[HN Gopher] NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize ...
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NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of
digital versions
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 303 points
Date : 2023-01-24 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| mabbo wrote:
| I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse
| incentives.
|
| The goal given to them is "house this person securely for a
| specific length of time _at the lowest cost possible_ ". They are
| rewarded for cutting costs.
|
| But the total cost _we_ pay is the cost to imprison this person
| the second and third time when they re-offend. It 's the policing
| costs when they're homeless because they can't find housing or
| get a job. It's the health care costs they can never pay for when
| all of the above inevitably leads to further problems.
|
| To reduce the lifetime cost of this person on society
| (financially and otherwise) we should be incentivising prisons to
| actually rehabilitate.
|
| But we won't, because our society is largely based on Calvinist
| nonsense that says there are "bad people" and we should celebrate
| those people having bad things happen to them.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Note that house them securely only means them from the outside.
| From the bit I know, threats from the inside are overlooked. I
| don't know how private prisons avoid liability when someone is
| injured, raped or killed. Why isn't it considered negligence on
| their end?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The Prison Industrial Complex is aware that with rehabilitation
| many offenders will repeat.
|
| Furthermore, in the USA a fair percentage of the incarcerated
| suffer from mental illness.
|
| We could mitigate both of these. But we don't.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Victim isn't the right word because none of it is accidental.
| It's intentional design dating all the way back to 13th
| amendment which states.
|
| "The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
| abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as
| punishment for a crime. "
|
| My brother in law was released recently from 12+ years of
| incarceration in the federal system. His crime was armed
| robbery, first offense, no one was injured, and he profited a
| grand total of $35,000.
|
| He spent 12 years doing slave labor for a $1.25 while being
| charged absorbent fees to make phone calls, send emails
| (something like $5 for 10 minutes), and purchase the daily
| necessities like deodorant and medicine. After 12 years, he
| still owes reparation where even if he was paid a bare minimum
| wage he could have easily repaid his debt to society.
|
| The US has the largest number of incarnated adults in the
| developed world because our government and capitalism demands
| it be so. We are a society whose engine has always been driven
| by slave labor. Until I was exposed to it in this manner, I
| would have been a "who cares do the crime pay the price" but
| that price extends so far, impacts everyone in a prisoners
| family even if they did no crime, and sets them up for failure
| when reentering the world.
|
| None of it is accidental, all the way down to stubborn
| insistence on impeding criminal reform around drugs and petty
| crime to the prison industrial complex being the single biggest
| contributor to anti-pot reform pacs and advertising.
|
| Companies make billions over charging and exploiting convicts
| in every conceivable way right down to sheriffs feeding them
| trash and keeping the delta in the food budget to buy
| themselves homes and luxuries.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >The US has the largest number of incarnated adults in the
| developed world because our government and capitalism demands
| it be so
|
| No, US has the largest number of adults in prison because we
| have a very ideologically diverse population, as well as a
| semblance of personal freedom, which necessarily will result
| in more people committing crimes. Nothing to do with
| capitalism. In fact, a true capitalism-based solutions would
| actually be organized forced labor camps - instead of sitting
| in cells prisoners would be forced to work, and have access
| to food and medicine to continue to optimize their
| productivity.
|
| Also, as an aside
|
| >Until I was exposed to it in this manner, I would have been
| a "who cares do the crime pay the price" but that price
| extends so far, impacts everyone in a prisoners family even
| if they did no crime, and sets them up for failure when
| reentering the world.
|
| If you hold a position but change this solely because of a
| personal experience, you don't actually believe in either
| side of the issue, you just go with what feels right.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think you might want to research the penal systems of the
| US a bit more closely. More than one state essentially
| functions on convict labor.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Functions is a strong word. Yes, convict labor is cheap.
| But its availability is generally not manufactured. Im
| sure that there are some sociopathic people that would
| absolutely love the idea of putting more people in prison
| to take advantage of cheap labor, but the system we live
| is pretty robust to that kind of bullshit, with a few
| exceptions of course.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It is, but I'm not one for hyperbole.
|
| _Arizona communities would 'collapse' without cheap
| prison labor, Corrections director says_
|
| https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2022/0
| 7/1...
|
| Louisiana is another state that's notable for the degree
| to which it has institutionalized this economic practice.
| prepend wrote:
| > 12+ years of incarceration in the federal system. His crime
| was armed robbery, first offense, no one was injured, and he
| profited a grand total of $35,000.
|
| No one was harmed. But the crime involved threat of death. So
| threatening to kill at least one person is a pretty serious
| crime. It's good that no one was killed, but definitely the
| intent to kill for personal gain was part of the reason for
| such a lengthy sentence.
|
| There are many flaws with the prison system but I wanted to
| point out the logical flaw of "no one was killed in this game
| of Russian roulette so it's not that bad of a thing" kind of
| thinking. Threatening someone's life for $35k is a big deal,
| I think.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Have to agree. We punish violent crime and corruption
| lightly; nonviolent crime inhumanely unforgivingly. If
| there was no violence, threat of violence, fraud or
| corruption, the limit should be two years. If there was,
| the minimum should be much higher.
| zarzavat wrote:
| I would go further. Prison should _only_ be used for
| violent crimes with a high degree of intentionality.
|
| It's been said that if you asked someone to design a
| process to create _more_ criminals, they would likely
| invent prisons: mix as many skilled criminals, with
| random unfortunate individuals, so that they can share
| their knowledge of criminality, and have to fight to
| survive.
|
| Prison is bad as a deterrent and is terrible at reforming
| criminals. The only thing prison is good at, is keeping
| violent people off the street. There's absolutely no
| reason why non-violent offenders should be in a prison,
| give them any other punishment instead.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Because of the mandatory guidelines at the time (which
| have since been declared unconstitutional) any felony
| committed while in possession of a firearm federally had
| a 15 year minimum with no discretion for the judge.
| wstuartcl wrote:
| Lol yeah, armed robbery is effectively the charge for
| someone that was totally willing to kill while robbing but
| due to circumstances did not need to. That should not be
| considered a light crime.
| themitigating wrote:
| How do you know they were willing to kill? If you rob
| someone you need to threaten them regardless if you are
| going to follow through.
| wstuartcl wrote:
| Umm based on the statute and elements of the crime they
| were charged with and found guilty of.
|
| Whoever, while committing a robbery, is armed with a
| dangerous weapon or any article used or fashioned in a
| manner to lead the victim to reasonably believe it to be
| a dangerous weapon, or inflicts bodily harm upon another,
| is guilty of aggravated robbery in the first degree and
| may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20
| years or to payment of a fine of not more than $35,000,
| or both.
|
| Or is your stance that a person committing robbery with a
| weapon and threatening to use it should instead be
| considered a hapless person that has not chosen to act in
| a way that is highly likely to cause great injury or
| death? Like a gun is "ok" and should not be considered as
| evidence of intent to commit harm during the act of
| robbery unless they shoot it?
| jeffwask wrote:
| I fully agree he earned punishment and it was a serious
| crime. (he says the gun was never loaded but that's neither
| here nor there). My question is the scope and breadth of
| the punishment and whether the system is about restitution
| and rehabilitation or pure punitive action. How do people
| come out after 10+ years having received no training,
| support or rehabilitation and step into a completely
| changed society from when they went in. Luckily, my brother
| in law has us to support him. Many don't have that option.
|
| Is 12 years being enslaved for $1.25 fitting with another 3
| on probation and in halfway houses? I don't believe it is
| especially when watching white collar folks steal millions,
| do infinitely more damage, and be released in 1/3 the time
| to pick up where they left off.
|
| Ultimately, being forced into slave labor and having to pay
| hundreds per a month to talk to family despite research
| showing it's one of the best ways to drive good behavior
| and rehabilitation in prisoners, is cruel and unusual
| punishment even if the crime committed means the person is
| never getting out.
|
| Even if we agree on the length of sentence, for someone who
| did work the entirety of their 12 year sentence, in roles
| that would have paid $50-70K a year to emerge still owing
| restitution on a paltry debt of less than a new car, is a
| travesty.
| notch656c wrote:
| In a politer society with more reasonable laws using a
| gun to take someone's money would have exactly one
| outcome: a 9mm hole in that robber's head.
|
| Anything beyond that is charity.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve
| life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager
| to deal out death in judgement."
| notch656c wrote:
| Someone tried to rob me at gunpoint many years ago.
| Pointed a gun to my head when I got a flat tire
| innocently trying to bike home from a bad part of town.
| Why was I in a bad part of town? Working in a hospital
| with the people helping the people in a bad part of town.
|
| I didn't try to kill them, even though I managed to fight
| the upper hand off of them. When the scuffle ended all I
| said was "don't point things at my head."
|
| Choose to believe me or not. Don't make presumptions
| about eagerness.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| I'm supposed to take comfort in the fact that you're more
| violent in hypothetical situations?
|
| The death penalty will always be executed with a certain
| false positive rate. Willing it as a form of punishment
| necessarily entails willing the death of innocent people,
| who crucially can't be brought back in the event that the
| state realizes it was mistaken.
| notch656c wrote:
| You know the process for executing someone is very long,
| expensive road. Eager is the worst possible description
| of the death penalty.
|
| There are plenty of criticisms for the death penalty but
| now you're changing the goalposts as you realize your
| description written in a science fiction feel good
| reality was a bad fit.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| > you're changing the goalposts
|
| Post one: The death penalty is always wrong because it
| can be handed out in error and cannot be revoked.
|
| Post two: The death penalty is always wrong because it
| can be handed out in error and cannot be revoked.
|
| No goalposts have changed in the making of this thread.
| notch656c wrote:
| I think the edit timer hasn't timed out. May want to go
| back and at least make it look like that's what your
| "post one" said.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > How do people come out after 10+ years having received
| no training, support or rehabilitation and step into a
| completely changed society from when they went in.
|
| Completely agreed. And it's not just that -- ex-prisoners
| also come out without any social network other than what
| they may have gained among prisoners, and they face
| extreme social stigma that makes finding work difficult
| even if they had the skills and connections.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I don't think he's objecting to the sentence, but the
| financial aspects--and I agree. Put somebody in jail and
| the basics of life should be provided. I don't mind
| commissary accounts for luxuries, but the basics should
| cost $0. And I include communication in that.
|
| Treating prisoners as captive markets to be bled is not
| good for society.
| themitigating wrote:
| But would he have done it? Obviously difficult to determine
| but a major factor. What if he made the threat knowing it's
| the only way to get the money?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The GP wasn't trying to make light of his brother-in-laws
| crime (if he was, he wouldn't have said what the conviction
| was). His point was that his brother-in-law has been
| exploited while serving his time and that is what leads to
| a high number of reoffenders.
|
| For what it's worth, I agree with his point. The west looks
| down on revenge ruling, "an eye for an eye" etc. Yet the US
| prison system isn't any more evolved.
|
| The worst part of it is because we are talking about "bad
| people", any defence of their treatment is easy to dismiss
| - and I get why. Arguing that someone who commuted armed
| robbery should have rights too does sound like a perverse
| thing to say. But ignoring those rights just allows
| problems to proliferate. So all your prison system does is
| the proverbial cutting off ones nose to spite ones face.
| vibrio_bobtail wrote:
| > The GP wasn't trying to make light of his brother-in-
| laws crime (if he was, he wouldn't have said what the
| conviction was).
|
| He was making doing exactly that when he said no one was
| injured. Just because someone wasn't physically injured
| doesn't mean they weren't profoundly harmed by being a
| victim or armed robbery. How long did it take that victim
| to feel safe in their community again? His brother-in-law
| took that away from someone and deserves harsh
| punishment.
| [deleted]
| hnlmorg wrote:
| ...and your comment sums up exactly the point I was
| making about how hard it is to have a grown up
| conversation about this subject matter.
|
| I get the need for justice but what you're describing is
| revenge, not justice. Justice needs to contain a
| rehabilitation part and not just punishment. The point
| the GP was making is that the rehabilitation part has
| been substituted for exploitation. Regardless of whether
| you think the sentencing was just or not, and to be
| clear: I don't think even the GP was suggesting that his
| brother-in-law didn't deserve jail time, if you don't try
| and rehabilitate then you're just encouraging your
| offenders to go out and reoffend. Thus perpetuating the
| cycle of crime and increasing the number of peoples who
| are physically and mentally scared from crimes in the
| process.
|
| Rehabilitating inmates doesnt need to be done for
| altruistic purposes. There's a very self reason to do so:
| those inmates will become less likely to commit further
| crimes upon release.
|
| And that is the crux of the argument here. It's what the
| discussion should be focused on, rather than a pseudo-
| morality debate about whether they deserve the time.
| Because literally no one believes there shouldn't be
| punishment for crimes. But what we don't agree on is
| whether criminals deserve a chance to reform.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| The late 1800s and early 1900s exploited this on behalf of
| White Supremacy. All of the Jim Crow states had laws against
| vagrancy which were only enforced against "colored" people.
| If you failed to have a job, local law enforcement would
| arrest you for "vagrancy" and the prison would rent your body
| out to work on the "chain gang". Prisoners got paid nothing.
| The politically connected "good old boys" would get paid for
| renting out the prisoners.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| there's someone close to me in prison for murder. for me,
| there's no getting around what they did. at the same time,
| i've come in contact with the criminal justice system through
| them, and there's also no getting around what it is: a
| disgusting and irredeemable machine of exploitation. i didn't
| always used to see it that way, but now i know better.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Even though I'm not a fan of private prisons, I wonder what
| would happen if they had a contract that gave bonuses for every
| year a former inmate stayed out of jail? Maybe that's already
| been tried.
| darkarmani wrote:
| Evasion training. How to stay out of jail (without changing
| your life).
| danuker wrote:
| Couple this with police abuse, and only honest citizens
| will end up being arrested.
|
| How Kafkaesque.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Suddenly prisons are trying to incarcerate the factually
| innocent, since they're the least likely to "re-offend."
| mabbo wrote:
| This is why I love HN. You've taken a really nice idea and
| identified _exactly_ how it will be abused by awful people.
| themitigating wrote:
| Because that's always a possibility! Not thinking that
| way is why company after company seems make the same
| mistakes.
| juve1996 wrote:
| All ideas can be abused by awful people.
|
| This is why we have stalled in general ; everyone has
| some "slippery slope" boogeyman as an excuse why we can't
| solve problems society faces.
| visarga wrote:
| Oh, not just the parent poster. It was also my first
| thought.
