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Comment by aero142 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I'm more worried about what 13 years in prison did to the person than the original crime. We don't know what the original crime was so it is hard to say in this case. Perhaps they have some deep, anti-social personality flaw and I wouldn't want to sit next to them. I would be concerned about sitting next to an innocent person who spent 13 years in prison, though. For me, that is a root issue. How many criminals are flawed people vs people who made a mistake or reacted badly to an isolated situation or just didn't have the skills or maturity to handle a difficult situation. I'm reminded of a quote I heard once. "Crime is committed by the young but prison is full of old men." People aren't the same their whole lives.

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> I'm more worried about what 13 years in prison did to the person than the original crime.

100% this. Going to prison is a traumatic experience, and would be even in a country that had a real commitment to safe rehabilitation. In the US, it's all too often multiple traumatic experiences one after the other. Nonetheless, I think former felons absolutely deserve every chance to reintegrate. I just worry about their psychological safety when things get tense and others get combative. This is just one more reason why more people in tech need to grow the hell up and treat people around them with basic respect.

> Perhaps they have some deep, anti-social personality flaw

Like a lot of people in IT ? Not necessarily anti-social but you need to be asocial to some degree to want to spend 8+ hours in front of a screen talking to a computer. It's usually easy to pick out programmers from general population.

You replace my word, "anti-social" with your word, "asocial" which doesn't mean the same thing. Anti-social behavior is a clinical diagnosis. I mean to describe people who react with a lot of violence or anger at situations that might happen at an office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour

Just trying to clarify here: you’re saying if someone was exonerated of a violent crime due to newer, overwhelming forensic evidence but had already spent 13years.

You’d feel more comfortable working with the actual criminal than the innocent person who spent 13 years in prison?

I'm not saying I would be more concerned. I'm saying that 13 years in prison might cause problems by itself. This is a criticism of prison, not the person.

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