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Comment by tw1010 | Hacker News Reader

That's a stereotyped characterization of why people go to prison that HN should be wise enough not to propagate.

So, we won't find a correlation between people who go to prison and propensity to immoral behavior? Or even intentionally mislabeling immoral behavior as moral.

HN should be wise enough to know that correlation is not causation, and that statistical differences in behaviour between groups do not necessarily describe an individual from the group. But that does not invalidate OP's point.

I think inmates or criminals have a higher rate of mental and physical diseases, as well as bitterness, grievances and other factors that skews their vision of reality, and make them judge situations differently from people who are not inmates.

It does not mean that there are criminals or inmates who are incapable of judging if a situation is moral or not. It's more like on a statistical basis, inmates/criminals are more likely to give ambiguous or erroneous moral answers to situations that seems obvious to others.

The main driver of incarceration is income. Main driver of where you end up is the wealth of your parents.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/14/17114226/incarcerat...

I'm sorry, I don't see the contradiction between:

a) Convicts make morally-bad choices at a higher rate than the general population.

b) Being convicted of a crime is correlated with low income.

You can sympathize with criminals and want to help them get back on their feet without also looking at them for moral guidance.

I never suggested looking to them for moral guidance. I was responding to op's quote "inmates or criminals have a higher rate of mental and physical diseases, as well as bitterness, grievances and other factors that skews their vision of reality, and make them judge situations differently from people who are not inmates".

According to the ACLU, over half of arrests in 2010 were for Marijuana possession (https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers). I can guarantee that most of those arrested were not upper class trust fund kids even though those same kids likely used drugs at the very least an equal rate than those arrested. In addition, once arrested, those without the means to hire a good attorney are much more likely to either be convicted and sentenced to jail time or become stuck in the criminal justice system. Should we doubt the moral character of all those that used marijuana or only those that were arrested and incarcerated?

I did plenty of drugs when I was younger but was never arrested. I was even pulled over while underage and released without being charged even though I had a ton of beer in my vehicle (I was not drinking yet). Is my sense of morality better than those that were arrested for the same crime? Sometimes the system is unfair and those without resources live much harsher versions of it. It does not make them any more or less moral than those that are able to live the nicer version of the same system due to having richer parents or a more desirable skin tone.

With that said I am not defending people who commit violent crimes. Another interesting avenue to explore is why only one person was jailed in the US on charges related to the 2008 collapse. Were the people responsible for that more moral than the people jailed for drug possession?

>I never suggested looking to them for moral guidance.

Then I'm not sure you were aware of the context of the thread you joined, which started with this remark:

>>>I hope they're not asked to label if specific actions are morally correct or not :)

The poster who you were responding to affirmed that they were defending that claim:

>>It's more like on a statistical basis, inmates/criminals are more likely to give ambiguous or erroneous moral answers to situations that seems obvious to others.

The only part you're responding to is saying that crime correlates with income, which doesn't contradict the broader or the narrower point: even if that correlation itself is true, it can be via the correlation with the other factors the parent mentioned.

Yes, because without appropriate guidance and modeling, people create Hobbesian dystopias. Countries like Finland and even the US are anomalies which need costly, active, intervention to maintain.

Alright, I’ll bite. Are you saying that most inmates are serving time for alleged violations of law that have not actually occurred?

Not OP, but just because you've broken the law once doesn't mean you're a bad person, much less lack moral agency.

People make mistakes. Sure, some deserve to rot in prison for irredeemable crimes, but many (at least, in my context as an American citizen) are there for nonviolent drug offenses or failing to pay fines.

That's irrelevant. All that the OP's point requires is that, on average, the moral choices of such people are worse. The existence of outliers -- or even common exceptions -- does not refute that.

You break a lot of laws every morning while driving to work; doesn't mean your moral choices on average are worse than someone else.

My frequency of lawbreaking would indeed (anti-)correlate with the quality of moral decisionmaking, and my frequency of lawbreaking is likely lower than those who have been convicted (at least if severity-weighted).

Further, the comparison was against convicts, who do it frequently and severely enough that someone finds it worth the money to prosecute and get a conviction. And at that point, yes, a correlation appears.

You're still making the same fallacy: "I can find an exception, so the correlation doesn't hold." That doesn't follow.

(And, FWIW, I don't drive to work.)

While I would personally wager that those in prison are on average less moral, there was nonetheless a valid point above that those who commit crimes don't necessarily lack morality. The argument here would be that law does not perfectly equate to morality, and separately, that people will commit crimes out of the lesser of two evils in some given scenarios.

Additionally, despite the reasonable conclusion we can make that those in prison are less moral, it probably does no good for recidivism rates for us to talk about how immoral prisoners must be. It stigmatizes them, and puts more barriers on the path to recovery and reintegration into society.

Theft because you're poor and hungry is a really shitty situation to be in and is done out of desperation, not malice.

Well, in Finland you should have no need to steal as social services generally attempt to support people in the general case above biological poverty (ie. pay for food and shelter).

Not everyone is protected by social services. Finland still has a homeless population, and not all of them are mentally or psychologically challenged.

I think he is saying that the reason why people do bad stuff is not because they don't know what's moral. It's because they made a decision to ignore moral.

Illegal and immoral behavior are not the same thing, especially when you consider bias in the legal system as to whom the law is enforced against (poor, male, minority).

"It was a morally ambiguous stabbing!"

It's quite common for drinking buddies to quarrel, and once the perpetrator has sobered they are sorry and give themselves in.

Straw man.

On the other hand pretending that people who go to prison are usually righteous is really unbelievable.

This was literally a plot point in _The Dark Knight_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4GAQtGtd_0

The Dark Knight isn't actually a rigorous academic study on virtue of prisoners.

Likewise for The Terminator and AIs. People almost treat these movies like they're historical documentaries, just so they can toss out cheap relatable memes.

It’s even more wrong to portray prisoners as a bunch of hapless victims. I’ve had to interact with prisoners in a previous career and less than 10% are people I would allow in my home.

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