The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill | Hacker News Reader

The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill

economist.com

140 pointsqingu76 comments

I am an HN regular, and a forensic psychiatrist. Every day I work with mentally ill people who have been charged with crimes. I don't have much to add here except to say thanks for taking an interest.

The mentally ill and the incarcerated are two of the most deeply marginalized groups in our society. It's nice that someone outside of our world is thinking about them.

Well, I wish you would add more. You'd surely have more of value and experience to say than almost anybody here. But I hope that doesn't sound demanding--I really appreciate your comment.

I'd be happy to say more, but probably the most important thing people can do is read the article. Lack of adequate services for the mentally ill is a huge issue. In the absence of services, they often end up behaving oddly enough for someone to call the police, leading to arrest. More and more often we see families who are relieved that their loved ones are arrested just to get access to treatment.

That seems like a real shame, and often their needs are a bad fit for the correctional system. I work in a forensic hospital, and most of our patients come from jails. They often do not get very good care there. Private hospitals are largely closing their psychiatric units, because they don't make money. More and more, state or county funded hospitals and clinics are the last stop, and those (as mentioned in the article) are popular targets for defunding when the budget gets rough. It's a bad situation.

At any rate, I'll check in again in the morning if anyone else has more questions.

My aunt is in that situation. She is severely mentally ill and homeless. She was in a shelter until a few months ago, no one has heard from her since. No one else in the family can afford to get her treatment, and she wouldn't comply even if we tried - she doesn't know she's mentally ill, she thinks her delusions are reality. We would all be relieved if she landed in jail as long as it came with some treatment. She is very intelligent, though, and she is not using drugs or alcohol, so she may never get herself in enough trouble to land in jail.

Committing people to treatment against their will sounds like a bad idea just begging for abuse, but what else can we do? In what world could she actually be taken care of? I don't know the answer.

Involuntary commitment is the reality for many people. Sometimes the delusions recede enough that they recognize they are ill.

I would encourage you to look for a support group for family members. Sometimes it helps to know other people are struggling with the same issues, and see how they cope with those issues when there's not a solution.

The article implies that it's more than 5x as expensive to house the mentally ill in jail than elsewhere. Such a huge difference suggests that providing them with housing and care would more than pay for itself, so cost ought not to be an issue. I realize that's oversimplifying--for one thing, total cost to society is not the same as costs (and income!) to different institutions--but do you think it's basically correct? If so, where in your view are the obstacles really coming from: moral ideas about criminality and illness? institutional politics? for-profit industry? etc.

Look at the outrage caused to some people when we suggest that someone's life should be saved with free-at-the-point-of-delivery health care.

Now apply that to giving people adequate care in the community and see heads explode.

I know it's so hard, even in the UK people get upset 'Why does this inner city youth club get X benefit' 'Why are we sending X troubled child to X holiday camp for the summer'

'Why doesn't my child get these things?' is often the question, but the answer that these things are put in place to try and reduce future potential crime and other societal damage are not things that a lot of people want to consider - I'm spending money now to negate possible risk in the future?

I can't find the report now, but there was an interesting experiment in London. In the UK the average homeless person costs the state around £26,000 (http://homeless.org.uk/costs-homelessness#.UgTa1Y3qlNQ) or even more in London.

A charity was able to get £5000 per homeless person from a corporate donation, and offered this money directly to 100 homeless people, with the only previsions being that they did not get to handle the cash directly and that everything they spent money on helping them get off the street.

Obviously this was a self selecting group (people that wanted to leave rough sleeping), but the following year a stunning proportion of those who had taken part had been able to turn their lives around.

Should there be a buffer to help people turn their lives around and stop them costing the state money? I'm all for it, but I have no idea how we could stop abuse of the system. We could start by trialling the idea out though, with money saved by stopping people and companies avoiding paying their taxes (some £16billion lost each year in the UK: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/500000Final.pdf )

And those are not even the biggest group. Most of them will never see someone in your position and just wander the streets spend one night or another in jail, but mostly on the street.