| scrollaway wrote:
| But prisons don't incarcerate people? They aren't the ones
| taking decisions on who goes in there.
| dokem wrote:
| The is an incredibly naive view of the way the world
| works. The prison system has money ie power. They have
| the power to get people elected. Judges law enforcement
| and prison system are all one system and looking out for
| each other at the highest levels.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| That's why the judicial-prison economy developed - to
| establish a financial relation between the two. We know
| it as "kids for cash"[1] and judges can make "millions of
| dollars" in payments from private facilities.
|
| Outlawing such arrangements only pushes the blackmarket
| economy of kids for cash underground. Instead, of course,
| it should be regulated.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
| glial wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something but it seems downright wrong
| for judges to have any financial incentive for ANY
| decision they make. Why would that be something we want
| to regulate? Seems like a judge should lose their
| position if they have a conflict of interest and rule
| anyway.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Seems like a judge should lose their position if they
| have a conflict of interest and rule anyway.
|
| That's pretty much what happened to the judge in the
| article linked by GP (you should read it, it's
| horrifying). Mostly because it's hard to work as a judge
| when you're serving a 17.5 year prison sentence.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I know it sounds wrong, but the same goes for guns,
| drugs, and just about anything else illegal. If it's
| banned, it's just pushed underground where it can't be
| regulated at all.
|
| Besides, if there isn't a market for child-imprisonment,
| then we won't be able to accurately price it as a
| commodity. Not being able to price commodified child-
| imprisonment means the market for it will be much more
| inefficient than it needs to be. Efficient markets imply
| positive public good. It's really that simple.
| NeuNeurosis wrote:
| Wow what a horribly worded idea. I can't tell if you are
| trolling everyone or if you are a diehard libertarian
| capitalist. The implications from your suggestion would
| imply that regulating behavior outside of markets has
| never existed in the lifespan of the human race. I agree
| incentives are what regulate behavior but leaping from
| child-imprisionment is bad to we should make it legal and
| efficient is the only/best/reasonable solution disregards
| so much human legacy and sidesteps so many societal
| issues with normalizing this bullshit while allowing the
| horrible shit to live and grow. This shouldn't be
| normalized. Maybe child-imprisonment shouldn't exist in
| the first place? Why is your market based idea so easily
| reached for instead of taking a step back and saying this
| shouldn't happen under any circumstance or only in very
| rare circumstances? Why try and motivate behavior at the
| end of a cycle instead of totally doing away with the
| cycle to begin with?
|
| Ideas like this show a moral bankruptcy that has become
| so ingrained in our Technocratic elites and we wonder why
| there is such a disconnection between different groups in
| our society.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Ideally, moral value would be signaled by market-based
| price discovery. Economic progress is one of creating
| markets for more things, not fewer. Markets for some
| things but not others reeks of special pleading.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Yeah. Let's create a legal market for human organs and
| start with yours.
|
| It will be _most_ efficient. I promise!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Economic progress is one of creating markets for more
| things, not fewer.
|
| So, eliminating markets for people was a bad thing?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If I was forced to admit that sometimes markets were bad,
| then I'd have to re-evaluate our entire economic system -
| what if healthcare markets, gun markets, even employment
| markets were up for debate? Under what criteria would one
| even evaluate those? Moreover, how could we even tell if
| they were genuinely bad or good, or if the particular
| cultural context and social indoctrination predisposed me
| to _think_ they were good through social conditioning?
|
| Why, for example, would a market for health care be good,
| but a market for child-imprisonment be bad? If a market
| for child-imprisonment were susceptible to bad actors,
| perverse incentives, and bad outcomes, then it stands to
| reason the same could be said of all markets. That's a
| rather large implication, I'm sure we agree on.
|
| If humane child imprisonment is valued by the market
| participants, then that's what the market will provide.
| If a market doesn't signal that it's important, then it's
| definitionally not important. That's what price
| signalling is all about.
| notch656c wrote:
| Kelseyfrog is trolling and enjoys using straw-man
| arguments to poke fun at other ideologies. I've debated
| with them before. Have you ever seen an ancap with
| pronouns in their profile lol? It's sarcasm.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I like debating. I use debate to test out theories and
| ideas all the time. It's a great way to learn what works
| and what doesn't. You don't have to believe everything
| you debate. The idea that people have to earnestly debate
| their own beliefs is a limiting mindset.
|
| It seems like what people are trying to say is that
| market outcomes dictate market success. Eg: bad market
| outcomes = bad place to hold a market, but no one is flat
| out saying it. At the same time, we have the idea that
| markets are "the best thing we have and any limits on
| markets produce negative outcomes." This is a
| contradiction and at this point at this place, I don't
| think debating that topic directly is going to teach me
| anything. Debating the fringes, however is.
|
| It's the same thing as saying "X doesn't work" on
| StackOverflow and getting people to prove that it does.
| It's that we're doing it with something non-tech this
| time.
| [deleted]
| glial wrote:
| There's a conversation in Harper's this month along these
| lines:
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/2023/02/is-liberalism-worth-
| savi...
|
| The conversation flits around a bit too quickly for my
| taste, but some interesting points are made.
| candiodari wrote:
| You are stating private jails don't control the
| government. You're right, the opposite is true:
| government officials control private jails, which means
| delivering inmates and redirecting profits ...
|
| Last big scandal about large scale wrongful imprisonment
| - of children, no less - the people profiting from this
| were:
|
| 1) Directly profiting
|
| * the District Attorney
|
| * 2 judges
|
| * the director of ... of the Juvenile Probation Office
|
| * the brother of the District Attorney, who ran the
| prison
|
| 2) Involved, capable of stopping the abuse, not proven to
| have personally profited, yet they cooperated:
|
| * the district attorney
|
| * a supreme court lawyer
|
| * a supreme court justice personally
|
| * the whole Pennsylvania supreme court
|
| * the governor of Pennsylvania
|
| * Pennsylvania's Judicial Conduct Board
|
| * the FBI
|
| 3) the only parties the justice system considered guilty
|
| * the brother of the District Attorney, who ran the
| prison. Note: he's still in business. The SAME business.
| He was convicted for a small amount, because he lied
| about paying off judges. He, and his brother the district
| attorney, are of course _completely_ innocent of plotting
| for a decade to wrongfully imprison children, for profit.
|
| The scheme continued for 7 YEARS after complaints about
| corruption were filed.
|
| The profit has not been paid back.
|
| * the lowest level judges
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
|
| As always, we come to the same point as always: people
| claiming the government can be trusted, because of
| $reason. Separation of powers, because of the law,
| because ... You forget the government is a system made up
| of people. Guarantees, laws, contracts, achieve nothing
| the quality of people in government doesn't achieve. And
| we all know that quality is lacking somewhat. Also, this
| cannot be fixed by better laws, better such guarantees,
| any of that ...
| gruez wrote:
| > You are stating private jails don't control the
| government. You're right, the opposite is true:
| government officials control private jails, which means
| delivering inmates and redirecting profits ...
|
| >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
|
| This gets brought up all the time as evidence of
| something systemic, but the linked article only mentions
| two judges convicted. Is there any evidence this is
| widespread?
| candiodari wrote:
| This scandal _was_ widespread. A LOT of people could have
| put a stop to it, and all but 2 were government
| officials. A LOT of people were warned this was
| happening, and sometimes went so far as to abuse it (ie.
| schools would threaten kids). The district attorney
| apologized regularly to victims.
|
| But yeah, this sort of thing is widespread.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/prisons-us-department-of-
| justice-...
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/final-defendants-
| includin...
|
| https://scheerpost.com/2022/01/23/the-scandal-of-u-s-
| prisons...
|
| https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/prison-
| ame...
|
| But all of the above is employees violating the law.
| Worse is the justice system itself abusing the law:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder (the state
| has a duty to prosecute. This is _NOT_ what lawmakers
| mean by that, yet nobody ever sees any consequences).
| More general this is an example of: https://www.prisonpol
| icy.org/graphs/pie2022_jail_churn.html
| choward wrote:
| The prison industrial complex has lobbyists who do
| influence those decisions. They could start focusing on
| making the penalties harsher for minor crimes.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Right, and the operators of prisons have never been known
| to collude with judges.
|
| /s
| scrollaway wrote:
| I don't know of a single argument that can't be
| dismantled with "right, and people have never been found
| to cheat the system?"...
|
| Is judges colluding with prison operators a frequent and
| normal occurrence? The US prison system is bad, but to my
| knowledge these things are the exception.
| briffle wrote:
| depends, are you looking at brazen bribery or collusion?
| or some 'free speech' activities like campaign
| contributions?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It's not about people cheating the system. It's about
| predicting what will happen under a given system of
| incentives.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Frequent not. But judicial deference to prosecutors is,
| and offering/acceptance of plea bargains with terrible
| terms is as well. And prosecutors bring bullshit cases
| all the time, for a variety of reasons. I have first hand
| experience of this as a (luckily, successful) defendant.
| macNchz wrote:
| It is certainly not unheard of:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
| TylerE wrote:
| That's never going to happen when 99% of places refuse to
| hire ex cons, or if they do at all only for the most
| unpleasant minimum wage "jobs".
| mabbo wrote:
| Well, what if the ex-con's former prison had a bond on
| them- if this person ends up committing a crime against
| your business, you get the full costs covered, less 10%.
|
| The prison would be incentivized to do this so as to help
| prevent recidivism. They'd also be incentivized to get that
| person the help they need so they _don 't_ commit crimes
| and can do the job too.
| notch656c wrote:
| The reason I would be hesitant to hire the ex-con is not
| because they're bad. OR I think they're going to be bad
| to me and thus I need extra insurance or whatever.
|
| The reason I wouldn't hire them is because the system
| salivates to put those people back in the system, and I
| prefer to hire someone less likely to get pulled into the
| abyss at any random moment and cause me to lose out on my
| trained workforce. Their PO, any officer scanning
| automatic plate readers, customs agents, whoever, they're
| all chomping at the bit to pull that person back out of
| society and employment.
| concordDance wrote:
| Could you explain how this conspiracy between customs
| agents and the prison complex came about?
| notch656c wrote:
| I was flagged on suspicion of being a criminal and now
| customs invents absurd shit every time I cross the
| border. Last time they got a federal search warrant out
| of thin air based on lies and dragged me to a hospital to
| internally search me for drugs. Every single time I go
| through it's something else with hours long detainment.
| They explicitly told me one one occasion if I was a felon
| they would fuck with me even more than they have.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I live in so much fear of technical violations it isn't
| even funny. I especially agree on the police cars having
| automatic plate readers.
| munk-a wrote:
| Actually the average cost of incarceration appears to be
| about 30k - if that was offered as a flat credit against
| employment cost (or some portion of that like 20k) for
| some term after the end of a sentence then the US would
| have a much stronger tool against recidivism.
| jeffwask wrote:
| The problem is more insidious, their incentives are to keep
| them incarcerated, not retrain them in any meaningful way,
| and hope they repeat.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yes, this. Certainly these companies have done the math,
| and clearly see that the worse inmates are treated the more
| likely they are to become repeat customers.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Utopian: Ex-cons lead happy and productive lives with
| relevant and in-demand skills. Education system is extended.
|
| Dystopian: Ex-cons learn how to evade capture. Law
| enforcement and enforcement capability is gutted, through
| lobbying.
| themitigating wrote:
| Weird that when I think dystopian I think of a police state
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Pop-culture is to blame, but it's not the technical or
| full scope of the meaning.
| layer8 wrote:
| The bonus would have to be higher than what they earn from an
| inmate.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Do we have any programs that have good, replicated evidence
| they reduce recidivism?
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| One essay that touches briefly on this is _Million Dollar
| Murray_ [0], about a homeless man and how the unwillingness of
| society to deal with his homelessness cost the taxpayers of
| Reno more than a million dollars. One of the points in the
| essay was that many difficult problems had "power law"
| distributions [1] (where the action is all at one extreme).
|
| And one successful program for treating homelessness handed out
| keys to apartments. The "moral hazard" involved offends lots of
| people: "I pay my rent! Why should some one/freeloader/whatever
| get a free place to live when I have to pay?" Outrage seems to
| be the driving force in media these days. Which is why nothing
| will change.
|
| 0 - https://housingmatterssc.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/11/Mill...
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law
| gruez wrote:
| >The "moral hazard" involved offends lots of people: "I pay
| my rent! Why should some one/freeloader/whatever get a free
| place to live when I have to pay?" Outrage seems to be the
| driving force in media these days. Which is why nothing will
| change.
|
| I find it strange that you're just shrugging off the
| objections as "outrage", rather than trying to engage/address
| them in any serious way. I think the concept of fairness, and
| the fact that people might be incentivized to freeload are
| legitimate concerns. You might not think they're valid, but
| if you want their tax dollars to fund the social programs you
| want, it seems entirely reasonable that their concerns be
| addressed.
| comboy wrote:
| Just offer it to anyone, with home or without, but who is
| willing to spend every night there and agrees that this
| will be verified. These are likely not places where people
| _choose_ to live.
|
| Compare it to prison with free healthcare, food and many
| more additional costs plus costs to society associated with
| whatever made somebody go to prison in the first place.
|
| I mean, if you think about country income (or lack thereof)
| and spending, even ignoring military, corruption, church
| etc. There are still way bigger things to worry about
| regarding your tax dollars. There is tons of freeloading,
| exploitation and injustice, but if somebody is willing to
| accept living in slums to just have some roof over his
| head, he probably needs it, for whatever reason.
|
| And even giving absolutely zero empathy, assuming no mental
| problems, childhood traumas etc., counting these specific
| irrelevant cents, it still may simply be the most economic
| solution from the society perspective.
| gruez wrote:
| > These are likely not places where people choose to
| live.
|
| How crappy/nice would it be? On one end of the spectrum
| is something like the camps set up at the border to house
| asylum seekers, and on the other is basically section 8
| housing. You'd probably have to _pay_ me a significant
| sum of money to stay in the former, but I would seriously
| consider the latter if it meant not having to pay
| thousands in rent in an expensive metro. The problem is
| that the nicer you make it, the more people would be
| attracted to using it for freeloading purposes, but if
| you make it too crappy, then people would rather sleep on
| the streets than use it. We see this for homeless
| shelters in some cities, for instance.
|
| >Compare it to prison with free healthcare, food and many
| more additional costs plus costs to society associated
| with whatever made somebody go to prison in the first
| place.
