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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

It's small because Georgetown law professors are the most elite of elite in society.

You could do a random sample of non-prisoners and you'd get as many potential Georgetown law professors as in prison.

I don't doubt that there are a lot of prisoners that would thrive with encouragement, but you also aren't being realistic: the people who end up prison often end up there because they made a series of very bad choices which were the result of being raised in an unfavorable environment. Some people in prison will never be rehabilitated and they certainly aren't going to became Georgetown law professors. Prison tends to select for people who aren't law school material, so the likelihood is not surprisingly very low. It's not something that can be fixed by pleading to the better angels of our nature.

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I've been to prison twice and I was raised in a very favorable environment.

These incarcerations have killed my career and ruined very important relationships.

My crimes? Both were rather low level drug charges where I was guilty of deep carelessness and rather bad luck more then anything else.

I guess you can call them a "series of bad choices", but only if you think overzealous US drug laws are a good thing.

> I guess you can call them a "series of bad choices", but only if you think overzealous US drug laws are a good thing.

Ignoring the existence of US drug laws through “deep carelessness” is a bad choice independently of whether the US drug laws are a good thing.

Even moreso after having been imprisoned once for that.

I don't see your point. Are you saying that we should all obey the law without question? Are you saying we should obey laws that we know are bad?

If you ended up in prison from your own mistakes (whether it was breaking the law, appearing to break the law, getting caught or something else entirely), it does warrant thinking about whether the choices you made are suitable for where you want to go in life. Of course if you were partaking in civil disobedience, it's another matter and my comment here assumes we are _not_ talking about civil disobedience.

This has nothing to do with whether the law is good/fair etc.

Even if you the have right of way at an intersection, wouldn't you wait for the truck to pass if you see that it has no intention (and/or chance) of stopping to let you pass?

So you think it is ok for a person's life to be ruined by a prison sentence just because they appeared to break the law?

You're ignoring the most fundamental assumption of the American criminal justice system. The presumption of innocence.

You also miss the lesson that can be learned from the article. If prison is treated as rehabilitation criminals can change their path to go in a positive direction. What your comment supports is the idea that consequences have permanent and devastating consequences on future potential. This is an attitude that hurts everyone.

Your last paragraph makes no sense to me. Presumably the truck driver is breaking the law and should go to prison?

I did not make a judgment on any of those options. I was just saying that if one were in such a system and had that kind of an outcome, one must question one's choices.

I'll clarify again that I've not stated which side of the fence I'm on when it comes to who should go to prison and what prison's purpose is. I was just saying that as a rational being, if you end up in prison and do _not_ want to be in prison after you are out, you should do something about it and not expect that doing the same thing will not have the same result again.

As for the hypothetical truck driver, I was trying to say that, in such a situation, saying "I have right of way" and just going ahead is not going to save you from the accident. Though, at that point, it is unfair to you, it is still the safer option to let the truck pass. How much effort one is willing to put into doing something about the errant truck driver depends on the individual who's experiencing this and his/her circumstances.

Most of us do stupid things. Some of us just get caught.

I worked in detention, at a military facility. There was a sign where we went from the staff area to the secure area. It read, 'There but by the grace of God go I.' I'm not religious, but it has stuck with me all these years.

I've probably done everything the OP has done, and more. The only difference is that I wasn't caught and/or have enough wealth to not have been looked at in the first place.

This is a toxic attitude.

You say that some prisoners will never be rehabilitated and say they won't become Georgetown law professors. This ignores the possibility that they could become something better than a prisoner. Note that the comment you replied to did not claim that all prisoners should be Georgetown law professors.

You admit that prisoners could have better outcomes with encouragement then make unfair generalizations that reinforce our alarming incarceration rate.

This is a huge cultural problem in the United States and we need to start being honest with ourselves about these biases.

Honest about what biases? My claim is it's unlikely that a prisoner will be a Georgetown law professor, which is a statistical fact.

I had an uncle die in prison, I've known people that were in and out of prison. I don't judge them on that, but there's not an insignificant number that's not really capable of reform and ended up back in jail due to their own personal issues. Some of course, do change.

I'd like a better society, too, but change is based in reality, and if reality is "biased", it's not gonna do you any good to ignore it.

We're talking past each other. I don't think anyone is making the claim that prisoners should be Georgetown law professors. The point here is that the story shows prisoners have a lot more potential than we give them credit for. If we considered the potential for redemption instead of fixating on why the person is wasted we could make the world better for everyone. The bias I am alluding to is the assumption that prisoners cannot be redeemed.

The reality is that our criminal justice system does not do a good job of rehabilitating people because it is focused on punishment.

I would argue that prisons are full of people who by percentage know the laws better than most paralegals.

One thing they always have access to is the Law library.

Do paralegals have less access to law libraries than prisoners?

Prisoners have nothing but time.

And that makes them more qualified than paralegals? Why would a law firm ever hire a paralegal then?

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