[HN Gopher] How I got here
___________________________________________________________________
How I got here
Author : low_tech_love
Score : 393 points
Date : 2023-11-11 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pthorpe92.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (pthorpe92.github.io)
| macintux wrote:
| I hate to quote so much of the post--it's well worth a read--but
| I think it's bookended by two very different experiences that
| convey _so much_ about the U.S. prison system.
|
| > A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers
| and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe
| you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that
| smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officers and
| junkies. I was left with the difficult choice of either living
| there and walking to a temp agency with hopes of making
| $10.50/hour doing manual labor (without an ID or social security
| card at this point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some
| associates, and coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my
| pocket and living in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an
| apartment... I chose the latter, obviously, and was back in
| prison after 14mo.
|
| ...and later:
|
| > I am very grateful for the opportunity, but I recognize that
| this is very much the exception and not the rule, and the success
| of the Maine model of corrections should highlight the absolutely
| embarrassing lack of opportunities in the rest of the system, to
| do anything but become a bitter, broke criminal; deprived of not
| just your freedom, family, financial security and reputation, but
| also of your self-identity as someone worth investing in
| changing. We need to do better as a society, and understand that,
| yes, there are people in the system that deserve this kind of
| punishment, but a large majority of our prison population are
| just regular people... non-violent drug offenders like myself.
| There are plenty more, like me, that are capable of being
| responsible, productive, tax paying members of society if given
| the opportunity, but you cannot expect anyone to change when you
| just lock them up in a cage with a bunch of other criminals where
| there is a subculture of endless negativity.
| k1ns wrote:
| Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises that rely on a
| consistent population. They have no incentive to rehabilitate,
| in fact it's the opposite. What I don't understand is how a
| country with so many advantages like the USA could come up with
| arguably the worst prison system in the world. As a citizen,
| it's embarrassing that this is accepted by those in power as a
| good solution.
| pcl wrote:
| As it turns out, Maine (where the author of the article ended
| up) has gotten rid of all their for-profit prisons, as of
| 2020.
|
| https://www.criminon.org/where-we-work/united-states/maine/
| oooyay wrote:
| Private prisons are problematic in their own right, but they
| only make up 8% of the total prison population at the state
| and federal level. imo, we (the citizens) are to blame for
| constantly championing a system of accountability that
| believes accountability is putting a man in a box and taking
| every future opportunity he doesn't know yet away from him.
| You can certainly blame those in power, and they share some
| blame, but we also elect to these sentences.
|
| https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-
| in...
| rendall wrote:
| Agreed. It's not "powers that be" that impose this system
| on Americans, it's we Americans ourselves. We vote for
| politicians who are tough on crime - meaning long prison
| sentences, unsafe conditions, no robust public defense.
| sitkack wrote:
| All true, but we also don't rehabilitate. Prisoners
| should come out better then they went in not worse.
| k1ns wrote:
| My main concern exactly.
| k1ns wrote:
| I said "prisons...are for-profit enterprises", not "prisons
| are privately owned". Government-owned prisons still rely
| on, and provide revenue to, companies specifically designed
| to profit from the prison population.
| chroma wrote:
| That's true of everything in an economy. It's also true
| that Norway's prisons rely on, and provide revenue to,
| companies specifically designed to profit from the prison
| population. Is a prison suddenly better if a government
| worker builds the bars rather than a contractor?
| k1ns wrote:
| I agree with your one example and disagree with the
| thousands of others designed to profit off of
| incarcerated individuals instead of rehabilitate them.
| chroma wrote:
| Ok. If there are thousands, can you give three examples
| of companies that are designed to profit off of
| incarcerated individuals rather than rehabilitate them?
| k1ns wrote:
| I'm not defending this. It's not an argument, it's a
| fact. If you're not afraid of the idea, look it up. Part
| of the problem here is never bucking back against what
| we've been taught and doing our own exploration.
| chroma wrote:
| I'm asking for facts. Surely if there are thousands of
| examples, three exploitative companies shouldn't be too
| difficult to find.
| oooyay wrote:
| I think this describes the issue k1ns is referring to: ht
| tps://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2020/8/5/private-
| c...
|
| > The next year, 111 inmates continued to produce
| "decorated party balloons" for MINNCOR, according to
| NCIA's database. Large contracts such as this, coupled
| with correctional industries wages of between $0.50 and
| $2.00 per hour, allowed MINNCOR to make a profit of over
| $13 million in 2019.
|
| Also relevant: https://minncorprod.blob.core.windows.net/
| files/MINNCOR%20In...
|
| I'm actually having trouble squaring the claim from
| corpaccountabilitylab.org of an average of $.50 - $2/hr
| and what MINNCOR claims which is an average of $14.20/hr.
| The leading value of MINNCOR industries is to have the
| industrial programs pay for the prison system, thereby
| not passing new taxes onto residents. The only way that I
| can think to measure whether that system is healthy or
| not is to determine if it can both scale _down_ and scale
| _up_. If it can 't scale down, then they will indeed be
| incentivized to incarcerate new people.
|
| Also of note, MINNCOR continues to employ people on
| release. From the report: 172 released + 753 incarcerated
| = 925 total active participants. The low of self-reported
| wages is $10/hr, the high is $22.38.
| Karellen wrote:
| > Private prisons are problematic in their own right, but
| they only make up 8% of the total prison population
|
| It's not how many people they are in charge of that
| matters, but how much money they donate to politicians to
| be be "tough on crime", and how much other soft money
| influence they have to make citizens think that crime is a
| problem that politicians need to be tough on, and to
| demonise politicians who aren't (which right-wing media is
| all too happy to help with).
|
| Even if private prisons only have a small slice of the
| prison pie, they still work hard to make the pie as big as
| possible.
| edgyquant wrote:
| A very small number of prisons are for profit and advocates
| of being soft on criminals love to push the idea that they
| make up a majority, just as you implied.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Serious question: does this come from real first hand
| experience of knowledge of the issue or are you simply
| repeating the NYT/the Atlantic/Vox etc.?
|
| My understanding is that about 8% of US prisons are privately
| owned. Perhaps that's not a good thing, but I don't think it
| is at all correct to say that "prisons in the USA are for-
| profit enterprise" when the actual number is so low.
|
| I have also heard this narrative for a long time that the
| prisons were filled mostly with non-violent drug offenders,
| only to learn that this description only applies to about
| 3.5% of the prison population. Maybe that's not a good thing
| either, but again I feel like I have been intentionally
| deceived after reading supposedly high-minded journalism into
| believing a fundamentally false understanding of what is
| going on.
| k1ns wrote:
| Yes, my introduction to the world of commercial software
| development was an internship at a company that built
| products for prisons.
|
| To be clear, I said "prisons...are for-profit enterprises",
| not "all prisons are privately owned". Even state-owned
| prisons are cash cows for the prison industry. I'm not
| interested in what narrative you identify with, I'm stating
| a fact.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Well that's true of literally every thing that is made
| and every service delivered. There's an absolutely huge
| industry build around primary education that dwarfs the
| prison industry by a significant margin.
|
| Actually prisons and schools have quite a lot in common
| so maybe you're onto something.
| k1ns wrote:
| I'm glad you brought up the public education system. One
| is designed to instill knowledge and nurture young minds
| (public schools) while the other is designed to make sure
| you come back (prisons).
| lyu07282 wrote:
| The criticism of private prisons (or the prison industrial
| complex) in general is more than just referring to
| privately owned and run prisons, its referring to prisons,
| jails, detention facilities, psychiatric hospitals, private
| security and guards, transportation and logistics, health
| care services, surveillance and other technology providers,
| food/commissary/library services, communication/phone
| services, cash bail creditors, etc. etc. all run for-
| profit.
|
| The other issue is more in general about having
| incarceration rates that are "four to six times that of its
| high-income peers in Europe and Asia". So you might
| recognize that as an issue too and think perhaps its the
| privatized prison system, the root causes for crime like
| inequality, disenfranchisement, homelessness, the reasons
| for drug use in the first place, or even just perhaps
| switching to an evidence-based rehabilitation system.
|
| But now imagine you are a liberal, you need a way to
| acknowledge and talk about these problems without ever
| actually having to change anything. So that's why liberal
| journalists are talking about non-violent drug offenders
| and the 8.41% private prison population and so Biden
| stopped the justice department from renewing contracts for
| federal private prisons and he pardoned all prisoners of
| federal non-violent marijuana possession charges. Of course
| it doesn't actually do anything, but that was the point.
| And that's what liberalism is.
| simbolit wrote:
| > how a country ... like the USA could come up with arguably
| the worst prison system in the world
|
| I will leave you with this quote by John Erlichman:
|
| "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the
| war or black, but by getting the public to associate the
| hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then
| criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those
| communities, (...) We could arrest their leaders, raid their
| homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after
| night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about
| the drugs? Of course we did."
|
| Source: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
|
| Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
|
| And, because everything is complicated, the family denies it
| all:
|
| The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for
| the first time today does not square with what we know of our
| father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time
| with him," the Ehrlichman family wrote. "We do not subscribe
| to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now
| implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John
| and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no
| longer respond. None of us have raised our kids that way, and
| that's because we were not raised that way."
|
| Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-
| ehrlichman-...
| Projectiboga wrote:
| One of the several hundred thousand nazis, erm German
| refugees, the Eisenhower administration brought here in
| 1953. This was much larger than operation paperclip. The
| GOP reloaded with that cohort. Their descendants are still
| wrecking havoc upon our country. I'm sure some come and
| have done well for us but many are trouble. That huge S&L
| scandal back in the late 80s was by some of them.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Could you provide more info on this? I haven't heard of
| this before. I don't doubt it's true, I'd just like to
| see more about it.
|
| Regarding Ehrlichman specifically, his Wikipedia page
| says he fought for the US during WWII, and his father
| died serving in the Canadian military in 1940 (when
| Canada was fighting, but the US was not).
|
| So it seems pretty low to call him a Nazi.
| saxonww wrote:
| What are you talking about? Ehrlichman was born in the US
| in 1925.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
| jimkoen wrote:
| Ehrlichman was born in the US though, so I'm not sure
| where you take the Nazi part from?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| One thing has become abundantly clear over the last few
| years: people in politics regularly do things that go
| against their most cherished beliefs when it is politically
| expedient. Those that hold out are notable for how rare
| they are, and it frequently ends their political career.
| otteromkram wrote:
| > As a citizen
|
| Of where?
