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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

This makes me sick. I work in the corrections industry and regularly encounter people that use the "they are criminals" justification for any/everything they want to do. People don't seem to understand the whole "paid debt to society" notion and it worries me because I was more or less brought up believing this and I worry for the future as more and more people seem to think this way...

I work in part in reentry, these people are trying to get their lives back together yet people want to treat them like bad behaving children instead of the adults that they are. I'm not saying they are fully functioning adults, most of them are just dumped out of the prison system and need a great deal of help to get back on their feet (find somewhere to live, a job, etc) but treating them as less-than... I can't think of a worse way to approach this problem. Thankfully the company I work for is largely part of the solution and not the problem or I couldn't bear to work in this industry.

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> paid debt to society

Since society is not actually an entity that can be paid anything, it's not surprising that individuals want to treat ex-cons unfairly.

I think we should scrap the notion of "paying your debt to society" altogether and instead focus on making victims whole. As it stands, victims of crime get minimal remuneration[1], and it varies by state. It's not the criminal who pays the victim, it's the taxpayer. And then the taxpayer gets to pay for the prison term as well.

[1]: http://www.victimsofcrime.org/help-for-crime-victims/get-hel...

I'm a little confused by this ???

Why would you give the victim of, say, an assault... money ???

I thought the idea was to give that person justice ??? And for that reason, we put the perpetrator in a prison that, of course, we pay for.

What exactly is wrong with that system ???

That is not justice, that is revenge. A base desire that civilized persons should attempt to overcome.

A person should be in jail if they are proven to be a continuing danger to others. A person should not be put in a cage simply to give the victim an emotional release under the "Eye for an Eye" doctrine.

Monetary compensation to victims is an attempt to make a person whole. Victims of all types of crime suffer actual damages such as medical bills, lost wages, damage to property. There is there are indirect damages for things like victim counseling.

Often times it is simply not possible to fully make a person "whole" again after a crime, however monetary compensation is the best option we have today to ensure the victim can get the needed treatment, or aid they need to at-least move forward with their lives

Locking persons in a cage does not help the victim, or the criminal. Prison should be used to separate persons from society to dangerous to be allowed to walk free... Nothing else.

>A person should be in jail if they are proven to be a continuing danger to others

no. i'm sorry but just no. People are in prison because their actions have proven they are a danger to others and should only be released then they have PROVEN THEY ARE NOT a danger to others.

How do you prove a negative?

Do you believe people should be guilty until proven innocent as well? Functionally that is what you are saying

Imagine yourself being arrested and convicted by mistake (eg due to mistaken identity or prosecutorial shenanigans) and now figure out how you would go about proving your non-dangerous status.

We have to assume the conviction is correct. Otherwise that leads to basically letting everyone go free just in case they're actually innocent. So once we're sure somebody did a crime, I would say we don't give the criminal the benefit of the doubt that they're probably safe. Rather we somehow find out that they're safe enough before releasing them. Erring on the side of "not safe".

We have an appeals process precisely because such assumptions are unreliable. The GP is essentially proposing we hand everyone a life sentence by default, which is hardly an improvement on the status quo.

> We have to assume the conviction is correct.

That's a pretty big assumption given that prosecutors face no professional or personal consequences for wrongful convictions, even if they are particularly egregious.

"We have to assume the conviction is correct."

That takes quite a faith in process that has little remedial feedback.

Unlike say engineering or medicine where there can be a said to be an objectively observable system where all strive towards similar outcomes - and even those disciplines screw up constantly.

"Otherwise that leads to basically letting everyone go free just in case they're actually innocent"

There is a huge category of crime where long term incarceration absolutely does no help to anyone whatsoever.

A substantial proportion of people in prison are not there for doing anything that endangered or harmed others.

Well, that's what people usually get out of civil trials, and there's plenty of literature on how to go about quantifying the cost of the injury (though often it just comes down to a jruy's intuition).

