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Comment by weard_beard | Hacker News Reader

Flagrantly violating a multimillion dollar bond agreement 3x by tampering with witnesses and therefore being unable to access digital equipment to prepare your case? Subsisting off bread and peanut butter and running out of ADHD meds because of same said violations of the terms of your pre-trial release? Still being given access to highly competent legal representation, access to a computer, and given multiple hearings to renegotiate your pre-trial re-release despite major violations the first time?

No, I don't think many people fall in that bucket.

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This makes sense, he is in the special “Flagrantly violating a multimillion dollar bond agreement 3x by tampering with witnesses and therefore being unable to access digital equipment to prepare your case” jail that they built specially just for him. The idea that these circumstances could happen to literally anyone charged with any crime is factually incorrect because that would imply that are others in similar conditions, of which there are none.

It doesn’t seem like you actually care about this but if you do, it is important to have a sympathetic face to get public support. There is a reason Rosa Parks was chosen as the face of the bus boycott. SBF is never going to be the face of prison reform so acting antagonistically to people online not giving him sympathy probably won’t help prison reform.

I like this article because the author chose an unpopular person. The majority of the comments are highbrow versions “ROFL eat bread bitch”, which is illustrative of a large and vocal group of people that believe that basic dignity should be punitively stripped by the state in the case of criminal behavior (of which they could never even be accused)

How many chances do you think a wealthy man from an upper class family should get? He's already burned through more considerations than poor people ever get.

Do you understand the concept of deterrence? He's being made an example. SBF is getting body slammed with the harsh reality of the consequences of white collar criminal behavior to serve as a lesson to all the other potential white collar criminals out there. The message is that it doesn't matter if you are wealthy and come from a connected family. The rules apply to everyone.

> How many chances do you think a wealthy man from an upper class family should get?

I have a question. Do you see any difference between the following two sentences?

1. The conditions that SBF is in could be experienced by any person accused of a crime in the US.

And

2. SBF should not be in jail.

I have not said anything that could possibly be construed as #2 but it seems like you are asking me why I said that?

Edit:

I do appreciate the honesty in stating that you believe that this sort of treatment of prisoners is a good thing. If nobody admitted that they felt that way, the mystery of why we treat people that are accused of crime terribly would forever remain a black box.

It is, however, genuinely amusing that people think that he’s getting treated Extra Bad because he’s an Extra Bad Guy.

Buddy, jail, not prison but jail is the place that you could find yourself tonight without a judge or jury. The only requirement for jail is probable cause or an officer having a bad day. You (the person inside the US reading this) could have your diet dictated and medication punitively taken away by the state while you are reading this sentence.

> Buddy, jail, not prison but jail is the place that you could find yourself tonight without a judge or jury. The only requirement for jail is probable cause or an officer having a bad day.

Ignoring the snark tone - Yes, exactly! Those people exist, so shine a light on their cases to garner sympathy, support and mindshare towards reform.

It would be infinitely easier to sympathize with someone who's actually being treated unfairly. I'd go further and say that writing about the "woes" of SBF is insulting to anyone's who's actually suffering from unfair treatment.

Trying to use SBF as the poster child of unfair treatment is frankly delusional. If you want to come across as genuine, write about the working class people whose stories would never see the light of day without someone taking a closer look, not the "woes" of a billionaire kid who's crossed every single boundary that's ever been set for him, who's interfered with justice process, and is now complaining about having to eat peanut butter because he refuses more nutritious food.

The purpose of using SBF as an example is not to paint him as a victim in need of help. It is a useful exercise that invites the people that are ideologically opposed to the idea of humane treatment in prisons to pop up and voice their reasoning for force feeding vegans meat and denying people prescribed medication.

> so shine a light on their cases to garner sympathy, support and mindshare towards reform.

And

> now complaining about having to eat peanut butter because he refuses more nutritious food.

Are incompatible statements. In your final sentence you literally say that the problem is not the availability for vegans to have access to their diet. You cannot logically claim to care about jails providing reasonable diets to prisoners while simultaneously placing the blame squarely on a prisoner.

You either think that the state punitively denying someone a reasonable diet and prescription medication is a good thing or a bad thing. There is no inbetween.

Even if you use “deterrent” style rhetoric to lend legitimacy to your personal enjoyment of seeing somebody you dislike suffer, you are still pointing at the state punitively denying people access to reasonable diet accommodation and prescription medication and saying “This is a good thing.”

Like, it’s kind of funny that you’re giving me tips on how to better illustrate this problem to people that are against inhumane treatment in jails. You’re not even the audience for such a thing because you are ideologically in favor of the phenomenon.

Right. He's been given way too much leniency already and look what he did with it. He's an asshole. He doesn't care. He cares about SAM, that's it. So, let him sit and cry because he 'has' to eat bread and peanut butter because he CHOOSES to stick to a vegan diet. I know plenty of vegans that, if presented with a situation where it was only PB and bread or other options, they would just say "Eh, well... I can just eat the other stuff for now because this is what there is..." That's a reasonable person. He is not reasonable and he is showing more and more how pathetically self-centered he really is.

> I know plenty of vegans that, if presented with a situation where it was only PB and bread or other options, they would just say "Eh, well... I can just eat the other stuff for now because this is what there is..."

This makes sense. There is a logical reason to deny vegans food that fits their diet, and if you think about it getting arrested while being a vegan is basically two crimes. Any vegan accused of any crime should be forced to eat meat as a punitive default. The reasoning for this is obvious, for example

There actually is a logical reason and that reason is they can only produce and provide so much in a day in a prison. They can't make all these custom meals. That's now how the kitchen works in a prison.

I like the idea that “giving people vegetables” puts undue stress on the state of California.

Can you elaborate on how kitchens work in prison and jails?

I don't believe that giving people vegetables puts undue stress. I don't believe that SBF hasn't been presented with vegetables or fruit either. I imagine they are canned and not fresh and beautiful, as he's come to expect. I think he's being a little brat.

I just meant that they have limited ingredients and set meals planned for each day. It isn't a restaurant where you have a menu to pick from.

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