|
| I, as a lawful citizen of the United States of America, am
| _not_ embarrassed by the prison system.
|
| I _am_ embarrassed, however, by folks who use hyperbole
| without merit to try and appease the masses without having
| the courage to go against the grain for fear of getting
| "downvoted" and losing faked internet points.
|
| The fact that you believe the USA has the worst prison system
| in the world, compared to somewhere like, I dunno, Venezuela,
| supports my prior point.
| k1ns wrote:
| This has nothing to do with "fake internet points" and
| everything to do with firsthand experience that most
| citizens lack completely.
|
| You chastise those that "appease the masses" but mention
| Venezuela's prison system. How much firsthand experience do
| you have with Venezuela's prison system? My wager is that
| your concept of their prison system is based on articles
| specifically designed to "appease the masses".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprises
|
| About 7-8% of US jail and prisoners inmates are in for-profit
| correctional institutions, most are in public institutions
| which are not operated for profit.
|
| Private, for profit prisons are an issue, but they are very
| much not the norm in the US.
| edgyquant wrote:
| So he chose to go back to a life of crime and we're supposed to
| feel bad for him? There's a reason he was able to make 20k in a
| weekend, it's a high risk high reward business and I have no
| sympathy for someone who skirts societal norms and makes a shit
| ton of money in the process while plenty of people suck it up
| and earn the 10.50 until they can get back out in their own.
| This guy and his entire post reeks of entitlement, beginning
| with "non-violent drug offenses" in the first paragraph.
|
| That's an opinion, he wasn't arrested for possession in reality
| he made a ton of money selling dangerous drugs to kids. Maybe
| they should be legal, some of that I agree with (I spent a lot
| of my late teens and early twenties in jail or on probation for
| simple possession and have a felony to this day for it) but
| that doesn't mean you should be able to peddle chemicals you
| don't understand in large quantities. Your upbringing being bad
| doesn't make that okay either.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Yeah I have no sympathy for this guy. It's funny how these
| stories are so often multiple offenders who use all kinds of
| weasel language to obfuscate their crimes. He leads with "non
| violent drug offense" then later admits he was importing huge
| volumes of drugs. Then he got out and did it again! He had
| his chances to be a productive, tax paying member of society
| and he blew it... twice!
| gavinray wrote:
| > He had his chances to be a productive, tax paying member
| of society and he blew it
|
| I love this thought that people in the US with felony
| convictions can just go out and be: "productive, tax paying
| member of society".
|
| I'll place a wager that if you called <$CURRENT_COMPANY>
| and ask them if they even HIRE felons, they'll tell you
| "No, as a matter of corporate policy."
|
| So, what then -- work for $10/hr so that you can barely
| make rent in your project housing and spend your entire
| life a single injury or natural disaster away from
| financial insolvency and homelessness?
|
| That's a bleak existence to even _think_ about, much less
| spend a lifetime living.
|
| The US criminal justice system is fundamentally broken, and
| we DO NOT AFFORD convicted felons the opportunity to have a
| decent life as a normal member of society.
| igor47 wrote:
| 1000x this. I only became a successful, productive member
| of society because a friend personally asked the CTO of a
| tech company to approve hiring me despite my computer
| crimes felony -- and the CTO took that chance. The
| company later went public for $B and now I am an angel
| investor and open source contributor etc, but I got lucky
| that I knew the right person at the right time. Our
| records follow us forever, and corporations/HR
| departments do not take risks like that.
| gavinray wrote:
| If you want to change a life, get a company to hire one
| person that you know is a decent human being but once
| made a bad decision.
|
| Often, it's that single opportunity that so many of us
| ever need.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| He was not born a drug wholesaler. He made that
| choice...twice! Rehabilitation is not the sole or even
| primary goal of incarceration. Nor should it be. But I do
| agree. People who've done their time shouldn't have to
| wear a permanent scarlet letter. I just have little
| sympathy for repeat offenders of very serious felonies.
| This guy wasn't a small time street dealer. He is
| probably partly responsible for many fentanyl overdose
| deaths.
| gavinray wrote:
| This is a nuanced topic.
|
| I think I probably have more firsthand experience with
| this subject than most.
|
| All I can do is share my own viewpoints:
|
| 1. It's not uncommon for hard-opiate users to willingly
| ingest or even seek out fentanyl. I have multiple dead
| friends whom I asked repeatedly not to even stop using
| heroin/fent, but just to consider smoking it instead of
| shooting it. Opiate addicts live on the razor's edge
| between life and death where they're alright with taking
| the gamble every time they push the plunger. It's sad,
| and heartbreaking, but it is what it is.
|
| (My father and his wife are dead from an opiate overdose
| as well, fwiw. Suspected fentanyl.)
|
| 2. There's a very solid chance, given his background and
| history, that the author was also using himself. If you
| live with a hard-drug addiction, you eventually become a
| husk of a person and you will hurt even the people who
| love you the most, so that you can keep using. Again, sad
| and heartbreaking, but it's the nature of the demon. One
| of the worst parts of getting sober isn't often the
| withdrawal, but coping with the regrets and memories of
| the decisions you made while using.
|
| None of this is to say what was done is okay, or that
| people ought to have sympathy.
|
| But what I do mean to do, is shed some light on what
| these sorts of situations are really like.
| macintux wrote:
| > There's a very solid chance, given his background and
| history, that the author was also using himself.
|
| The author chimed in here and acknowledged that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38231933
| macintux wrote:
| > Rehabilitation is not the sole or even primary goal of
| incarceration. Nor should it be.
|
| I don't understand this perspective at all. "We shouldn't
| punish them after they've served their time, but let's
| make sure they don't leave with any new job prospects
| either."
| overrun11 wrote:
| Of course it's not the primary goal. The primary goal is
| to remove people from society so they cannot continue to
| inflict harm on others.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Rehabilitation is not the sole or even primary goal of
| incarceration
|
| In the US, it is evidently an anti-goal: the US
| incarceration system is structured as if it were
| deliberately designed to do the opposite of
| rehabilitation, to take people who are minor and
| nonviolent criminals and turn them into major and violent
| criminals.
| haswell wrote:
| From a purely moral/ethical perspective, this doesn't
| withstand scrutiny.
|
| The foundational ideas underlying the justice system are
| inherently religious (in the literal sense) in that they
| depend on a world view that takes at face value the
| notion of free will, and assumes that all causal factors
| are under the control of the perpetrator.
|
| The more we learn about the mechanics of the brain, the
| less we have a reason to believe in what people typically
| mean when they say someone did something freely and of
| their own accord.
|
| This is not to say that people who do bad things
| shouldn't be locked up for it. Negative consequences are
| still important. But the other things we attach to
| incarceration: retribution/revenge/punishment depend on
| dubious moral/ethical viewpoints that do not withstand
| scrutiny and are rooted in old religious moral dogma.
|
| There is a category of brain malfunction that puts
| someone in the category of a "survivor" deserving our
| sympathy, support, and respect. And not long ago, those
| same survivors were looked at as social pariahs for the
| misfortune of being born with a deficient brain.
|
| But when the malfunction (or collective systemic factors)
| leads someone to break the law, we're predisposed to fall
| back to the deeply entrenched Judeo-Christian viewpoint
| that insists we are all free to make choices, and this
| freedom means the wrong choice is sin, and therefore a
| direct moral indictment.
|
| Except the person who steals food out of necessity has no
| choice in the place of their birth. No control over
| growing up in economic circumstances that make it more
| likely they'll get caught in the broken prison system. We
| can retroactively judge the person who deals drugs, but
| if everything else was equal and we had their brain, we'd
| have done the same thing.
|
| And again, none of this means that serious crimes aren't
| serious or that incarceration isn't necessary, but we
| need to fundamentally shift the framing of why we do it,
| and what is or is not acceptable while doing it.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Your entire response relies on subjective claims. None if
| it is objective, factual, or falsifiable in the sense of
| say, physics. So, in effect, what you're saying is, "I
| have a better opinion." I disagree.
|
| The Judeo-Christian viewpoint that you deride got us this
| far. The last 30 years of peace and prosperity (which was
| _created_ by and from the societies founded in Judeo-
| Christianity morality) has given way to a mindrot in the
| West. One of the features of this mindrot are the luxury
| beliefs that you 're espousing. Incarceration works.
| Retribution within the confines of the law works. In case
| you're unsure about this, look at the miracle that is El
| Salvador since they threw all the gang members in prison.
| Meanwhile, San Francisco, for example, continues to
| slowly implode under the type of beliefs and their
| attendant policies enabled by a drift away from the
| "Judeo-Christian viewpoint". You can philosophize all you
| want. All I care about are outcomes. I'd much prefer the
| El Salvadorian type of outcome over that of San
| Francisco.
| haswell wrote:
| First, all claims about moral or ethical stances are
| subjective. So, too, the appropriate punishment. We have
| no accepted theory of consciousness and more scientists
| than ever have aligned with the idea that free will is
| something we _experience_ , but not something that exists
| the way we think it does. But until we make some
| scientific breakthrough, all of these ideas are
| ultimately in the philosophical realm, which is why we
| need to reexamine them regularly.
|
| Over the course of history, we've held deeply flawed
| beliefs as societies that all "got us $this far". The
| reasons we've kept evolving/progressing is that we've
| changed our models of understanding when new data
| indicates it's necessary. Humans stopped sacrificing
| children. We stopped believing in the geocentric theory.
| For the most part, we stopped accepting slavery. We don't
| carry out a myriad of bizarre ritual based on the color
| of people's hair, etc.
|
| Many modern institutions are associated with religion
| because religion was pervasive during their inception.
| But there is no reason to cling to faith-based beliefs
| just to preserve the underlying principles and human
| wisdom that still have utility. And when the religious
| dogma we're talking about is one that involves how and
| when we remove the most sacred of all human rights - how
| we imprison other humans, we _better_ be adjusting our
| views to match our current understanding of the world.
|
| And bringing up specific cities with lax policies is
| unrelated. A system can have teeth and enforce its laws
| while treating offenders as humans and avoiding punitive
| behaviors that are inappropriate. The issues are
| orthogonal.
|
| > _Incarceration works. Retribution within the confines
| of the law works...All I care about are outcomes._
|
| This depends highly on your definition of "works", and
| what outcomes you hope the system achieves.
|
| The primary reason we lock people up is to protect
| society from people who act in ways that are considered
| unacceptable. This has downstream effects: deterrence and
| a sense of justice. But fundamentally, the point is to
| reduce the crimes committed to begin with, and to prevent
| known offenders from continuing to break the law.