Penal theory is a complex topic. The intellectual heavyweight on this topic from a philosophical standpoint is the late Michel Foucault, who wrote a book called Discipline and Punish studying the origin of the prison. It's not an easy read (I strongly suspect Foucault just banged out his first draft on a typewriter and then browbeat his publisher into printing it without any revisions) but an extremely thought-provoking one.

Basically his thesis is that in earlier times, most work was agricultural and lawbreaking was treated as tantamount to attacking the king of a country, so terrible retributions and tortures would be visited on the body of offenders in a way that was meant to mirror the (metaphorical) injury to the body of the monarch (which was the embodiment of society, law and so on). although such punishments were gruesome (and often had the unintended effect of creating sympathy or notoriety for criminals) they were not actually administered that often and there was actually a lot of wiggle room between what the law said and how it was enforced, which had the purpose of acting as a political safety valve while still making it easy to crack down on real threats (truly awful crimes, or waves of crime by rebellious mobs etc.).

At the dawn of the industrial age, the factors of economic production shifted away from land and towards other forms of capital, and manufacturing shifted away from skilled craftsmen in self-policing guilds towards factories and so on. The division of labor and specialization made organization essential, and first the workplace, then also schools, hospitals, and eventually prisons were reconstituted in the image of military camps, since standardization and deindividuation had long proved their worth in military conflict.

Foucault argues that organizing, quantizing, and generally systematizing the punishment of crimes led to an increasingly impersonal approach based on surveillance and the manufacture of compliant behavior as a social product (note, for example, the oddly anthropomorphic architecture of Pentonville prison, which was heavily influenced by Benthamite concepts of continuous surveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice#/media/Fil...). Insofar as this disciplinary approach became the norm across society as the middle class displaced the peasantry as the primary political force, so too it made society more and more neurotic and whole industries sprang up to manage and indeed optimize these neuroses. Further, establishment of prisons as a mainstream social technology practically guaranteed the dissemination of criminal knowledge between inmates, providing society with a way to extract value from criminal enterprises at the same time that expanding the scope of criminalization proved an effective tool for restraining whole sections of the population by channeling criminal energies into fairly predictable and manageable channels.

tl;dr by default, we're actually cogs in a big economic machine that molds our entire perception of reality. Various science fiction films like The Matrix make a similar argument in allegorical terms.

> I think we should scrap the notion of "paying your debt to society" altogether and instead focus on making victims whole.

We have a whole justice system for that -- and its not the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system exist to serve interests that aren't addressed by the compensatory orientation of the civil justice system.

Part of the problem is the "Debt to Society" crap. People who violate the law do not owe a debt to society, they owe a debt to their victim(s) and no one else.

This "debt to society" was invented in order to justify the creation of 1000's of victimless "crimes"

It should be very simple... No Victim, No Crime.

To be sure I understand you: you mean we can't prevent people from bringing an AK47 in school, as long as they don't shoot anyone? And one can drive as fast a she wants as long as there is no accident? One can sell outdated food as long as no client gets sick?

>>>you mean we can't prevent people from bringing an AK47 in school, as long as they don't shoot anyone?

As a matter of General Law, no.

However if the property owner, in this case the school board, chooses on their own to disallow guns on their property then a person violating that would be guilty of criminal trespass.

This is true for a Starbucks, Walmart, your personal home or any other property.

That being said the issue gets a little more tricky when it comes to government run property, with government run property I tend to come down on what I think is a reasonable position of if you are not required by law to be there then the individual government agencies can restrict gun possession provided there is not a superior law preventing that.. an example would be many State governments preempt local parks depts from passing rules prohibiting carry in a public park.

>>>And one can drive as fast a she wants as long as there is no accident?

Generally speaking I believe in enforcement of Reckless Driving Laws and less on arbitrarily defined laws. For the most part speed limits are less about safety and more about revenue generation for local government. Even under todays law if you are driving the speed limit and a cops believes that is unsafe for the road conditions you can be ticketed and even arrested.