|
| Right, but the reason for prison isn't _just_ keeping
| someone housed, there 's also the additional concern that
| they're presumably a danger to society and therefore must
| be contained. Therefore the argument of "you don't want
| people to get free housing but are okay with prisoners
| getting free housing" isn't the type of gotcha you think
| it is.
|
| >I mean, if you think about country income (or lack
| thereof) and spending, even ignoring military,
| corruption, church etc. There are still way bigger things
| to worry about regarding your tax dollars. There is tons
| of freeloading, exploitation and injustice, but if
| somebody is willing to accept living in slums to just
| have some roof over his head, he probably needs it, for
| whatever reason.
|
| This is an entirely unpersuasive argument. Think about it
| from the flip side. Suppose the Other Side wants to
| increase funding for the police, and you object because
| you think that the police have shown a history of wasting
| the money on armored trucks and tacticool gear. They then
| reply with, "who cares? there are way bigger wastes of
| money you should worry about!" would you be convinced?
|
| >And even giving absolutely zero empathy, assuming no
| mental problems, childhood traumas etc., counting these
| specific irrelevant cents, it still may simply be the
| most economic solution from the society perspective.
|
| Has there been a serious attempt at estimating the costs?
| Taking (cost of a studio apartment) x (number of homeless
| in america) doesn't really get to the true costs,
| because:
|
| 1. it doesn't factor in the induced demand from people
| freeloading
|
| 2. that a studio apartment completely solves the homeless
| problem. for instance, for people with mental health/drug
| addiction issues, they might trash the place and cost
| more than a studio apartment, or might choose to live on
| the streets altogether.
| [deleted]
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I find it strange that you're just shrugging off the
| objections as "outrage", rather than trying to
| engage/address them in any serious way. I think the concept
| of fairness, and the fact that people might be incentivized
| to freeload are legitimate concerns. You might not think
| they're valid, but if you want their tax dollars to fund
| the social programs you want, it seems entirely reasonable
| that their concerns be addressed.
|
| Your argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense _without_
| that sense of outrage. _Especially_ if you make the
| ridiculous economic argument you 're making.
|
| Firstly, there are serious housing shortages in many places
| in the US, driving up prices and making housing
| unaffordable for many.
|
| What's more, it's _really_ hard to hold a job when you have
| no place to shower or store your stuff (I know this from
| personal experience), so homeless folks _could_ be
| contributing to society (BTW, the data says that less than
| 10% of homeless folks have drug abuse /serious mental
| illness issues).
|
| As such, providing _most_ homeless folks with real housing
| (as compared with "shelters" which are dangerous and often
| unsanitary) can _boost_ the economy by giving more folks
| the opportunity to work, make a living and contribute to
| the community /society.
|
| It's really very simple. As James Ridgeway[1] pointed out
| back in 1988 or so (I've searched and searched for the
| Village Voice article over the years, but haven't been able
| to find it online) when he asked (then answered his own
| question):
|
| "What do homeless people want?"
|
| The answer being, "homes, mostly."
|
| This is not a new issue, nor is it particularly
| complicated.
|
| The vast majority of homeless people are willing and able
| to support themselves, but circumstance (medical bills,
| lawsuits, layoffs death of a partner/fellow breadwinner)
| has taken away their ability to afford rent. And given that
| a majority of Americans[2] (~60%) can't come up with $1,000
| for an emergency expense _should_ give you some pause.
|
| Spending some money to get folks to a place where they can
| once again support themselves and their children (yes, I'm
| going with the "think of the children" trope, although in
| this case it seems useful/relevant), so they can earn a
| living in excess of that expenditure helps the homeless
| people, the economy where that person resides and the
| community in which they live.
|
| And since "housing" people in shelters is _more expensive_
| [0] than putting these unfortunate folks in apartments,
| that's _another_ strong reason to find permanent housing
| for homeless folks.
|
| tl;dr: Since the economics of homelessness and our response
| to it broadly calls out for paying (at least until folks
| are able to pay themselves) rent on permanent housing
| rather than the half-assed measures that cost more, your
| argument about "fairness" falls really flat.
|
| [0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homeless-shelters-more-
| ex_n_5...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ridgeway
|
| [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-
| cant-...
|
| Edit: Fixed link references.
| mLuby wrote:
| > Why should some freeloader get a free place to live when
| I have to pay.
|
| You too can have this "free" housing; all it will cost is
| your choice of living location and proving that you're
| incredibly poor.
|
| If that sounds like a good deal, then this taxpayer is all
| for you mooching off the same system. But as with "I'm
| moving to Canada" I doubt we'll see significant movement.
|
| So this outrage is emotional bluster, like a child who
| never learned to share.
| gruez wrote:
| >You too can have this "free" housing; all it will cost
| is your choice of living location and proving that you're
| incredibly poor.
|
| >So this outrage is emotional bluster, like a child who
| never learned to share.
|
| You're repeating the same mistake as the parent, by
| refusing to seriously engage with the opposition, instead
| arguing against a strawman version the opposition's
| argument, and then concluding that they must be
| insincere. If I had to steelman the opposition's
| positions, I would go with the following:
|
| 1. They think it's fundamentally not their responsibility
| to help society's downtrodden
|
| 2. They think think we have a responsibility to help
| society's downtrodden, but only the ones who physically
| can't support themselves. "free housing for everyone
| who's incredibly poor" wouldn't be compatible with this
| view, because it's possible for you to be be poor through
| laziness or whatever.
|
| "It's fair because you too can get free housing if you're
| poor" doesn't address either of these concerns.
|
| >like a child who never learned to share.
|
| Okay, and what if they actually don't want to share? This
| isn't kindergarten where you can appeal to the teacher to
| forcibly get them to share. This is the real world, which
| means you need to amass a coalition of supporters to back
| you. Name-calling your opponents isn't going to help do
| that.
| JoshTko wrote:
| The only incentive should be recidivism rate.
| luckylion wrote:
| Regarding the recidivism in this analysis [1], the US doesn't
| look totally out of place vs European countries that consider
| prison's core reason to be rehabilitation (e.g. Denmark,
| Germany).
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/
| magicalist wrote:
| Which suggests that the US's longer sentences and higher
| incarceration rate are unnecessary for reducing recidivism,
| which is often what's argued as justification (keep those
| people off the streets, etc).
| luckylion wrote:
| It suggests that the OP was misinformed and deductions from
| false data should be considered carefully. Might still be.
| Might also be total nonsense. It's a claim that rests on no
| data.
|
| I think generally you can't compare the US with European
| countries on many things. The US are much more
| individualist, wealth is much less equally distributed, the
| population is much more diverse, there's still a lot of the
| frontier mindset. That'll create a different profile which
| you can see in e.g. entrepreneurship, and probably also in
| crime-rate.
| afarrell wrote:
| > incentivizing prisons to actually rehabilitate
|
| Parenting is hard. Parenting someone who is already an adult is
| harder still. Beyond incentives, they might not have the
| resources to rehabilitate the prisoners.
| wefarrell wrote:
| They're spending over half a million dollars a year to house
| prisoners[0]. The resources are there but they're not using
| them for rehabilitation.
|
| [0] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-
| stringer-co...
| Majestic121 wrote:
| The resource they are given are provided by society, it's up
| to society to decide how to allocate them.
|
| If we realize that it's barely more expensive or even cheaper
| in the long run to rehabilitate instead of punishing purely,
| we can decide to allocate more resources to rehabilitation
| (at least in theory)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Parenting is hard. Parenting someone who is already an adult
| is harder still. Beyond incentives, they might not have the
| resources to rehabilitate the prisoners.
|
| The social and economic benefits of rehabilitation _far
| outweigh_ any costs incurred in rehabilitating folks.
|
| Communities would be wealthier and safer if we didn't
| penalize convicted persons for the rest of their lives, by
| denying them jobs, housing and access to the financial
| system.
|
| And since we do penalize folks that way, is it any wonder
| they turn to more _potentially_ lucrative illegal pursuits?
|
| And the economic argument is even stronger than the social
| argument. All those folks could learn skills and provide
| boosts to local economies if they were allowed to get decent
| jobs. That would improve overall GDP and provide a strong
| incentive for convicted felons to walk the straight and
| narrow.
|
| Is it necessarily easy? No. But it makes societal and
| economic sense.
| harimau777 wrote:
| > But we won't, because our society is largely based on
| Calvinist nonsense that says there are "bad people" and we
| should celebrate those people having bad things happen to them.
|
| I'd argue it's just the opposite. If people believed Calvinism,
| then they would believe that all humanity has an innate
| capacity for evil and it's only circumstances that lead some
| people to become criminals and others judges. As I see it, the
| logical conclusion is that by changing people's circumstances
| we would be able to reform criminals.
|
| However, I'm increasingly suspecting that many if not most
| people who profess to be Christians are actually just
| tribalists.
| squokko wrote:
| Prison creates absolute animals. We shouldn't put people in
| prison unless they're going to be there for their entire lives.
| Singapore-style caning is probably much better for both the
| convict and the broader society -- take the incorrigible
| violent criminals and lock them up for life without parole, and
| cane the rest.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _Prison creates absolute animals_
|
| In US prisons I suppose. Most prisons in the world don't have
| shankings, or gangs, they're designed to rehabilitate, not
| punish.
| mansion7 wrote:
| Interesting. As an expert on world penal systems and
| criminal rehabilitation, how do other more civilized
| countries rehabilitate a woman refusing to wear a hijab, or
| a guy who refuses to renounce Falun Gong?
| SideQuark wrote:
| US has one of the lower recidivism rates [1], so it's hard to
| support "Prison creates absolute animals".
|
| [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/recidivis...
| askvictor wrote:
| 45% after 5 years hardly seems low; it's pretty similar to
| other countries in that list. The short-term recidivism is
| pretty low (though there isn't that level of data for most
| countries listed).
|
| The source publication concludes "that international
| comparisons are currently not valid" due to inconsistencies
| between countries' data and lack of transparency.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_System
| a...
| blululu wrote:
| Interesting - from this data it does appear that US is on
| the lower end of the spectrum. I will say that this dataset
| is very hard to parse - a lot of information and very
| little is apples to apples in a simple ranked chart. Also
| some countries (Denmark for instance) have fluctuated
| wildly in a span of ~10 years, which suggests that what is
| treated as a crime might be a driving variable here. I
| would be really curious to see a more detailed analysis of
| this data that segments the population by offender class
| (if you lump in non-violent and violent offenders I would
| imagine that you are making more of a commentary of the
| relative enforcement of these respective crimes).
| autoexec wrote:
| Strange, I see other sites list the US recidivism rate as
| one of the highest.
|
| > An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested
| within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.
| (https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism)
|
| Norway is often claimed to be one of the lowest in the
| world at ~20% within 5 years.
| HPsquared wrote:
| 45% reimprisonment after 5 years isn't exactly low.
| rvnx wrote:
| Would be interesting to look at recidivism and crime rate
| in Japan or Oman ?
| choward wrote:
| Pretty sure they still receive prison sentences in Singapore
| in addition to caning.
| koolba wrote:
| Starting by bringing back caning in elementary school would
| pay substantial dividends in about 10 years.
| blululu wrote:
| This policy is a bit outside of the Overton window, but
| caning really does seem more humane and effective than the
| nightmare of American prisons (I would take 3 strokes from a
| cane (will scar and you can't sit down for a few weeks) over
| 6 months in prison). It's not just the crowded brutality that
| we subject people to in prison but the painful fact that once
| you are out you are ruined. Caning is quick and convincing.
| The punishment is administered and the convict can get on
| with their life and keep their job, their house and their
| family. From a conditioning standpoint I would also suspect
| that the severe bout of physical pain is a more effective
| tool than a few years of psychological torture.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| According to federal data the average annual cost per prisoner
| in federal prisons is about $115,000.
|
| Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified
| people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled
| crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about.
| Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so
| $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do
| crime. Peoples lives improve, less crime, save money.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Better yet, just give _everybody_ a UBI sufficient for the
| basics, then we don 't need to spend money on any newfangled
| AI bullshit.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > just give _everybody_ a UBI
|
| I assumed that UBI meant _Universal_ Basic Income; so I
| supposed that everybody got it. A UBI that only some people
| get is just some other benefit.
|
| Anyway, thanks; there were some remarks upthread about UBI
| that I didn't understand. Now I do.
| concordDance wrote:
| This has the effect of discouraging people from working. So
| the question becomes how many are left who would be willing
| to work? And would we need a 80% tax rate on all
| transactions between people to fund it? And would that be a
| really bad idea?
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| You only get the money if you are likely to be a
| criminal. Since it is based on 'AI', that would mean
| people from poor and crime prone areas because pattern-
| matching. So you weren't already in that situation, then
| you'd have to figure out how to make your family very
| poor and move to a poor crime prone area. That's alot of
| friction for most to bother with. If everyone in that
| area qualifies and get the money, over time it likely
| that crime would decrease and economic activity would
| increase, school funding improves, and so on and so and
| eventually this place will no longer be seen by the AI to
| produce criminals.
| concordDance wrote:
| I meant the people in the crime ridden area will have
| that incentive.
|
| Another thing worth pointing out is this gives money to
| the young and the male more than anyone else.
|
| Actually, do we even need the AI? We could give every
| African American male between the ages of 14 and 30 who
| lives in a crime ridden area, has been arrested, has an
| absentee father and has at least one friend in prison the
| money...
|
| I'm not sure the more general approach wouldn't work, but
| "funnel a ton of money into poor crime ridden area"
| sounds obvious enough as a solution that its probably
| been tried. Anyone know what the results were?
|
| I have vague recollections that a lot of gang crime is
| more about subculture incentives rather than money
| directly.
|
| Apologies for disjointed thoughts.
| [deleted]
| ok_dad wrote:
| > This has the effect of discouraging people from
| working.
|
| Does it? I don't know that we can say it will, for sure.
| You're just assuming people are lazy, probably. Maybe it
| will discourage people from doing bullshit jobs and
| working on shitty advertising crapola, and instead we
| will have another human renaissance period of amazing
| things. Everyone I know, even those who aren't college
| educated and on the track to success since birth, would
| absolutely do amazing things for their communities with
| their time if they weren't doing stupid bullshit to
| enrich others.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| newfangled AI bullshit is a key component of the pitch. If
| you say you just want to help people and make the world
| better, there will be zero traction. But, say you have
| newfangled AI bullshit and now everybody is talking about
| it and trying to invest in newfangled AI bullshit companies
| and those companies then use that money on lobbyists who
| then 'contribute' to politicians who then pass the bills.
| It's not the world I want, but its the one we got.
| mden wrote:
| Then you would encourage people to have behaviors that trend
| towards criminal so they would get paid.
|
| But I agree with the thrust of the idea - investing that
| money in reducing factors that would cause people to turn to
| crime is a good idea. I assume it's already being done but
| maybe not as effectively as we would hope?
