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Comment by gavinhoward | Hacker News Reader

This is an incredible post, and I encourage everyone to read it.

I wish I knew better how to help incarcerated people. Based on the Norway(?) model, I feel like help would reduce return rates, but I don't know how to go about it.

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I just got out after 10 years. I work with a lot of people just coming out (just been helping a guy locked up for 40 years, he's doing great).

The biggest issue is that 95% of them will be returned within a few months. Drugs is the main cause. You get out, you have no ID, no job, no family, no friends. You're stuck in a halfway house that is just like being in prison (lots of rules, line up for meal service etc). All the other guys there have a ton of drugs and you swear you won't touch them, but then you do because you're bored and sad. And then you're addicted again. And now you need money to buy more drugs. So you go do something goofy to get money and you get caught and locked up for another 10 piece. Or your parole officer drug tests you and violates your parole and you go do another 3 piece. Or the halfway house owner gets sick of you coming in after 7pm smelling of alcohol so he calls your parole officer and you go do another 3 piece.

Cycle repeats until you die in prison.

The no ID thing is interesting. The article mentions that as a major issue as well. Seems like it'd be a pretty cheap intervention to just issue all out-going prisoners a gov't photo ID on their release.

It is so terribly insane that this isn't done. You are being held by the state. The state has elevated access to state services. How easy would it be for them to hook into the state ID/DMV system and print you a state ID or driver's license before you leave?

If they can't verify your identity while you are in prison, then what are you even doing there?

All they did before I left prison was try to sign me up for Medicaid (I'm not elligible because I'm an illegal immigrant).

They did kindly let me keep my prison ID when I left which has my photo on it and says IN CUSTODY in giant letters. (they used to say INMATE but that word has gone out of fashion and they couldn't think of another word to use on the badges)

> they used to say INMATE but that word has gone out of fashion

Is this due to some kind of “political correctness” thing coming from well meaning people outside the system that the system is pleased to accommodate for easy brownie points, or are there distinct-enough tiers of people inside the system that “inmate” isn’t useful?

I feel like it grew from within the system (where change isn't possible) until it was picked up by those outside the system who would articulate the change.

I was mostly locked up in pre-trial detention and "inmate" has a serious connotation of conviction behind it, so it was considered especially ugly and demeaning there, where the acceptable term is "detainee."

Here are some quick reads on the issue:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/04/12/i-am-not-your-...

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/04/12/what-words-we-...

Recidivism rates are astonishingly high in all countries. Norway has the lowest at 20% within 2 years. The real rate is higher because most crimes aren’t solved. So in the best case, rehabilitation makes someone 300x more likely to commit crime than the average Norwegian.

It's unfair to say it "makes" them that way. They were incarcerated because they already proved willing to commit a crime. It failed to change them back into an average citizen, sure. Understandably a very difficult problem. It's quite possible that it makes them worse instead of better but we'd need different evidence to show that.

The average citizen in every country is already willing to commit a crime. The difference between the average criminal and you is a couple of meals.

This is completely untrue and does a tremendous disservice to the many impoverished people who do not become criminals.

> The difference between the average criminal and you is a couple of meals.

This is an insane point of view! Most criminals aren't stealing food.

No amount of missed meals will make me commit a rape, a murder, or other heinous crimes.

You don't know this. You can "imagine" how you'd react in a theoretical situation all you like, but It's like the first time you go skydiving - sure you know the safety record and you've got a parachute/reserve but until you get thrown out of a moving plane at 14,000 feet in the air, you have no idea whether you're going to react calmly or completely freak out.

Likewise until you're actually in a life and death situation, you don't know what you're truly capable of.

Not knowing the answer to these questions makes me wonder at who I am sometimes. How would I react to being thrown from a plane, a gun to my head, starving on the street. I thank God I haven't had to experience those things, but I still wonder at what kind of man I am.

Maybe not for you, but what if your son/daughter was missing meals? Moreover, you can see other people eating just fine, and no one will hire you? Also consider that the people you "murder" likely "had it coming" and were rapists, terrorists, blasphemers, or otherwise cultural heretics...until and unless you've been in those exact situations, it's incredulous that you'd not do what many other humans would do/have done.

People who say they wouldn’t murder people for food are saints. I would definitely do it. I like living more than I like other people living.

However, I wouldn’t murder anyone in anyone in a modern civilized society. Why not just use social services? And if that doesn’t exist, then steal. Even if you’re caught they’ll be obligated to give you food.

Society needs to devolve to far far below what is the US standard before murder becomes a reasonable solution to food problems.

So you steal and the person tries to murder you. Do you defend yourself? Even a push can knock the person over, hitting their head. Congratulations, you are a murderer.

I think it was pretty clear we were all talking about intentional crimes, not crimes of passion or accident or even negligence.

So unless I know the core of your argument, I’m not sure how to respond to this digression.

If you honestly believe this, you've never been truly hungry. Most to all people will kill for food.

There is a very famous American Buddhist monk called "Ajahn Geoff" who teaches this exact thing. Most people WILL commit heinous acts under the pressure of starvation. (And that's why he and other Buddhist monastics urge the taking of the Buddhist moral precepts).