|
| There is plenty of evidence that the current system in
| the US creates criminal behavior on top of whatever
| issues it solves, and if we're primarily focused on
| outcomes, not feeding the system seems just as important
| as trying to make sure the people who are there are less
| likely to end up back in.
| haswell wrote:
| I think there are two independent issues here.
|
| Getting out and going straight back to dealing drugs is
| obviously a bad move.
|
| But it's a move that is far more likely to happen because
| of the abysmal state of the system and the kinds of
| "opportunities" it affords to people trying to transition
| back to normal life. It's a system that is predisposed to
| getting people stuck in the same patterns.
|
| "He had his chance to be productive" is stretching the word
| productive pretty far.
|
| "The system" is made up of individuals. People who have
| offended and their tendencies. People who think they know
| how an offender must live their life and the limits that
| must be placed on them post-incarceration. And if the
| system leads to recidivism, that is a reflection of the
| whole system, not just the individuals re-offending.
|
| So while I agree that going back to dealing drugs is not a
| winning move, it should give us pause that people regularly
| end up doing exactly this _despite_ the consequences.
|
| If the goal is to transform criminals into functioning
| members of society, then from a purely utilitarian
| perspective, the system is broken. And the "opportunities"
| one is given and told they should be grateful for are often
| laughably insufficient.
|
| To draw an overly simplistic analogy: people stopped
| pirating music and started paying for it as soon as it was
| reasonable to do so. I don't condone piracy, but I
| certainly understand why people did it.
|
| Selling drugs that can kill people obviously puts this in a
| different category. But the overarching ideas are similar.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think it really matters if you feel bad for him or
| not, and focusing on that aspect does more harm than good. I
| think, given a choice between living in a fucked-up halfway
| house with your only prospect for the future being a shitty
| minimum-wage job, or falling back into your old crimes where
| you can make pretty solid bank doing illegal things (yes,
| with high risk)... most people would probably pick the
| latter.
|
| I absolutely agree that "non-violent drug offenses" is a cop-
| out when describing high-volume drug dealing. Maybe he wasn't
| directly violent, but dealers like him directly contribute to
| dragging many more people into addiction, violence, and even
| death. I don't think people should be jailed (or even
| punished) for simple possession, but dealing -- especially on
| a large scale -- well, that's a different matter.
|
| But ultimately what I really care about is outcomes. The
| bottom line is that it doesn't matter what we _want_ someone
| to choose when they get out of prison. If we don 't provide a
| compelling path for an ex-con to go straight, that's just us
| shooting ourselves in our feet. If that means spending more
| time and money housing someone in actually good conditions,
| and providing them direct access to higher education and
| better job opportunities, so be it. Ultimately that ends up
| being a lot cheaper for taxpayers than what we're doing now.
| And we get a much healthier society in the bargain.
|
| Acting punitive toward convicts and ex-cons doesn't help
| anyone. It doesn't help the person involved, and it
| especially doesn't help ourselves.
| peyton wrote:
| You're saying if only we'd given this particular guy more
| free stuff he wouldn't have gone back to flipping
| carfentanil for $20k a weekend? That seems pretty far-
| fetched.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I agree. But society has a hard time accepting that
| rehabilitating people with criminal records is more useful
| than punishing them.
| cvz wrote:
| He's not asking for sympathy. The entire article is about how
| he ended up where he is now, how the prison he's at now has
| saved him from a life of crime by giving him a meaningful
| chance at a career, that this is an anomaly, and that it
| shouldn't be.
| sctb wrote:
| I'm wondering if one of the factors here is that the public
| is funding this opportunity, and that many, many non-
| criminal members of that public are doing the $10.50/h
| thing with no such support and very limited opportunity.
| gavinray wrote:
| > that many, many non-criminal members of that public are
| doing the $10.50/h thing with no such support and very
| limited opportunity.
|
| The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. The non-
| criminal members of the public shouldn't be subjected to
| this either.
|
| Yes, there must exist unskilled, low-paying labor -- but
| there _also_ must exist ample opportunity for education
| and self-betterment for (almost) ALL individuals.
|
| The most heinous of persons excepted, of course.
| jotaen wrote:
| If I were to choose between (a) getting such a
| funding/opportunity but having to spend 10 years in jail
| to qualify for it, or (b) not getting this funding and
| staying free, I'd certainly pick (b), even if my only
| alternative was a minimum wage job.
|
| I'd also argue that the reason for the public to fund
| such opportunities is not primarily an act of humanity,
| but it's rather a long-term "investment" into lowering
| overall recidivism rates. That being said, one way to
| look at it is that the public is not funding _him_ , but
| it's funding its own interests.
| sctb wrote:
| No disagreement here. The main thrust of my comment was
| the observation that perceived fairness is a powerful
| psychological factor and that it might be at play in
| discussions like this one.
| thefaux wrote:
| I agree with you that just on the basis of this piece, he
| does not sound accountable and can appreciate given what
| you've shared about your own history why it might be
| particularly frustrating. At the same time, there are factual
| elements of the story that deeply bother me about the way we
| treat those who have previously transgressed. I believe that
| we do need systems of accountability, but I also believe that
| our current system is broken beyond repair and is not
| ultimately effective. Or rather it can only be effective if
| we collectively agree to condemn a certain class of people as
| criminals and therefore deserving of treatment we would never
| accept of non criminals. We would all do well to remember our
| own incredible good fortune in life.
|
| Of course there are people in prison who are a menace to
| public safety and must be dealt with. And there must be
| consequences for harmful behavior even when it is
| "nonviolent" (which is a word that diminishes non-physical
| harm). But I truly struggle to understand how it is a good
| idea to segregate all the people who have previously
| transgressed, deny them opportunities for betterment and
| fully initiate them into criminal life.
| charles_f wrote:
| Guilty once, guilty forever right? You're defined by your
| lowest moment and surely can never come back from it ; and
| surely serving your sentence is never enough to be allowed a
| second chance.
|
| There's not a mention asking for sympathy in there. It's
| mostly factual, and explanatory of his experience. And the
| fact that giving opportunities to convicts to educate
| themselves and find their way seems a much better solution
| than just educating them to gang life.
| overrun11 wrote:
| *guilty twice
| bionsystem wrote:
| > There are plenty more, like me, that are capable of being
| responsible, productive, tax paying members of society if given
| the opportunity, but you cannot expect anyone to change when
| you just lock them up in a cage with a bunch of other criminals
| where there is a subculture of endless negativity.
|
| Of course they expect inmates to change, but towards even more
| criminality, not towards rehabilitation. This will justify them
| for being inmates in the first place (and thus the existence of
| the model) and justify them to come back later. It's a very
| profitable business model.
|
| The whole article is fantastic though.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Of course they expect inmates to change, but towards even
| more criminality, not towards rehabilitation._
|
| Who is "they"?
| ebiester wrote:
| Those that profit off of the prison system, whether it be
| the ecosystem of companies supporting the system or those
| that are employed by it.
| chroma wrote:
| He was convicted of possessing 30 grams of carfentanil while on
| parole for his previous conviction. A lethal dose of
| carfentanil is 2mg, so it was at least 15,000 doses.
|
| 1. https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-
| sen...
| Nursie wrote:
| Fuck me, carfentanil is one of those things I read about
| years ago, that seemed like it would _never_ get anywhere
| near the recreational drug market, because it's just too
| potent and too dangerous to handle safely...
|
| Ah, I see from your link it was u-47700 he was arrested with.
| Certainly a potent and potentially lethal substance, but not
| exactly on the same scale as carfentanil. U-47700 is quoted
| as 7.5x the potency of morphine, fentanyl at 50-100x and
| carfentanil around 4000
| chroma wrote:
| Apologies. I read a news article about him being charged
| with carfentanil possession and assumed the conviction
| referred to that. Apparently the carfentanil was found in
| his apartment and he was later caught with the other
| synthetic opioid.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Did you mean 30 kilograms?
| wavemode wrote:
| 2 milligrams * 15000 = 30 grams
| gavinhoward wrote:
| This is an incredible post, and I encourage everyone to read it.
|
| I wish I knew better how to help incarcerated people. Based on
| the Norway(?) model, I feel like help would reduce return rates,
| but I don't know how to go about it.
| dleslie wrote:
| There are reasonable suggestions for organizations to support,
| at the bottom of the post.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Yes, though supporting an organization always feels like
| expecting someone else to do the hard work. I'd like to do
| more.
| kelnos wrote:
| Have you considered writing to some of these organizations
| and asking them if you can volunteer your time?
| frob wrote:
| Recidiviz is hiring:
| https://angel.co/company/recidiviz/jobs
| macintux wrote:
| Apropos of nothing, that jobs site is technically-
| challenged. Recidiviz has 2 jobs posted, but looking at
| the filters, there are apparently 3 available in NYC or
| SF (and no "remote" filter, despite the fact that both
| jobs are listed as remote, NYC, or SF).
| chroma wrote:
| Recidivism rates are astonishingly high in all countries.
| Norway has the lowest at 20% within 2 years. The real rate is
| higher because most crimes aren't solved. So in the best case,
| rehabilitation makes someone 300x more likely to commit crime
| than the average Norwegian.
| halffullbrain wrote:
| By that logic, the worst possible recidivism rate (surely
| 100%) would make someone 1500x more likely to commit crime
| than a non-offender. That's still a pretty good case for
| having effective rehabilitation (unless you insist on the
| death sentence for all prisonable offences)
| chroma wrote:
| You don't have to execute them, just lock them up until
| they're too old to be a threat.
|
| I've been a victim of violent crime at least a dozen times
| in my life. I wasn't the first victim for any of my
| attackers. Far from it. And I wasn't the last. Every single
| one of them escaped. They probably got caught on some other
| occasion, and maybe they spent some time in prison for that
| crime. And then they got out and continued robbing and
| assaulting innocent people. They'll keep doing this as long
| as they are physically able.
|
| I don't really care what happens to them, because they're
| basically constantly-exploding bombs that force the rest of
| us to pay more in taxes for police, invest in more security
| systems, avoid certain areas at certain times, and
| generally worry about safety much more than we otherwise
| would. Most criminals have been given countless chances to
| not commit crime, and they keep doing it. The sooner
| they're separated from society, the better off we'll all
| be.
| andai wrote:
| >I've been a victim of violent crime at least a dozen
| times in my life.
|
| I can't think of a way to say this without sounding
| insensitive, but have you considered moving?
