Prisoners in England to be taught code | Hacker News Reader

Prisoners in England to be taught code

bbc.co.uk

29 pointssizzle21 comments

Numbers from 2015, 46% of prisoners have literacy issues that they are at the level of an 11-year-old. 52% have numeracy issues, a third self-reported having a learning difficulty or disability. Ref https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/media-press/new-govern...

"carefully vetted" prisoners as described in the article is likely to mean prisoners with literacy/numeracy skills.

No issues with people being able to learn and better themselves, a bit of a nonstory it's just another training course on offer for people incarcerated. The only bit that concerns me is "prisoners will work on real-world projects with external clients" I hope they are not just being used as cheap labor.

As someone who has been coding and developing software for almost twenty years, started young, had an aptitude for math and reading comprehension, scored high on standardized tests, got an advanced education and all the while, basically lived in front of a computer learning the full stack from top to bottom, painstakingly solving problems as they arise, debugging server configs, hardware issues, more debugging, and on and on ... I still find software development very difficult and mentally taxing.

I am having a really really hard time buying any of this teach prisoners or coal miners to code mantra (my first word choice was 'nonsense'). And I am also having a hard time finding proof that even a single ex-coal miner is gainfully employed in a coding job today and I am seeing stories going back to 2012 about programs popping up to teach miners to code. I am sure there are a few, but it must be vanishingly few.

It just doesn't seem like a good fit at all. It's opposite ends of the spectrum. Why don't we teach out of work coders to play professional rugby too?

I guess teaching coal miners to become plumbers or electricians or heavy equipment operators (all of which they would already have many skills for if not already qualified) wouldn't grab headlines.

As someone who has overcome incarceration, spent years behind bars reading every book I could get me hands on, realizing that despite all of my short-comings I could find a way to be a software developer. . . this comment reads as quite offensive; smacks of typical HN snobbery. I never finished my degree, neither did my roommate for that matter (hell, he worked in a pizza shop and a brewery for years). Yet, we both are gainfully employed (full-time remote work, full-stack react, GatsbyJS, ReactNative etc.), we both work on a startup that is profitable, we both have found a way to persevere despite the naysayers. To any coal miners reading this, do what makes you happy. If that is writing code and becoming a software engineer, the only person holding you back is yourself. I read a comment on here this morning that rang true, "I can do anything, I just can't do everything".

I did not mean to sound snobby. In fact, the opposite, I was stating that despite all those things, I still find programming very difficult.

And I applaud you for learning it and am impressed. You likely have a much higher aptitude than me to be able to learn a difficult skill without an extensive background.

But surely you don't disagree that ex-cons or coal miners are an odd choice to target with government programs to teach them to code?

You seem like an extreme exception. Or do you feel like many of those you came in contact with in incarceration would also be well suited to do what you are doing?

And in case I didn't make it clear in my first post, there is nothing wrong or lesser about trade jobs like plumbing, electrical, welding, etc. They are challenging and honorable professions that may end up outlasting software development when the automation/a.i. monster comes knocking.

That is fair enough but I do believe that focusing on software has been a boon. It has been a deciding factor in my sobriety among many other things. That said, yes, you are right in the sense that many of the people I came into contact with would scoff at the idea of spending time reading books and studying. I was ridiculed a lot. I guess in the end the comments struck a chord but there are surely others out there who could benefit from these programs. If even a handful of people can find salvation in coding then I am all for it.

I don’t think this is snobbery. Software is hard. Most coal miners don’t want to write code and lack a lot of fundamentals to do so effectively. Sure anyone can pursue it if they want, but announcing programs to transform coal miners into coders is not a reasonable solution to disappearing coal mining jobs.

I don't think they aim to turn out computer science graduates. The article states they will be starting with HTML, CSS and JS, it's likely to be more computer competency than anything.

Vanishingly few, but I did work with a coal miner. Competent embedded programmer, very methodical, and had a strange obsession with Native American flute music.

Just a guess, but wouln't ops/devops work be a better fit for prisoners? Sitting for hours in front of a monitor, trying to solve an algorithmic puzzle doesn't seem to be the kind of hobby that gets you into prison. Conducting a complex operation, assessing the risks, hands-on work with hardware, even being on-call and saving the day when outage hits, that's more like it.

Presumably, getting caught and convicted introduces a selection bias away from the traits you just listed.

If ops/devops were purely a game, yes. Yet ops is privy to a mountain of confidential information and has the power to arbitrarily shut down revenue sources. I would say this introduces a lot of risk into the equation.

I'm not an ops guy, but it's not really something that can be taught - you need the experience, whether it's with your own project or for an employer. Unless you are talking about those mid-tier IT workers who get Cisco certs and which are being squeezed by the cloud and devops.

prisoners in control of production systems, what could go wrong?

I've employed or worked with many ex-cons in my years. It was always the good guys who screwed up.

I'm sure a good percentage of prisoners are there due to one stupid mistake, and many (hopefully most), leave prison reformed, or even enter prison reformed. I'm 100% for giving ex-cons a helping hand, and for offering training while they are prisoners - coding, of course, why not, it's a valuable skill.

But that's not at all the same thing as having them sit monitoring/dev-oping production systems, which on the one hand is exploiting the prisoners, and on the other, exposes an obvious channel for un-reformed criminals to exploit.

So yeah, prisoners doing devops work (rather than just devops training) is a dumb idea.

I wonder if the nearly unlimited free-time they have will offset their lack of internet access when it comes to learning speed.

I'm not sure 'free-time' is what I'd call it. More like trapped-time.

The time is free. The prisoner is not.

But you aren't free to do what you want. You are very constrained.

You could do what Nick Yarris did and read thousands of books. I suppose you can let your mind adventure a little. Just seems so ironic calling it free time.

Perhaps 'unallocated' is a better word?

That's what free time already means.

Is giving a criminal the skills to write Malware really a smart move?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com