>>>One can sell outdated food as long as no client gets sick?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY

Relevant Part at ~9:35

>> However if the property owner, in this case the school board, chooses on their own to disallow guns on their property then a person violating that would be guilty of criminal trespass.

But who is the victim then? What was the damage? How does that compare to the case where they didn't make that rule?

The property owner is the victim. Property owners have the right to deny entry/use of their property for any reason or no reason at all.

They can say "No one wearing blue shirts", or "No entry after 5pm" or any other rule they want to impose, if you violate that you have violated their property rights.

I don't think this works for you. Most "victimless crimes" have victims, you just don't believe they should count as victims, or the punishment isn't proportional. I suppose you could say not every instance actually has a victim, just some of them, but then should I get to walk if I shoot at you and miss?

Copyright: IP owners who lose money, everyone who no longer benefits from new content because making it is economically unsustainable.

Regulation: consumers who buy defective and dangerous products (particularly drugs), people who drink contaminated water and breathe contaminated air, people whose radio electronics won't work anymore because some asshole is jamming them, people whose retirement accounts evaporate on irresponsible trades or investment in fraudulent businesses, people who become suddenly homeless on the whims of their landlords, people who get hit by speeding cars, drunk drivers, cars without working brakes, cars that don't properly signal their presence and intentions.

War on Drugs: people whose friends and family members become unreliable and/or dead because of their addictions.

Tax fraud: people whose economic and medical situations get worse when government is underfunded.

>>>Copyright: IP owners who lose money, everyone who no longer benefits from new content because making it is economically unsustainable.

Setting aside the fact that I do not believe in the concept of IP. To the extent that the government grants such a privilege, there is a victim, the "owner" of the intellectual privilege. That person can raise their hand and say "I am a victim of Infringement on my government granted intellectual privilege"

>>>Regulation: consumers who buy defective and dangerous products (particularly drugs), people who drink contaminated water and breathe contaminated air, people whose radio electronics won't work anymore because some asshole is jamming them, people whose retirement accounts evaporate on irresponsible trades or investment in fraudulent businesses, people who become suddenly homeless on the whims of their landlords, people who get hit by speeding cars, drunk drivers, cars without working brakes, cars that don't properly signal their presence and intentions.

All of these are victims to some extent, I do not think you understand what the term victim means in this context. One does not have to be physically harmed to be a victim, you can be a victim of fraud, theft, negligence, these are all victims.

>>>War on Drugs: people whose friends and family members become unreliable and/or dead because of their addictions.

A person using drugs of their own free will can not be classified as a Victim, it is tragic yes but so is suicided, or countless other things. Family members are not being "victimized" by that. Further arresting a Drug abuser has been objectively proven to be about the worst thing you can do for them, and a sure fire way to turn a drug user into an abuser is to ruin their lives with criminal records and penalties.

No Families are not "victims" when a family member uses drugs, any more than they are "victims" when a family member makes any other life choice that is poor.

>>>Tax fraud: people whose economic and medical situations get worse when government is underfunded

Setting aside the fact that I believe taxation to be theft, Taxation produces victims every day, every single taxpayer is a victim of unethical and immoral theft by government...

Setting that aside no one is entitled to other peoples money, if a government program is underfunded that does not make a victim.

every single taxpayer is a victim of unethical and immoral theft by government...

But insofar as governments are constituted or upheld by the will of the citizens, there's no moral injury. People want physical and social infrastructure and voluntarily group together to set up institutions to achieve those ends. Now, since nobody alive in the USA today was around to sign the Constitution you could argue that everyone living in the US at present was opted into a social contract without their consent, but on the other hand there's a longstanding legal principle called quantum meruit that says it's OK to charge for services that were provided out of reasonable necessity even if they weren't requested. This is why you can be knocked unconscious and later receive a bill for being transported to the hospital by ambulance, even though you were aware of or competent to contract with the ambulance operators. (This has happened to me, and it's quite a strange experience to get a large bill for a service you have no memory of receiving.)