| chroma wrote:
| I've moved lots of times. In terms of crime, the SF bay
| area was by far the worst. The Bronx was second-worst,
| but I hear it's gotten a lot better since I lived there.
| Portland has gotten pretty bad over the past few years
| but at least I can legally carry a gun there.
|
| When you're 5'6" and 120lbs, criminals will target you.
| vertis wrote:
| You should try Europe or Australia. The worst I've ever
| experienced is having someone break and enter while I
| wasn't there. I have lived in what could be considered
| less than savoury areas in Sydney and have stayed all
| over Europe and the world (as a digital nomad, currently
| at 45 countries).
|
| And you won't feel the need to carry a gun...
| chroma wrote:
| I wasn't born in the US. I've lived in other countries.
| There are other disadvantages to places like Europe or
| Australia (or Japan or China, where I've also spent time)
| that make the tradeoff not worth it to me. The biggest
| issue is that you'll always be a foreigner. Even if you
| jump through the hoops to become a citizen, you won't be
| accepted the same way that Americans accept immigrants.
| US conservatives are painted as disliking immigrants, but
| that's only true for immigrants who don't culturally
| assimilate. Conservatives have no problem electing
| immigrants like Winsome Sears, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and
| Young Kim. The mayor of Helena, Montana is a refugee from
| Liberia. The state with the most foreign-born governors
| is Georgia. Anyone who claimed that these people aren't
| "real Americans" would be shunned and shamed across the
| political spectrum.
|
| There's also the issue of employment and compensation. My
| skills are worth far less in other countries. I make over
| $250k/year in compensation, and my taxes are low enough
| that I've managed to accumulate "fuck you" money before
| the age of 40. I could retire, but I want to maximize my
| family's quality of life. It'd also be nice to have an
| aircraft and a cabin on some land in the middle of
| nowhere. My chances of accomplishing those goals in
| another country are much lower. (I'll probably have the
| cabin in a few years. The aircraft... well, we'll see.)
|
| If I wanted to move to an area with low crime, I could
| choose from plenty of places in the US. I don't live in
| those places because, similar to other countries, I'd
| have to take a massive pay cut. As remote work becomes
| more commonplace, that could change.
| modeless wrote:
| It's unfair to say it "makes" them that way. They were
| incarcerated because they already proved willing to commit a
| crime. It failed to change them back into an average citizen,
| sure. Understandably a very difficult problem. It's quite
| possible that it makes them worse instead of better but we'd
| need different evidence to show that.
| closewith wrote:
| The average citizen in every country is already willing to
| commit a crime. The difference between the average criminal
| and you is a couple of meals.
| laurent_du wrote:
| No amount of missed meals will make me commit a rape, a
| murder, or other heinous crimes.
| closewith wrote:
| If you honestly believe this, you've never been truly
| hungry. Most to all people will kill for food.
| cellis wrote:
| Maybe not for you, but what if your son/daughter was
| missing meals? Moreover, you can _see_ other people
| eating just fine, and no one will hire you? Also consider
| that the people you "murder" likely "had it coming" and
| were rapists, terrorists, blasphemers, or otherwise
| cultural heretics...until and unless you've been in those
| exact situations, it's incredulous that you'd not do what
| many other humans would do/have done.
| true_religion wrote:
| People who say they wouldn't murder people for food are
| saints. I would definitely do it. I like living more than
| I like other people living.
|
| However, I wouldn't murder anyone in anyone in a modern
| civilized society. Why not just use social services? And
| if that doesn't exist, then steal. Even if you're caught
| they'll be obligated to give you food.
|
| Society needs to devolve to far far below what is the US
| standard before murder becomes a reasonable solution to
| food problems.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I just got out after 10 years. I work with a lot of people just
| coming out (just been helping a guy locked up for 40 years,
| he's doing great).
|
| The biggest issue is that 95% of them will be returned within a
| few months. Drugs is the main cause. You get out, you have no
| ID, no job, no family, no friends. You're stuck in a halfway
| house that is just like being in prison (lots of rules, line up
| for meal service etc). All the other guys there have a ton of
| drugs and you swear you won't touch them, but then you do
| because you're bored and sad. And then you're addicted again.
| And now you need money to buy more drugs. So you go do
| something goofy to get money and you get caught and locked up
| for another 10 piece. Or your parole officer drug tests you and
| violates your parole and you go do another 3 piece. Or the
| halfway house owner gets sick of you coming in after 7pm
| smelling of alcohol so he calls your parole officer and you go
| do another 3 piece.
|
| Cycle repeats until you die in prison.
| simplicio wrote:
| The no ID thing is interesting. The article mentions that as
| a major issue as well. Seems like it'd be a pretty cheap
| intervention to just issue all out-going prisoners a gov't
| photo ID on their release.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It is so terribly insane that this isn't done. You are
| being held by the state. The state has elevated access to
| state services. How easy would it be for them to hook into
| the state ID/DMV system and print you a state ID or
| driver's license before you leave?
|
| If they can't verify your identity while you are in prison,
| then what are you even doing there?
|
| All they did before I left prison was try to sign me up for
| Medicaid (I'm not elligible because I'm an illegal
| immigrant).
|
| They did kindly let me keep my prison ID when I left which
| has my photo on it and says IN CUSTODY in giant letters.
| (they used to say INMATE but that word has gone out of
| fashion and they couldn't think of another word to use on
| the badges)
| xxr wrote:
| > they used to say INMATE but that word has gone out of
| fashion
|
| Is this due to some kind of "political correctness" thing
| coming from well meaning people outside the system that
| the system is pleased to accommodate for easy brownie
| points, or are there distinct-enough tiers of people
| inside the system that "inmate" isn't useful?
| causality0 wrote:
| I don't at all care for the way in which he mentions his crimes
| were nonviolent and tells us about being arrested for dealing
| ecstasy (a drug with little taboo associated with it) while
| skipping over the fact he's currently in prison for dealing
| choke-on-your-own-vomit synthetic opiods, not cute party drugs.
|
| That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in
| his own recliner.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yeah this guy belongs in jail and clearly doesn't think what he
| did was a problem at all. In the midst of an epidemic that
| kills tens of thousands of Americans a year the dealers of
| these drugs make the front page and are cheered on as
| "victims."
|
| The victims here are the families and children of the people
| whose abuse he profited greatly off of.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| The guy is in jail and is serving his sentence. I could
| understand given recent scandals with opioids that people
| view perhaps justice in this area as "patchy", though.
| throwaway626 wrote:
| It's some strange bias that lets people get worked up about
| this one already-convicted dealer but pass over in silence
| the pharmaceutical companies that designed these opioids to
| be so addictive and marketed them so aggressively so that
| doctors would over-prescribe them.
| dvektor wrote:
| Author, here:
|
| As a severe opioid addict myself for over 10 years, I am
| absolutely ashamed of having any part in that life. It is a
| burden that I will have to continue dealing with every day
| for the rest of my life.
|
| In no way am I trying to say that I did not deserve to go to
| prison. The focus of this post, was about the facilities made
| available to those people who do end up in prison, so that
| they do not return.
|
| As to the references... yes I am a non-violent drug offender.
| That isn't a label I gave myself, that is a fact: there to
| let readers know that I am not here for murder or rape or
| something of that sort. Involvement in opioids and that
| lifestyle/culture is something that I did not have any
| contact with UNTIL I was sent to prison. Perhaps we should
| consider whether 1. Prison is making people worse (that is
| just an objective fact) 2. We want to be institutionalizing
| people that clearly are capable of much more, who turn to
| things like dealing out of their drug habits, or lack of
| resources/options.
|
| Before anyone wants to go google'ing and coming up with
| immediate judgements, why don't you look into that there was
| absolutely zero prosecution of the case being referred to..
| They said they found "residue" in my apartment, put out a
| nationwide manhunt for me, then immediately dropped the case
| as soon as I was judged by the media and the judge. They
| couldn't just destroy my apartment and all my stuff and say
| "we found nothing". Leaving them to prosecute me for 1oz of a
| synthetic opioid 8x stronger than morphine, that itself, had
| a potency of roughly 1%. It was almost completely inert.
| absolutely useless. and this was a completely unrelated case.
|
| To the person who said I sold drugs to kids.. Where exactly
| do you get off making such horrible claims about me? Do you
| live in such a bubble that you think that every drug dealer
| sits around behind dumpsters at high-schools and asks kids if
| they want to try some 'pot', thats really laced with angel
| dust? Oh and they all put rainbow fentanyl in your kids
| halloween candy too right?
| mdaniel wrote:
| For my curiosity, did you have to apply to be able to
| access HN as well as GitHub, or are you part of a trusted
| group of inmates who are allowed to access the Internet
| broadly? I guess my question is if the access is allow-
| list, or deny-list, or something else?
| oooyay wrote:
| The opioid epidemic has killed a good chunk of my friends
| over the years. It was rampant in the form of "cheese" when I
| was a teen; one of my closest friends was left to die when he
| began vomiting from an overdose. When I was in the Marines I
| saw Marine after Marine prescribed opioids for pain and
| injuries after deployments, many of them separated out and
| continued using. As an adult I've lived in the Bay Area and
| Portland; I've gotten to observe first hand what culture
| these drugs cultivate on our streets. I've gotten to see
| opioids make their way, sometimes by mistake, into the rave
| scene and the constant fear it creates among people who want
| nothing to do with those drugs. We have Narcan at our house
| because people consistently use the church parking lot next
| door to shoot up in their car. I've personally ran down the
| street and through the fence to go bang on doors because I
| saw someone passed out for too long - not because I want them
| gone, but because I don't want to see someone else die.
|
| To put the entire mantle on dealers would be a mistake, imo.
| Their choice to sell can come from a variety of incentives:
| sometimes from clout, sometimes their upbringing, sometimes
| lack of opportunity, sometimes lack of education, many times
| a mixture of the above. Often enough these people are users
| themselves; the pain the people they sell to endure they also
| typically endure.
|
| I don't view this post as victim-seeking and I don't really
| view him as a victim. Instead, I view this as a critique of
| prison culture that reinforces its outcomes. I view him as
| someone that wants to change and has the capacity to change,
| but there is little if any pipeline or incentive to do so. If
| there is one, it seems frail. When people want to change we
| should have a stepped pipeline for reintroducing them to
| normality and finally society.
