Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

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> another piece of evidence that "3 strikes" rules have no benefit to society.

First, I'm glad Woods is out. It's clear he is a changed man. His release was a fair decision by Gov Brown.

Would he have been equally as changed if he had only served 3 years? Doubtful, if recidivism statistics are accurate.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics report in April 2014. It studied recidivism patterns of 404,638 prisoners released from 2005-2010, from state prisons. Within three years, they were re-arrested at 67.8%, and 76.6% were re-arrested within five-years. 28.6% of inmates were arrested for a violent offense within five-years; 1.7% were for rape or sexual assault and 23.0% for assault.

Since a prior criminal record is a good predictor of future offending, the odds are that Woods would have committed another crime had he not been three-striked. As it is, society had 21 years of no further crimes from Mr. Woods as he was incarcerated. Remember, we aren't talking about a petty drug user or shoplifter -- we're talking about a man willing to put a gun in another person's face -- a violent act.

I'm happy that Mr. Woods has gotten his life together, but his third "strike" was attempted armed robbery. He wasn't shoplifting a candy bar. We have to ask ourselves, if Woods had gotten 3 years for the armed robbery, wouldn't statistics suggest that he would have committed more crimes, probably violent, such as another armed robbery?

3-strikes rules have no benefit to society? Sure they do -- we had 21 years without another violent crime from Mr. Woods.

Statistics are bullshit. God help us when we replace judges with ML-powered blackboxes.

Previous history is only a good indicator of future performance because we wrote the rules that way.

When you're taken out of society for a few years and the world moves on without you, the only connections you've made upon release are with other criminals.

And when your record is made public and discreetly used to discriminate against you as a job candidate, is it any wonder so many criminals reoffend? It's all too easy to be tempted back into easy (or illegitimate) money when you're surrounded by people playing that game.

Funny thing is, it's acknowledged to be a real problem-- the parole system tries to discourage you from maintaining associations with criminals as a condition of release-- but it isn't realistic depending on where you're from or what support you have.

If statistics are bullshit I’m sure you’ll never refer to the below evidence. If you refuse to look at or listen to evidence unless it’s ideologically congenial you’re not a thinker, you’re a hack.

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/reasonable-doubt-new-l...

> I estimate, that at typical policy margins in the United States today, decarceration has zero net impact on crime outside of prison. That estimate is uncertain, but at least as much evidence suggests that decarceration reduces crime as increases it. The crux of the matter is that tougher sentences hardly deter crime, and that while imprisoning people temporarily stops them from committing crime outside prison walls, it also tends to increase their criminality after release. As a result, “tough-on-crime” initiatives can reduce crime in the short run but cause offsetting harm in the long run.

Doesn’t your argument also suggest using a 1-strike rule?

I think it also calls for looking at why recidivism rates are so high, and what can be done to lower them. If we can lower recidivism rates after the first crime then the benefits would be much greater than using 3-strikes to lower them after the third crime after which two more crimes have already occured.

The only connection recidivism has with prison time is that the longer you are in prison, the more likely you are to be institutionalized and thus comfortable with prison.

You are completely misinterpreting those statistics.

Only it started out as 3 strikes for anything. Not only for violent crime. A lot of people got locked up for a long time during that period.

Including this guy for stealing a slice of pizza

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/05/us/25-years-for-a-slice-o...

Yeah, but briandear is replying to someone who wrote that Woods' story was evidence against it, not that guy's.

Sure. But with regards to people throwing around statistics of who is likely to re-offend etc I'm pointing out that when it got started it wasn't only for violent crime and given people got 25 years there ought to be two kinds of prisoners represented in that population. Those in for violent crime and those in for non-violent crime. So it's not so black and white. Only that after a while people figured out it was a terrible idea for non-violent crime which I'm assuming no one disagrees with.

For violent crime I don't have a very informed opinion. I'd need a few hundred hours research to get better resolution models than I currently have in my head. Suffice to say jurisprudence is a rather thorny problem with no nice answer as you only have so many levers you can push/pull to change the economics and it's well established that for a certain segment of the population even the pain of death isn't enough to deter them, so they are better off just off the street.

Penal theory is such a conundrum in that regard. It's like oh, there are people for which nothing works. Well can we just destroy them? The public says no. Right. So... Back in they go with the public? Well, no the public doesn't want that either. Ok, so we'll just hold on to them for a really long time? Yes, but the public is not happy about paying for that. Ok, but hey wouldn't it be better if violent people spent less time with other violent people than more time? It would but where else can we put them? So, we just leave them here in the same cage together for a really long time? I guess so? That seems just like a really, shitty, fucked situation for which there is no good answer. Hmm... seems that way.

At least thats my analysis. It's an interesting topic. More study required.

3 strikes and death sentences don't pass the smell test with it comes to "reforming" people, so we need to be honest about what we really want - is it to reform people or just exile them? Everyone is being disingenuous here.

The idea behind three strikes and death sentences, as I understand it, is that some people have proven unreformable, and therefore must be removed from society for the sake of everyone else. Of course death and permanent incarceration isn't the point, but what do you do if you run across someone who genuinely seems unable to reform and function safely?

I'm not writing this intending to endorse three strikes laws or death sentences, but you're arguing against a point that I don't think is being made.

(Now, my own personal opinion is that we ought to be taking a closer look at why the penal system is doing such a poor job reforming criminals, and that "3 strikes laws" feel a lot like "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".)

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