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Comment by marshray | Hacker News Reader

There are some famous instances of hackers being locked up, e.g., Kevin Mitnick.

But are there any examples of hackers not being locked up long enough? Someone who gets out after 10 years but hadn't learned their lesson and really needed 20?

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Unfortunately, the problem with your question is that it assumes that the purpose of prison is rehabilitation.

As an honest and simple question: what are the possible purposes of incarceration?

A few come to mind (and I'm not saying I approve/disapprove of any of these):

    1. Rehabilitation
    2. Isolation (get them off the streets)
    3. Revenge
    4. Deterrence

Edit: is there a way to format a list on HN?

- Try

- bullets

+ and

* paragraphs (two newlines between each line).

The prison system in the US is a multi-billion dollar industry. More prisoners = more prisons = more jobs (guards, cleaning staff, psychologists, etc.).

It's also there as a 'scoreboard' for politicians who want to claim to be tough on crime.

The classical purposes of punishment (as taught in my criminal law courses):

1. Specific deterrence. (deterring the individual from doing 'it' again)

2. General deterrence. (a signal to other potential criminals to 'not do it')

3. Rehabilitation / resocialisation. Giving the criminal a chance and circumstances to reconsider their way of life or state of mind, or be 'cured' from the mental illnesses or moral defects that are causing their actions.

4. Prevention. Getting people off the street.

5. Revenge for the victim.

6. Revenge for society - making the perpetrator fulfill their moral debt to society.

There are various schools in criminology, criminal psychology etc and depending on which one one subscribes to, some of the above are more important than others. An interesting (to me) development of the last years/decades is the emergency of neuropsychology, explaining people's behavior in terms of neural functioning and basically acknowledging that all actions come from the way our brains are wired. This will have huge implications in the moral aspects of punishment; it will basically nullify the concept of 'guilt' as there won't be a difference between someone who has an epileptic seizure and kicks somebody down the stairs in a spasm, killing him; and a psychopathic murderer who creeps up on a woman at night and cuts her throat. Both will come from 'neural defects', and it will require a serious redefinition of our legal concepts of 'guilt' to reconcile this state of affairs with society's more 'intuitive' concept of guilt.

Sorry for OT, it's one of my pet topics :)

The Mitnick incident was a good example of the government failing to understand new technology and completely overreacting to a sensationalised crime, resulting in Mitnick receiving punishment well in excess of what would be appropriate for his "crimes".

Giving the government power to double their capacity to overreact because of future failures to understand technology just seems like a Bad Idea.

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