Comment by karlkatzke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karlkatzke | Hacker News Reader

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One of my coworkers met a guy on the bus the other morning who had been imprisoned in the mid 90s and was just released. (Assault charge plus drugs.) He hadn’t seen a smart phone in person yet and was astounded that you could look up bus schedules on it.

Besides the tech astonishment and the sheer length of the 25 year prison sentence (that’s tangential), it was a bit inhumane how they treated released prisoners. This guy had been released in downtown Austin at 3 in the morning after being bussed from Huntsville, Texas and processed at the courthouse. He had been given a Greyhound ticket to a El Paso Texas, and in order to not violate his probation he had to check in to a halfway house within 48 hours.

What he wasn’t given was any money for taxi, any information about where the greyhound stations were, any money for a cab ride, or any way of actually staying within the bounds of his probation, which involved avoiding being cited for minor misdemeanors like laying on a park bench to catch a nap after being thrown out into a city at 3am.

The guy was lucky he ran into some folks willing to buy him a transit ticket and tell him how to get to the greyhound station half a city away. Imagine how few people are that lucky.

You are released from Texas prison with $100, and any money you may have had on your prison commissary account. The downtown Austin bit sounds a little strange. You typically are released from the Huntsville Unit directly, unless you have additional charges somewhere (they wouldn't wait until you finish a 25 year sentence however to do that; transfers from prison to places for additional trials are common). You also don't typically receive a 25 years sentence for assault+drugs - I know people who only received 15 years for murder. I suspect there's much more to the story, or this was someone who had been to prison, and knew how to sound convincing.

(former Texas inmate)

How sure are you that this wasn't a practiced sob story designed to extract money from passerby?

I've heard many such stories just like this. Criminal beggars will A/B test and refine their story over years to optimize results.

I would think a "criminal beggar" as you call it could come up with an equally convincing sob story which doesn't involve revealing a "criminal" background. In my anecdotal experiences, random strangers asking for money almost always give the excuse that their church bus full of children broke down 10 blocks away in the bad part of town, etc.

I’ve seen people reward “honesty” too, like a beggar asking money for alcohol. I would be more inclined to help an ex convict thrown in the streets than a childrens bus or something

Isn't that exactly why claiming you're a recently released criminal would work? Who would use that as a fake story, in our society?

It's people who beg for money that have a story that makes them sounds like they're down on their luck that I think most people are wary of.

(I was bit by the 'thought I had more cash in my wallet, trying to get to a city 40-50 miles away but don't have gas' story. And heard the bus ticket story quite a bit. But if someone told me they had gotten out of jail on a long stint and the world changed on them while they were inside, and the system doesn't care ...)

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