Comment by dave_sullivan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dave_sullivan | Hacker News Reader

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Fair points, but did you read the article? There's more to it than that.

> Donnie Gaddis picked the wrong county to sell 15 oxycodone pills to an undercover officer ... After agreeing to a plea deal, he was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison.

> From 2006 to 2014, annual prison admissions dropped 36 percent in Indianapolis; 37 percent in Brooklyn; 69 percent in Los Angeles County; and 93 percent in San Francisco.

> Prison admissions in counties with fewer than 100,000 people have risen even as crime has fallen

> Just a decade ago, people in rural, suburban and urban areas were all about equally likely to go to prison. But now people in small counties are about 50 percent more likely to go to prison than people in populous counties.

> “I am proud of the fact that we send more people to jail than other counties,” Aaron Negangard, the elected prosecutor in Dearborn County, said last year. “That’s how we keep it safe here.”

I think the implication of "Small towns are sending way more people to prison for petty drug crimes (like selling 15 pills to an undercover cop) than big cities" is supported by the article.

I read the entire article yesterday, long before it was posted here. Not sure why you think I haven't read it, or how your quoted snippets contradict what I said in any way.

My previous comment doesn't take a stand in any direction, or make any normative statements. Simply pointing out that there are multiple valid ways of headlining the exact same facts, each of which would bias the audience in very different ways.

Does the article support them catching or convicting more drug dealers? I didn't read it in detail, but it seemed like the point was that the sentencing was different more so than catching or convicting people.

I thought you made a very well-reasoned critique. Always more than one way to interpret the data.

> Not sure why you think I haven't read it, or how your quoted snippets contradict what I said in any way.

You seemed to be saying the article was generic and the slant could be changed by changing superficial aspects of the argument. I'm saying that this is sometimes true but does not apply here. In fact, I thought your comment was so out of place that I wondered if you'd read the article. Apparently you have. Regardless, I didn't want your comment to dissuade people from reading the article and making up their own mind; it's well written and well researched.

The article makes the case that the county has a large drug-abuse problem, and also that the justice system is responding to this problem with very severe policing/sentencing policies, in a way that severely punishes not just Minority offenders, but also White offenders. In this regard, any one of the 4 spins can be reasonably made, given the facts presented in the article.

You seem to think that just because I pointed out the spin in the headline, I'm attacking the article in some way - that's a vast misunderstanding of what I said. Let me clarify this further: there is no concise headline that can possibly describe the article in a spin-free manner. No matter what concise headline anyone comes up with, it will be biased in one direction or another.

I certainly hope people read the article regardless, but I also hope that people will read the article while being mindful of how the wording used will bias them towards certain directions.

> I read the entire article yesterday, long before it was posted here. Not sure why you think I haven't read it, or how your quoted snippets contradict what I said in any way.

I read the article myself, long before it was posted here. But I think you need to read it again, because you're misrepresenting the facts.

Whereas major cities like San Francisco and New York City are taking a different tact to dealing with a drug problem (shorter sentences and treatment instead of jail time), that small Indiana town is doing the opposite thing - longer jail sentences that don't match the crime committed.

That's the gist of the article, but that's not what you seem to have taken from it.

I think you need to read my comment again because you're misrepresenting what it says.

After reading your first quote, the punishment for this particular crime might appear to be too harsh. But, if you look into it, you will find out that: "Donnie Gaddis has previously been charged with trafficking in controlled substances and heroin, theft, breaking and entering, theft from an elderly person or disabled adult, domestic violence, shoplifting, and unauthorized use of property."

http://eaglecountryonline.com/local-article/couple-charged-d...

Perhaps repeatedly sending this person to jail just makes them a hardened criminal as described in the article.

It may be supported but it's certainly not supported enough to be a conclusion. The emotional resonance is powerful but it is not all that is needed to make a case.

Sure, in the philosophical sense. But you're saying what? That people shouldn't talk about it or the article shouldn't have been written?

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