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Comment by squokko | Hacker News Reader

Prison creates absolute animals. We shouldn't put people in prison unless they're going to be there for their entire lives. Singapore-style caning is probably much better for both the convict and the broader society -- take the incorrigible violent criminals and lock them up for life without parole, and cane the rest.

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This policy is a bit outside of the Overton window, but caning really does seem more humane and effective than the nightmare of American prisons (I would take 3 strokes from a cane (will scar and you can't sit down for a few weeks) over 6 months in prison). It's not just the crowded brutality that we subject people to in prison but the painful fact that once you are out you are ruined. Caning is quick and convincing. The punishment is administered and the convict can get on with their life and keep their job, their house and their family. From a conditioning standpoint I would also suspect that the severe bout of physical pain is a more effective tool than a few years of psychological torture.

US has one of the lower recidivism rates [1], so it's hard to support "Prison creates absolute animals".

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...

Strange, I see other sites list the US recidivism rate as one of the highest.

> An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years. (https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism)

Norway is often claimed to be one of the lowest in the world at ~20% within 5 years.

The data above had Norway at 20% at 2 years, so it would be surprising to still be 20% at 5 years.

They're also low population, and quite wealthy from the giant oil fields national income.

If you broke the 330 million in the US into 5 million sized chunks, you likely find well performing outliers like Norway too. That's the problem when assuming a small thing should scale.

> The data above had Norway at 20% at 2 years, so it would be surprising to still be 20% at 5 years.

This article puts it at 25% (https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846) which admittedly isn't 20, but isn't far off. Wikipedia has it at 20% after 5 years using 2016 data, but I haven't checked their sources on that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway)

The article is a quote from someone talking offhand who is not a researcher.

The wiki claim has three sources listed, none of which state the claim. The first claims 20%, no timeframe (so may well be the same 2 year value stated lots of places), the second sources the 20% in 2 years and a report (which looks to be a decent study, but does not have any claim of 25% at 5 years), and the third again has the 20% at 2 years with a linked report (the report also has that data).

Not one is a very good source, and if the person speaking for an interview were right, you'd think that data would appear all the times the 20% at 2 appears.

Given that, and that the data I cited was from a careful study [1] including lots of research from many countries (including the 20% at 2 years results from Norway), I tend to think the 25% is more or less made up wishful thinking. If it were defensible, it would be cited in other studies that aggregate all this data.

When you find something online, try to determine it's original source. Someone simply saying something is not generally true unless it's from a reputable place that actually measured it.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/pdf/wel...

45% reimprisonment after 5 years isn't exactly low.

45% after 5 years hardly seems low; it's pretty similar to other countries in that list. The short-term recidivism is pretty low (though there isn't that level of data for most countries listed).

The source publication concludes "that international comparisons are currently not valid" due to inconsistencies between countries' data and lack of transparency.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_Systema...

Interesting - from this data it does appear that US is on the lower end of the spectrum. I will say that this dataset is very hard to parse - a lot of information and very little is apples to apples in a simple ranked chart. Also some countries (Denmark for instance) have fluctuated wildly in a span of ~10 years, which suggests that what is treated as a crime might be a driving variable here. I would be really curious to see a more detailed analysis of this data that segments the population by offender class (if you lump in non-violent and violent offenders I would imagine that you are making more of a commentary of the relative enforcement of these respective crimes).

Would be interesting to look at recidivism and crime rate in Japan or Oman ?

Pretty sure they still receive prison sentences in Singapore in addition to caning.

And hanging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapor...

This is such an insane comment even for HN. Is no one really going to point out savage an idea this is for handling prisons? There are countries that have incredibly low recid rates without deciding to black hole someone for their life or committing violence against them.

Prison creates absolute animals

In US prisons I suppose. Most prisons in the world don't have shankings, or gangs, they're designed to rehabilitate, not punish.

Interesting. As an expert on world penal systems and criminal rehabilitation, how do other more civilized countries rehabilitate a woman refusing to wear a hijab, or a guy who refuses to renounce Falun Gong?

Nothing and therapy, respectively.

Caining is plain torture and outlawed by United Nations Convention Against Torture

Starting by bringing back caning in elementary school would pay substantial dividends in about 10 years.

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