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| > people to have behaviors that trend towards criminal so
| they would get paid
|
| This won't work because newfangled AI is very smart.
| georgyo wrote:
| My first gut reaction was $115k/person/year was way too
| high... But apparently a person in a NYC prison costs
| $560k/year[1]...That amount of money can definitely do a lot
| of good to rehabilitate a person.
|
| However
|
| > we identified people likely to become criminals
|
| This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked
| by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will
| likely be used in court as evidence that a person likely
| commit a crime. Sadly, this is already happening today [2]
|
| > you can have this as long as you don't do crime.
|
| So if you are convicted of a crime, in addition to all the
| stuff convictions currently do to prevent you from getting a
| job and beating any chance to better yourself besides crime,
| you also loose that UBI making you even MORE desperate than
| you were before. All you have done is increase the longer
| term punishment of prision.
|
| Not to mention it encourages first time convictions so the
| city can save money. There are many vindictive judges, who
| will say something like "You don't deserve the money the
| goverment is giving you."
|
| [1] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-
| stringer-co...
|
| [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-
| algorith...
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| So its a thought experiment and so this AI is very smart,
| like even better than Microsoft's Tay. And maybe it not
| just on the person's behavior but also family wealth,
| living location, history, convictions of family members,
| and so on. Lots of things that are hard to manipulate or
| would take generations to do so.
|
| If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free
| money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out
| of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.
|
| Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing
| people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-
| effect.
| georgyo wrote:
| It is likely impossible for the AI to be that smart. You
| are talking almost about doing pre-crime. The AI could
| figure out you're going to murder someone before you even
| know yourself!
|
| But more seriously, even if the AI was super smart, it's
| still limited on it's inputs. The factors you listed are
| how the current crime AIs determine likely hood the
| person committed the crime.
|
| This AI is very smart and people trust it. If it says you
| committed the crime then you must have done it!
|
| > If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this
| free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and
| not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.
|
| > Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing
| people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a
| counter-effect.
|
| These are exactly my points. Being marked by the AI gives
| you money, but people won't trust you.
|
| If you're on trail it's this big weight people want to
| hate you. The jury isn't likely getting the money, why
| should this person on trail get it.
|
| The judge has an incentive to incarcerate.
|
| Even as a thought experiment, this idea can not stand.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| For anyone who is wondering why the prison costs 560k/year
| a big portion of that is the cost per inmate quadrupled due
| to a dropping prison populations.
| concordDance wrote:
| The perverse incentives to try and behave like a potential
| criminal would be hilarious!
|
| Also, I think you might be missing how impulsive criminals
| can be... murder is often a crime of passion.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Even so extreme poverty is a contributing factor to how
| some end up in situations where the impulse is to commit a
| crime, even murder.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| IMHO, it may be those impulsive murdering types are best
| kept in jail.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| You would get rid of a small percentage of crime. A lot of
| crime happens out of either cultural ideals, or inability to
| control emotions.
|
| My opinion is that the money should be spent on labor camps,
| specifically towards guaranteeing good nutrition, secure
| housing, access to medicine, with oversight on a government
| level, but everyone is forced to work. You would solve for
| things like inner prison violence/drug trade, since people
| will be physically and mentally exhausted, and best of all,
| everyone finishing their sentences will have had a good
| number of years of blue collar work. If some dude spent 5
| years every day welding up structures for solar panels, I
| guarantee you companies are gonna want to interview him to
| make use of his skills.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Are you using metrics that are gameable? For instance some
| predictors of future criminality are past criminality, and
| education level.
|
| This heavily incentivizes people to commit crimes and drop
| out of school.
|
| So you are forced to only use metrics that are outside their
| control such as parent's previous income level. And you'll
| get nowhere near a 50% false positive rate using only these
| metrics.
|
| Not to mention all of the frustration felt by their neighbor
| who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a
| year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year.
| Spivak wrote:
| > their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking
| home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox
| for 50k a year
|
| And they wouldn't be mad that inmates are getting $100k/yr
| in court mandated housing services sitting in a cell doing
| nothing because for some insane reason we decided that it's
| a good use of our money and their time? Does it suddenly
| make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The inmates don't receive 100k/year.
|
| If we didn't have prisons would we punish criminals in a
| different way or just let criminal commit as many crimes
| as they'd like? I guess taking a hand or a foot is
| cheaper than a prison but most people think prison is
| more human.
| Spivak wrote:
| Does the difference matter? You're still out $100k/yr. If
| you pay for my rent, food, clothes, electricity, heat,
| water, gym membership, healthcare, internet, and a one
| person subscription to rent-a-prison-guard the fact that
| I'm not seeing the cash is immaterial.
|
| > would we punish criminals in a different way
|
| Yes, this is implied. The most popular alternative is
| "house arrest" (i.e "adult grounding") where you're
| monitored but allowed to go to work, school, and
| essential places like the doctor, grocery store, etc.. If
| you need more we can keep stacking on things like
| garnished wages, daily detention, mandatory community
| service.
|
| I think that's way more human. The number of people that,
| for the safety of others, need to be separated from
| society I think it's vanishingly small, and smaller than
| that the number who are such a danger that they require
| confinement in cells.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're
| suffering while they do it?
|
| Yes. What a stupid question, of course people would
| rather pay money to punish criminals than to pay that
| money to have them play videogames.
|
| You might argue that people shouldn't think that way, but
| not only do all apes have a sense of fairness, almost all
| other semi intelligent creatures do too.
|
| Asking people to go go against a built-in drive is like
| asking teenagers to practice abstinence.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The AI is very smart and can't be gamed. It's a thought
| experiment, the AI is amazingly accurate. That neighbor
| earning $25k a year would rightfully be upset, minimum wage
| is a joke.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| If we had some super AI that couldn't get gamed, yes it
| would make sense at least from a financial standpoint.
| But once we have a singularity
|
| Also we don't produce enough goods in the economy to make
| a 50k UBI possible.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Going a step further, we can reduce costs by funding social
| services that help prevent people from ending up in prison in
| the first place. I agree with your assessment of our Calvinist
| thinking.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Do we have any silver bullets? My understanding is most
| social services show very small effects once replicated.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| In Germany are about 1/3 people in prison because they used a
| train or bus without ticket. If you can't pay you will end up
| in prison. Imagine how much money this does cost.
| VMG wrote:
| This seems like a made up number. This article here states
| that it is at most 10% of all people even in that category
| of crime in Bavaria
| https://netzpolitik.org/2022/datenluecke-wie-viele-
| menschen-...
|
| The category being "Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe" (imprisonment
| for failure to pay a fine)
|
| Do you have a source for your claim?
| notch656c wrote:
| Bavaria is the second most well off state so it seems a
| little unreasonable to assume the average numbers must be
| near that. These are the kind of crimes
| disproportionately concerning the poor.
| lancebeet wrote:
| I was also curious about this statement. According to
| wikipedia, one third of the Plotzensee Prison inmates are
| there due to fare evasion. Or rather, they were when the
| articles that wikipedia cites were written. Of course,
| being a juvenile prison in Berlin, it might have the
| highest rate of fare evader inmates of any prison in the
| country (which would explain why the articles write about
| that prison specifically).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotzensee_Prison
|
| https://taz.de/135-Schwarzfahrer-hinter-Gittern/!5134051/
|
| https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/jeder-dritte-in-
| plotzense...
| dymk wrote:
| If your numbers are true, and 10% of the prison
| population consists of people who didn't pay their bus
| fare, that is egregious
| candiodari wrote:
| You don't get it. The fines are HUGE and the prison
| sentences really short.
|
| So what do you choose? Pay x000 euro? Or go to prison for
| 1 day, a week at most? There are a substantial number of
| people picking the second option. Hell, people joke it's
| about the experience.
|
| (Also this is in fact mostly about speeding tickets, not
| public transport fares)
| VMG wrote:
| The 10% are in the category of "Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe"
| which are is "imprisonment for failure to pay a fine"
|
| The article is about the lack of more fine-grained data
| in that category
| bionade24 wrote:
| I am German and support the degradation of this "crime" to
| a delict, but even if 1/3 of the emprisoned is there bc of
| riding without a ticket, which I can hardly believe without
| a source, you leave out a very important aspect. Most if
| not all of those aren't emprisoned because they were caught
| 3 times without a ticket, but because they were on
| probation when they were caught. Most of those got
| probation immedeately in court. The law was created in the
| 1930s by the Nazi government because people "hacked" the
| new ticket machines, which weren't as secure as today. This
| wasn't an issue before when selling tickets was done by
| humans. Sadly western Germany always has been too
| conservative to change it, the reunification would have
| been a good chance to overthink every law that originated
| from the 3rd Reich.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > In Germany are about 1/3 people in prison because they
| used a train or bus without ticket.
|
| I think this could be read two ways:
|
| > In Germany, 1/3 of the total population is in prison
| because they used a train or bus without a ticket.
|
| > In Germany, 1/3 of the total prison population is there
| because they used a train or bus without a ticket.
|
| I suspect you mean the second, just noting that it could be
| misunderstood. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken!)
| [deleted]
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Is this 1/3 of the current prison population, or is it 1/3
| of prison sentences handout in a certain period?
|
| I could believe the latter.
|
| But I assume that sentences for fare evasion are shorter
| than for other types of theft, or more serious things like
| murder?
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Sadly population
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I'd want to see a citation on that, only thing I could
| find so far is this quote "Peter Biesenbach, justice
| minister in Germany's most populous state North Rhine-
| Westphalia, said that over one-in-ten verdicts handed
| down in his state dealt with fare-dodgers."
|
| I can't imagine that 1 in ten verdicts for fare dodging
| would result in one third of the prison population being
| fare dodgers.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/germany
| aedocw wrote:
| This is wildly inaccurate.
|
| The population of Germany is about 84m. The total prison
| population in Germany is 56557. [1]
|
| What are you talking about?
|
| [1]: https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/germany
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Not OP but I believe they're talking about the total
| prison population and not the total population. They're
| saying that roughly 19,000 people (roughly 1/3 of 56,557)
| are in prison in Germany due to the inability to pay a
| fine that was given to them for riding on a train or bus
| without a ticket.
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| I'd rather ride the U-Bahn in Munich than the subway in
| NYC.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| Yes, and I'd rather go to prison in Munich than to Rikers
| Island.
| notch656c wrote:
| It will make more sense once you realize the judicial system,
| cops, prisons etc demand their tribute and if less people are
| breaking the current laws more will have to be invented or
| prison sentences made longer.
|
| Government apparatuses don't shrink in size. This is why the
| war on drugs started after prohibition, Henry Anslinger had
| to go after the evil marijuana. If people stop committing
| crimes we'll just have to invent more.
| explorigin wrote:
| [flagged]
| etna_ramequin wrote:
| Yes, please. I'm pretty sure Calvinism says that everybody is
| corrupted by sin (not just prisoners) and that everybody is
| in need of God's grace. There's certainly nothing about
| celebrating when something bad happens to somebody.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_election
| sofixa wrote:
| _Gestures vaguely around_
|
| Take a look at any "tough on crime" or "conservative"
| politician, and the majority of then will say stuff to that
| regard.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >Take a look at any "tough on crime" or "conservative"
| politician, and the majority of then will say stuff to that
| regard.
|
| It's not just the conservatives. HN will happily argue for
| disproportionate punishments for "risk of life and limb"
| type crimes in which there was no criminal intent and
| nobody was harmed. "Anti-social" crimes or "crimes that
| make a mockery of the system" (turnstyle jumping, vandalism
| of public property, stuff like that) are a pretty close
| second.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >To reduce the lifetime cost of this person on society
| (financially and otherwise) we should be incentivising prisons
| to actually rehabilitate
|
| As an American, I think that rehabilitation _should_ be the
| goal. But for the most part, it isn 't. But not just to "cut
| costs."
|
| There's the human cost of lost potential, which is worth much
| more than money. But the current system _also_ penalizes
| families and communities and society at-large by limiting the
| opportunities for those who have been convicted of a crime.
|
| The issues with incarceration in the US go much deeper than
| that. You mention homelessness/joblessness. That's a very real
| issue, that's a result of stigmatizing (often for life) people
| convicted of a crime. But that's not a result of the system of
| incarceration, rather it's a result of government and societal
| devaluing of human life. And more's the pity.
|
| As to this specific situation, I'd note that there are no
| _prisons_ in New York City.
|
| Rather, they are jails[0]: Jail and prison are
| often used interchangeably as places of confinement. If
| you want to be specific jail can be used to describe a place
| for those awaiting trial or held for minor crimes,
| whereas prison describes a place for criminals
| convicted of serious crimes.
|
| Which means that the majority of folks in the institutions
| discussed in the post are either being held before trial (which
| means they haven't been _found guilty_ of a crime) or those
| found guilty of minor offenses (mostly misdemeanors).
|
| As such, this move is _even more_ egregious, as many (most?) of
| these folks haven 't even been convicted of a crime.
|
| Yes, the US systems (note the plural, there are at least 51) of
| incarceration tend (sometimes pretty hard) towards retribution
| and exploitation, But they are not monolithic. They're mostly
| bad, but some are worse than others.
|
| NYC had been moving in a more positive direction, with bail
| reform and plans to shut down the notorious Riker's Island[2]
| in favor of multiple, smaller _jails_ across NYC.
|
| However, just last week, after body/security cam footage of a
| mentally ill Riker's Island inmate (not convicted of a crime,
| but awaiting trial) being violently transferred to a "mental
| health" unit of the jail, the Corrections Department (DOC) [3]
| restricted access for the Board of Corrections (BOC) [4] (the
| oversight agency for the Corrections department) to such
| videos.
|
| This was pretty obviously retribution for the release of the
| video to the media.
|
| And now they want to further punish/exploit those who are
| incarcerated (again, many/most of whom haven't been convicted
| of a crime) with this.
|
| It's pretty awful, but, at least in this case, please don't
| paint these folks with the broad brush of "criminal" as many
| have not been adjudged to be guilty of _any_ crime, or are
| serving a short sentence for minor crimes (shoplifting, public
| urination, etc.).