Many countries prosecute attempted suicide, and yes family members are absolutely "victimized" by their loved ones' self-destruction. Of course the response of jailing suicidal people and drug users isn't helpful either, but now we're talking about a more interesting standard (whether punishment is helpful) than whether a victim exists.

>using drugs of their own free will

Some proponents of drug prohibition would argue that people (particularly teens) are not using drugs of their own free will, but exploited by dealers and peer groups. Others of a more liberal bent might argue that people don't use hard drugs of their own free will, but as a release from desperate circumstances - becoming a heroin addict is no more a "free" act than jumping from a burning building.

>no one is entitled to other peoples money

Says you. It's certainly not a property of the universe - just 400 years ago there'd have been no question that the lord of the manor owned all your labor, graciously giving you your daily bread out of Christian obligation. Every man for himself is a relatively recent development in human history. You may consider it progress. But a leftist wouldn't - he would say progress is the replacement of the lord of the manor by a democratic state, or the people as a whole, or something like that.

Failure to help your fellow man obviously has victims - thousands of people die of circumstances that could have been alleviated by your money. As do taxes, as do environment regulations (some are spared cancer; some are out of a job; some are out a great deal of capital equipment). The question of politics is what distribution of harm is just.

Incidentally, if you're ever tempted to shit on liberal arts majors... this is what they do all day. Philosophy is, in large part, working through very old and complex arguments on questions such as this. "What is justice?" is at least as old as Plato's Republic and the conversation continues for thousands of years.

>>>yes family members are absolutely "victimized" by their loved ones' self-destruction.

They may be traumatized, but they are not victimized

>>>Some proponents of drug prohibition would argue that people (particularly teens) are not using drugs of their own free will

those same people believe that nothing is "free will". That free will does not exist. You should ignore those people.

>>>It's certainly not a property of the universe - just 400 years ago there'd have been no question that the lord of the manor owned all your labor,

Using unethical policies in history to justify more unethical polices today is ridiculous.

>>>Failure to help your fellow man obviously has victims - thousands of people die of circumstances that could have been alleviated by your money.

You keep using the word victim to describe tragedies, I do not think you understand the difference. Humanities failure to help people in need is not victimizing them, it is a tragedy.

"It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint." -- Penn Jillette

I fail to see what that has to do with a modern justice system.

Crime can be personal, but law and justice are statistical, bureaucratic instruments that target societies, not individuals. They only produce as an accidental external factor occasional catharsis for the victim.

> regularly encounter people that use the "they are criminals" justification

The inclination to enslave others is ingrained into certain strains of the human species and they will take them where it can find them.

This is pretty bad, there is no way this law can be legal. If anything, I dare the folks who get fired to challenge the law and sue the county down to bankruptcy.

If the offender has only ever committed one crime, and they did so while a teen, then OK. Give them another chance, provided they have a workable budget that includes a non-criminal job.

If the offender repeated the crime while being older than 25, then no. There is no realistic hope that the person will ever be non-harmful. Never let them free.

(cases between those two extremes are questionable)

I would be extremely wary of making such cosmological, sweeping generalisations about anything. "Realistic hope that the person will ever be non-harmful" really depends on a gazillion other variables.

And why start with a semantically negative presumption, anyway? A world of difference in attitude can be reaped from daring to ask whether a person might harm again, rather than if they will "ever be non-harmful".

So you believe every crime after the age of 25 should come with a life sentence?

Get in to a drunken fight at the bar on night... Life

Shoplift a pack of gum.... Life

WOW....

You missed the word "repeated". Also, some participants in drunken fights act in self-defense or as part of a fighting sport, and so would not be criminals.

So it's actually like this:

You reach 25. You assault somebody. You serve time in prison. (now a questionable case) We decide to give you a second chance. You feel no need to follow the law, and you enjoy assaulting people, so you do it again. OK, at this point we know what kind of person you are. You didn't just make a bad decision one day. Simply letting you out into society is pretty much the same as assaulting a random person, because that is clearly what you are going to do.

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