Hacker News Reader

Comment by GiorgioG | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it, what point(s) is this article trying to make. It seems to be all over the place.

This captures a real person's experience going through a challenging time. Real life is messy, and long form writing in a documentary style doesn't need to make a point so long as it leaves you with an impression.

What I took from it was her points toward the end about how the re-entry process needs to be vastly improved.

On one hand I empathize, on the other hand - she made the poor choices that wound up getting herself incarcerated. There are long-lasting consequences to their actions. When society has to choose between spending a dollar on re-entry or spending it on other more (perceived) worthwhile causes - we know how that goes. Before you all get mad at me for saying that, we don't live in a fantasy world with infinite resources that can do X and also do Y.

You'll have to forgive me for not believing that you empathize, since most of your thoughts here are about rationalizing why there's nothing be to done.

There are other ways of thinking about this problem than as a zero-sum matter of where to allocate tax dollars.

I don’t really give a shit whether you think I’m sincere or not. Lots of people are in shitty situations of their own doing, or not of their own doing - I can emphasize with them and still prefer not to prioritize tax dollars on their situation over others that benefits society more in my opinion.

Fine, you're sincere. But you didn't actually read my comment.

she made poor choices but 8 years for assault where no one was permanently injured seems excessive. She served a year before an appeal had her out, before it was reversed and she went back for another 8 years, I'd call that excessive and as the article entails, really serves no one's best interest, not her daughters, not societies and not the victims.

That's not even budgeting back the costs associated with housing and caring for this person in prison nor the time and energy that's going to go back into reintegrating this person into society.

> we don't live in a fantasy world with infinite resources that can do X and also do Y.

Right, for instance in this world, we have to choose between, say, Jeff Bezos renting Venice for the weekend and school lunches for kids, or Elon Musk buying a presidency or programs to reduce prison recidivism. It’s a tough problem, and we’ve all gotta make sacrifices and make do.

I read it as a human interest story. I would have liked more citations but it's a magazine article not a research paper so that is not a reasonable expectation.

I think the goal is to understand someone else’s situation

I suppose it's pointless nonsense unless it's "optimized" for maximum information density?

You do know that there's this thing called a human interest story, and part of its point is to capture something of a narrative for its own sake yes? Stories like this cane make for very interesting reading. They don't have to include technology and hacks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com