|
| I am not pleased with how the DOC is backsliding and will hold
| my elected representatives accountable in 2025 (City Council,
| Mayor, etc.) for these punitive and egregious abuses.
|
| Understand that I'm not making light of your point WRT inhumane
| conditions and retribution/abuse/exploitation in the various US
| systems of incarceration. You're quite correct. I expounded
| because this is _even more egregious_ than usual given the
| population involved.
|
| I'd also say that our current systems don't just harm those who
| are incarcerated, but also the communities they come from and
| the economy, as those with criminal convictions are limited by
| the stigma of criminal convictions in the economic activity
| they can generate.
|
| It's a lose-lose proposition and it requires fixing. Sadly, I
| won't hold my breath. :(
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/jail-vs-
| prison...
|
| [1] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/public-
| safety/2023/01/1...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikers_Island
|
| [3] https://www.nyc.gov/site/doc/index.page
|
| [4] https://www.nyc.gov/site/boc/index.page
| KMag wrote:
| I'm not a theologian, but my understanding is that 5-point
| Calvinism actually claims all people are bad (total depravity
| of Man) and that Christians shouldn't think they're better than
| other people, since it's not the person's choice if they
| believe in God or not (irresistible grace).
|
| Though, maybe in practice Calvinism deviates from theory.
| jmainguy wrote:
| Man is fallen, we are all equally fallen and sinful. No man
| is better than another, nothing man can do would ever be
| enough to make up for our sins.
| plorg wrote:
| All 5 points are just different facets of the belief in
| predestination - that we are ultimately incapable of changing
| our moral standing, our fate, that only God can do that for
| us. In practice it means that there are an elect few who are
| capable of good (and in my educational experience, are tasked
| with "building the kingdom of God", aka running things) and
| everyone else deserves what is coming to them even if they
| could incidentally do good by the accident of common grace.
| There really isn't any incentive to not treat everyone not in
| your church as garbage and deserving of punishment. The only
| difference is now there isn't, for any one believer, a good
| reason to even try to listen to the pleas and arguments of
| someone outside your belief structure, because you're both
| under total depravity, but you feel, and are assured by those
| who believe the same as you, that you have God's blessing and
| are incapable of losing it.
|
| Obviously not everyone believes all of it to the same extent,
| and they may have a softer padding between these beliefs and
| how they act within the real world, but based on my
| experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist
| communities) most people who take the title Calvinist, and
| even most who rather take the label Reformed (because
| Calvinism has earned its bad name) do believe this to a fair
| extent.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist
| communities_
|
| Disappointing to see your unusually extensive first-hand
| experience downvoted to the bottom of this sub-thread.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Indeed so, but by the same logic it's not the person's choice
| to be hypocritical while reaping the mundane rewards of
| apparent piety.
|
| Philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues that it is religion/ideology
| that allows for the commission of atrocities, by ascribing
| cosmic importance to otherwise banal conflicts over resources
| and prior injuries.
|
| In nature, predatory animals might hunt prey to extinction
| and then die off themselves. But this is more likely to
| happen in theoretical models or very isolated/extreme
| environments with an unusually narrow 'fault tolerance. In
| more complex environments, adversarial populations wax and
| wane chaotically, selection pressure yield evolutionary
| innovations and arms races that allow breakouts from local
| minima, and so on.
|
| _A History of Warfare_ by John Keegan is a good introduction
| (with an excellent bibliography) to the anthropology of
| warfare, and has a particularly good treatment of initially
| adaptive social mores can end in catastrophe when they bump
| into resource limits or experience an external shock. Keegan
| emphasizes the role of technologies (both physical and
| social) which confer overwhelming advantages in conflict,
| which may or may not be sustainable. For example, pastoral
| herding /hunting practices developed on the large scale of
| the Mongolian steppe allowed nomadic hordes under leaders
| like Genghis Khan to overwhelm less dynamic agricultural
| societies. But lacking deep administrative foundations (quite
| literally, due to a lack of construction materials and
| incentives) they were unable to lock in their massive
| tactical advantages over a longer timescale.
|
| _War_ by Azar Gat has a deeper exploration of competition
| between socio-cultural systems and incorporates fresher
| scholarship, but at the price of being somewhat more
| tendentious and a much less engaging read.
| mabbo wrote:
| Specifically, the concept I'm referring to is
| Predestination[0], or the more extreme version 'Double
| predestination', wherein God pre-ordained who the Good people
| are and who the Bad people are, and you know you're the Good
| people because bad things aren't happening to you, and you
| know that that person must be a Bad person because bad things
| happen to them.
|
| If you're born to a wealthy privileged life, this belief says
| that you deserve it because you're one of God's chosen-
| that's why life is so good. And it's a _good_ thing that all
| those bad things happen to other people because they are
| _bad_ people. God didn 't choose them.
|
| This is an extreme view, but the seeds of it are everywhere
| in our society. Just the term "bad guys" is used to imply a
| generic evil that we need to _stop_. Meanwhile real life is
| far more nuanced (with most true sociopaths actually doing
| very well in finance and politics).
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination
| KMag wrote:
| Again, I'm not a theologian, but this sounds like some
| mixture of predestination and prosperity gospel, not merely
| predestination. Most of Jesus's most influential early
| followers were hunted down and tortured by the Roman
| authorities, which wouldn't seem to jive with the proposed
| criteria.
| plorg wrote:
| This reads like you are suggesting that Calvinism is the
| same as early Christianity. There was no single organized
| Christian belief to speak of, and very likely what
| organization there was looked nothing like the church of
| 16th century Geneva let alone that of 18th to 21st
| century America.
| KMag wrote:
| I'm saying if the way to know that you're predestined to
| be saved is that bad things aren't happening to you, that
| doesn't square with Jesus, Peter, and Paul, and many
| other early leaders having been tortured and killed by
| the Romans.
|
| Presumably, the Calvinists believed that Peter, Paul, and
| others were predestined to be saved, and that Jesus was
| on the right side of history.
|
| This is the first I've heard that John Calvin preached
| that bad things don't happen to people who are
| predestined for salvation.
| claar wrote:
| What you're describing is more commonly known as the
| "Prosperity Gospel" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology - which
| is a niche theology that claims believers will experience
| "health and wealth" on earth.
|
| Predestination is a much more mainstream Christian doctrine
| that has nothing to do with "good people" vs "bad people",
| or even "good actions" vs "sinful actions". Predestination
| means some people are "destined" to salvation and others
| are not.
|
| Predestination is a challenging theology that has to
| balance God being all knowing (omniscient) and free will.
| michael1999 wrote:
| You may be too generous. The slaving mindset lives on, and the
| goal for private prisons is "how can I make the most money off
| this captive person". Obscene long-distance rates, pay-per-use
| computers, and now this proposed mail rule, are all about
| creating new revenue streams for an extractive business.
| mattmillr wrote:
| The entire US policing & carceral system arguably traces back
| to slave patrols.
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-
| invention-...
| adamc wrote:
| This is evil. All this crap where we dump the costs of
| imprisoning people on their families is gross and wrong.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It's unreal how much money prisons make off of Prisoners'
| families. Selling items for 2-4x as much as retail, selling them
| items and not allowing them to give them away when they leave,
| making phone calls super expensive, etc. A large majority of this
| money comes from the Prisoner's family. And because they're
| prisoners most people will never really care until it happens to
| them.
|
| And this isn't really just a US thing, I know the UK sells them
| items at far greater than retail and I suspect most countries do.
| njovin wrote:
| Let's not forget about spending money per-email when messaging
| an inmate (and paying extra to include a photo).
|
| Is that program administered by the state? Do the funds go
| toward paying money owed to victims or funding the prisons?
| Nope. Private companies (like JPAY) are making money hand-over-
| fist with no benefit to the prisoners nor the victims nor the
| state.
| granshaw wrote:
| The GDP-enhancing privatization and financialization must
| continue, all externalities be damned
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The justice system in general is a huge financial drag on
| anyone connected to someone accused of a crime. Unless they
| just cut them loose completely. Court fees. Fees for all kinds
| of stuff in jail or prison. Lawyer costs. Rehab instead of
| prison? Pay that (huge, inflated) bill or off to prison they
| go. Hell I think there are even parole fees, at least some
| places. It seemingly never ends (I've been lucky not to be
| close enough to experience it personally, but have seen it from
| a shortish distance)
|
| I'd bet it's a big part of why the poverty/crime cycle is so
| hard to break. Families already on the margin pushed off the
| edge by all the expenses associated with having someone close
| to you get charged with a crime (again, unless you just totally
| cut them loose and pretend they're dead, not caring at all what
| happens to them).
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| One previous job I had a part where our application was being
| used to track court fees and restitution. The anonymized
| (names & addresses were, the rest was not) data used in the
| development environment was heartbreaking.
|
| Many of the fees are set by state legislators. If you got a
| $50 fine for "whatever", there would be close to $1,000 added
| in fees for misdemeanors (things you cannot be imprisoned for
| more than 365 days). Felonies (things that you can get more
| than 1 year in prison for) were not handled by this level of
| court.
| soco wrote:
| In Switzerland the internal shops sell at premium prices as
| well. But regulations are way less intrusive on what you can
| receive, or on any other aspect as a matter of fact. The
| theoretical goal of "reeducation" is thus placed slightly
| closer.
| exabrial wrote:
| I wish _I_ could ban my physical mail... why are we cutting down
| trees, hauling it with diesel, to have me throw it away, have
| that hauled with diesel, to a landfill...
| shever73 wrote:
| In Ireland, physical mail in some prisons was stopped during the
| pandemic. People were soaking the paper in "spice", sending the
| letter in, and then the prisoners smoking it to get high. As a
| result, the censors started just giving photocopies of the
| letters to the prisoner.
|
| Unfortunately, this meant that letters I had sent in took over 8
| months to get to the recipient.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| A sheet of that went for $2500 in the feds during COVID in
| 2021. $750 to the inmate inside that got it in, $750 to the
| inmate that sold it, and the rest to the non-inmates.
|
| Edit: The saddest was when they stopped letting people get
| pictures/cards made by their kids. Only manufacture cards were
| allowed in at that point. We were still getting an epidemic of
| K2 in somehow though? -\\_(tsu)_/-
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Hmmm, this one seems Ok / good idea? The bad part is jails that
| try to replace in person visits with paid video calls. Besides
| obvious humanitarian part, preserving inmates ties to family and
| community is obviously important for eventual reintegration and
| for reducing offense rates of inmate's children. But here? A
| letter is a letter and free individuals don't get much physical
| mail anymore. There are obvious angles for abuse and inmates
| don't have a right to privacy, for good reasons. Digitize mail,
| keep in person visits and allow properly screened physical
| presents for inmates with good behavior.
| buildbuildbuild wrote:
| Books.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Imagine being deprived of your freedom and not being able to
| have letters you can read anytime, only when you're permitted
| to use a computer. Seems even more unfair than it already is.
| ahoy wrote:
| Man, this is one of the more soulless comments ive read on HN.
| Imagine the father who's been locked up on trumped up drug
| charges, now unable to get a letter from his kid.
|
| You could only arrive at your opinion if you think that the US
| Justice system is fair, and that inmates aren't people. I
| strongly suggest you rethink this.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Imagine a Godfather locked up on accurate drug charges
| ordering hits on his rivals using invisible ink? Introducing
| a digital layer reliably prevents all kind of exploits. If
| the issue is innocence, you are not going to solve this with
| half steps, in fact an innocent guy can end up being stabbed
| by a razor smuggled in a postcard. If people are guilty, they
| are still humans but we have no reason to trust them and need
| to protect ourselves from their potential bad intents as much
| as possible.
| SllX wrote:
| The privatize the digital scanning part is the issue. It'll
| just be another thing for some company to charge for. Just
| deliver the damn mail and stop trying to turn jails and prisons
| into a profit center.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Hmmm, this one seems Ok / good idea?
|
| Did you read the article? It explicitly says several other US
| states have already done this, and it hasn't reduced the
| prevelance of drugs in the system. So I really don't see why
| this is a "good idea"?
|
| >>inmates don't have a right to privacy, for good reasons.
|
| They do though. It's severely limited, but it exists. Article
| also mentions this, if you read it?
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Who said drugs are the only problem? How about handmade
| weapons (can cut someone's throat with a glass shard), hidden
| messages, non-hidden messages missed during inspection? Once
| things are digitized they can be investigated if something
| happens and anyone aiding criminal acts can be held
| responsible.
|
| Inmates certainly have privacy to consult their lawyer. They
| should not have privacy to plan additional crimes with
| arbitrary people outside. If at some point we decide they
| earned an exception, that can be handled accordingly.
| post_break wrote:
| So prisons lost the phone revenue scam, and now moving onto mail
| scam?
| LadyCailin wrote:
| That's not still ongoing?
