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Comment by techdragon | Hacker News Reader

Well it’s pretty clear that nicer prison cells don’t encourage recidivism when you look at the statistics. So basically it comes down to social drives/desires...

The will of the people has spoken and citizens of the USA _want_ to see inhumane prisons because they feel the inmates deserve it. I don’t even say that while standing on terribly high ground... Australian prisons are much closer to American ones than Norwegian ones... especially for non-white inmates.

TLDR... Shits fucked and the thing I want most from the whole BLM 2020 protest movement is meaningful prison reform. Because it’s a long path to social reconciliation and meaningful integration... but it’s not anywhere near as long a road to prison reform.

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> citizens of the USA _want_ to see inhumane prisons because they feel the inmates deserve it

While I think that's true, I also think it's missing another major argument: that prison is a deterrent. I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but it's a big part of the discussion.

My feeling is that Nordic countries can have nice prisons because their social safety net is so strong. Maybe they can argue that being a free, poor person in a Nordic country is still better than being in their prisons.

The same is not true in the US, especially when you consider how harsh our culture is toward people who suffer from drug addiction. Abject poverty is much, much worse than the prisons in this tweet, and we don't have good non-criminal options for people who are both poor and deeply addicted to illegal drugs.

You can imagine a poor person in the US (with or without an addiction) trying to steal from someone's house and ending up shooting someone. If they go to a dangerous, filthy prison, they're probably worse off than when they were free.

If they go to a Nordic-style prison, their lifestyle has actually upgraded quite a lot. My understanding is that the latter option, the Nordic prison, would reduce their likelihood of having to resort to crime in the future.

But the question is how much violent crime is deterred by fear of prison and whether the Nordic style of prisons would instill enough fear.

I think I'm on the side of having nicer prisons, but I don't really know enough about it.

Not a Nordic country, but the case still holds value: Japan apparently has a problem with lonely, old ladies doing minor crimes with the intention of going to prison where they are less lonely. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-16/japan-s-p...

So there is a danger of prisons becoming too attractive.

It's interesting though that the motivation isn't about creature comforts but about social connection. I wonder how much the reverse is true and not seeing your loved ones is a deterrent from prison. So much comes down to a healthy, connected society.

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I think one of the biggest drivers in US prison conditions is cost. The percent of the population that is incarcerated is quite high. This would increase the per tax payer cost to support the system, while also shrinking tax revenue (people in prison generally aren't making money to pay tax on).

I agree that reforms are needed. It would also be great to see a reduction in the incarceration rate by relying on other punitive measures when possible. And that people actual get a speedy trial instead of waiting years. And officers/judges actually following rule of law.

I think the real root issue of all of this is that the majority of people have no idea or experience in how broken to system is. The idea that people deserve it, and even seen that many people don't laws/rights and simply assume someone charged is likely guilty.

> I think the real root issue of all of this is that the majority of people have no idea or experience in how broken to system is.

You think that the root issue is the majority of people who (according to you) have no idea how the system works, and thus are not at all involved in the system itself? How on earth does that make sense?

How does it not make sense?

I think you are underestimating the ignorance of public. Take poll of people. Most won't know that you have to wait years to get a trial. Most won't know that the majority of cases never make it to trial and are resolved plea deals (some of which are innocent people pleading guilty to avoid sitting in jail because they can't afford bail). Most won't know their civil rights (ask them about Brady vs MD, Miranda, the 4th ammendment, etc). How many do you think understand jury nullification?

These people fund the system through their taxes. They sit on juries. They elect people who commit abuses and allow abuses to happen. Even the ones who have been a victim of the system may not know it, the extent that it is common, or the other parts of the system they have not experienced.

For example, you could have a summary offense filed against you and the officer might amend the charge at the trial. If you aren't given a continuance, then it could violate your rights. If the change was made because the officer made a mistake and you didn't realize/understand it, if he will possible lie to the judge and say the change was for leniency (concealment of exculpatory evidence). At the very least, you wouldn't witness prison conditions for most summary offenses. For reference, approximately 8% of the population has been convicted of a felony and less than half of them have served time in prison. So the people with firsthand prison experience will be quite low (guessing less than 10%, but couldn't find those numbers).

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If they are false premises, then show me some data to change my mind.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/15/us/poll-finds-only-33-can...

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Your article is irrelevant - and doesn't even support your claim. The article simply states that ordinary citizens have the least effect on policy creation (and they, self-admittedly, offer no data on how effective other participants are). Not that they have no effect. In fact, the purpose of a democratic republic is to provide protections against mob rule by limiting persons' individual effects. You are misinterpreting their study and misapplying it in your argument. Had your argument been valid, then you would be wasting your time anyways - why argue with people who have no effect (definition of a troll)?

