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Comment by tomschlick | Hacker News Reader

> Does Andre get out of prison? What then?

He either accepts the help again (housing, food, job, education, etc) and actually makes something of himself, or he commits more crimes and goes back to prison. Seems like a fairly straightforward deal to me.

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So, the current system? The same strategy that's gotten us the high incarceration and crimes rates we have today doesn't seem like a solution to anything. Seems like a straightforward way to changing nothing.

The part that is missing is the personal responsibility. If the guy doesnt change his direction with all the help thats available to him thats his own fault, not the system's.

>The part that is missing is the personal responsibility.

Where is that missing? It is there today. The fact is that society bears the financial burden of someone spending a life in prison (and also the emotional/financial/physical burden of the person's actual crimes). You seem to be dismissing that to make an ideological stance.

Thats not the case anymore in cities like Seattle/SF/LA that have removed funding from police and discouraged police to arrest for crimes like theft, breaking into cars, etc. In the cases where they are arrested they are released on no-bail hours later to do the same thing.

Now, to test the ideology, do Miami/Jacksonville/Ft. Worth. All Republican cities in Republican states, all with surging crime. They didn’t take the actions you mentioned, but have the same result. Maybe it’s an opportunity to re-visit baseline assumptions.

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