There are several documentaries about that. It's worse in the US because of the left over from the eugenics movement, when sanatoriums were deemed unnecessary.

i'm trying to remember names but i can only recall one: skid row. When watching remember that eugenics was very strong around LA. specially in the Pasadena area.

We see those guys all the time. I'm not sure how accurate those documentaries are; the mass closing of psychiatric hospitals was primarily a product of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 (as mentioned in the article). The intent was good (get people out of poorly run institutions), but had some serious unintended consequences. Although some people could be managed in the community, most communities have not funded clinics adequately and as a consequence many mentally ill people are on the street or incarcerated.

Given that the USA system is expensive, immoral, and counterproductive, is there a system or model or whatever we should work towards.

Having done some activism, I've learned it's an easier sell what you're for vs what you're against. I'm totally onboard with improving the care of mentally ill people.

But I don't know what to ask for. If someone pointed out a bandwagon, I'd totally hop on.

Well, there's ideas like Participatory Society, but people criticize it for being too far in the "blueprint" spectrum. (http://www.zcommunications.org/topics/parecon)

Can't please everyone. :)

If that's a bit too fundamental, then consider Terry Kupers' argument in favor for rehabilitation. This situation is quite simple: instead of solving the problem through humane institutions (like childcare assistance, lifelong education, fiscal policy to reduce unemployment, drug rehab), we use the prison system. Which is not only expensive and violent, but it clearly makes the problem worse. (http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S130328)

I see many comments here about developers upset about being treated as "just a developer."

Well, if you want to be respected as more than "just a developer," you'll need to understand more about the real world. Specifically people.

If that doesn't convince you, look at it this way: healthcare is a huge, growing, and technologically behind-the-curve industry. It offers a huge market for your services. Mental healthcare needs better solutions.

Also, I have met my share of severally mentally disturbed developers. So this could be any of us we're talking about.

Agreed. I don't mean to construct a strawman here. However, it surprises me how this is not relevant. Code doesn't exist in vacuum. Ultimately, software engineering is about applying yourself to solve real world problems. Including mental health care. No one crawled out of the woodwork when 7 cups of tea announced their product. Yet the opposition for this is surprising. How does one understand and solve a problem like that unless one is aware of one's society? An interesting problem requires discovery. That requires awareness of the world.

"...taking something without paying at Wholefoods Market; but when two security guards came after her and she thought they were attacking her, she fought back. This led to a felony charge for robbery."

I'm very curious about Melissa's case now. Shoplifting ain't felony robbery, obviously, and over-aggressive security staff have been known to injure or kill people[1][2], so "thought they were attacking her" is a legitimate concern.

[1] - http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/ex-guard-convicted-sho... [2] - http://jezebel.com/5967072/woman-shot-dead-by-walmart-securi...

The article uses a woman as an example and gives her crimes as: "trespassing, prostitution, drugs, disorderly conduct, petty theft, drinking in public".

The petty theft is later discussed as theft from a supermarket, probably of some small food item.

As to the others, why should any of them be imprisonable offenses? Drinking in public? Drugs? Prostitution?

Trespassing is not breaking and entering, which is reasonable as an imprisonable offense. Shouldn't trespassing be an infraction with a modest fine?

Back to that food item she took from Whole Foods. In a fabulously wealthy nation, how is it that she has come to need to shoplift food to be able to eat. Is that not a failure of the society as a whole?

The proposed answer in the article is to have them committed by some sort of court order and place them indefinitely in a "secure nursing home" facility with an ankle bracelet. That's likely to be more costly than prison since it requires round the clock medical care, and is no better than a prison since they are locked up.

I propose a better solution. Decriminalize all of these things, leave this woman alone, and save the $719,436 it cost to imprison her for minor and non-offenses.

