Comment by clarky07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clarky07 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one here not seeing this as propaganda with nicely worded articles masking a lot of the reality here? Some of them seem a little unreasonable I'll agree, but lets go through a few of these:

"taking a wallet from a hotel room" - we blame it on the court appointed lawyer. He's already been convicted and sent to jail twice for burglary and he continues to break into other peoples places and steal their stuff. Poor guy just took a wallet from those rich vacationing golfers. Screw that. If I was there I'd be scared to death. How many times do we let him keep doing this. Stop doing it stupid.

"stealing tools from a tool shed" - oh he was just riding along. sure he was. already been convicted multiple times for burglary. The fact that he desperately misses his children does not make him less guilty of continuing to break into other peoples places and taking their things. Stop doing that stupid.

"borrowing a co-workers truck" - i think there is clearly more to this story. generally speaking, people don't normally drive other people's trucks 3 states away without letting them know. If it really was harmless, i'd expect the other guy to not press charges or testify on his behalf. Hey guys, it was just a misunderstanding I thought someone else took it. Also, "inadvertently killing someone" is a really nice way of saying he beat the shit out of someone in a fight and the guy died.

Perhaps some of these don't deserve life, but I don't really have that much of a problem with it. Maybe we could lower it to 20-30 years, but I have no problems with escalating penalties. If you are a productive member of society this isn't a problem. These mini-articles are all worded as if these people didn't do anything wrong and just made a tiny mistake this one time and now they are in prison forever. Not the case. Most of them made pretty big mistakes, and they made them repeatedly.

Incredible.

Please, please take a step back and read what you wrote. Now, for each of those instances you described, please assume this is your uncle, brother, cousin etc? Do you still feel the same?

No one is saying these people did nothing wrong. The main issue is that the punishment does not fit the crime. That's it. Simple.

Where do we draw the line? Obviously for you the line is ok where it is at. But, frankly, all these cases, I have an intuitive sense that the punishment does not fit the crime. There are many people, I would assume that also have this intuitive sense.

Why is this? I would make a guess that when I see someone like Martha Stewart getting less than a year in prison for securities fraud and someone "taking a wallet from a hotel room" getting life, well, it just doesn't jive right. Obviously this is just one example. The unevenness of it makes it wrong.

you clearly don't know me at all. I have a cousin that has stolen large sums of money from and threatened bodily harm to my grandma along with several other convictions that i'd like to stay in prison for a long time. I've got an uncle that I have similar feelings for.

Also, you should re-read what I wrote. I also said that perhaps these don't deserve life, but "a long time" does seem reasonable.

Finally, how is securities fraud worse than breaking and entering? How is securities fraud worse than "inadvertently killing someone?" Really? Yes yes, I know we hate the 1%. Terrible rich people. Insider trading is not worse than breaking and entering or killing someone. Come on now.

Breaking and entering: $1000's of damage, per instance. Insider trading: $100,000's of damage, per instance. Enforcement level of insider trading is also low, so a person can commit many more times the crime of insider trading before they're caught.

Breaking and entering - very traumatic to someone.

insider trading - traumatic to no one. I'm not sure what these "damages" you speak of are. Someone wanted to buy or sell stock, and an insider bought or sold it. Sure, they have more information, but someone always has more or different information. carl icahn and warren buffett have more information than me about a lot of things. yet we trade on the same market everyday. many economists argue that it should be legal, and it is a victimless crime. "Other critics argue that insider trading is a victimless act: a willing buyer and a willing seller agree to trade property which the seller rightfully owns, with no prior contract (according to this view) having been made between the parties to refrain from trading if there is asymmetric information. The Atlantic has described the process as "arguably the closest thing that modern finance has to a victimless crime""[1]

i can't imagine how someone can suggest that insider trading is a worse crime than breaking and entering.

also, FWIW, if you want to get mad at insider trading, don't get mad at martha stewart. She went to jail for it. Get mad at the fact that it is completely legal for politicians to insider trade. I mean WTF. They get non-public important information on a regular basis and for whatever bizarre reason we decided that they can trade on it but nobody else can. WTF?

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments_for_l...

"insider trading -traumatic to no one."

When the whole Enron thing went down a few years back, my flatmate at the time lost her job, as an accountant in the UK as a result of that.

Losing a job is traumatic. Enron though, wasn't about insider trading. Yes several of the guys at the top were charged with insider trading, but they were also charged with fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, bank fraud, making false statements to banks and auditors, securities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, among other crimes. Insider trading, not the thing that caused trauma, and in fact I believe most of them were actually acquitted on the insider trading charges. And, fwiw, the guys found guilty of these things did end up with significant prison terms for the trauma they caused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

So despite listing all the extreme damage they did, you still think it is reasonable that they got "significant" prison terms and the guy who stole a wallet gets life?

