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Comment by mtw | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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