Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit | Hacker News Reader

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

nytimes.com

58 pointsrobg38 comments

I am really disappointed in the pitifully short length of sentence that the prosecution offered. Eight years seems to pale in comparison with the level corruption and outright abuse of power that they committed.

Being sent to juvenile detention can ruin your life. Those aren't nice places to be.

Sentencing guidelines being what they are, 8 years is pretty harsh. If the judges had snapped and shot one of the kids in the heart they would have gotten, statistically speaking, about ten or so.

As a normative question, I agree that we should punish the heck out of official misconduct. The possibility for damage is just so darn high. I mean, these men essentially engaged in serial kidnapping under the color of law. They need to be made an example of so the next time anyone gets a bright idea about selling their badge or gavel they go "Oh no way, not gonna do it".

Do you have a citation for that anecdote about sentencing guidelines?

How long do you think these guys would be serving if they were laundering drug money rather than money derived from jailing children?

An additional reason in favor of making the punishment for this harsher than for murder is that as I understand it it's often the case that the severity of a sentence is related to the chance of getting caught. I bet it's a lot easier to catch a murderer than a corrupt judge, so to deter the judge, we need a longer sentence. I've heard this as an explanation for why arson has such stiff sentences--most arsonists aren't caught.

This principle doesn't make any sense to me. The severity of the sentence is (or should be) proportional to the severity of the crime. In this case, the harm that a corrupt judge can cause is extremely large, and society does not tolerate this.

The reason why arson has such a stiff sentence--and indeed why arson of one's own house is illegal--is because fire has the potential to spread, killing many people and destroying many properties. If you think back to the middle ages, when the common law principles of arson arose (think wood dwellings with thatch roofs and few or no fire brigades), fire spread more rapidly and was more deadly than it is even today. As such, the punishment had to be severe.

Let's try to compare the length of the sentence to the excess prison-days he sentenced people to. The story says there were 5,000 detainees, that his sentencing rate was 2.5 times the norm, and the two particular cases described were for 3 months each. If those were typical, that's 3,000 excess detainees times 3 months, or 9,000 total, versus prosecution's offer of 87 months for the judge: two orders of magnitude greater. If the typical sentence was 10 days, then it's 'only' one order of magnitude.

This is easily the most disgusting corruption I've ever heard of being practiced in modern America. So many lives ruined for so little.

What surprises me is that everybody thinks that this is the only instance of such a thing happening.

Educated/erudite citizens know the law is rotten to the core with not one redeeming feature. That's not to say all people working in the law are rotten but a good many are damaged in one way or another.

The populous see the law as some sort of high point of civilization. Somehow vital to life. Impossible to conceive of a system of justice that does not involve in some combination the law/judiciary/enforcers/punishment.

Any suggestions for such a system?

Privately run prisons have plenty of incentives to be monstrous, and only feel-good ones to do the right thing. Unfortunately, the private prisons cat is out of the bag and over the horizon.

Maybe we could pay them based on the recidivism rate?

easy. have prisons compete for prisoners. prisoners are allowed to choose which prison to go to. a natural equilibrium of supply and demand will develop.

Yes...then the need for prison marketing teams would arise, and each prisoner would receive glossy booklets extolling the virtues of the respective prison, with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Michael Vick and Martha Stewart. The golfing retirement community meets the prison system.

Whoa! I just flashed hard on school vouchers. (Prison vouchers!?) All of the arguments I can think of in favor of the one fit perfectly on the other. Scary.

Nice concept. I now have the plotline for a wonderful dystopian movie percolating in my head.

why dystopian? this would free up billions in taxpayer dollars.

There's a clear distinction, though. Prisons are not designed for the benefit of the imprisoned. Compulsory schooling is, at least in theory, for the students' own good.

That would depend on if you believe the primary purpose of prison is punitive or rehabilitory.

'Compulsory schooling is, at least in theory, for the students' own good.'

Rubbish. Schooling is for the good of society. Schooling != Education. Nothing in school benefits the student. Everything is about preparing the student for the workforce. The main subject taught in school is obedience.

You should probably read John Gatto to get a clearer picture how and why schools came about. It most certainly was not to educate the working class.

I'm quite familiar with Gatto's thesis, and, having been through the public school system myself, I consider it self-evident. The phrase "at least in theory" was meant to communicate my skepticism of the surrounding claim; sorry if that didn't come across. I mean that most members of society believe they are acting in children's best interest by requiring them to attend school, while the primary motivation for keeping prisoners in prison is to protect the safety of others. I agree with you that practical distinction between schools and prisons is much smaller than what most people delude themselves into believing it is.

We are not over the horizon. We can and should reverse the private prison trend. Putting people in prison is a hardship on society and should be. Turning prison into economic opportunity perverts the ability of society to "feel" and fix its problems.

exactly. Some things simply can not and should not be privatized.

The prison system is one of those.

What? Guilty in Scheme? And now I realise this wasn't a Lisp article!

I should start to skim the subjects more carefully.

Why is it in our society the people in power who abuse their authority always get slapped with a smaller sentences than a regular citizen would get in the same situation?

It should be the other way around, these people should get harsher penalties, simply because they abuse the public's trust.

Because they understand and know the system and have connections. That's why. Why do you think rich people can get less harsh sentencing than poor people (unless there is a lot of media/political attention?), because they can hire lawyers.

Wow ... corruption is more insidious than I thought. I thought such corruption happened only in developing nations like mine.

I think its a problem with humans, corruption, no society is free from it.

Corruption in developed countries is just significantly more subtle.

whats the punishment for the private prison that paid the judges? may i suggest a ten minute sentence in the yard at San Quentin, should set those bastards straight.

If there ever was a crime that deserved a death sentence...

direct link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html

Glad it was revealed and not surprised at all.

that's interesting but why is it on hacker news? what has it got to do with anything hacker newsy?

Exactly, we really don't need another "Fucked up things in the American justice systems"-news site.

i would think you would want a strongly typed language for something like this

If there's a Satan, he's waiting for these judges to die with a huge hard-on.

why the hell would the judges die with a hard-on? that doesn't even make sense.

Word order fail on my part. Revise to "waiting, with a hard-on, for these judges to die."

Because if you die with a huge hard-on, you go to hell.

Downmodded for questioning His existence.

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