|
| Like you, I'd like to see less opioid related deaths in the
| future but I think there's more than one way to get to that
| goal. If there's a way that can make productive citizens out
| of people rather than shutting them away forever then I'm all
| for it because, frankly, the threat of a felony or life
| imprisonment didn't stop people before. In fact, that's when
| the prison population and recidivism bloomed.
| gavinray wrote:
| People do things they're not proud of in desperate situations.
| Also, everyone was 18-21 once.
|
| Speaking as someone who (barely) survived an unintentional
| acetyl-fentanyl overdose that hospitalized me with rhabdo and
| almost killed my then-fiance -- him dealing this stuff is not
| the end of the world.
|
| I think a lot of people on HN don't know what it's like to be
| someone below the poverty line who is also entangled with the
| law. If you're looking for hell in a first-world country,
| that's about as close as you can get in the USA.
| causality0 wrote:
| He was 24.
|
| _People do things they 're not proud of in desperate
| situations_
|
| See that's the thing. Did you read one word in the post about
| him being remorseful or apologetic to the people he might've
| killed by selling them U-47700, a drug that's essentially
| unstudied in humans? I didn't.
| gavinray wrote:
| The thing about writing public apologies is that there's no
| way to differentiate them from crocodile tears. You can't
| tell whether the person posting it genuinely means those
| things or is saying them because they know other people
| will read them.
|
| Obviously, anyone who causes damage to another human being,
| if they aren't a sociopath, feels remorse.
|
| Of the entire post, perhaps 3 sentences talk about the
| specifics of crimes committed. Every day that one wakes up
| inside of a prison/jail, is a reminder of exactly what
| choices you made to get there.
|
| Can you blame him then, for wanting to write a post that
| isn't focused on the wrongs he did, and rather his hope for
| his future?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have to imagine that if someone in that position talks
| enough about their past they get a little tired of having
| to apologize all over again to every new person they talk
| to.
| overrun11 wrote:
| > People do things they're not proud of in desperate
| situations.
|
| Having to get an office temp job for minimum wage at 24 isn't
| ideal but it's a stretch to call it "desperate" and somehow
| justifying pushing opiates.
|
| > what it's like to be someone below the poverty line
|
| Which he wouldn't have been with the job options he had
| available at the time.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Indeed. He had an ounce of U-47700, a synthetic opioid
| equivalent to about half a pound of morphine. With intent to
| distribute. And this is not his first prison sentence for
| distribution. I think opioid dealers are a different and worse
| class of dealers compared to, say, MDMA. That's a personal
| opinion. At any rate, he's paying for that crime, and when he's
| done he'll return to a normal life, hopefully, and I'll wish
| him well. Until then, he should be honest about who he is--or
| was--before his supposed epiphany.
|
| https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-sen...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| He also completely glosses over why he was really in solitary
| confinement. I guarantee it is not merely because of his
| "influence".
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > particularly those affected by the war on drugs, like myself,
| who has spent 1/3 of his life imprisoned for non-violent drug
| crimes
|
| Still not quite ready to take responsibility for his actions...
| You weren't magically "affected" by the war on drugs. You went
| into crime for the easy money, but found out you weren't very
| good at avoiding getting caught.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Meanwhile working class people have lesser and lesser
| purchasing power to the point were renting and homeownership
| are out of their reach; subemployment / "gig" employment
| ("innovating" by removing without workers rights) is rampant.
|
| Nothing like a system that produces a high amount of
| marginalized / vulnerable people and then blames them for going
| for "easy" money like drugs or prostitution.
|
| I would expect the tech crowd here to be more inclined towards
| blameless postmortems / systemic safety.
| gavinray wrote:
| You might consider emailing him. It's lonely in jail/prison.
| Suddenly everyone you thought were your closest friends don't
| speak a word to you again.
|
| If you're lucky, you've got a wife or parents that'll write to
| you or take your calls.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Wow, I know you've been locked up, brother.
|
| Nobody will take your call the second you step inside a jail.
| Best man at your wedding? He's not picking up, I promise you.
| Literally nobody will call you or write to you. You will get
| nothing except maybe from your mother. If you are married,
| forget it.
|
| Humans only like to associate with success. Once you seem to be
| failing literally nobody will want to even speak to you.
| gavinray wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fair-weather_friend#Noun
| low_tech_love wrote:
| I wanted to contact him to tell him that he was wrong (he got
| to the front page without using any of his proposed techniques
| [1]) but I couldn't find the e-mail. I have no LinkedIn either;
| right now I almost feel like submitting an issue to one of his
| github repos just to get his attention. Can you point me to his
| e-mail address?
|
| [1] https://pthorpe92.github.io/humor/How-to-get-on-
| hackernews-f...
| gavinray wrote:
| I got it from his GitHub page:
|
| https://github.com/PThorpe92
|
| His email is preston@unlockedlabs.org
| mmaunder wrote:
| The is incredibly inspirational. It's a light we can potentially
| use to guide our prison system out of the dark ages.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| The apparent lack of opportunities for anyone is easy to solve
| with Dorm Room Welfare:
|
| Open free dorms next to the campuses of community colleges.
| Anyone who is physically able to live on their own, but who can
| not afford to live on their own can move in and live there as
| long as they are working towards being economically self
| sufficient.
|
| Working towards being economically self sufficient can mean
| passing academic classes, passing career and technical education
| classes, taking remedial classes, completing a high school
| equivalency degree, passing K-12 classes online, earning
| certifications, working in internships, working jobs at a
| training wage, or other things
|
| I suggest we replace all other welfare programs with drom room
| welfare.
|
| This does not solve the problem that many of us do not want to
| hire convicted criminals.
| gavinray wrote:
| > This does not solve the problem that many of us do not want
| to hire convicted criminals.
|
| Thank you for at least acknowledging this.
|
| I'd wager that if people with convictions on their record, had
| even a 10-20% chance of being hired at a decent establishment,
| we'd see recidivism go down by a statistically significant
| amount.
|
| I know the justice system. The grand majority of folks coming
| in and out of prison genuinely do not want better for
| themselves, it's a lifestyle choice that they've accepted (or
| resigned themselves to, depending on how you look at it).
|
| But for the fractional percentage of incarcerated individuals
| that DO decide "Okay, I've had enough, I'm done with this and I
| want better for myself" and _mean it_ , they aren't afforded
| such a luxurious opportunity for a bland life in suburbia.
| malodyets wrote:
| This sounds like the deal I have had with my (young-adult) kids
| (who live at home).
| indymike wrote:
| > This does not solve the problem that many of us do not want
| to hire convicted criminals.
|
| The issue that keeps people from hiring ex-offenders isn't hard
| to solve:
|
| One part is social. This one requires a little leadership and a
| little bit of re-defining what is an acceptable attitude.
|
| The other part is a financial issue and is EASY to solve
| politically: most business insurers will raise rates or not
| insure companies that hire ex-offenders.
|
| In my home state we were able to get a law passed that shifted
| liability for a hired ex-offender who committed a crime on the
| job to the state so insurers could not make hiring ex-offenders
| ridiculously expensive.
|
| We were able to sell the idea to our legislators and local city
| councilors with a simple trade: the Democrat-controlled city
| council wanted to pass laws making it illegal not to hire ex-
| offenders. The Republican-controlled legislature wanted to give
| tax credits to businesses that hire ex-offenders. I suggested
| instead of passing unconstitutional laws or handing out
| corporate welfare we could solve the problem by making it
| illegal to charge more to insure a business that hires an ex-
| offender, and at the same time, absolving the insurer of having
| to pay claims because of the hire. The city and state decided
| to try it out, and it's helped a lot of people over the past
| eight years.
| arbuge wrote:
| >> the success of the Maine model of corrections should highlight
| the absolutely embarrassing lack of opportunities in the rest of
| the system
|
| Very well said. And I am glad we have a model now, if one was
| ever needed. I hope other prison systems take note.
| frob wrote:
| As someone actively working in this space, I can tell you they
| are. Maine is following the so-called Scandinavian Model. It
| essentially comes down to giving incarcerated people a chance
| to practice normal daily activities and social interactions.
| The facilities feel more like highly secure dorms than jails.
| The way a head of a different DoC said still sticks with me:
|
| We send people away for years, tell them exactly what to do
| every day and they get to make exacrly one choice every day: do
| you obey or not? That's the only choice you get to make. Then,
| after 3, 5, 10 years, we send them out into society and tell
| them, "Make better choices." But we haven't prepared them for
| that at all. We have given them almost no chances to make
| decisions and learn how to make good ones. We just tell them
| the decision to make and they do it. There's no space for
| practicing good decisions in traditional prison settings.
|
| Multiple other states are pointing to Maine as proof that the
| Scandinavian model can work in the US and are incorporating
| their learnings into their plans and trainings.
| qingcharles wrote:
| None of the places I was housed at had any opportunities,
| really.
|
| One place had computers to learn typing. You weren't allowed
| computer books in that facility in case you used them to figure
| out how to hack out of the jail. So, bless the elderly nuns,
| they smuggled in "C# in a Weekend" for me, with the CD-ROM, so
| I could teach programming classes when the guards weren't
| paying attention.
| simplicio wrote:
| Seems like a good idea, but from the article it sounds like a
| lot of the difference between Maine and his earlier prisons was
| the culture that existed amongst the prisoners themselves.
| Obviously prison officials can try to influence this (indeed,
| it sounds like the authors transfer to Maine was an attempt to
| do that), but it seems like the kind of thing that's hard to do
| with just, like, correspondence college degree programs and the
| like.
| wavemode wrote:
| I guess I read this blog post very differently from many other
| commenters. I don't see this as being entitled or avoiding
| responsibility for his actions. He's just telling his story. He
| knows he fucked up. But he also knows the system is fucked.
|
| If you can't possibly understand how growing up without positive
| influences can lead someone to a life of crime, you're probably
| too privileged to be the target audience of this article. Just
| move on.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Many more people then you might think have had a unsatisfactory
| childhood. However, most of them get their act together at some
| point during growing up. Pointng at your past as an excuse for
| criminal acts is pretty fucked up, IMO. They are not alone, and
| guess what, it is not an excuse. I can see why other commenters
| are not willing to see this acuse as valuable as you seem to
| do.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Dude was already in crime at 17. He didn't really have any
| time with the luxuries of adulthood to figure out his own
| life.
| lynx23 wrote:
| I was deep into rave culture at that age. Lets just say I
| know the "deal". However, I always knew I would never sell,
| because, surprise, I knew the penalty was not worth it.