The article also makes the claim, "If someone decides he wants to walk around naked, or cannot give his name to a police officer, the likelihood is that he will end up in jail." If police are arresting people without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, then it is the police that are acting illegally here. You are not required to identify yourself to any police officer just because he asks, and if he asks without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (it depends on the state which one is the threshold), and you refuse to state your name, then he can not arrest you for that sole reason. If he attempts to do so, it is false arrest, and you have the right under the law, upheld by the supreme court, to use any necessary force to resist illegal arrest.

Regarding walking around naked, that is permitted or tolerated in some areas such as nude beaches. There are also issues where people ask why it is that it is legal for men to go topless, yet is criminal for women to go topless? Should not the law apply equally to both men and women? That is a reasonable question and there is no answer that justifies this discrimination that is not intrinsically sexist. Is that what we want? What is so wrong with even total nudity? There is an old man in Barcelona who is well known for going about completely naked, wearing only his tattoos, pierced foreskin and often a full erection. The police do not bother him.

http://chrisrako.blogspot.com/2007/05/naked-man-of-barcelona...

Has Spanish society collapsed as a result? Is it obvious he should be in prison as The Economist advocates as common sense?

Or consider the Jainists, many of who walk about India naked because of their religious beliefs. Are they criminals as well?

http://s781.photobucket.com/albums/yy95/phuongvien_bucket/Do...

I propose that public nudity and refusing to give your name to police when they have no cause to ask it are both fundamental rights of man and that any society which denies these rights is tyrannical and any person who denies these rights is an enemy of humanity.

You had me dangling by a thread, I was still sort of with you... then you declare that disallowing public nudity is tyranny?

My friend, overstatement is a quick & easy way to lose support.

Public nudity is mere morals. IMO nothing law should deal with. Tyranny is a strong word, but it seems unreasonable interference.

It's a tiny bit more than morals (e.g., sanitation) but either way, I'm not commenting on whether law should deal with it. I'm objecting to the use of the word 'tyranny'.

(e.g., sanitation)

Really? Is there even a single documented case of a sanitation problem caused by mere nudity?

It would be hard to document such cases, when public nudity has been restricted for thousands of years.

You should not have to stretch your imagination, however, to figure out all the possible transmission vectors.

Clean nudity is inferior to clean clothing, that's OK.

However, we allow fully clothed homeless that haven't bathed in months, or even anybody with poor personal hygiene. We allow dirty street, dirty buses and public transports, kids playing in sewers in bad area of town, hoarders and countless other documented hygiene threats.

So let's be intellectually honest and accept that nakedness is a morality issue first and foremost.

> Public nudity is mere morals.

So are laws against killing people, theft, and beating animals.

I'm always dismayed at people who think that the "good" ethical norms that they like are somehow scientific, universally agreed upon, and absolute, whereas the "bad" ethical norms that other people have are merely cultural, subjective, and contingent.

We could do worse than to require a few years of ethical theory as a precondition to graduating high school.

All those actions you stated have a consequence for some other than the primary participant.

Killing someone derives them or life, theft of a possession, beating an animal hurts the animal.

Public Nudity may not be comfortable to you but what's the consequence beyond that?

Seeing naked people in public hurts most people.

For beating animals you might be right. I don't think so, but maybe you are right. For the rest you are not.

Also you somehow see to confuse moral and ethical. Moral is "Eww, that's itchy." For example sodomy. Ethics are a reflection and systematization of the first. The latter is abstract.

There are no universal ethics. But several sound systems. Kant's Categorical imperative, several utilitarianism. Hell even Hedonism is ethics and IMO a way better than morals.

But all these have in common they do give explanations and justifications, unlike morals. Morals is just "that's nothing one should do" or "We never did that." And I can't see a ethics that would demand the criminalization of public nudity. However it is very easy to reduce to criminalization of killing and theft to a sound first principle. And IMO only these first principles are important enough to force them upon others.

