could forbid tents and count hours rather than days.
| Criminalizing the act of napping in a park seems like a huge
| overreaction to peoples' fear of tent cities. If you've never
| taken an afternoon siesta along a local greenway, you should
| try it sometime. Bring a blanket and a book, but don't forget
| to check for sharps before you lie down.
| RIMR wrote:
| I don't think there are valid points on all sides of the
| debate. A disturbing number of people think that homeless
| people should basically be exterminated.
|
| That's not a welcome idea at all, and it deserves no
| validity.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yes, in most places it is effectively a crime to be homeless.
| It is one of the many reasons it is so hard to break out of the
| trap of homelessness.
| closeparen wrote:
| It's really easy to imagine: think of a neighborhood of
| politically engaged homeowners, whose sidewalks are covered in
| sleeping homeless people around the clock.
|
| The residents of that neighborhood don't have the power to end
| capitalism or the money to secure homes for all who need them
| (bare minimum $500k each). But they do have the power to get an
| ordinance passed.
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