|
| So, I actually know what I am talking about here, and still
| lack sympathy. Risk taken, game lost. Simple.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It's great your ability to judge risk and reward at age
| 17 was so solid, but for many it is not. Brain
| development does not stop that early. I think the
| difference in culpability between a bad decision at age
| 17 and say, a bad decision at age 23 is huge.
| closewith wrote:
| More importantly, the fact the GP believes the risk was
| not worth it shows that their situation was far better
| than that of many people. Crime is a risk worth taking in
| many cases.
| ThrowAway1922A wrote:
| > it is not an excuse.
|
| Things can be a reason without being an excuse.
|
| Sure I'm not in jail and on the surface I have my act
| together, but my entire life has been fucked up by what are
| now called "ACEs" and it's a miracle I'm as stable as I am.
|
| I'm not going to let people off the hook, but I am able to
| sympathize...especially knowing the wrong person or event at
| the wrong time would have quickly sent me down the same path.
| closewith wrote:
| I hope you know how alone you are in this compassionless
| response.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Going with the opinion of the masses was never anything I
| aspired to anyways, so... Thanks for the compliment.
| neilv wrote:
| Are your comments on this post more about you and your
| experiences, than about the person who wrote the article?
|
| I hope that you're doing well, and that you see
| compassion from others whenever you need it.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Many more people then you might think have had a
| unsatisfactory childhood. However, most of them get their act
| together at some point during growing up_
|
| Did they have the same exact family circumstances, growing up
| experiences, psychological capacity, and so on? Or at least
| very close ones?
|
| Or are you comparing different cases and expect them to have
| handled things the same?
|
| > _Pointing at your past as an excuse for criminal acts is
| pretty fucked up, IMO_
|
| It's not an excuse, it's an explanation, and a description of
| the forces and circumstances which led you there.
|
| People's family and early life circumstances are hard to
| overcome, and just because some percentage of people manage
| it, doesn't mean it's easy for the rest, or that the people
| that did do it wouldn't also have slipped if they didn't have
| some lucky breaks (from psychological perspective all the way
| to the people they met, the connections they had, some rare
| good mentor or a good friend influence, etc.).
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I don 't see this as being entitled or avoiding
| responsibility for his actions_
|
| Did others commented that? If they read this post like that,
| then they are part of the problem.
| darkclouds wrote:
| > He's just telling his story. He knows he fucked up. But he
| also knows the system is fucked.
|
| Here in the UK we have something called Joint Enterprise [1]
| which is controversial for a numnber of reasons, I've read this
| chaps blog, I can relate to his circumstances in a number of
| ways having grown up with the rave culture in the 90's, I've
| seen many people turn a blind eye and escape prosecution,
| mainly because its too hard to prosecute, demonstrating the
| laziness of the police as evidence gathers and the judicary.
|
| What annoys me is how these so called law abiding people manage
| to remain in their job. People claim to live in a democracy,
| none more so that many in the US, and yet AFAIK noone gets
| taught law as a mandatory subject when growing up. If you are
| not taught something how can the public even debate it? Is this
| the legal system applying a form of Darwinism on the population
| in a dictatorial fashion? Is this a form of intellectual
| torture being applied on some who want to enjoy themselves in
| non-alcoholic ways?
|
| If I had the money I'd get a Judicial Review to find the
| reasons why judges dont want people to be taught the law as a
| mandatory subject for a number of reasons, and for adults to be
| kept up to date with legal changes in a TLDR fashion, that
| doesnt rely on the opinion of the state broadcaster and other
| news outlets. Some people are too busy to watch/read the news,
| which is the only en-masse way to keep up to date currently,
| and there is also the issue of why is legal conformity pushed
| on people if they are doing no harm? Just what exactly is a
| democracy and do you really have a say?
|
| If Roe v. Wade (1973) can mandate a change across a country
| like the US, are these judges who shy away from making a
| countrywide decision to keep people abreast of legal changes,
| not only undermining the idea of democracy, but also just
| keeping themselves in a stealth sado masochistic schadenfruede-
| like position of authority with accompanying lucrative income?
|
| Has any scientific study measured the dopamine receptors of
| judges or serotonin receptors or testostorone levels when they
| pass a judgement? Has the scientific community shown they
| derive pleasure from controlling other peoples lives in non
| scientific ways, because I see the reoffending rate is quite
| high, and the system is clearly not fit for purpose.
|
| To the original poster, just remember there are some people who
| agree with your actions, enjoy the mental mind games of
| programming, it can keep you occupied even when not in front of
| the computer. :)
|
| The Law of 'Joint Enterprise': Graham Virgo Cambridge Law
| Faculty [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjBwCmwpvMI
| JessicaHicklin wrote:
| Whatever people are incarcerated for, the fact of the matter is
| that 95% of the people currently incarcerated in the US will one
| day live next door to one or more of us. Isn't it better to
| prepare them to live there, self-sufficent and contributing to
| society? (Disclosure: I am the Cofounder of Unlocked Labs,
| Preston's current employer and formerly incarcerated myself). I
| can say without hesitation, Preston is an incredible employee
| whom I am happy we provided this opportunity for.
| gavinray wrote:
| Great to see you here Jessica =)
|
| I didn't realize Unlocked was your organization.
| JessicaHicklin wrote:
| Nice to see you in the conversation as well and yes, I am a
| cofounder
| ulizzle wrote:
| There are a lot of historical examples arguing for and against
| you. But murder and rape is far different than getting popped
| for heroin or selling weed and our laws already reflect that
| Kye wrote:
| What are the recidivism rates on those crimes like? Our laws
| often reflect misguided morals, not hard data. Justice is
| supposed to be blind. That's an ideal to reach for, not
| reject out of hand.
| hu3 wrote:
| https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-5-adult-sex-offender-
| re...
|
| > Sexual recidivism rates range from 5 percent after three
| years to 24 percent after 15 years.
|
| Also, I wouldn't put murder and rape in the same sentence.
| There are some situations where murder reasoning might be
| debatable even if still wrong (self defense against and
| archenemy that promised to assassinate your family, for
| example).
|
| But rape? There's no rationalizing rape other than mental
| illness.
|
| I don't want to open a can of worms here, but I had to
| write this.
| kortilla wrote:
| > But rape? There's no rationalizing rape other than
| mental illness.
|
| 20 year old having sex with a 17 year old isn't mental
| illness.
| hu3 wrote:
| Rape is also about consent, not just age.
|
| As an aside, I learned the other day that in Brazil the
| age of consent is 14:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_South_Am
| eri...
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| 14 is pretty average globally speaking. It's 16 in most
| U.S. states, with exceptions often going down to 14 when
| there is an age gap of 4 years or less. https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_...
| KMnO4 wrote:
| The stark reality is that there's a difference between
| rape (the crime) and rape (the action).
|
| You can be convicted of the crime for a lot of reasons
| other than lack of consent. A common example of that is a
| 20 year old with a 17 year old in many states.
| verall wrote:
| This obviously isn't what he's referring to and isn't
| illegal in most states.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I don't want to continue the can of terrifying worms :),
| but:
|
| * I agree that what most of us generally mean in
| colloquial usage of the term "rape" is never justifiable
|
| * However, in many jurisdictions, the legal definition of
| "rape" may be different and significantly broader than
| our colloquial usage. As an immediate example, a
| completely informed and consensual sexual experience
| between two teenagers may be considered "statutory rape",
| with all the prison, registered offender, difficulty
| getting a job and social stigma that follows a rape
| conviction. Whereas I personally don't think two
| teenagers having sex is indicative of mental illness.
|
| It sucks, but the longer I live, the less immediately
| easily categorizable or black & white things are :<
| hu3 wrote:
| I agree. It's a delicate topic full of nuances and
| differences in jurisdictions.
| qingcharles wrote:
| You're doing the Lord's work :) Thank you.
|
| Almost 10 years inside here. Going on Monday to have all the
| charges dismissed.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Can you please let him know about this? I wanted to contact him
| but I can't find his e-mail address anywhere.
| JessicaHicklin wrote:
| Whether you feel sympathy for Preston or not, the fact of the
| matter is that 95% of the incarcerated individuals in the US will
| one day love next to you and me. Wouldn't you rather they be
| prepared to live there, to have a job and resources? To be self-
| sufficient (Preston will not need welfare resources when he
| returns because of this opportunity)? (Disclosure, I am Preston's
| employer and formerly incarcerated myself)
| FpUser wrote:
| It is incredible story. I wish you all all the good luck you can
| get and happy life after you get out of prison. I also wish that
| prison systems in the US and Canada will adopt this
| "Scandinavian" model. So much better to put people back on right
| track instead of being vengeful fucks who would chase person the
| end of their days,
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| TFA is interesting but I've got a problem with this:
|
| > I was left with the difficult choice of either living there and
| walking to a temp agency with hopes of making $10.50/hour doing
| manual labor (without an ID or social security card at this
| point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some associates, and
| coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my pocket and living
| in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an apartment I chose
| the latter, obviously, and was back in prison after 14mo.
|
| That is _not_ obvious. My father was left with nothing at some
| point in his life, living like a hobo in an abandoned, broken,
| leaking RV next to gypsies (heck, he 'd even, for free, help the
| gypsies' kids with "homework").
|
| And he was still proud --and still is-- of never having done
| anything illegal.
|
| People _choose_ to engage in crime, and there 's nothing obvious
| about it.
|
| Nobody needs the latest iPhone or the latest sneakers. They
| believe they "flex" with the latest iPhone and sneakers (I've got
| a whole different idea of flexing btw but that'd be another
| topic). They _choose_ the easy path.
|
| And that is not obvious at all. Most poor people and by very,
| very, very far, even most hobos, are _not_ thieves and are _not_
| drug dealers. When you deal drugs you have on your conscience how
| miserable you make the lives of so many others: it 's not even
| about legality here.
|
| I had a friend and roommate at one point (and still friend to
| this day), we'd split rent and he'd barely make any money.
| Serving pitas at a tiny kebab/pita place three nights a week for
| hardly any money. And he was okay with that. He didn't care about
| clothes or cars or phones or fancy hotel rooms or whatever. He'd
| just be honest and survive.
|
| What I'd like to know is why people believe it's "obvious" they
| choose a criminal life for $25 K a week instead of an honest life
| flipping burgers.
|
| It's not obvious and that mindset of "fancy luxury hotel rooms"
| and "latest iPhone" should just die. Nobody is impressing anyone
| with these utterly pointless bullshit.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Asking newly-release prisoners to have the absolute strongest
| constitution and pain endurance is also not obvious to me. The
| average person would struggle in this situation, and we expect
| formerly-incarcerate individuals to be even stronger than them?
|
| It doesn't offend me at all to see it highlighted as "obvious"
| to the author. For some high proportion of these individuals,
| it is obvious (and indeed seems like the only choice).
| overrun11 wrote:
| Crime will always pay better than legitimate alternatives.
| You can either choose to sacrifice the extra income or risk
| going to prison- that's kind of just how society functions.
|
| > For some high proportion of these individuals, it is
| obvious (and indeed seems like the only choice).
|
| Then they can go back to prison. Society need not be
| blackmailed into giving ex-cons excessively lucrative jobs in
| hopes of luring them away from crime.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Certainly. But it's not quite as binary as you make it out
| to be. Lowering the threshold to having a stable job for
| the people might change the proportion quite a bit. If we
| gave them excessively lucrative jobs as you suggested, we
| may be able to prevent most recidivism!