>I propose that public nudity and refusing to give your name to police when they have no cause to ask it are both fundamental rights of man and that any society which denies these rights is tyrannical and any person who denies these rights is an enemy of humanity.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.... whoa. I like to think of myself as open-minded but I'm not ready for that just yet. That being said, San Francisco apparently has no punishment for being nude in public and yet I've only seen nudity in public twice in the 6 years of having a full-time job there. So maybe it should be removed from the law and most people will continue to cover-up out of personal modesty.

>I like to think of myself as open-minded but I'm not ready for that just yet

But...why? Is there any good reason, or is it just puritanism?

Oh come on, it's not like people will start walking around naked just because...

Honestly, I think if public nudity was common, no-one would care about it. When you go to the beach and see people in swimming costumes, there isn't really much left to the imagination. You can already pretty much figure out what they look like naked, but no-one cares, we're all used to it. Society just places a weird importance on nipples and genitals. But just women's nipples. Even though men's nipples kind of look the same anyway. You could take a swimsuit catalogue and cut the nipples off the men and glue them onto the women and turn it into porn.

If you think about it, we're just animals. It's really crazy that we can't just walk around in our natural state freely because we tend to feel really weird about looking at other members of our own species.

What if I've got it backwards and other animals are just as prudish? When a dog is barking at another dog, maybe he's really saying, "hey, check out this weirdo - he's naked! Get the hell out of here, you pervert!"

"swimming costumes"... are you British? :)

But yes, this apprehension of nudity is something I've always found so bizarre. Why is seeing skin of our species such a big deal? At what point of our social evolution did it evolve that way (because the idea of clothing is pretty universal to humans).

The idea of clothing isn't quite universal, but nearly so. Still, we're something of an outlier in how serious our nudity taboo is. As far as I can tell most cultures are ok with women going around topless and most think that it's ok for men and women to see each other naked when bathing, though I guess Hollywood is changing that.

If you want an idea of what the imagination can fill in when someone is in a swimming costume look up "bubbling"; the examples here will show you how it works:

http://gizmodo.com/5627807/bubbling-tricks-your-mind-to-make...

Link is technically safe for work but looks NSFW (that being the entire point of the illusion)

Public nudity has been taboo since long before we had governments and laws. Even uncontacted peoples generally cover their genitalia even if they are otherwise totally naked. Regardless of first-principles freedom-based arguments, US legislators did not create proscriptions against public nudity and they are not going to be able to eliminate them.

Homosexuality was treated similarly negatively in much of the world and much of human history, but US legislators have managed to move away from it being illegal.

Not true in the slightest. Ancient Greece and Rome all the way up untill the Holy Roman Empire had no problems with homosexuality especially when it was citizens against members of the lower classes.

Homosexuality was quite common and accepted in Europe until the widespread adoption of Christianity.

What you are talking about was pederasty, not homosexuality.

It includes pederasty but is not exclusive to it. A male citizen having sex with a male slave when both are adults was considered fine too. From my understanding it was acceptable so long as it was a citizen with anyone of lower class.

> "If police are arresting people without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, then it is the police that are acting illegally here. You are not required to identify yourself to any police officer just because he asks, and if he asks without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (it depends on the state which one is the threshold), and you refuse to state your name, then he can not arrest you for that sole reason. If he attempts to do so, it is false arrest, and you have the right under the law, upheld by the supreme court, to use any necessary force to resist illegal arrest.

What constitutes whether a police officer has the right to "stop and identify" someone varies quite widely from state to state[1]. Before attempting to do so, it's a good idea to know the explicit details for the current state one is residing.

Some states actually have claims that you must identify yourself when stopped if the police officer asks. Failure to do so can lead to arrest under laws of the state:

"Five states’ laws (Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, and Ohio) explicitly impose an obligation to provide identifying information."

"Seven states (Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio, and Vermont) explicitly impose a criminal penalty for noncompliance with the obligation to identify oneself."

"In five states (Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island), failure to identify oneself is one factor to be considered in a decision to arrest. In all but Rhode Island, the consideration arises in the context of loitering or prowling."