So while individuals have relatively little effect on policy creation, you are completely leaving out their participation in policy execution - a major component of my argument. People can file complaints against bad officers or judges. People can file lawsuits when their rights have been infringed (look at policies that were enacted and the payouts against police departments in big cities). People can generate a combined effect on policy creation through voting. An easy way to view this would be to ask yourself what policy changes should take effect if one party or the other took full government control as this requires individual participation as voters and would likely lead to lawsuits against those new policies.

"I bet it makes software engineers in Seattle or SF feel very good about themselves when they can blame the woes of society on the median income household, but maybe you should try to go after people who actually have an impact."

You complain about invalid premises yet you engage in ad hominem fallacies? I wouldn't presume to know what devs in those areas think. I think it's also a stretch to claim that anyone is blaming the median income households - plenty of higher income people are ignorant of the problems as they are disproportionately unaffected.

Yes. There’s many examples of people who wanted the absolute worst for criminals, but once someone they care about goes to prison, they change their tune pretty quickly.

People don’t dig into things that don’t affect them that much. And when the problem is on the news, it’s justified through cognitive dissonance with “they probably did something to deserve it”

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They do have an affect though. They vote for the people who make the policies. Sure, they don’t directly vote on them, but they do cause it.

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You are conveniently ignoring primaries, which tend to have more choices.

So you claim that businesses drive the candidates and that it's a problem? If that is really the case, then you are arguing against yourself. The true power is people being able to vote and to create their own parties (protected in numerous laws and court decisions). Then the poor candidate choices would be the result of ignorance on the part of the citizens in not self organizing or seeing what is going on.

"business interests and a couple of large political parties"

Who comprises these institutions? People!

"But some people are just too comfortable to understand such things."

Your arguments would be more effective if you focused on creating coherent arguments rather than consistently engaging in ad hominem attacks.

I don't see any way around the enormous hatred and desire to inflict suffering that many Americans have for anybody convicted of any crime that carries any prison term. As you said, to them it's all about what people "deserve", and that ideology is one of the most fundamental and powerful poisons in societies - a part of the id that civilized nations seek to keep out of the government's decisions. It's something straight out of the dark ages. I would never blame a person who wanted to inflict suffering on somebody who personally wronged them gravely enough, but to want that emotion enshrined in the system is immoral in the most extreme way. On this topic, I don't think it's unnecessarily dramatic or ad hominem to say that the viewpoint of many Americans is evil.

The will of the people is besides the point. The policy preferences of the bottom 90% of the US population are not reflected _at all_ in actual policy making (a Princeton study from some years back).

Edit: maybe this was it: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

That’s not what the Princeton study said. Regardless, the policy preferences of individuals drive our punitive prison system. Even among non-white people, under 1/4 of people polled in 2016 say the criminal justice system is “too tough.” Among non-whites, 30% say it’s not tough enough, and 40% say it’s appropriately tough. https://news.gallup.com/poll/196568/americans-views-shift-to...

In 2003 just 8% of non-whites said the justice system was “too tough” and 57% said it was “not tough enough.” It takes time for changes in public preference to be reflected in changed laws. Especially since the people who actually vote in state and local elections (where criminal justice system is mostly handled) are older and more conservative than the whole population of people represented in polls. 2003 was a decade after the 1993 crime bill, and the people who are the most affected by the criminal justice system overwhelmingly demanded an even tougher system. You’re starting to see laws changing now but it’s going to be a long process.

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It's impossible to demonstrate that - to what extent the population drives policy and practice in all matters in which the state has a hand is just too socially complex.

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It’s extremely difficult to model what people actually want. Stated policy preferences change dramatically when you go from the general to the specific and ask people to make specific trade-offs. For example: https://reason.com/2014/07/10/millennials-prefer-small-gover...

> At first glance millennials appear to prefer a "larger government providing more services" (54%) over a "smaller government providing few services" (43%). However, once tax rates are mentioned support for large government flips. Instead 57 percent favor "smaller government, providing fewer services, with low taxes" and 41 percent want "larger government providing more services, with high taxes." We also find that the race/ethnicity gap on the size of government disappears among Hispanic, Asian, and white millennials once tax rates are explicit.

Most policy polls are useless, because they don’t ask voters what they’d be willing to pay or give up in another area for that particular policy. For example, support for universal healthcare plummets when you mention taxes and losing private insurance:

> But the more revealing part of the survey, I think, comes from the questions focused on the costs of single payer, all of which caused support for Medicare for All to drop below 40 percent. Told that it would eliminate private health insurance and require people to pay more in taxes, for example, support fell to 37 percent. Told that it would cause some medical treatments and tests to be delayed, support dropped even further, to 26 percent.

It’s also the case that in a Republican form of government, politicians are specifically charged with implementing specific policies that reflect the public’s hierarchy of preferences. Poll after poll shows the economy as the dominant concern of most voters. (Apart from this year when covid because a main concern.) People might, in the abstract say they favor taxing the wealthy and corporations more heavily. But when Election Day rolls around, they reward politicians (especially at the state and local level) who convinced a big corporation to move to their area and punish politicians who caused corporations to leave.

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