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >have the absolute strongest constitution
|
| you don't need to have the 'absolute strongest constitution'
| to work a boring min-wage job in the United States of
| America. Ask any refugee who migrated to the country what a
| hard life looks like.
|
| Smart people like this guy, who choose to go into the drug
| trade do it because they think a crappy 9-5 job to get back
| on their feet is beneath them.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This entire post is based on misunderstanding why the author
| used the word "obviously" here: You're reading about an
| incarcerated developer, so you obviously know he chose to
| commit a crime again at that point in the story. He wasn't
| saying it was the obvious choice to make.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Wait, do they have computer and internet access in prison?? And
| free meals, healthcare and lodging? I might have taken that deal
| when I was young, busting my ass at shit jobs and renting shit
| places with crazy roommates.
| imtringued wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you, but the quality of the roommates
| doesn't get better in prison.
| zoogeny wrote:
| > Who else has an opportunity to spend 12+ hours a day learning
| something for years? With no other obligations or
| responsibilities?
|
| Totally tangential, but this prison article reminded me of a
| short story by Cory Doctorow about a monastery for programmers. I
| imagined living in a room about the size of my home office, a
| bed, a desk, a decent MacBook Pro and a high-speed connection and
| just hanging out on the Internet all day reading articles and
| programming. Food and shelter taken care of, no obligations or
| responsibilities. Like the pictures of Norwegian prison cells.
|
| That reminded me of a weird Internet streamer collective started
| by a Twitch streamer named Athene. He started a group called The
| Singularity Group [1] which allowed people to move into a house
| to volunteer work on philanthropic projects. They are responsible
| for the AI Jesus [2] channel on Twitch. There is some controversy
| since some see the streamer as having tried to start a cult [3].
| They also created a few mobile games that run on their own
| crypto-currency.
|
| At any rate, it is all quite interesting to me. It was very
| common in the past in almost all cultures for a certain number of
| men to just reject society and go off into hermitage. Sometimes
| those hermits would band together into brotherhoods. Often they
| would make beer, or honey or some other collective task to earn
| enough money for the members to spend the rest of their time in
| quiet contemplation. I can imagine such a life might be
| attractive to a lot of programmers who tend to be introverted and
| feel alien to normal society.
|
| 1. https://singularitygroup.net/
|
| 2. https://www.twitch.tv/ask_jesus
|
| 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDAkkiwmmBQ
| wavemode wrote:
| Athene was indeed trying to start a cult (it had all the basic
| elements). And from watching him speak in the past, he did seem
| to me like a huge narcissist.
|
| Haven't been following his latest projects much, and I can't
| speak to how the Singularity group has changed since back then.
| Though I have seen his AI channel sometimes. It's moderately
| entertaining.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I cant't comment directly on whether or not he was or wasn't
| actually trying to start a cult, but I am interested in cults
| in general (and any kind of esoteric/occult stuff) so I
| devoured a lot of content related to this. I mean, a 21st
| century digital cult!? That is some juicy stuff!
|
| What I found was a young idealistic kid who was playing a
| character online. He was optimizing for views and we all know
| what kind of behavior gets attention online. The character
| _was_ overblown and narcissistic. There is zero argument from
| me that if you take selected clips of him from when he was at
| the height of his streaming fame he was a dumb-ass edge-lord
| playing the role of a prophet or spiritual leader. He even
| leaned into it when he was accused because he thought it was
| funny. But when you watch recent videos of him (he does a
| pretty good react to Asmongold 's react of him), I think I
| saw a different side.
|
| All that being said, he isn't a kind of character I trust. He
| seems to me to be very much the kind of person where the ends
| justify the means. He has some pretty high ideals, some of
| which I agree with and others which I am sympathetic towards.
| It's like Greenpeace or animal rights activists ... even if I
| agree with their overall goals I often disagree with their
| methods.
| andai wrote:
| Include me in the monastery.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I managed to read over 800 books when I was locked up. Every
| famous book by every famous author. I read it.
| zoogeny wrote:
| Can you suggest one or two recommendations? Maybe one that
| surprised you and one that lived up to the hype?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Ha! My favourites that I remember are The Martian, 3-Body
| Problem, Wild, 1Q84. I wish I could remember them all. I
| wrote down the names of all 800 as I was reading them but
| the documents all went up in a building fire last year.
| kortilla wrote:
| Nice! Which ones stuck with you the most?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Ha! My favourites that I remember are The Martian, 3-Body
| Problem, Wild, 1Q84. I wish I could remember them all. I
| wrote down the names of all 800 as I was reading them but
| the documents all went up in a building fire last year.
| btrettel wrote:
| I've had a similar idea before.
|
| I once was talking to someone who wanted to financially support
| independent scientific research. He had started a successful
| business (you may have heard of it, though I won't name it) and
| he wanted to put his money to good use.
|
| He wanted to find people he could write a check to, basically.
| I suggested that if he wanted to advance science as much as
| possible, it would be far more efficient to run a dormitory for
| scientists with free room and board, as long as they do
| scientific research. I'm sure he could find many people who
| would accept a minimalist lifestyle for the opportunity to do
| research the system wouldn't otherwise support. (I'd be
| interested.)
|
| He declined, stating that one major factor was the tax write-
| off he got from the donation, and I guess giving people a place
| to live doesn't have that benefit.
| zoogeny wrote:
| It is interesting to think that your definition of a "a
| dormitory for scientists with free room and board, as long as
| they do scientific research." is kinda-sorta what I think of
| when I consider the Institute for Advanced Study. If you
| squint hard enough, it is kinda-sorta what tenure in
| universities aims to provide.
| btrettel wrote:
| I don't think those examples are similar.
|
| A tenured professorship or position at a prestigious
| institution provides a lot of resources and status that the
| minimalist approach does not. I don't know a single
| professor who would accept living in the very modest setup
| I proposed.
|
| Also, I don't know any research organization that provides
| room and board for long-term faculty/staff. IAS does not
| work that way. Surely there are universities that provide
| room and board for graduate students, and some summer
| research internships will provide room and board. But those
| cases are rare in my experience in the US, and are only be
| temporary at best.
| adbachman wrote:
| link to the Cory Doctorow story, "The Things That Make Me Weak
| and Strange Get Engineered Away", for anyone else who's
| interested: https://www.tor.com/2008/08/06/weak-and-strange/
|
| I also highly recommend _Anathem_, by Neal Stephenson if the
| STEM monastery theme is interesting to you.
| j7ake wrote:
| PhD can be like this but for a limited time.
| futureamish wrote:
| I'm currently recovering from a grief, depression, intimate
| partner violence, State abuse, and whatever-the-hell-is-in-
| nationwide-legal-psuedo-cannabis-vapes based psychosis. Long
| story short: I sacrificed my physical, mental, emotional, and
| future well-being as a human shield so my non-biological
| daughter who I won't see again could have part of a childhood
| and not develop a cluster-b personality disorder like her
| mother. To those that don't understand what these people are
| like behind closed doors, you simply have no frame of
| reference. There are no words that will allow you to
| understand; many social workers and psychiatrists are often
| even fooled into serving as these people's unwitting thralls.
| Their nature is predatory. They smash mirrors within and
| without (even posting something public about it like here will
| summon a small herd of them to cover the tracks with doubt).
| They have no ideology other than predation, so they follow the
| ideology of the hour that gains them the most; they wear
| personalities like hats. It was after being attacked, yet
| again, that I was DARVOed (because I was actually escaping for
| good this time, and the cherry on top of these relationships is
| always, without fail, a DARVO kick-in-the-ass on the way out
| the door). Then, despite having over two hours of her attacking
| me over years of time recorded, including her pouncing atop me
| and snatching my phone on the very day in question, the
| brilliant detective at Atlanta PD warranted me, and I stayed in
| the Rice Street gulag where the schizophrenic kid was murdered
| by police via bedbug consumption (the police there use
| subterfugal torture methods to "keep people in line" by
| throwing them in freezing-in-winter, low-to-no ventilation,
| hot-in-summer, or bug-ridden cells, keeping lights on at all
| hours, refusing medical care, 30 people bricked in cells meant
| for 8, kept standing for days, COVID outbreaks in entire cell
| blocks, standard US prison system fare, torture by any sane
| definition of the word). It's when I looked down at the
| homeless man in that cell, the one laying flat directly in the
| piss and the shit on the floor so he can lay down in the real
| estate that no one wants, that I said to myself, "yeah, that's
| where I'm at."
|
| It's after that, I underwent a psychosis so vast that every
| word, every symbol, every story, every axiom, every fear, every
| thought, and all of human history amassed into a unified and
| perfect whole; only after would I come to recognize that what I
| saw was identical to the ascent in Merkabah literature,
| Thelema's visit to the City of the Pyramids, Samadhi, and
| several other analogies for such experiences. Myself had
| disappeared, and in its place was a sacrifice burning through
| time like a star. There were only really two forces in the
| universe, entropy and creation, and the two were yet an
| illusion still of a singular. Dark matter became simply matter
| not yet light, returned to the path of least resistance towards
| supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies, dark energy
| became simply the remnant left by matter past the edge of
| observability to continue the pulling, decimation, and return,
| breaking the laws of thermodynamics that were merely local
| phenomenon, and creating novel matter in the process, the early
| stages of which would expand in an accelerated manner that
| would appear as a bang, but be more akin to a snake eating its
| own tail and growing.