"Virginia makes it a nonjailable misdemeanor to refuse to identify oneself to a conservator of the peace when one is at the scene of a breach of the peace witnessed by that conservator."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#Obli...

> Some states actually have claims that you must identify yourself when stopped if the police officer asks. Failure to do so can lead to arrest under laws of the state:

This is false. You are misstating or misreading the article. You only must identify yourself (this does not mean you have to carry ID) if you are under a Terry stop and are in a state which has specifically enacted legislation requiring identification during a Terry stop. A Terry stop requires reasonable suspicion a crime has been committed. This is why I specifically and carefully said "you are not required to identify yourself to any police officer just because he asks, and if he asks without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (it depends on the state which one is the threshold), and you refuse to state your name, then he can not arrest you for that sole reason." In states with stop and identify laws that allow for it, he can require you identify yourself given reasonable suspicion of a crime. In other states, he needs probable cause.

The model for mental health care shifted from institutions to community based care. The problem is that folks who won't say on medication disrupt and deny everyone from accessing public resources.

A crazy naked homeless man taking a shit in the middle of a public library is a problem. Yet in our society, it is often difficult to remove these sorts of folks.

These are difficult problems without easy solutions. We moved away from institutionalizing people because it was cruel and ineffective. But we're left with hard cases who are difficult to deal with.

because it was cruel and ineffective

As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working out for ya?"

It was a classic case of people wanting to be litigious or do-gooders and making the situation much worse than it already was rather than accepting the best option that was available.

From what I know of the time, it wasn't just an imperfect system, it was an imperfect system with rampant opportunities for abuse.

Have you ever read about the Magdalene Asylums?

To my knowledge it wasn't the less-than-perfect parts of institutionalization that caused us to get rid of them, it was the abuse of aspects of those systems that caused us to abandon them, and thus it is the abuse of those systems to which we should probably compare our current solution.

One possible missed opportunity of course- institutionalization has been marked, and may never be seriously considered again. Yet it's possible with sufficient oversight it could be a useful system.

> The problem is that folks who won't say on medication disrupt and deny everyone from accessing public resources.

The problem is that the move to community based care was a move to say individuals have to do the work themselves and should expect no help from the community. If we were serious about better outcomes for people with mental disabilities, health and domestic care would be free for those that use those services.

That's likely to be more costly than prison since it requires round the clock medical care, and is no better than a prison since they are locked up.

Some people need round the clock medical care. Making the problem go away by just legalizing everything, including petty theft, is a silly solution.

> There are also issues where people ask why it is that it is legal for men to go topless, yet is criminal for women to go topless? Should not the law apply equally to both men and women? That is a reasonable question and there is no answer that justifies this discrimination that is not intrinsically sexist.

Here in New York City, both men and women are permitted to go topless.

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France

> In a fabulously wealthy nation, how is it that she has come to need to shoplift food to be able to eat.

She is crazy. A sane poor American can get food from any number of government programs, private charities, begging, or working a couple of hours a day at nearly any job.

Regarding the food item from Whole Foods, I doubt that she needed to shoplift in order to eat. Even if she did, there are certainly cheaper and more accessible places to shoplift than Whole Foods. This is not Bourbon Restoration France.

In my experience, when a crazy person gets the urge to take someone else's thing, then that person is not thinking, "Oh, it's theirs, hands off." The crazy person is just acting out the urges, and the lady was genuinely surprised that the police officers would have a problem with what she was doing.

I don't think the article was proposing ankle bracelets for everyone. That was just one solution that worked for some of Mr. Dart's patients. Incidentally, how messed up is it, that the sheriff is in charge of creating a decent home for the mentally ill in his district.

Those of us who deal with the marginally criminally insane, know that the system is just not set up to handle them. These people need adult supervision, and the social service just throws them into the street, to be arrested and put in jail every time.

Interesting post.

