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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Arguably. But if you let the prisoner die while in your custody, a lot more people are going to be screaming about how evil you are to allow that, and how it's your fault that they died because you didn't protect them, and it's even more your fault because you probably wanted them dead and at least encouraged it to happen, and and and...

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Maybe we should house these prisoners under conditions where they don’t become suicidal, then.

While I agree with humane treatment of prisoners, that's a very slippery argument. Every prison is technically inhumane enough to send some people to attempt suicide.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Well, what's your alternative? The death penalty? Release them?

Make your prisons humane, don’t force-feed anyone, and accept the condemnation that occurs when one of your prisoners decides to starve himself to death anyway.

That's fair. But you aren't the one I was asking. I get the impression that that wasn't danharaj's alternative.

I don’t see how “Makes you think, doesn't it?” would imply anything more than the comment it was in response to.

I read it as implying that all prisons are inherently inhumane, and therefore that nobody should be in them. But that's one of the problem with drive-by questions like that - you can't tell for sure what their actual point is.

If prisons get too humane shareholders don't make as much profit, that's the real problem.

It’s not slippery at all. Life isn’t fair. Keeping prisoners means you’re responsible for them, and that means that sometimes you’re going to be responsible for problems. There doesn’t have to be a way out of this.

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