|
| I wandered in a daze, searching for what I called my fellow
| "wizards" or fellow autists or fellow disciples, not fully
| knowing what I was doing or why. I researched Benedictine and
| Bhuddist monestaries to try to escape the world. So yes, US
| hermits are very real, we are very noble, and we are fucking
| livid regarding the state of adequate hermitages. I'm currently
| in a low-rent studio, searching for minimum wage jobs, so I can
| pay less taxes to the undemocratic State. "Fully-employed" I'd
| make 1/4 million a year.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| There was a thread or submission recently on setting up a low
| cost room & board for aspiring people, that I loved, but
| haven't been able to re-find the thread.
|
| > _Sometimes those hermits would band together into
| brotherhoods. Often they would make beer, or honey or some
| other collective task to earn enough money for the members to
| spend the rest of their time in quiet contemplation. I can
| imagine such a life might be attractive to a lot of programmers
| who tend to be introverted and feel alien to normal society._
|
| Lovely imagery & idea, thank you.
|
| Rather than focus on the negative motivations ( _be introverted
| and feel alien_ ), i think often there's hope optimism & drive;
| more modernly especially, some are marked out from others by
| being _inspired_ people, seeking to be active forces. Caring
| deeply about enormous possibilities trying to spring forth.
| Finding capacity for the cause, finding support or even just
| peers for those folks is hard.
|
| Programmers have such amazing leverage, but most day jobs are
| just work. The idea of sustainable no frills living among other
| Burton Klein type-1/Happy Warrior types, able to pursue the
| thing & tangle with it & ideally also have others enmeshed in
| their questing too: that has huge appeal. It'd be such a worthy
| investment to support, imo.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I recently read a book about experiences in the UK prison system:
| 'A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner' by Chris Atkins
| (there is an associated podcast, which is also excellent). It is
| a fascinating, but rather depressing read about his experiences
| being incarcerated for tax fraud and how broken the UK prison
| system is. It is no wonder the re-offending rates are so high.
|
| I'm guessing much of the US system (where I understand a lot more
| for-profit private companies are involved) is at least as broken.
| qingcharles wrote:
| As a Brit prisoner in the USA I understand the that USA systems
| are far, far worse than the UK systems.
| th4tg41 wrote:
| What blew my mind is that ~667/100000 or ~.67% of Americans are
| incarcerated according to the numbers in this post and the
| population according to the German Wiki page for the US.
| Wikipedia says it's .531% on the English language website, .629%
| on the German site. (Don't know which year for either or if
| juvenile detention is counted on German site.) That is A LOT! A
| LOT!
| overrun11 wrote:
| It's largely a function of the much higher rate of violent
| crime in the United States
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The last time this topic came up on HN (not that long ago, a
| matter of weeks), I dove into the rabbit hole a bit. Turns out
| that the lion's share of the difference in incarceration rates
| between the US and other countries comes down to sentencing.
| Crime-for-crime, the US doles out a lot more time than e.g.
| Western European nations.
|
| A lot of people think it's drug crimes. Not really. Just the
| same old crimes as everywhere else, punished with 2-3x the
| amount of time.
|
| This is basically what US voters have asked for up until
| recently. Being tough on crime is a feature for a politician.
| Three-strikes laws, etc.
| andai wrote:
| Well, it looks like he finally did it!
|
| https://pthorpe92.github.io/humor/How-to-get-on-hackernews-f...
| andai wrote:
| Edit: He says he posted this literally yesterday. LOL
| ghuntley wrote:
| Today he reached a personal goal -
| https://pthorpe92.github.io/humor/How-to-get-on-hackernews-f...
| andai wrote:
| The site doesn't show the date, but I emailed him and he says
| he posted it yesterday. Ain't that just the way!
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Awesome and amazing.
| codingrightnow wrote:
| As a former software engineer for over a decade and current
| corrections officer in a max level state facility, this is a very
| interesting topic. My facility has a large college presence
| within it. While there are problems with it, I think overall it
| is probably a net positive for the staff and inmates. At the same
| time, I don't believe that we have more than maybe a small
| handful of nonviolent/drug offenders; anybody on the outside
| advocating for murderers, rapists, and those in for armed robbery
| to have access to more of the normal comforts of the outside
| world is going to have a hard time and not much support. Even the
| medium level prisons have those types of people in them. So what
| facilities would wider access to remote learning and work become
| available? There would need to be honor facilities inmates must
| work towards proving they're responsible enough to be transferred
| to. Right now budgets are being slashed, we're at 60% staffing as
| it is, and the whole state is in the shit. And this is a
| "progressive liberal" state. It would probably take the federal
| government to start throwing money around for pilot programs, no
| state is going to increase their prison budget to accommodate
| this.
| strix_varius wrote:
| Thanks for more first hand insight, from a related but
| different perspective.
|
| I'm curious: what led you to leave software engineering? SWE to
| corrections officer sounds like a rare journey.
| harryvederci wrote:
| I was going to make a joke like "He probably wanted to do
| less stressful work."
|
| Then I read that it's not far from the truth:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554517
| j7ake wrote:
| If I get locked up maybe I would finally get to doing the
| exercises from the art of computer programming.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > kicked out of my parents house for being a stupid 17yr old
|
| That's child abuse in my book. If you are a parent, you are
| responsible for your children. That's it. No age limit. Nothing.
| They need a place? You are responsible for providing them a place
| to live. This isn't to say you have to be responsible for their
| crimes, but you should never be allowed to force your child out
| of your house. YOU brought them into this world. They are your
| responsibility. Forcing a child out? You are a terrible parent.
| Yes, some children thrive, but others don't. I'm sorry, but it's
| on you.
|
| If you aren't ready to take care of your children or make sure
| they are taken care of for the remainder of their life, you
| shouldn't have children. 18 and you force them out? You are in
| the wrong.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's pretty harsh. Children turn into adults, and not all of
| them turn out great. As a parent my responsibility is to get
| them to adulthood with as much chance of success as it is
| possible for me to provide. At some point they do absolutely
| become responsible for their own decisions. Do I ever want to
| find out what it would take to throw my own child out of the
| house? Of course not. Am I going to toss them out when they
| turn 18? No plans to. But this idea that you should be
| responsible for another adult for the rest of their life just
| because you created them...? That's silly.
| dvektor wrote:
| Author here again: I told myself I was done chiming in, but
| this is just something I have to clarify.
|
| My parents are absolutely amazing people, and they are the only
| reason my life has any hope at this point. They were still
| figuring things out, and didn't understand why I was such a
| rebellious asshole. Having 4 kids and two of them teenagers
| isn't easy, and they have been incredibly supportive to my
| younger siblings when one went through some troubles, and have
| been supportive to me the entire time. I know this is something
| my mother feels terrible for, but I feel like I was going to do
| what I was going to do, and I put no blame on her for anything.
|
| This was the only thing that was going to get me to comment,
| because i know it breaks my moms heart.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| I'd like to make a couple of points to think about:
|
| I'd been addicted to opioids for a couple of years. And I was
| very happy that I was able to get original non-counterfeit pills
| on the dark net, from vendors that had thousands of positives
| reviews. Being a nerd, and successful when it comes to business,
| risk-free supply had never been an issue. Luckily I bought
| Bitcoin when they did cost $0.20...
|
| Fighting the dark net has always been a stupid idea. It's the
| cleanest way for people to get the substances they need, with the
| lowest amount of risk in every single regard. Lowest risk to get
| your substance cut with something unhealthy, lowest risk of
| getting ripped off, lowest risk of getting into criminal circles.
|
| Fighting the dark net means pushing people to street dealers,
| increasing suffering, violent crime and deaths.
|
| So, why did I get addicted? Depressions, anxiousness, and
| finally: Being on the autistic spectrum, which now seems
| absolutely obvious from earliest childhood memories, but my
| parents never took me to a neurologist to get that diagnosed. I
| just lived with being "different". Until I could not take it
| anymore, and tried to help myself with substances.
|
| How did I get off the addiction? Did a search for the best-rated
| neurologist in the region, made an appointment, got treatment. It
| took a while, but in the end a combination of substances was
| found that worked out better than opiates.
|
| But that being said: Those substances are the same that I can get
| as prescription medication, or as "drugs" on the street. It's
| just that now I no longer have to spend Bitcoin on it, but get
| them for free from the health care system. Yay!
|
| Please remind yourself: Nearly everything that is taken and sold
| as "drugs" on the streets is used to treat some problem, just in
| a very dangerous way, without proper education, without proper
| risk management.
|
| Whatever that scary drug that your parents and your school are
| warning you about to be evil: It's just medication. The poor
| people die on the street trying to get their supply, the rich
| guys get a subscription to get it for free.
|
| If your country has a problem with drugs on the street, and with
| crime due to people trying to get those substances, your country
| SIMPLY HAS A PROBLEM PROVIDING HEALTH CARE to its citizens!
|
| So please stop demonizing substances, demonizing substance
| "abuse", demonizing people providing those substances in a clean
| and safe way via the dark net, and demonizing people who sadly
| did not have the luck of their health care system helping them.
|
| And go fix your health care systems.
| hereme888 wrote:
| I could have been that guy, and worse.
|
| When I was 19 I got caught selling a bunch of MDMA at a night
| club. Undercover police caught me, and by God's grace they chose
| to let me go.
|
| MDMA had just begun to carry a minimum 10 yr prison sentence
| throughout the state.
|
| I had no idea what I was doing in my life, like I was asleep and
| not awake, until I got caught that night.
|
| About 15 minutes into the interrogation at the scene, Officer
| Garcia - I still remember him - knowing my mental state of panic
| and realization of reality, said to me "You know, when I was your
| age I did the same thing, and I was forgiven and let go. So what
| I'm going to do is forgive you and let you go this time. Go home,
| and don't ever do this again."
|
| I drove home at about half the speed limit that night, trying to
| process what had happened. First time I had experienced such
| forgiveness and mercy.
|
| The aim of my life now is to maximize the amount of good I can do
| for others. I'll never forget. I could still be in prison. Maybe
| as an open source computer programmer, but prison nonetheless.
|
| It's a big risk to let someone go like that; will they actually
| repent, or continue causing harm?
| Fischgericht wrote:
| You should not have been arrested.
|
| MDMA should have been legal.
|
| End of story.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02565-4
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34708874/
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/well/mind/mdma-ecstasy-ri...
| https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/07/03/australia-just-lega...
|
| It's legal or decriminalized in Portugal, The Czech Republic,
| The Netherlands, and Switzerland, by the way. Surprise: Those
| are now the countries with the lowest number of drug deaths and
| drug related crimes in Europe.
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