I'm not fond of declaring her mentally ill based on the offenses she has committed. Clearly, she isn't living an ordinary life, but plenty of ordinary people have used drugs, drank alcohol, trespassed and stole during the course of their lives. Prostitution might be a different case, but prostitution ultimately also is a choice. I can even imagine her shoplifting because she wasn't able to obtain the necessary money through different means: nobody would hire her, and whenever she prostitutes she gets arrested. Also, it appears that she doesn't rip out her veins when she isn't incarcerated - otherwise she would be dead by now. Furthermore it is not uncommon for "normal" people who get arrested to be put on suicide watch. The tendency for self affliction perhaps isn't so uncommon for the imprisoned.

I think that if the government would stop disturbing her in her daily life, a Pareto optimum would be reached. Naturally we have the moral obligation to kindly offer help with her problems - rehab, etc. - but shouldn't have the right to force her into anything as long as she isn't a menace to society.

What I'm trying to say is that the system now is turning her into a menace to society. Stop it!

Some people engage in self-destructive behaviour because their early life was destroyed by abuse. These behaviours can be things like taking drugs, risky sex, self-harm, and so on. Obviously not everyone doing these things has had awful experiences in early life.

For these people it's not acceptable to just let them get on with it. They're not happy, they're not fulfilling their potential, they are not well.

This is why I stopped voting for any politicians years ago. It's just enabling.

I was on vacation last week, went to the Puget Sound area in Washington. Downtown Seattle has the usual homeless people wandering around like most cities in the U.S.. We went to Victoria BC in Canada one afternoon. No homeless beggars threatening the pedestrians. Crazy Canadians and their healthcare system, getting the mentally ill off the streets.

So you're comparing a major US city of 3.4M people (greater Seattle area) to a small Canadian city of 344K (greater Victoria area)?

I've lived in several major Canadian cities during my lifetime and the homeless problem is huge, particularly in Vancouver. Universal healthcare doesn't do much if the person refuses treatment.

"SINCE 1994 Tracey Aldridge has been arrested 100 times, jailed 27 times for more than 1,000 days and spent a total of eight years in prison."

The math does not add up. There were not 27000 days since 1994. Did I misinterpret something?

I assume that means 1000 days total, not 1000 days per incarceration.

1000 days over 27 intervals

Usually sentences of less than one year are served in city or county jails. Beyond one year, you go to prison.

The article doesn't mention the diagnosis of "Personality disorder". This is a difficult and controversial diagnosis, but it's important for this kind of article.

We'll hear about people who don't take their meds (this thread has such comments) but these people aren't the main problem. People with a probable diagnosis of PD are the problem.

Some numbers from the mostly rural UK county of Gloucestershire:

Population is roughly 800,000 people. There are about 4,500 people on the books of specialist MH services at any time. There are about 2,000 people with a probably psychotic illness. There are about 2,500 people with a probably mood disorder. There are between 20,000 and 30,000 people with a probable personality disorder.

Looking at the psychotic and mood disorders, and putting it very simply, you hospitalise for a short time while you stabilise the illness and sort out the meds. Then you release the patient back to the community with intense support from community workers (daily, weekly, monthly visits). You give an easy route back into services when these people need it. You also provide vocational support - help people back into work and to integrate back into society.

Now look at what happens to people with a personality disorder. There's no real treatment. This used to mean they were specifically excluded from treatment - turned away from specialist MH services. That doesn't happen anymore, but there's not much that can be done. And behaviours are often much closer to "bad" than "mad", and so criminal justice is involved a lot more than MH services.

Here's a harrowing Grauniad article (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/mar/30/prisonsandpro...) (contains description of self harm and suicidal behaviour)

> On the day Diane Kent set herself on fire in her cell at Low Newton prison, County Durham, two months ago, she had already tried to hang herself twice and asked a prison officer to take away her lighter because she was scared of harming herself. According to incomplete prison records, her request was refused.

This woman's burns were so severe she was kept in a medically induced coma for 5 weeks.

