Comment by jeffwask | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffwask | Hacker News Reader

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Victim isn't the right word because none of it is accidental. It's intentional design dating all the way back to 13th amendment which states.

"The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. "

My brother in law was released recently from 12+ years of incarceration in the federal system. His crime was armed robbery, first offense, no one was injured, and he profited a grand total of $35,000.

He spent 12 years doing slave labor for a $1.25 while being charged absorbent fees to make phone calls, send emails (something like $5 for 10 minutes), and purchase the daily necessities like deodorant and medicine. After 12 years, he still owes reparation where even if he was paid a bare minimum wage he could have easily repaid his debt to society.

The US has the largest number of incarnated adults in the developed world because our government and capitalism demands it be so. We are a society whose engine has always been driven by slave labor. Until I was exposed to it in this manner, I would have been a "who cares do the crime pay the price" but that price extends so far, impacts everyone in a prisoners family even if they did no crime, and sets them up for failure when reentering the world.

None of it is accidental, all the way down to stubborn insistence on impeding criminal reform around drugs and petty crime to the prison industrial complex being the single biggest contributor to anti-pot reform pacs and advertising.

Companies make billions over charging and exploiting convicts in every conceivable way right down to sheriffs feeding them trash and keeping the delta in the food budget to buy themselves homes and luxuries.

> 12+ years of incarceration in the federal system. His crime was armed robbery, first offense, no one was injured, and he profited a grand total of $35,000.

No one was harmed. But the crime involved threat of death. So threatening to kill at least one person is a pretty serious crime. It’s good that no one was killed, but definitely the intent to kill for personal gain was part of the reason for such a lengthy sentence.

There are many flaws with the prison system but I wanted to point out the logical flaw of “no one was killed in this game of Russian roulette so it’s not that bad of a thing” kind of thinking. Threatening someone’s life for $35k is a big deal, I think.

Have to agree. We punish violent crime and corruption lightly; nonviolent crime inhumanely unforgivingly. If there was no violence, threat of violence, fraud or corruption, the limit should be two years. If there was, the minimum should be much higher.

Because of the mandatory guidelines at the time (which have since been declared unconstitutional) any felony committed while in possession of a firearm federally had a 15 year minimum with no discretion for the judge.

I would go further. Prison should only be used for violent crimes with a high degree of intentionality.

It's been said that if you asked someone to design a process to create more criminals, they would likely invent prisons: mix as many skilled criminals, with random unfortunate individuals, so that they can share their knowledge of criminality, and have to fight to survive.

Prison is bad as a deterrent and is terrible at reforming criminals. The only thing prison is good at, is keeping violent people off the street. There's absolutely no reason why non-violent offenders should be in a prison, give them any other punishment instead.

Lol yeah, armed robbery is effectively the charge for someone that was totally willing to kill while robbing but due to circumstances did not need to. That should not be considered a light crime.

How do you know they were willing to kill? If you rob someone you need to threaten them regardless if you are going to follow through.

Umm based on the statute and elements of the crime they were charged with and found guilty of.

Whoever, while committing a robbery, is armed with a dangerous weapon or any article used or fashioned in a manner to lead the victim to reasonably believe it to be a dangerous weapon, or inflicts bodily harm upon another, is guilty of aggravated robbery in the first degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $35,000, or both.

Or is your stance that a person committing robbery with a weapon and threatening to use it should instead be considered a hapless person that has not chosen to act in a way that is highly likely to cause great injury or death? Like a gun is "ok" and should not be considered as evidence of intent to commit harm during the act of robbery unless they shoot it?

I understand the law I was arguing against it.

"Or is your stance that a person committing robbery..."

Consider the crime of attempted murder.(IMAL) that's when a person attempted to commit murder but failed. So they had intent and action, they just failed

Armed robbery is someone whose intent is to rob someone and they are successful at the act of robbery.

The reason the robber is armed is not to harm the person but as a threat. If their intent is to harm the person that's an additional crime (assault, murder, attempted murder)

"that is highly likely to cause great injury or death?"

Highly likely for the robbery or if they carry out the threat. I believe the vast majority of robberies where violence was threatened don't end in violence. I don't have data for this so if you contest it I'll recind that claim.

If they shoot and miss, assault or murder they get additional uplifted charges (like you list above because of the ACT not just intent). Robbing with a weapon is in itself prima facie evidence of willingness to use that weapon and why there is uplifted punishment for "armed robbery" vs "robbery".

If they simply rob without a weapon, there are generally robbery charges with lessor penalties.