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| the op may be referring to the recent California legislature
| that took effect. Sadly that is not national.
| malfist wrote:
| Not as badly. Biden signed a bill capping the per minute rate
| for phone calls from prison. When it takes effect, the costs
| will be capped at 25 cents per minute.
|
| Still insane, but better than the alternative.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| What mail?
| jerry1979 wrote:
| Prisoners in the United States don't even have access to the
| internet, and now this for NYC? Really a disgrace.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I'd want to give prisoners access to an offline copy of the
| internet...
|
| Lets start with a dump of wikipedia on cheap $40 android phones
| with the radios disabled.
|
| Plenty of prisoners would like to learn stuff given the
| opportunity. No reason not to let them, especially the ones who
| will be getting out of prison one day.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There are many federal protections for mail. This sounds
| unplausible.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| As (for example) with the Second Amendment, not every
| protection applies to prisoners.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Hahaha. During COVID, our warden just flat refused to receive
| mail, because they couldn't 'lose' peoples compassionate
| release requests when received via certified mail like they did
| when you tried to use the internal 'grievance process' system
| that somehow had an 80% loss rate that the courts were just
| fine with. Oh, and if you had a problem with the grievance
| process? The BOP and Courts require... you guessed it... that
| you follow the grievance process to address. You can't even get
| access to the courts until you exhaust the grievance process
| which takes 3-6 months and minimum $24 in postage (a lot when
| you make $5 a month) and another $10-20 in copier fees.
| warning26 wrote:
| It's too bad about the privatization corruption potential,
| because banning physical mail seems like a good idea overall in
| this case.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Assuming your end goal with prison is to spit out a member of
| society at the end, not just a harder, worse criminal, cutting
| off all their ties to people they know really isn't a great
| thing to do. There's a big difference between a handwritten
| letter and a picture on a screen to a person who wants to get
| out and try again at making something of themselves. Of course
| if all you want is more criminal activity from them then making
| their only physical contact other criminals is a great plan.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Hard disagree. If I were in prison, it would make a great
| difference to me to keep a drawing that my child sent me in my
| cell, vs. maybe being able to look at a bad scan of it. Plus,
| when would I actually get to see the scan?
| warning26 wrote:
| Sure -- but _you're_ not in prison. The kinds of people in
| there are probably receiving smuggled goods or other illicit
| materials, not pleasant drawings from kids.
| jkingsman wrote:
| I feel sad after reading this comment. People in prison are
| still people. Many of them have committed crimes against
| society; some are imprisoned unjustly; all are deserving of
| human dignity and love. People in prison have families,
| children, loved ones, and it's an undeniable fact that
| strong social support networks reduce recidivism.
|
| People in prison are not monsters. They're people.
|
| I won't deny that illicit substances flowing into prisons
| is a problem. But painting all prisoners as smugglers who
| are incapable of receiving affection, love, or support is
| absurd.
| warning26 wrote:
| _> Many of them have committed crimes against society
| [...] all are deserving of human dignity and love_
|
| If someone deprived another of dignity via a crime (say,
| via sexual assault or murder), why should that person be
| deserving of any dignity themselves?
| burnished wrote:
| Did you know you can be jailed for watching the sun rise
| on top of a church? They can and will charge your ass
| with burglary. It isnt fitting, but if you start acting
| just the least bit weird and a cop catches you well, hope
| you have access to adequate legal representation.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The criminal justice system does not punish for the
| benefit of the victim by retribution, but rather for the
| benefit of the state. Criminal cases in court are the
| state vs the defendant. The victim is not a party.
| gambiting wrote:
| Because how we treat others speaks a lot about ourselves.
| This is the shortest TLDR on a philosophical argument
| going on literally for millenia. It's the same reason why
| prisoners are given a mattress to sleep on and warm water
| to wash with, even though you could argue many of them
| don't deserve even that.
| lesuorac wrote:
| There's many more crimes then sexual assault and murder
| that can land you in prison.
|
| How many soap bottles would I have to steal before you
| think I don't deserve any dignity?
|
| And then there's also not everybody convicted of a crime
| actually did the crime [1].
|
| [1]: https://innocenceproject.org/national-academy-of-
| sciences-re....
| thewildginger wrote:
| As recently as 2022 en masse convictions of corrections
| officers have been happening within states.
|
| In Georgia during a two year sting 46 people were
| convicted, all DOC employees, mostly Corrections Officers.
|
| Taking away physical mail from people already deprived of
| their rights seems extreme, especially when the problem
| pretty clearly is COs who enable it.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/final-defendants-
| includin...
|
| https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/court-overturns-
| guards...
| indymike wrote:
| > kinds of people in there
|
| At some point, they are human, and if you've ever spent any
| time even volunteering around the "system" you would begin
| to understand exactly how wrong, and how utterly heartless
| this kind of thinking is. How we treat the helpless defines
| our humanity.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| Like they can't get both? Who are you to decide that? Are
| you in prison since that was your qualifier to the GP?
| warning26 wrote:
| GP began with "if I were in prison", so I meant it more
| like "but you're not in prison, because you're distinct
| from those who are".
| thefaux wrote:
| > I meant it more like "but you're not in prison, because
| you're distinct from those who are".
|
| This is a wretched assumption that dehumanizes everyone
| in prison by implying that they are a part of some lesser
| subspecies that does not deserve humane treatment.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Right, but you're not in prison either making you
| distinct from those that are. You're painting with a very
| large brush assuming that the only possessions a prisoner
| might have are contraband. If you think they don't have
| pictures of family or notes/letters/drawings from kids,
| you'd be sorely mistaken.
| jollyllama wrote:
| There's truth to what you say, but that's a sweeping
| generalization.
| skcusgnad wrote:
| Yeah, because criminals don't love their children /s
|
| Man your callousness is jarring.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| "The kinds of people in there" are not very different from
| you or me and treating them as other is merely a cognitive
| opioid to comfort ourselves with treating prisoners with
| cruelty.
| treeman79 wrote:
| There are some in prison that screwed up and want to
| change.
|
| Many in prison would slit a throat, scam, mug, assault,
| rape etc without any kind of remorse. These people are
| not like you and I.
|
| Some of these do some variation of "find Jesus" and try
| and change. Many do not. Or they take decades to change
| ways.
|
| At Some point dangerous people need to be locked away.
|
| Fear of punishment is the only thing that keeps a small
| percentage of the population from doing these things on a
| regular basis. Think how people act in real life vs being
| Anonymous online.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| The truth of the matter is there are plenty of children
| coerced into false confessions, and there are plenty of
| freely-going CEO rapists and scammers.
|
| There's very little about people who are imprisoned that
| justify depriving them of being able to communicate with
| people who aren't imprisoned. For one, how will they
| communicate if they are being raped, physically abused,
| or medically neglected by the prison?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Minority of the prison population is there because of a
| violent crime *.
|
| There's no reason to assume the majority would committed
| violence at the first chance they get since they didn't
| do that while outside of prison.
|
| * Violent crimes often include things such as drug
| dealing even when no actual violence occured.
| jMyles wrote:
| What a ridiculous presumption.
|
| Is there anything resembling evidence that the current
| system of incarceration selects the "kinds of people" to
| whom you refer, rather than arbitrarily from the
| population, weighted by money and melanin?
| warning26 wrote:
| Are you saying that no one in prison is there because
| they committed a crime? While I'd be certain that there
| are false positives, you seem to be asserting that the
| entire prison population is composed of false positives.
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Is there anything resembling evidence that the current
| system of incarceration selects the "kinds of people" to
| whom you refer
|
| The National Crime Victimization Survey?
|
| I mean people always try and say that the FBI crime stats
| are wrong/falsified/whatever but I rarely if ever see any
| attempts to debunk the NCVS which corroborates the FBI
| crime numbers.
| [deleted]
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Evil rent-seeking bullshit. Ugh.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I'm sure reducing prisoner contact with loved ones will surely
| reduce crime! /s
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| That's a feature, isn't it? Must keep the revolving door
| spinning!
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| What else will we do with all these surplus unproductive
| labor pools? Everyone knows if someone isn't useful to the
| stock market, they _deserve_ to suffer.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I mean, to be cynical: those friends and family didn't stop
| them committing (serious) crimes in the first place. Maybe
| prison SHOULD be time for a clean break with bad influences...
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| So you lock them in with all the other bad influences?
|
| American prisons are in no way a "clean break with bad
| influences". The entire system is basically set up how it'd
| be if you asked someone to make sure recidivism was high as
| possible. Long harsh sentences for non-violent crime, low
| contact with the outside, no real job training, roadblocks
| for jobs for ex-cons on the outside, stuck with a ton of debt
| in court fees on release plus a parole system designed to put
| people back in jail.
|
| To reduce crime you need to either support a community or
| create opportunity. Instead we starve communities to fund
| putting people in jail and block them from opportunities once
| they make it outside.
| notch656c wrote:
| Your comment is unpopular but in some ways it's probably
| right. I think family, indirectly, forces a lot of crime.
| Once you have kids to feed the desperation is real. You may
| be able to support yourself on minimum wage but add a kid or
| two into the mix and no real skills and the result is having
| a family results in crime. Toss a court order for child
| support on top of that, and hey it's go to jail for non-
| payment or go to jail for theft or whatever -- at least the
| theft charge has a definite ending whereas child support they
| can chase you literally forever for that.
|
| When I look at peak imprisonment rates it corresponds pretty
| well to when men are at max pressure to provide for
| dependents. Most of us wouldn't hurt someone else for our own
| good even if starving but look your starving kid in the face
| and the question becomes more difficult and theoretical about
| morality and risk of getting caught may go out the window.
| CerieXerox wrote:
| Picking Rikers as an example is low-hanging fruit. Even by the
| (very-low) American jail standards it's one of the worst.
|
| > _Violence and drug use among the inmate population has been a
| problem at Rikers for decades_
|
| https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-rikers-vio...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikers_Island#Abuse_and_neglec...
| burkaman wrote:
| It's also the largest or second largest jail in the country
| depending on how you count, and close to the largest in the
| world. It makes sense to go for the largest and lowest-hanging
| fruit if it somehow remains uneaten even after many decades of
| reporting and investigations.
| CerieXerox wrote:
| Agreed! Just a reminder that _NY Daily News_ is only slightly
| to the left of the _Post_ so we can 't discount the subtler
| message here -- "this data extrapolates to _every_ jail in
| the US 1:1. " (An oversimplification, the article also quotes
| someone saying this practice "seems cruel" for ex.)
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Somehow the left has become incredibly radical about every other
| issue, but isn't dealing with the basics like this, which have
| been discussed for many decades and most of the public would
| support reforming?
| r053bud wrote:
| The democrats make just as much money on private prisons and
| defense contracts as the rest of them. It's their business!
| user3939382 wrote:
| The establishment left i.e. "The Democratic party" is on many
| issues left in name only, and actually comprised of pro-war,
| pro-censorship, anti-labor, right-wing corporatists. This is
| much more of a problem with the party in DC than the People.
| The focus is exclusively on social issues as a diversion from
| the corrupt theft of our tax dollars for their executive
| buddies.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Awesome reply. That makes sense. Thanks for sharing.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Most of the public supports "reform," sure. Just half the
| country wants reform that looks like more privatization,
| harsher sentences, less probation/parole, more pre-trial
| incarceration, fewer books available, lower cost/quality food,
| fewer medical services available, etc. etc.
|
| Trump actually took a big step in the right direction with the
| First Step Act and the GOP was... chilly to it, to say the
| least.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I don't actually think half the country supports all the
| things you said. Some people are for harsher sentences, sure,
| but if they had the option of a compromise where the
| sentences were slightly longer but the conditions much better
| I suspect they might accept such a compromise.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Sure, "half the country supports some combination of [list
| of bad and counterproductive reforms]." Consider it edited!
|
| The reality is that some people view prison as a punitive
| system, and others do not. These people can agree or
| disagree on specific reforms but fundamentally it's very
| hard to see eye-to-eye because they are operating toward
| totally different goals.
| themitigating wrote:
| Biden just signed a bill to reduce the cost of Prison phone
| calls by a significant amount [1]. Here's more details on how
| excessive the charges were. https://harvardpolitics.com/jail-
| phone-calls/ . Is your argument that because the Democrats
| haven't tackled the issue with privatization of mail and/or
| haven't spoken out about it they don't care? Maybe they will,
| maybe not, at least they have done something.
|
| All the sponsors of this bill are Democrats or independent. To
| be fair it was approved by voice vote so some number of
| Republicans might have been ok with it? (I'm not sure how that
| works)[2]
|
| [1]"Biden signs a bill to fight expensive prison phone call
| costs." https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1146370950/prison-phone-
| call-...
|
| [2]https://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1372341
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Prison guards smuggle drugs. Then they invent all these weird
| policies to avoid admitting that. Until the pandemic they claimed
| it was visitors, but when shutting down visits didn't change the
| rate of drug detection they invented this drug impregnated paper
| crap.
| csdvrx wrote:
| Here's a lower tech + lower cost solutions: introduce said letter
| in a Xerox or a fax machine - contraband problem solved.
| double2helix wrote:
| I was locked up in the feds, and the last two years I was there
| they went to this policy. Let me assure you if did absolutely
| nothing to stymie the flow of drugs. There are a hundred
| different ways people get stuff on the inside, and even if those
| hundred different ways were stopped there would be a new hundred
| in no time. The quality of the mail scans were terrible. Problems
| like missing portions of letters and B&W scans of greetings cards
| (which BTW is against copyright laws). I can't speak for the
| state level, but as far as the federal level the prison system is
| 0% rehabilitation. It is a profit mongering machine if you follow
| the money. For example the judge that sentenced me has a stake in
| the unicor federal prison industries factory I worked at, as well
| as the halfway house I was required to stay at when I got out
| even though I had a job and home immediately upon release.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I was thinking the other day about how jails are powerful in all
| the wrong ways. Inmates harm each other and their crimes are not
| always prosecuted. Guards beat someone to death and no charges
| are ever filed. Prisons have the power to hide crimes when
| convenient, but don't have the power to stop gang activity and
| drugs inside the prison. This is what corrupted power looks like.
|
| Police departments are often the same.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > Police departments are often the same.
|
| I don't know understand why some people online seem to so often
| want to steer discussions towards how the police are so awful.
| BigRedDog1669 wrote:
| It seems pretty relevant here. Both prisons and the police
| are part of the government monopoly on violence.
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| "Government monopoly on violence" is a phrase that I see
| constantly see on the internet that makes less and less
| sense the more you think about. Of all the news I read of
| killings near where I live none are the government doing
| it, and certainly it's a minority of homicides nationally
| done by active government employees. And outside the world
| of crime there's plenty of violent sports, plenty of
| violent non-criminal activity happens. I'd bet most people
| I know have experienced non government violence.
| D13Fd wrote:
| The article is about prison mail. It has nothing to do with
| police officers and does not mention the "government
| monopoly on violence."
| danuker wrote:
| Digitized mail is one more straw on the camel's back. It
| is an example of the deeper issue: the prison-industrial
| complex going backwards on rehabilitation, because it is
| following the bad incentives written into law.
|
| Meanwhile, in Norway, the incarceration rate is 10x
| lower, while the 2-year recidivism is about 20% instead
| of the US's 50-60% [1].
|
| [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20100509171347/http://w
| ww.time.c...
|
| Here's an idea: pay prisons a meaningful amount when
| people coming out of them stay out and/or get jobs. For
| example, a bonus each year for five years.
|
| Another idea: penalize them for every death or
| recidivism.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I agree with all of that (except maybe the "another idea"
| that was added via your edit). The U.S. prison system is
| in need of deep reform and this article is another great
| example of why. It's a completely misguided proposal that
| puts yet another private and profit-driven entity in a
| position of power over prisoners, extracting money from
| them and providing little if any value to the system.
|
| The article still has nothing to do with police
| departments, though.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yes. To connect this with my point. The prisons will end
| up with a fancy IT mail system. The jail will be able to
| provide digital mail for a fee, while not providing
| physical safety for the inmates. Priorities are wrong.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Here's an idea: pay prisons a meaningful amount when
| people coming out of them stay out and/or get jobs. For
| example, a bonus each year for five years.
|
| I get that you see financial incentives to prisons as
| _the_ solution. However, that doesn 't really solve the
| problem. Because it's not the prison or its
| administrators who deny housing and employment to those
| released from prison.
|
| Which is why many folks (myself included) support "Ban
| the box"[0] laws.
|
| Unless and until the societal stigma of incarceration (or
| even just an arrest -- both are public records) is
| satisfactorily addressed, this issue _can 't_ be solved.
| And certainly not with incentives to prison
| administrators.
|
| [0] https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/ban-
| the-box-...
| indymike wrote:
| The OP is talking about why these kinds of things exist.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > The OP is talking about why these kinds of things
| exist.
|
| No they are not:
|
| >jails are powerful in all the wrong ways. . . . This is
| what corrupted power looks like. . . . Police departments
| are often the same.
|
| The article talks about prisons scanning mail. The OP
| then says that prisons are corrupt, then throws in that
| by the way, police departments are too.
|
| OP's opinion about police department corruption has
| nothing to do with the article about prison mail.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They are part of the same system where if one is
| happening it is more likely the idea will happen
| indymike wrote:
| In the US a large number of incarceration facilities are
| ran by the county police (otherwise known as the
| Sheriff's department).