Women who attempt suicide by arson are sometimes put in prison (http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8389188.Woman_locked_up_for...) for endangering life.

Here's another example, again traumatic reading. (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/feb/03/prisonsandpro...)

And this is in the UK where we have much better services than the US. God only knows what it's like over there.

How about all reporting of sentences including a) the cost of the trial, and b) the cost of the sentence?

Great example of something that does not belong here. A social political issue with absolutely zero to do with tech or hacker news! Why is this getting upvotes?

As heartwrenching and important as the issue is, yeah, kill it.

We need more articles about people winning the VC lottery and less about the wider suffering in society....

Social issues are issues which affect society. It doesn't concern you that there are people who haven't received treatment for their mental health problems making them a danger to themselves and society? It doesn't concern you that money is being wasted while cumulatively cheaper and more efficient solutions exist? What sort of hacker are you if you aren't seeking out more efficient solutions to existing problems?

It concerns me. This discussion should not be on hacker news. These opinions are not mutually exclusive. Flagged the story.

> This discussion should not be on hacker news.

Ok. I'll bite. Where should it be? What site provides deep discourse into these topics in an intelligent manner?

If the person you're replying to is going to flag it based that vague criteria, they might as well flag much of the front page. One should start finding better articles and submitting them if they believe HN is lacking what they perceive it to be proper content.

I will vote something up is based on the quality of the article (whether it's technical news or not), if it has not already been submitted recently and if the article will lead to an informative/intellectual discussion. If it only has one of those criteria, then I'm less likely to upvote it when there's other articles that meet two or all three criteria.

For the record, I (the commenter you're referring to) do flag a lot of what's on the front page. In the vein of introspective disclosure, I recently found myself flagging an article PG submitted and other that tptacek did, so it's likely I am missing some of the nuance in the guidelines.

I can't say I contribute much to the site in the way of links though. Usually, by the time I find something I think would be valuable here it's already fallen off the top end of the new page and doesn't get much discussion. Either I don't have the infrastructure in place to find stuff interesting enough to submit, or thus far have just had some unlucky timing. Honestly though, you're right. I just don't submit very much.

Thanks for your reply. I agree there's quite a few things that I would flag myself if I could (I coincidentally lost the ability from flagging too many in a short amount of time). I would ask for it back, but I am afraid I would lose it again and honestly, it ate up a lot of time I could use for something else. In lieu of that, I just try to upvote new content more that has substance.

In terms of actual content: um, The Economist. I don't think Hacker News is a particularly more valuable bellwhether of 'valuable content' for non startup/tech-related stuff than the publishers themselves (I'd say NYT, The New Yorker, and The Economist have a much better signal-to-noise for general things.)

In terms of 'deep discourse': honestly, the level of discourse in HN comments on things that are outside the traditional purview of the site is not particularly deep. I've found that if you want deep discourse about a topic X, you should seek out areas where there are many people very knowledgable about X.

plastic.com used to be a good place for such, though I fear it may be running out of users.

> What sort of hacker are you if you aren't seeking out more efficient solutions to existing problems?

Well right now the top story is how blink has been removed from Firefox, so...

I am happy to see this sort of story on HN mostly for the potential discussion amongst such a broad variety of (generally) very intelligent people.

Given that it's accurately described in the headline, it's easy to avoid for anyone not interested in the discussion.

I believe you're wrong here. HN is not just about tech. It has always had room for substantive articles about anything interesting. Is this article substantive? I'd say it's surprisingly so, for such a short piece. It contains a mix of anecdote, data, and history. I learned three or four things I didn't know, and I've read occasional stuff on this issue in the past.

The graph alone is worth the visit.

Economist is also a quality news source. I'd rather have articles from the Economist make the front page over sensationalist/uninformed tech articles from The Register or similar sites that lack substance.

A wider variety of topics also occasionally spurs an HN denizen to start implementing a solution, even a startup around the 'non-hacker' stuff.

From the official FAQ [1]

>What to Submit

>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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