There is a clear uplift of risk/jeopardy of death or harm when using a weapon while committing robbery -- the person committing the crime is only partially in control of the outcome: the victim, witnesses, law enforcement interruption or an infinite number of random events can all trigger the harm (which is attached to the original crime). But this is well known and a decision the assailant made before committing the act -- they inherently are willing to kill or harm the second they chose to use the weapon in the act even if their intent walking into it was not to kill specifically.

I guess we just disagree, but I am very happy the laws and punishments are written to align with my POV.

> How do you know they were willing to kill?

Because they brought a gun. I’m not sure how you truly know someone’s intention. But getting a gun, loading it, and threatening someone with it is perhaps the closest to knowing they are willing to use it.

I think that people can’t even know themselves as many who claim they didn’t mean to, still “accidentally” shot someone.

But in the case of sentencing guidelines, you don’t need to know whether they will or not. If they use lethal force that’s a multiplier in prison time.

And I’m ok with that. I don’t care to get into nuance with people who threaten innocent people with death.

Note, there are exceptions when the gun isn’t loaded and the sentence is not the same as a loaded gun.

I fully agree he earned punishment and it was a serious crime. (he says the gun was never loaded but that's neither here nor there). My question is the scope and breadth of the punishment and whether the system is about restitution and rehabilitation or pure punitive action. How do people come out after 10+ years having received no training, support or rehabilitation and step into a completely changed society from when they went in. Luckily, my brother in law has us to support him. Many don't have that option.

Is 12 years being enslaved for $1.25 fitting with another 3 on probation and in halfway houses? I don't believe it is especially when watching white collar folks steal millions, do infinitely more damage, and be released in 1/3 the time to pick up where they left off.

Ultimately, being forced into slave labor and having to pay hundreds per a month to talk to family despite research showing it's one of the best ways to drive good behavior and rehabilitation in prisoners, is cruel and unusual punishment even if the crime committed means the person is never getting out.

Even if we agree on the length of sentence, for someone who did work the entirety of their 12 year sentence, in roles that would have paid $50-70K a year to emerge still owing restitution on a paltry debt of less than a new car, is a travesty.

> How do people come out after 10+ years having received no training, support or rehabilitation and step into a completely changed society from when they went in.

Completely agreed. And it's not just that -- ex-prisoners also come out without any social network other than what they may have gained among prisoners, and they face extreme social stigma that makes finding work difficult even if they had the skills and connections.

One positive has been that he didn't have any issues getting work. He had a factory job within a few days and has already been offered potential advancement to a salaried role. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that stemmed from white middle class privilege and the fact that it was a impulsive action (potentially related to mental illness) on his part rather than a lifetime of gang affiliations that led to his crimes. He has no visible markers of incarceration and easily blends into any crowd of middle aged white guys.

In a politer society with more reasonable laws using a gun to take someone's money would have exactly one outcome: a 9mm hole in that robber's head.

Anything beyond that is charity.

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”

Someone tried to rob me at gunpoint many years ago. Pointed a gun to my head when I got a flat tire innocently trying to bike home from a bad part of town. Why was I in a bad part of town? Working in a hospital with the people helping the people in a bad part of town.

I didn't try to kill them, even though I managed to fight the upper hand off of them. When the scuffle ended all I said was "don't point things at my head."

Choose to believe me or not. Don't make presumptions about eagerness.

I’m supposed to take comfort in the fact that you’re more violent in hypothetical situations?

The death penalty will always be executed with a certain false positive rate. Willing it as a form of punishment necessarily entails willing the death of innocent people, who crucially can’t be brought back in the event that the state realizes it was mistaken.

You know the process for executing someone is very long, expensive road. Eager is the worst possible description of the death penalty.

There are plenty of criticisms for the death penalty but now you're changing the goalposts as you realize your description written in a science fiction feel good reality was a bad fit.

> you’re changing the goalposts

Post one: The death penalty is always wrong because it can be handed out in error and cannot be revoked.

Post two: The death penalty is always wrong because it can be handed out in error and cannot be revoked.

No goalposts have changed in the making of this thread.

I think the edit timer hasn't timed out. May want to go back and at least make it look like that's what your "post one" said.

I don’t think the prison system is about rehabilitation. I think it’s based on the principal of protecting the population from people likely to commit crimes. P who commit crimes are much more likely than the general population to commit a crime, so the more years they are behind bars, the less chance they commit crimes.

The slave labor is punishment, and I believe the only form of slavery allowed under the US constitution. I think the prison could pay nothing but they choose practically nothing.

I agree on reforming exploitative services like $5/minute phone calls. I don’t think prisoners should be abused financially. I wish I could vote for candidates who supported this kind of reform.

In elections near me, this isn’t even an issue where candidates differentiate. There were a few candidates that were running for reform but they were more along the lines of not prosecuting certain misdemeanors.