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| WellYesButActuallyNo.jpeg
|
| The majority of _jails_ in the US are run by county
| sheriffs or local law enforcement. The majority of
| _prisons_ are run by the states.
| generj wrote:
| Even worse, in some jurisdictions the incoming pipeline
| for hires routes through running the jail or prisons.
|
| The mindset behind being a good cop and a good prison
| guard are totally different. Exposing hires to the
| corruption and violence inside prisons right before
| sending them to police the streets creates a very
| adversarial mindset against the public.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The article is about prison mail. It has nothing to do
| with police officers and does not mention the "government
| monopoly on violence."
|
| No. The article is about _jail_ mail. While "prison" and
| "jail" are often used interchangeably, they are _not_ (at
| least in the US) the same thing.
|
| Jails are for folks being detained _before trial_ (i.e.,
| they are innocent as they haven 't been proven/pled
| guilty) or incarcerated for minor crimes (with a sentence
| of less than 1-2 years).
|
| Prisons are for people who have been _convicted_ of
| serious crimes (with sentences longer than a year or
| two).
|
| That's not to say that those in prison _should_ be
| exploited /abused, but this policy change affects those
| who haven't even been convicted of a crime.
|
| As a rule, I'm usually disgusted by the US "justice"
| system. I'm even more disgusted now.
| D13Fd wrote:
| It's about both prisons and jails. From the article:
|
| > The proposed changes follow a nationwide trend of
| prisons and jails moving to stop incarcerated people from
| receiving physical mail. Prisons in Pennsylvania stopped
| physical mail in 2018, and prisons in Massachusetts
| started sending incarcerated people photocopies of
| original letters. Last year, prisons in New Mexico and
| Florida adopted similar changes, and Texas has also
| limited in-person mail.
|
| Obviously it's a bit more relevant to prisons where
| prisoners tend to stay longer and are more likely to
| receive mail.
|
| Also, none of this shows that the article has anything to
| do with police department corruption.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Yeah, but WRT this horrendously egregious policy, I
| didn't (and won't) address facilities other than NYC
| jails, as that's most relevant to _me_.
|
| This article isn't about front line police, yet you keep
| bringing them up. Why is that?
|
| In fact, I didn't mention the police at all (although, as
| others have noted, corrections officers generally _are_
| sworn LEOs), so I don 't know why you have such a hard on
| for cops[0].
|
| No, not all cops are sadistic, power-drunk scumbags. But
| _one_ is too many. cf. Daniel Pantaleo[1], Derek
| Chauvin[2] or Joseph Franco[3]. There are _hundreds_ more
| _that we know about_. Which leaves many, many more we
| _don 't_ know about.
|
| Why don't you invite some of these folks over for dinner
| so you can tell them how much you love and respect them?
| Well not Chauvin, as he's in prison, but you better hurry
| because Mr. Franco will be soon too.
|
| [0]When I was a kid, it was clear that the police were
| just the biggest and best armed gang -- with qualified
| immunity -- in NYC. And since I saw and experienced that
| dynamic a bunch of times over the years, the police
| themselves proved that to be true. Over and over again.
| There have been _a few_ positive changes over the last
| decade or so, but not nearly enough. Certainly not enough
| to change my view of the police.
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/nypd-officer-put-eric-
| garner-letha...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Chauvin
|
| [3] https://abc7ny.com/joseph-franco-nypd-detective-
| convictions-...
|
| Edit: Used "jail" when "prison" was the appropriate term.
| Fixed.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > This article isn't about front line police, yet you
| keep bringing them up. Why is that?
|
| This is literally my point in this thread. The article is
| not about the police and I don't understand why people
| are steering the discussion that way.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >This is literally my point in this thread. The article
| is not about the police and I don't understand why people
| are steering the discussion that way.
|
| I didn't even mention police. _You_ did.
|
| So who is it that's steering the discussion in that
| direction?
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| I dont understand why some people online want to take every
| opportunity to defend class traitors.
| gnu8 wrote:
| No one on HN understands reality. The name of the site
| should be False Consciousness.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Every online site is an echo chamber. Why are you here?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Why would participating preclude criticism? Does anything
| else work like that?
| i80and wrote:
| This is pretty directly relevant to the article.
| D13Fd wrote:
| How so? The article is about prison mail. It doesn't even
| mention police officers and police officers have nothing to
| do with prison mail.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The article stated most contraband in the jail is passed
| via the guards, not through the mail. Prison guards are
| LEOs, just part of a different agency than the police
| most of us see in town.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > Prison guards are LEOs, just part of a different agency
| than the police most of us see in town.
|
| So what? You might as well say the article is about dogs
| eating mail, dogs are mammals, so I'm going to talk about
| how much I hate elephants even though they don't eat
| mail.
| smcl wrote:
| What's the big deal? People on HN explore adjacent topics
| quite frequently, and the idea that both police and
| prisons exist to exert power over (and frequently choose
| to exercise violence upon) the population is a very
| common and uncontroversial feeling.
|
| Not trying to "out" you here, just trying to understand
| why you're fighting so hard on their behalf, but do you
| maybe have a friend or relative that works in the police?
| Nothing wrong with it, but I have seen that this causes
| people to be more willing to turn a blind eye towards (or
| even to outright forgive and excuse) some of the darker
| things they do. Often viewing them as victims to be
| defended, while many of the rest of us tend to want the
| police to be more accountable and generally less violent.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > What's the big deal? People on HN explore adjacent
| topics quite frequently, and the idea that both police
| and prisons exist to exert power over (and frequently
| choose to exercise violence upon) the population is a
| very common and uncontroversial feeling.
|
| It's popular right now to bash the police as corrupt and
| as not having people's best interest at heart. But the
| fact is that those are only _some_ of the police. And
| when we start throwing out our respect for the
| institution as a whole, that 's when we'll start seeing
| real corruption.
|
| The big deal to me is that not everything has to be about
| police officers. The article raises a real issue about
| prisons scanning mail and refusing to deliver paper
| copies. That's _horrible_ , and there is a ton of
| interesting stuff to discuss there. Why do we need to
| steer it towards yet another uninteresting and rote
| "police are all corrupt" "hell yeah suck it bootlickers"
| discussion?
|
| > Not trying to "out" you here, just trying to understand
| why you're fighting so hard on their behalf, but do you
| maybe have a friend or relative that works in the police?
| Nothing wrong with it, but I have seen that this causes
| people to be more willing to turn a blind eye towards (or
| even to outright forgive and excuse) some of the darker
| things they do. Often viewing them as victims to be
| defended, while many of the rest of us tend to want the
| police to be more accountable and generally less violent.
|
| I have zero relatives in law enforcement and I don't work
| in law enforcement. But I really think the rote "police
| suck" attitude and the current popularity of completely
| thoughtless police bashing is really going to hurt us all
| in the long run.
|
| The flaw in your reasoning is that because _some_ police
| officers have done bad things _all_ police officers are
| bad. That 's not true and it's not supported by the
| evidence.
| yladiz wrote:
| Can you provide the evidence you mention at the end of
| your comment?
| D13Fd wrote:
| No, because my point here is that we shouldn't be
| steering this thread into a discussion of police
| corruption, which has nothing to do with the article.
| smcl wrote:
| > some police officers have done bad things all police
| officers are bad
|
| The flaw here is that there are countless examples of one
| police officer doing something terrible, and an entire
| department rallying around them in support. Or the
| opposite - like Adrian Schoolcraft attempting to blow the
| whistle, and being terrorized by the NYPD as a result.
|
| The police generally _do_ suck, and in the US at least
| they cost a lot of money and do little good while also
| doing some pretty shitty things and getting away with it.
| That 's going to lead a lot of people to hate them for
| life, and it would take a herculean effort to reverse
| that. This is why I wondered if there's maybe a
| family/friend connection, because while I'm not exactly
| screaming for the abolishment of the Police altogether, I
| do think it's sort of absurd to come out swinging in
| defence the police as the exist in many countries
| D13Fd wrote:
| You've still said nothing about why this thread should be
| about police departments rather than mail scanning.
| smcl wrote:
| Yes I did, in fact you know this because you even _quoted
| me_ saying why I thought this was acceptable and on-
| topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34507130
| woooooo wrote:
| Corrections officers are sworn officers in many (all?)
| states. Typically under an elected sheriff at the county
| level.
| D13Fd wrote:
| There is a pretty huge difference between corrections
| officers working for the department of corrections and
| police officers working for the police department.
| ddulaney wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction.
|
| Where I am (Jefferson County, KY), corrections officers
| are routinely used as additional back-up during protests
| or other times when the police feel they need more
| manpower. They are also routinely hired to work as
| security when they are off duty, where they wear their
| uniforms and are allowed to make arrests.
|
| In my jurisdiction, they are legally a type of sworn law
| enforcement officer and regularly appear in public in
| ways that are more-or-less indistinguishable from police
| officers.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, caged vs free range.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| And a huge similarity: they are given power over people
| and routinely use this power to harm, rather than help
| heal. Our 4-yr old has police trauma from police coming
| to bother us about them playing outside naked because
| traumatized older people ignorant of other cultures won't
| stop calling them.
|
| Instead of visiting those people, they harass a child and
| parents for something that's legal. The child has
| nightmare of police shooting them.
|
| This isn't because of misunderstanding, but because the
| nature of these systems and the sick sm cultures
| involved. Not talking about it persists it.
|
| Trying to keep conversations strictly on-topic is a form
| of putting on blinders. It's also a neurotypical
| conversation style.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > And a huge similarity: they are given power over people
| and routinely use this power to harm, rather than help
| heal. Our 4-yr old has police trauma from police coming
| to bother us about them playing outside naked
|
| That's horrible and I'm really sorry to hear it. I've let
| our daughter play outside naked and I'd be absolutely
| livid if law enforcement bothered us about it.
|
| But that still has nothing to do with jails scanning mail
| (or even police "corruption").
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| It's literally about having power over people, which is
| coming through the monopoly on violence, which is being
| exercised by scanning mail.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How else is one supposed to sneak in LSD blotter if they can't
| disguise it as a letter?
| dwater wrote:
| Through the guards like all the other drugs.
| CerieXerox wrote:
| Rikers specifically has a reputation for this
|
| > _[A] guard-turned-federal cooperator described how he
| struck a deal with [an] inmate, who allegedly sold drugs to
| hundreds of his fellow inmates_
|
| https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-how-
| rikers...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Those poor prisons lost their ability to price gauge on phone
| calls, they have to make up for the loss!
|
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/01/19/martha-wright-r...
| rando404 wrote:
| Prisons are a racket, but physical mail is also an exploitable
| loophole for getting drugs into the system by sending paper laced
| with fentanyl.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/bronx-jail-officer-hosp...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > On Friday night while sorting mail in the Bronx, the
| officer's hands went numb despite wearing gloves. Workers
| administered Narcan, a drug used to help reverse an overdose,
| and sent her to the hospital. She was treated and released.
|
| Fentanyl. Does. Not. Work. Like. That.
|
| Cops are having panic attacks, not fentanyl exposures - in most
| cases the described symptoms don't even match fentanyl's
| effects.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/magazine/police-fentanyl-...
|
| > Last month, a 33-year-old clinical toxicologist and
| emergency-medicine pharmacist named Ryan Feldman co-published a
| case study about the time he accidentally spilled a mammoth
| dose of pure liquid fentanyl all over himself at work; he
| simply washed it off, with no adverse effects.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/fainting-fentanyl-...
|
| > There are many such videos of police officers quickly showing
| overt symptoms or even collapsing after exposure to minute
| quantities of fentanyl - or even just possible fentanyl - and
| these are just not pharmacologically possible. Fentanyl is not
| absorbed through the skin like this. Yes, there are indeed
| fentanyl skin patches for hospital pain relief, but these are
| formulated with other agents to make the skin more permeable
| under the patch (as are all such skin-patch dosage forms).
| Think about it: you do not see opioid addicts rubbing small
| bits of fentanyl on the backs of their hands for a quick hit.
| rando404 wrote:
| I agree that your info refutes that it was fentanyl. This
| report: https://www.fdle.state.fl.us/FCJEI/Programs/SLP/Docum
| ents/Fu...
|
| mentions a similar incident that was initially thought to be
| fentanyl but turned out to be synthetic cannabinoid.
|
| It's also questionable how often this is actually occurring
| versus the claims / justifications:
|
| "In Florida, for example, of the 3.1 million contraband items
| that entered the prison system from January 2019 to April
| 2021, only about 1 percent came in through mail."
|
| source: https://www.vera.org/news/more-and-more-prisons-are-
| banning-...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In a Washington DC jail, on March 15, 2018, at least a
| dozen employees became sick when a package arrived in the
| facility mailroom containing what was first thought to be
| fentanyl, but later determined to be synthetic cannabinoid.
