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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotes from a Scandinavian country:

- When I was a kid someone "borrowed" a bulldozer and made a huge hole in the wall at a prison. A few guys escaped. But most of the rest didn't. They were having some sort of family day and didn't think it made sense to bolt.

- I was taught how to swim by a convict on release. He had a police officer with him each time, but she kept in the background. He was doing time for a violent offence, but one that reasonably did not pose a danger to the general public.

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I think the question to ask people who favor punishment prisons is this: prisoners get out of prison one day. If a prisoner was moving in the house next to yours as your neighbor, would you rather have a prisoner from a prison focused on humane treatment or from a prison focused on punishment?

Spot on question, bravo!

prisoners get out of prison one day

Unfortunately the people who favour punishment prisons are likely to counter by saying that people should never get out of prison; or, if they do, they should be banned from living next to ''decent'' people (this is the effect of things like offender registry laws).

Even those people don't think you should get a life sentence for every crime. If a prisoner gets out of prison they are going to live somewhere, so somebody is going to be their neighbor. Even if they aren't your neighbor they still live in the same city. The only way around that is to make completely segregated cities for ex-prisoners with walls around them, but that's effectively a giant prison with life sentences for everyone.

The most important thing is to engage the rational side of the brain and focus on outcomes instead of the emotional side of the brain and focus on revenge. Recidivism is much lower in humane prisons (something like ~20% vs ~70%).

Even those people don't think you should get a life sentence for every crime.

The effect of 3-strikes laws was a life sentence for every third crime, and these have been quite popular. My point is the underlying moral viewpoint of some people that crime is a character trait and not a contingent behaviour: the view that some people are just "bad". Switching this discussion to the rational mode is extremely hard.

I'm one of those "some people" you mentioned. It is indeed about morals. Violence, in my view, is definitely a character trait inextricable from genetic makeup and early upbringing (which sets significant epigenetic markers).

That is exactly why people should be armed. There is no reason for violent criminals to be in prison, they should be dead either from their victim defending themselves, or those around the victim defending the victim. As for non-violent crimes, they shouldn't be in prison, they should be fined or made to work to repay their damages.

This is the rational mode. Your mode, being soft-hearted and wanting to find excuses for violence behavior just so that the criminal can't be blamed, is the emotional mode.

Not sure why you are downvoted and not parent comment; both make the unsubstantiated claim their position is rational and another position is not.

Ah, but that's hardly a claim that needs substantiating. Everybody knows that people can change, adapting to your environment is a basic survival instinct.

Anyone arguing that people don't... can't change obviously has a deeply twisted understanding of humanity.

Maybe because it directly contradicts the facts? If people can't change then why is the recidivism rate in humane prisons 20% and in punishment oriented prisons 70%?

A more likely explanation however is that there is another reason why he is downvoted: because he suggests killing all violent offenders.

Usually its actually not about the crime at all- its just a revenge phantasy on somebody, who is percieved to be not "caged" in the working life and society as oneself.

Offenders are just the smallest set of agreeable individuals deserving the punishment for not walking the citizen line.

or worse - "I have a firearm for reasons of self-defence"

The people who favor punishment prisons live in communities unaffordable to convicts and have likely never met one or ever expected to meet one.

Citation?

It's called gentrification.

I expected better from someone with the username laotzu.

And gentrification isn't even a proper example for Palindrome Peter. This isn't a matter of yuppies coming into a neighborhood that has a strong community but has been historically poor, aianus is talking about suburbs that have always been middle-to-upper class. Think Santa Monica, Bellevue, and the entire state of Connecticut. :3

And I suspect that Taoists really wouldn't give a fuck about gentrification. "If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve."

Gentrification is the buying and renovating of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by wealthier individuals, which in effect increases property values and displaces low-income families and small businesses

"When rich speculators prosper while farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn- all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao."

You set it up as "punishment prisons" vs. "humane prisons".

I don't think anyone says prisons should be inhumane in order to punish criminals. The imprisonment is the punishment, not the treatment inside the prison.

And yet...Texas made their lesser criminals plant potatoes in the hot Texas sun in the middle of nowhere. Recidivism dropped to almost nothing, for those crimes (petty theft etc).

Cruel? No, some folks line up to do those jobs. If its ok for Joe Shmoe to get paid minimum wage to do it, then its ok for inmates. Just hot and miserable.

Anyway, I'm 'incarcerated' in my cubicle for 8 hours a day. It definitely matters what treatment is inside the prison.

> Anyway, I'm 'incarcerated' in my cubicle for 8 hours a day.

Really? You can't go to lunch when you want? Go for a coffee break? Call in sick when you aren't well? Quit that job if you find a better one?

Anybody who lines up for the opportunity to plant potatoes in the hot sun is clearly desperate for work. Desperate people will do lots of things that "normal" people would not.

Thats what all the moral high horse talk boils down to- a revenge fantasy against those percived free

Thanks for proving a point i made somewhere up in the thread.

I don't think anyone says prisons should be inhumane in order to punish criminals.

Huh? People say it all of the time, at least in the U. S. Prison rape is just a given with no visible attempts at fixing it, and $DEITY help the prison official or politician proposing putting in TV, or keeping the prison library updated lest they be labelled as "coddling" prisoners.

Maybe we just have vastly different points of view, but I find your statement to be outlandish enough that I assume that I've misunderstood what you're saying.

> I don't think anyone says prisons should be inhumane in order to punish criminals. The imprisonment is the punishment, not the treatment inside the prison.

I think there are many people who say prisons should be inhumane to punish criminals, it's just that they don't understand what they're advocating is inhumane.

An example is the meme that prisoners aren't being punished enough in their "country club prisons", and they should be denied all "luxuries" (defined as thing like TV sets, education, and other things to pass the time). The people who subscribe to that are advocating for inhumane punishment (sensory/psychological/social deprivation), but often they're reflective and haven't thought though their own ideas to really understand them.

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