Hacker News Reader

Comment by PorterDuff | Hacker News Reader

They may have a sense of community, it just might be one that is harmful to your own.

My own theory is that prison has been set up to remove potential criminals from the street, chosen via a demographic of education/ethnicity/wealth/gender/aggressiveness, during their prime years of being a nuisance. The results don't have to be particularly fair.

There's no real intention of transformation or revenge, just a form of quarantine.

Looking at a chart of incarceration rate over time and murder rate over time, this last a better indicator of crime than most, you can make a case that the big ramp up in jailing somewhat matches the peak and fall of murders. It's tough to find causalities in anything, but I rather like that one.

View on HN

They may have a sense of community, it just might be one that is harmful to your own.

By some accounts, prison is an opportunity to network and gain mentors and knowledge towards furthering a career as a criminal.

There's no real intention of transformation or revenge, just a form of quarantine.

If considered as a criminal networking opportunity, it's likely to transform people into those who would seek revenge, and it would have the opposite effect intended by quarantine.

EDIT: I'm reminded of a folk dance group I was once a part of. Usually, we were obscure, and the one or two new people who might show up would become immersed in what we did, and would quickly learn to dance. Once, there was a local newspaper article about us, and 16 newcomers showed up all at once. It was very difficult that evening, and I think a lot of the newcomers didn't learn much.

If we want incarceration to make people less criminal, not more criminal, then the prisoners should not be spending their time with criminals. The prisoners should be spending their time with mentors, teachers, and counselors.

> If we want incarceration to make people less criminal, not more criminal, then the prisoners should not be spending their time with criminals. The prisoners should be spending their time with mentors, teachers, and counselors.

I immediately think of Nordic prison systems, where even the highest-security prisons are usually set up as an idealized microcosm of the outside world, with real living spaces, personal prisoner responsibility for preparing meals and cleaning up, grocery shopping and money management, workshops and classes, jobs that are designed for real vocational training, etc [1]. The recidivism rates are around 20% (some of the lowest in the world), with specific prisons approaching 15%.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-pr...

By 'revenge' I'm referring to revenge by society by putting people in an unpleasant situation for a term.

By 'revenge' I'm referring to revenge by society by putting people in an unpleasant situation for a term.

Sure, but revenge tends to beget revenge in a vicious circle. This is why forgiveness is key to robust societal systems, when imperfect communication is taken into account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat#Tit_for_two_tats

"Potential criminal" is a term so vague as to be useless, because its boundaries are overwhelming shaped to oppress minorities and the poor.

Consider criminalization of loitering and its effects on poor people, criminalization of "gang association" (even when in practice it can mean "cousin of a gang member" or "babysat the child of a gang member's sister"), and the soft-touch handling of Oxycontin addicts while crack cocaine users get life in prison.

I wonder if you'll be singing a different tune, if you were born black...

What tune? I'm just giving a theory of why things have evolved the way they have.

> potential criminals

This is a self-referential definition.

The removal of vibrant individuals from such communities is design to crippled them, making them more reliant on, e.g. unfavorable employment.

Who is a “vibrant individual.”

We could just start by addressing the elephant in the room which is that black people are disproportionately arrested for marijuana despite using drugs at the same rate as white people [1].

Which, naturally, can cripple families for incredibly small amounts of possession.

[1] https://www.splcenter.org/20180918/racial-profiling-louisian...

I’m literally just asking what the term “vibrant individual” means.

I thought that I sort of implied that in the root post, although I expect that there's more to it than your example.

It's easy these days to get arrested for minor deviltries (way easier than when I was a lad) so the police have that in their pocket.

So, you pick out the groups who are statistically most likely to commit real crimes, pick them up for any old thing, and warehouse them until they are more old and tired.

Like I said, it's not fair, but it appears to work to some extent.

>despite using drugs at the same rate as white people

This statistic does not accommodate for cultural differences in use. It's quite possible that black people are more likely to carry and/or use marijuana in public or while driving.

Every living being.

The point is that criminalization of poverty drains vitality from already-marginalized communities.

Wouldn't surprise me if law abiding black people are the biggest beneficiaries of the way the system works. Imagine living in the ghetto if there was no policing.

> Imagine living in the ghetto if there was no policing.

There would be plenty of problems, but not being stopped and frisked constantly because of skin tone even though white people are more likely per capita to actually be a valid target of the frisking[1] would probably be nice.

[1]: https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data https://www.nyclu.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/20... ("Black and Latino people were more likely to be frisked than whites and, among those frisked, were less likely to be found with a weapon.")

Prisoners by and large do not become productive members of society, nor do they fear prison enough to avoid recidivism. But they almost never escape, and the handful of escapes this century were all captured or killed within weeks. Quarantine is, if not what it’s it aimed at, what it accomplishes in practice.

What universe do you live in? 96% of all prisoners are released. Less than 4% serve life sentences. The reason why rehabilitation needs to be emphasized is because we live with large numbers of ex-criminals. They serve their time and they are released and now they are part of our society again.

The one where 76% reoffend within 5 years [0]. Whatever its stated goals or values, rehabilitation is not an actual effect of the penal system.

[0] https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welc...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com