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Comment by Jackypot | Hacker News Reader

I do wonder why people are so motivated to help the perpetrators of violent crimes. You could take that same energy and help the victims instead. I doubt whoever suffered whatever violence it was that merited 13 years has forgotten the whole thing by now. I doubt they're stoked to see their attacker off to start a cushy new job. You don't get 13 years for something trivial.* If after that time you find it to get a job, well, you kinda have to wear that.

*for non-violent stuff, like drugs, obviously you can. I'm referring to this specific example, which is described as violent. Non-violence shouldn't impact your future in the same way.

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We Americans are bad at forgiving. If someone commits a crime we think they should get whatever comes their way, but people make mistakes and I want to live in a society where someone can screw up, but work hard to improve themselves and become a productive member of society. If you have two children and one is constantly bullying the other, you dont take the bullied child out for icecream everytime because that doesn’t improve the situation in the long term. You put the time and energy into the misbehaving one to correct the situation forever.

If we don't then there are only two end states for people sentenced for a crime: permanent incarceration or the death penalty. People who can't get jobs, can't rent a place to live, and have no hope of improving their situation have much higher rates of re-offending. Duh. Why wouldn't they?

Do you imagine the victim of a violent crime wants to see the offender crushed by society to such an extent that they offend again? Do you imagine the victim wants the offender's children to suffer as well? How many generations of pain and suffering should be imposed? How many more victims will that spawn? How much misery should we be willing to impose and on how many people?

There's no shortage of jobs for both groups. It's never been one-or-the-other.

We can either admit that prison sentences aren't actually meant to rehabilitate criminals and they exist solely as a way of inflicting punishment (as you imply), or we can take the folks coming out the back end of that system and give them opportunities to rejoin society as a productive citizen. The attitude of "you made a bad choice, therefore you're no longer worthy of opportunity" is exactly why the United States has the highest imprisonment rates in the world: when folks come out of prison and have every door to rebuilding their life shut, what do you expect is going to happen? That they move away to become a monk in a cave somewhere?

It's funny to me to see HN comments so strongly opposed to "cancel culture" but then as soon as someone talks about folks being released from prison, it's "If after that time you find it to get a job, well, you kinda have to wear that."

Prison in the U.S. is traumatic and life-ruining by design and people who are imprisoned become victims themselves. Not only that, but a huge number of offenders have previously been the victim of a crime, or will be after they're released. The world is not made up of attackers and sufferers, it's made up of people. You can waste your time allocating empathy based on your own flawed moral calculus or you can just try to see people as individuals and treat them accordingly. Note that this could also mean treating people worse than the justice system did.

If the empathy-allocating thing appeals to you, you can think about it in terms of externalities. If you can prevent recidivism, you can proactively "help the victims" by preventing their victimization in the first place. What drives recidivism? Primarily, poverty, unemployment, social marginalization, untreated mental health issues. People with no options will act as if they don't have options.

Because there's already endless energy and motivation for helping the victims, but many like you openly question whether former criminals should even be able to get a job. It's no surprise that some find the energy to focus on problems like this that are overlooked by most and often ignored.

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