| At least seven of the effected employees, who suffered from
| dizziness and breathing difficulties, were taken to the
| hospital for treatment. (Coffin, 2018)
|
| That's almost certainly another panic attack. As the NYT
| article mentions, "mass psychogenic illness". What form of
| synthetic marijuana makes an entire room of people go into
| respiratory trouble just from being in the same room?
| hospadar wrote:
| My brilliant plan to create prison reform:
|
| Every time the state wants to force a human being into a locked
| cage, they need to find a volunteer to be locked in a cage for
| the same amount of time as the person being involuntarily locked
| away. The forcibly imprisoned and voluntarily imprisoned must be
| imprisoned in the same facility, but are not informed who their
| imprisoned partner is.
|
| The volunteer cannot be paid for their service, they must elect
| to do it because of their glowing sense of civic duty.
|
| Prison guards may not have any access to information about
| whether or not an imprisoned person is a convicted offender or
| volunteer. Upon going in, volunteers must post a bond equal to
| 10% of their total wealth. If they disclose to any prison
| employee that they are a volunteer, they are discharged from
| prison immediately (a new volunteer must be found, if one is not
| available, the forcibly imprisoned person is discharged
| immediately) and forfeit the bond. 90% of the forfeited bond will
| go to the imprisoned person they are volunteering for, 10% of the
| bond will go to the prison employee that they disclosed to (as a
| reward for the employee reporting their serious offense).
|
| Bonus points: The volunteer must be sourced from the inverse
| wealth percentile as the potential involuntary prisoner (i.e. if
| you want to lock up someone from the bottom 10th percentile of
| wealth, you must find a prison volunteer from the top 90th
| percentile of wealth).
|
| Since prisons are such a wonderful peaceful place where troubled
| folks are taken care of and rehabilitated (couldn't we all use
| some quiet time for reflection?), finding plenty of volunteers
| should be no problem. I am certain that many wealthy scions of
| public society will volunteer for life imprisonment due to their
| great concern for civil society.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| So if your mom got raped you want her to be imprisoned with the
| rapist in order to make sure he has a nice time?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Every time they try to do this, part of the effects are to ban
| prisoners from receiving books. If you can't receive physical
| mail... how do you get books to read?
|
| Once they remember this is a thing (and that the pesky first
| ammendment even for prisoners probably means they can't just ban
| all reading material), they say that prisoners have to read only
| "e-reader" books from approved vendors at inflated prices and
| limited selection -- or if they are lucky, they can still get
| physical books from only approved vendors at inflated prices and
| limited selection. (the latter which prisons are always trying to
| do even before/without limiting paper mail too).
|
| Not being able to receive mail is bad enough, but the
| consequences on receiving books double it down. One of the few
| avenues to self-improvement, education, or even just recreation
| prisoners have.
|
| The way we approach prisons are insane. We take people who have
| done something from their worst selves, and put them in an
| environment which seems almost designed to force them to continue
| to practice being their worst selves, with no other paths
| available.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I'm mostly surprised that anybody gets any mail any more.
| alistairSH wrote:
| How else would inmates communicate with family and friends?
|
| Phone? Cost prohibitive in most states. Internet? Banned or
| several restricted in many places. In person visitation? Hard
| to schedule, especially if you aren't being held near your
| family's residence.
| flerchin wrote:
| I cannot imagine being a software dev for these projects. I'd
| rather work on a porn-site.
| adenozine wrote:
| [flagged]
| barbazoo wrote:
| What's wrong with pornography?
| Spivak wrote:
| It's crazy how weirdly we moralize porn when it's a massive
| industry that basically everyone consumes in one form or
| another.
| tarotuser wrote:
| Most people will respond with "immorality" or likewise.
|
| What it amounts to is badly interpreted bible verses by the
| 3 Abrahamic religions as a means of social control over the
| taboo of sex.
|
| As someone who follows the old religions, I see this
| everywhere. The men are expected to be open to sex, but
| women who do are seen as whores. But, that's where the
| taboo of sexwork comes from.
|
| And to link it back to the article, Calvinism (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism ) is the primary
| and dominant reason why prisons are as brutish as they are.
| The basic gist of this form of Protestant Christianity is
| that 'you are predestined to be a horrible person and
| predestined to be in prison, so we have the right to treat
| you inhumanely as possible because you deserve it'.
| Capitalist monopoly forces also have a bearing here in the
| price gouging, but the basic infrastructure of a prison is
| brutish because "you deserve it", in a Calvinist sense.
| sokoloff wrote:
| What's wrong with working on a porn site? I'd feel better about
| working on a porn site than at least one of FAANGs.
| flerchin wrote:
| Nothing really wrong with working on a porn site, but I might
| hesitate to bring it up with my family members.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Can also get a little weird in interviews.
| richbell wrote:
| "I'm a Software Developer at MindGeek, a prestigious global
| industry-leading information technology firm."
| scifibestfi wrote:
| "I work on a video site that you've used"
| flerchin wrote:
| To me, that's hesitating to bring it up.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Engineer on a video platform that's bigger than youtube
| flerchin wrote:
| To me, that's hesitating to bring it up.
| throwawayxxx111 wrote:
| [dead]
| ilickpoolalgae wrote:
| A sense of a large portion of the porn industry, whether
| domestic or international, is developed through coercion,
| abuse, and sometimes straight up sex trafficking of
| vulnerable people? For every legitimate actress/actor who is
| involved in the industry in a safe manner, there are several
| who were tricked into a production. I think as a society
| we've generally moving to accepting the sex industry as a
| necessary vice, but there's a lot of seedy stuff happening
| behind the scenes.
|
| Won't try to get into an argument about what is more
| negatively impacting society (FAANG or sex industry) but I
| think it's easier to empathize with the fact that that's
| someone's child on screen that more likely than not, had no
| idea what they were getting into.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Many people consider porn fundamentally immoral, not to
| mention most porn has connection to sex trafficking.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I understand the first part of the claim - many people
| indeed do consider porn immoral, for whatever personal
| reasons they have. I may disagree with them, but your
| statement is still valid, and more power to them as long as
| they keep it to themselves.
|
| I do not understand the second part of the claim, that
| "most porn has connection to sex trafficking". This seems a
| fairly strong statement (there's a huge amount of porn, so
| "Most" is gonna be a very large number), and have never
| seen anything remotely accurate supporting it (occasional
| allusions from those who consider porn immoral, but with no
| meaningful statistical significance). Not to say there
| isn't a considerable Venn diagram, and that Venn diagram
| should be reduced through strong law enforcement, but
| "most" seems wildly inaccurate.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Agreed we shouldn't speak so broadly, but let's not be
| naive here. Part of the reason California legalized adult
| filmmaking was to reduce trafficking.
|
| In California they have agents, everywhere else they have
| pimps.
|
| Just one example: https://www.justice.gov/usao-
| sdca/pr/adult-film-performer-pl...
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Pimps are not neccesarily traffickers.
|
| It might be hard to digest but a large majority of people
| in the industry go in by choice. We should have tougher
| law enforcement to weed out the bad apples, but that is
| difficult since this isssue seems to involve two things
| that are extremely nebulous and difficult to weigh. Sex
| and morality.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| > "Pimps are not neccesarily _[sic]_ traffickers "
|
| Right, they just use force, fraud, and coercion as they
| recruit, transport, and provide their victims as
| prostitutes. Totally different...
|
| > "a large majority of people in the industry go in by
| choice"
|
| Cool, can you share your stats that a "large proportion"
| of people go in by choice?
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Interesting that you want stats. In the interest of
| science - would you be willing to talk to actual
| prostitutes from down the street to those on social media
| and platforms like only fans - to collect the data
| yourself. Thats within your means to do is it not?
|
| If you are genuinely interested in the well being of
| prostitutes that is.
|
| > Right, they just use force, fraud, and coercion as they
| recruit, transport, and provide their victims as
| prostitutes. Totally different...
|
| It is different.
|
| My point is trafficking is bigger than prostitution.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Just wondering if you had _any_ evidence at all for your
| claim. You 've had _two_ chances to post it.
|
| > _It is different_
|
| Oh, did you notify the Office on Trafficking in Persons?!
| That's the _definition_ they give for sex trafficking
|
| https://www.acf.hhs.gov/otip/fact-
| sheet/resource/fshumantraf...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking
|
| > _My point is trafficking is bigger than prostitution_
|
| Agreed! I thought your point was "a large majority of
| people in the industry go in by choice" though? I guess
| not!
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| precision =/= naivety
|
| if you're going to make a strong claim like "most porn
| has connection to sex trafficking", you should have
| strong evidence to back that up
| last_responder wrote:
| >not to mention most porn has connection to sex
| trafficking.
|
| Citation needed
| mschuster91 wrote:
| They are probably referring to cases like the Pornhub
| scandal, GirlsDoPorn or recently arrested Andrew Tate who
| is alleged to have lured and exploited young women for
| camgirl work.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Of the entire body of porn in existence, is it closer to
| 2% or 51% that is trafficking-implicated?
|
| Is "some"? Yes. Is "most"? I seriously doubt it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| US-made porn I'd agree with you, the unions and other
| associations (e.g. APAG) have a pretty good eye, and the
| record-keeping requirements help out as well.
|
| Internationally however? Oh hell no. Particularly Eastern
| Europe has been rife with stories of exploitation for
| decades, and some Asian countries have an even worse
| problem with sexual exploitation of minors. For example,
| Andrew Tate, moron that he is, just made the error of
| _publicly_ admitting that the police doesn 't care about
| sexual exploitation on camera - now he forced the hands
| of the police to act.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| [flagged]
| aftbit wrote:
| The same logic applies to industrial farming, at least in
| USA. Literal slave labor produces a bunch of the food
| that we eat and export. It probably isn't >50% though.
| This is a really interesting ethical argument though. How
| exploitative does an industry need to be before we'll
| consider it unacceptable?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've communicated no judgement that I'm OK with the
| subset that is. Since you've accused me of being OK with
| it, I'll now respond to unambiguously and strenuously
| deny that accusation.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'm not sure the technology itself is evil, it is the business
| model that is the problem. Which is to say that you don't need
| to be a software developer to be morally compromised, you could
| be a secretary/recruiter/etc and still feel compromised by this
| employer's practices.
|
| The only reason they aren't just trying to charge for physical
| mail letter reviews is that that is too transparent, the public
| understands exactly how immoral that is. Once you add
| technology a lot of people's brains shut off because of the
| "complexity" they assume exists, particularly once the vendor
| starts with the buzzword vomit (e.g. "High Security cloud
| service utilizes the latest deep learning technology to detect
| abuse and illegal subjects, then we have a team of experienced
| experts for secondary review").
|
| So tech is the smoke-screen here, but it is immoral no matter
| how you slice it.
| mc32 wrote:
| I can see why on the surface this may seem like a good idea:
| reduce contraband.
|
| On the other hand it may just increase the take of corrupt prison
| officials.
| valine wrote:
| But why privatize it? If the goal is to reduce contraband
| digitizing makes sense.
|
| This just seems like a new way to for prisons to make money.
| Digitizing is cheap, certainly no more expensive than hand
| delivering mail.
|
| Privatized prisons should be arguably be abolished. Granting
| them new sources of revenue is appalling.
| mitchellst wrote:
| I think there's a meaningful distinction between "privatized
| prison" and "service provided to prison by private company."
| The trouble with privatized prisons is that the incentives
| are all wrong. (Those incentives being: cut costs, cut
| corners, minimize oversight/hide failures, increase number of
| inmates.)
|
| On the other hand, privatizing some services makes sense,
| depending on how you structure the deal. Same reason your
| tech employer buys some software--you can supply some things
| at better quality for cheaper price by trading for them. The
| catch: don't establish a monopoly where the provider can set
| costs and pass costs directly to inmates.
|
| For example, a lot of jails, especially smaller jails, have a
| private company run their medical care. The doctor doesn't
| bill for every visit, they negotiate a rate with the county.
| It's cheaper than the county employing a doctor directly. One
| doctor can serve many counties. (I know one who serves 8 plus
| a few juvenile detention centers.) And if the doctor or nurse
| quits, the company has enough scale they can make sure
| somebody else shows up for the next shift. "Privatized?" yes.
| But also way better than the alternative in practice.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| In most states, private prisons get guaranteed minimum
| occupancy rates in their contracts with the states. If, for
| some miracle, people stopped committing crimes, and no more
| got incarcerated, these prisons were guaranteed a minimum
| profit level.
| mc32 wrote:
| I don't disagree. These should be run as non-profits (which
| are not a cure-all either but slightly better). However note
| that prison privatization is not a US only thing --it's being
| adopted by many countries around the world.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Guess where prisoners get all those books they read? From family
| in the mail. Guess how they stay in touch with what is going on
| in the world. With magazine and newspapers. Oh, they are
| replacing that with free tablets? That is so nice. Wait... those
| tablets charge a per minute usage fee? Ah. They are free to have,
| but not to use. And of course, you have to pay EACH TIME you want
| to read the same book over on them, at a per minute fee, for
| people with an on average lower reading proficiency.
| angelgonzales wrote:
| I understand your point - prisons want to exploit prisoners and
| their families for profit by brokering imports into their
| facilities. I also think that many people who have bleeding
| hearts for these criminals and their families haven't been
| direct victims of crimes themselves. Often these criminals are
| terrible people who act horrifically and with malice but act so
| sorry for themselves when they're caught and on trial. Their
| families usually only care for the criminal they're related to
| and never to the victims no matter that the criminal did. I
| don't see families of criminals giving money to the victim of
| the criminal, do you? Sometimes the families and cultural
| influence are factors that attribute to a criminal's motivation
| to commit a crime. Trust me, I've been there! Finding the
| balance of incentives not to commit crime is difficult because
| crimes are often committed by violent people who do not respond
| strongly to logical or legal reasoning but respond somewhat to
| force and fear. The key, I think, is providing people with
| resources and care far before they're at the age where they
| usually commit crimes. There's also something to consider about
| the western and eastern views of individualism. An eastern view
| might consider this prisoner as a component of their family or
| their community.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| So you want to use the excuse of drug smuggling to punish
| criminals above their judges ordered constitutionally legal
| sentence? Got it. Thanks for elaborating on your reasoning
| and why you don't believe 'all men are created equal' and
| have constitutional rights (with criminals, what we are
| discussing here is a protected right to 'familial
| association' if you want to look it up in case law and
| Supreme Court precedent). We don't have constitutional rights
| because they are easy, but because that is what the United
| States of America has said since it's founding is the right
| thing to do and the core of what it is as a country.
| [deleted]
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