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Comment by api_or_ipa | Hacker News Reader

You're totally right. What better way to show inmates the virtue of living an upright life than to treat them just like real people. If you pay them 85c/hr they'll resent The Man even harder and see a life of crime as the only way they'll ever succeed. Pay them for their hardwork and they'll learn they can succeed in life by hardwork, determination and honesty, all virtues that prison _should_ be about instilling.

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I'm going to use a alt account for this ( for obvious reasons )...

I disagree with this sentiment, I was ( some 20 years ago ) incarcerated for drug dealing. I broke the law ( much more than I was caught and prosecuted for btw... ) and I deserved what I got, probably more.

For the record, being in prison sucks... it's SUPPOSED to suck, it's supposed to make you regret what you did to get put in there and actively look forward to the day of your release, it's not supposed to be a cushy summer camp for confused snowflakes... if it was, it WOULD NOT rehabilitate errant individuals like myself. The fact that it did suck SO BAD, is STILL some 20 years later FRONT-AND-CENTER in my mind - actively DETERRING me from doing something stupid and illegal again.

Also, for the record, I was allowed to EARN the right to work outside the prison ( good behavior / etc... ), for about a dollar a day ( usually removing trash and cleaning roadsides and tending parks and other municipal assets ) and I made more ( triple if I remember correctly ) when on fire duty.

Fire duty started the minute you got on a bus and left the prison, and ended when you got back, even if you did nothing but sit on the bus on the side of some road... you got paid for every hour you were on duty - 24 hours a day / 7 days a week - IT WAS GOOD MONEY ( for being in prison ) and it was a PRIVILEGE... because more than the money ( which was nice to have in prison, believe me ) it allowed you to go OUTSIDE of the prison, which was PRICELESS.

"Pay them for their hardwork and they'll learn they can succeed in life by hardwork, determination and honesty" -- Again I disagree, I learned nothing of the sort, what I learned is this: There are NO SHORTCUTS to success, and I should quit breaking the law and instead become a productive member of society INSTEAD of being a criminal.

Giving criminals (like my former self) better pay and treatment in prison has to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. If it wouldn't have been terrible I maybe would still be a criminal, because the deterrent would be insufficient.

Well, the Nordics employ this "stupidest idea ever" and outcomes are definitely better than in the US.

The author of the parent comment seems not to understand recidivism in the United States if they were ever in prison at all. The Nordic example is leagues more potent than an anonymous anecdote.

Leave it to HN to ignore someone with far more experience/knowledge than them and counter with “I read X somewhere, so you’re wrong.”

Leave it to the typical HN comment on things like that to equate heaps of evidence with "I read X somewhere" and praise some anon anecdote over solid data.

What "heaps of evidence"? What data? None where linked, just assumed.

Well, I'd like to remain anonymous for obvious reasons and will provide no proof of this assertion, but I'm actually that commenter's mother and they never went to jail.

Well, things like more lienient drug laws, harsher gun control, and social welfare usually keep people out of prison or from re-offending when they get out. Outcomes are better there because, truthfully, life is better there.

Sure, those help, but there is a lot more to the idea.

Most prisons are places where the word "criminal" is imprinted on your soul. You live as a criminal and learn from criminals. Or you're isolated which damages your mental health. If you have children, they normalize the idea of being a criminal. You lose your friends and colleagues (your "support network") so when you get out, where else do you go other than crime?

The idea behind Norway's incarceration system is simple. You deprive the person of their freedom, then simulate real life in a controlled environment. You teach them skills. You teach them how to socialize. You do everything to make sure that the criminal learns how to live a normal life.

So why don't other countries implement this system? Two reasons, both of which have to do with politics:

1- Politicians who act "tough on crime" are applauded (as if that will make the streets safer).

2- You produce cheap products and compete with the cheap labor of the third world. Why destroy a system that can produce a lot on the cheap (while banning the import of products of prison labor)?

Aside from the obvious difference USA <> Norway, saying "everyone copy Norway" is a huge generalization without much consideration for the situational and confounding variables present in different countries/societies/cultures.

Norway has ~5M people while the US has ~325M people. The US has a 5.35/100k murder rate compared to .51/100k murder rate for Norway [1]. In 2014, Chicago alone had 14x the number of murders the entire country of Norway had [2][3]. Pretty much across the board, the US has a ton more crime than Norway [4]. The scale and expanse of the problem is so vastly different between Norway and the US that is would take nothing short of a societal shift to begin to approach overhauling such a massive problem. Norway is basically sample size data when planning a criminal justice system for countries with 100M+ people that are already more socioeconomically strained.

Politics is a part of the problem, but fixing criminal justice is immensely more complicated than a 2-step solution of fix politics and copy Norway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Norway [3] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-crime-year-end... [4] http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Norway/Unit...

There are many differences between American and Nordic societies.

I agree. Prison is supposed to suck.

The "suck" might please puritanical values. However, it doesn't encourage inmates to get on a better path. It just churns out bitter unemployable people with high rates of recidivism.

The inmate who posted his story seems to think the "suck" has value.

We have no way to check if they were actually an inmate or just a sock puppet for their political position. Even then, they never experienced the alternative, so they don't have any more information than we do. A classic "alternative history" problem.

We haven't experienced an alternate-history version of America without slavery, so does that mean we don't have any information on whether it was bad or not?

"Make prison suck" is just one possible means to an end (the ends being to deter crime and recidivism, and keep dangerous people off the streets), not an end in itself. For some offenders, the sucky experience is enough to set them straight. For others, their whole lives already sucked at least as bad as prison, so prison is just more of the same.

Using an alt account and that ridiculous-sounding language does the opposite of helping your case.

I'm sure ALL of your fellow inmates are now stellar citizens with not one in recidivism. Not one back where they started, or leading a life of crime still... because our criminal justice system has a 100% success rate at rehabilitation.

I’m interested in this subject. Hoping you’ll connect with me through my HN profile.

The issue is not that I want to make prison suck any less. I believe it sucks and that's done by design. What I care about is instilling the skills, attitude and experience that will allow seamless re-introduction back into society. Teaching inmates how to handle money, understand finances and giving them something to buy a car, rent an apartment, a uniform for work and tuition for education isn't going to make their prison stint any less awful, but it will reduce recidivism, increase participation in the legal economy and make these inmates _people_ in the real sense of the term.

The issue is that if you fuck up and go to jail, your life is effectively over.

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