While that's probably true, I don't really see its relevance. I'm fairly certain that exactly zero of the people spending prison time for murder in my country committed murder because they were hungry.

I'm open to the possibility that the situation may be different in other countries, but I strongly doubt it's a leading cause pretty much anywhere.

Well, as Lord Beaverbrook might have said, we've already established that we're all potential criminals. All we're haggling about now is the threshold that would cause us to commit a crime.

Without having lived the lives of others, you simply don't know if you would have committed the same (or worse) crimes in their situation. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't punish crimes, but to imagine that you're a better person than most criminals is just self-flattery.

Not everyone who is incarcerated committed a crime. Some are in custody for having marijuana which has since been decriminalized in some areas. Others are there because they plea bargained due to pressure. Almost no one who is in custody ever had a trial despite this being a “right” in the USA.

We're talking about averages here. Certainly there are plenty of individuals wrongly incarcerated, etc.

you'll never get that "different evidence", how are you going to set up a control

I agree that it's difficult. Sometimes there are natural experiments that already happened.

By that logic, the worst possible recidivism rate (surely 100%) would make someone 1500x more likely to commit crime than a non-offender. That’s still a pretty good case for having effective rehabilitation (unless you insist on the death sentence for all prisonable offences)

You don’t have to execute them, just lock them up until they’re too old to be a threat.

I’ve been a victim of violent crime at least a dozen times in my life. I wasn’t the first victim for any of my attackers. Far from it. And I wasn’t the last. Every single one of them escaped. They probably got caught on some other occasion, and maybe they spent some time in prison for that crime. And then they got out and continued robbing and assaulting innocent people. They’ll keep doing this as long as they are physically able.

I don’t really care what happens to them, because they’re basically constantly-exploding bombs that force the rest of us to pay more in taxes for police, invest in more security systems, avoid certain areas at certain times, and generally worry about safety much more than we otherwise would. Most criminals have been given countless chances to not commit crime, and they keep doing it. The sooner they’re separated from society, the better off we’ll all be.

>I’ve been a victim of violent crime at least a dozen times in my life.

I can't think of a way to say this without sounding insensitive, but have you considered moving?

I've moved lots of times. In terms of crime, the SF bay area was by far the worst. The Bronx was second-worst, but I hear it's gotten a lot better since I lived there. Portland has gotten pretty bad over the past few years but at least I can legally carry a gun there.

When you're 5'6" and 120lbs, criminals will target you.

You should try Europe or Australia. The worst I've ever experienced is having someone break and enter while I wasn't there. I have lived in what could be considered less than savoury areas in Sydney and have stayed all over Europe and the world (as a digital nomad, currently at 45 countries).

And you won't feel the need to carry a gun...

I wasn't born in the US. I've lived in other countries. There are other disadvantages to places like Europe or Australia (or Japan or China, where I've also spent time) that make the tradeoff not worth it to me. The biggest issue is that you'll always be a foreigner. Even if you jump through the hoops to become a citizen, you won't be accepted the same way that Americans accept immigrants. US conservatives are painted as disliking immigrants, but that's only true for immigrants who don't culturally assimilate. Conservatives have no problem electing immigrants like Winsome Sears, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Young Kim. The mayor of Helena, Montana is a refugee from Liberia. The state with the most foreign-born governors is Georgia. Anyone who claimed that these people aren't "real Americans" would be shunned and shamed across the political spectrum.

There's also the issue of employment and compensation. My skills are worth far less in other countries. I make over $250k/year in compensation, and my taxes are low enough that I've managed to accumulate "fuck you" money before the age of 40. I could retire, but I want to maximize my family's quality of life. It'd also be nice to have an aircraft and a cabin on some land in the middle of nowhere. My chances of accomplishing those goals in another country are much lower. (I'll probably have the cabin in a few years. The aircraft... well, we'll see.)

If I wanted to move to an area with low crime, I could choose from plenty of places in the US. I don't live in those places because, similar to other countries, I'd have to take a massive pay cut. As remote work becomes more commonplace, that could change.

Interesting points. Yeah, it is pretty funny hearing conservatives being called Nazis and fascists all the time. In many ways America is already living the Star Trek future. Well, except for the UBI. (You'll probably get that soon though, the robots are just about done cooking.)

I heard you can get a used Cessna for $15k. But maybe you want something fancy ;)

This is shocking. Where have you lived that this is so common for you?

There are reasonable suggestions for organizations to support, at the bottom of the post.

Yes, though supporting an organization always feels like expecting someone else to do the hard work. I'd like to do more.

Recidiviz is hiring: https://angel.co/company/recidiviz/jobs

Apropos of nothing, that jobs site is technically-challenged. Recidiviz has 2 jobs posted, but looking at the filters, there are apparently 3 available in NYC or SF (and no "remote" filter, despite the fact that both jobs are listed as remote, NYC, or SF).

Have you considered writing to some of these organizations and asking them if you can volunteer your time?

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