I think the whit collar crime being punished less than violent crime kind of makes sense. I’d rather someone steal $1M than injure someone. It’s pretty mercenary to say that someone stealing $5M without violence is worse than someone stealing $35k with violence. I also don’t think prison sentences have clear relationships for comparison.

Is your brothers crime worse than raping 5 people? He would have received less jail time. Is that right? I’m not sure.

I don't think he's objecting to the sentence, but the financial aspects--and I agree. Put somebody in jail and the basics of life should be provided. I don't mind commissary accounts for luxuries, but the basics should cost $0. And I include communication in that.

Treating prisoners as captive markets to be bled is not good for society.

The GP wasn’t trying to make light of his brother-in-laws crime (if he was, he wouldn’t have said what the conviction was). His point was that his brother-in-law has been exploited while serving his time and that is what leads to a high number of reoffenders.

For what it’s worth, I agree with his point. The west looks down on revenge ruling, “an eye for an eye” etc. Yet the US prison system isn’t any more evolved.

The worst part of it is because we are talking about “bad people”, any defence of their treatment is easy to dismiss - and I get why. Arguing that someone who commuted armed robbery should have rights too does sound like a perverse thing to say. But ignoring those rights just allows problems to proliferate. So all your prison system does is the proverbial cutting off ones nose to spite ones face.

> The GP wasn’t trying to make light of his brother-in-laws crime (if he was, he wouldn’t have said what the conviction was).

He was making doing exactly that when he said no one was injured. Just because someone wasn't physically injured doesn't mean they weren't profoundly harmed by being a victim or armed robbery. How long did it take that victim to feel safe in their community again? His brother-in-law took that away from someone and deserves harsh punishment.

…and your comment sums up exactly the point I was making about how hard it is to have a grown up conversation about this subject matter.

I get the need for justice but what you’re describing is revenge, not justice. Justice needs to contain a rehabilitation part and not just punishment. The point the GP was making is that the rehabilitation part has been substituted for exploitation. Regardless of whether you think the sentencing was just or not, and to be clear: I don’t think even the GP was suggesting that his brother-in-law didn’t deserve jail time, if you don’t try and rehabilitate then you’re just encouraging your offenders to go out and reoffend. Thus perpetuating the cycle of crime and increasing the number of peoples who are physically and mentally scared from crimes in the process.

Rehabilitating inmates doesnt need to be done for altruistic purposes. There’s a very self reason to do so: those inmates will become less likely to commit further crimes upon release.

And that is the crux of the argument here. It’s what the discussion should be focused on, rather than a pseudo-morality debate about whether they deserve the time. Because literally no one believes there shouldn’t be punishment for crimes. But what we don’t agree on is whether criminals deserve a chance to reform.

But would he have done it? Obviously difficult to determine but a major factor. What if he made the threat knowing it's the only way to get the money?

there's someone close to me in prison for murder. for me, there's no getting around what they did. at the same time, i've come in contact with the criminal justice system through them, and there's also no getting around what it is: a disgusting and irredeemable machine of exploitation. i didn't always used to see it that way, but now i know better.

The late 1800s and early 1900s exploited this on behalf of White Supremacy. All of the Jim Crow states had laws against vagrancy which were only enforced against "colored" people. If you failed to have a job, local law enforcement would arrest you for "vagrancy" and the prison would rent your body out to work on the "chain gang". Prisoners got paid nothing. The politically connected "good old boys" would get paid for renting out the prisoners.

>The US has the largest number of incarnated adults in the developed world because our government and capitalism demands it be so

No, US has the largest number of adults in prison because we have a very ideologically diverse population, as well as a semblance of personal freedom, which necessarily will result in more people committing crimes. Nothing to do with capitalism. In fact, a true capitalism-based solutions would actually be organized forced labor camps - instead of sitting in cells prisoners would be forced to work, and have access to food and medicine to continue to optimize their productivity.

Also, as an aside

>Until I was exposed to it in this manner, I would have been a "who cares do the crime pay the price" but that price extends so far, impacts everyone in a prisoners family even if they did no crime, and sets them up for failure when reentering the world.

If you hold a position but change this solely because of a personal experience, you don't actually believe in either side of the issue, you just go with what feels right.

I think you might want to research the penal systems of the US a bit more closely. More than one state essentially functions on convict labor.

Functions is a strong word. Yes, convict labor is cheap. But its availability is generally not manufactured. Im sure that there are some sociopathic people that would absolutely love the idea of putting more people in prison to take advantage of cheap labor, but the system we live is pretty robust to that kind of bullshit, with a few exceptions of course.

It is, but I'm not one for hyperbole.

Arizona communities would 'collapse' without cheap prison labor, Corrections director says

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2022/07/1...

Louisiana is another state that's notable for the degree to which it has institutionalized this economic practice.

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