Why does everyone keep minimizing this to stole a wallet? He did more than steal a wallet, and he did it repeatedly.

Finally, I've also said that life might be excessive, but significant jail time is reasonable.

It is still fairly naive to think that it is traumatic to no one.

You just suggested that Enron was insider trading so I don't think you have a great handle on what insider trading is. It is not traumatic for someone to enter into a stock trade that they are planning to make. The fact that the person on the other end might know more than you is a fact of life for every stock trade ever made. There are prominent economists that think we should let people insider trade. It is a victimless crime.

Just because the damage is spread out to thousands of people doesn't mean it's a victimless crime. I'm trade stocks and I'm a victim, too. The damage to the share market's reputation may scare off some people, they will lose an avenue for investing their savings, as a result suffer a reduction on the return of their capital over their lifetime, with a significant chance of relying on the society for their retirement, because they were put off from investing, causing an increased drain on society's resources as well as a permanent reduction in their self esteem due to their lack of self reliance. In terms of damage to people's emotional state I still think insider trading is more insidious than breaking and entering. My home has been broken and entered into twice but I'm still more angry when insiders traded off private information in a company I invested in.

You are right, I do not know you.

Anyways, let's agree to disagree on this.

ah quick edit there. I'll leave my response below. We can agree to disagree, but let me make a few more points first :-) I'll be civil I promise.

He didn't get life for stealing the truck. he got life for stealing the truck in addition to the 2 other convictions. It's also not "any severity," but felony level severity. You can argue that the line in the sand has been drawn in the wrong place, but the line in the sand is for bad offenses. Stealing a chocolate bar is not a felony, it is a misdemeanor (pretty much everywhere as far as I can tell. Generally speaking, shoplifting is not a felony until is it several hundred dollars worth, usually $500).[1]

You can argue that the "felony" label is too broadly applied to things that aren't "that bad." You can argue that life is too harsh of a punishment. Those are reasonable arguments. But in general, felonies are "severe" and not comparable to speeding tickets or chocolate bars.

>Realistically if the first two strikes were horrendous the person would already be put in jail for life and a long time. There would be no opportunity for a third strike. By your logic, the courts got it wrong the first two times and now they are getting it right with the life sentence.

I'd say it's more along the lines of we'll give you a couple chances, but only a couple. 1, go to jail for awhile and think about what you've done. 2, I told you not to do that and you kept doing it anyways think about it longer. 3. Dude, seriously. We warned you, and now we've had enough.

Some felonies on their own are in fact worthy of life. Murder someone and you generally get life. They idea behind 3 strikes is that on their own maybe they aren't worth that long of a sentence, but they are bad and we gave you several chances.

>Also, I am sorry, personally for me 20-30 years in jail is as good as life.

perhaps. how about 10-15? I have no idea what the "right" amount of time for any crime is. All I'm suggesting is that it isn't that unreasonable to have that time scale for people who repeatedly prove that they aren't being productive members of society.

[1] - http://examples.yourdictionary.com/what-are-examples-of-felo...

You may find it interesting that there's a guy in California who died in prison under the three strikes law for attempting to steal a candy bar, because a petty theft can be prosecuted as a felony for people with previous thefts. Another guy, who was never arrested for theft or violence of any kind, has been in prison for 20 years and will likely remain there for life after getting arrested with 13 sheets of LSD. The cost of keeping someone in prison can be over $100,000 a year. Regardless of the seriousness of the crimes committed by the people presented in the ACLU link (and I don't disagree with you that they are not trivial), the fact remains that we have the most overzealous criminal system in the world.

also, fwiw I probably agree with you that the line on felony should be moved in some cases, specifically related to drug offenses. I do think that many of the things in the article should very much be felonies. specifically the breaking and entering and the "inadvertent killing" seem reasonable.

Serial theft is a tricky issue.

Imagine someone pricking you with a pin. And doing it repeatedly. For years. The crime is tiny, but you'd anyway want him to stop permanently.

So the question is what do we do with people who commit small crimes as a lifestyle, and have proven repeatedly in practice that our rehabilitation doesn't work on them? On one hand, harsh punishment doesn't fit the crime, but on the other hand, allowing to continue to offend all the time (we locally had an underaged teenager that was caught stealing 20+ times in less than a year, but was always released because the legislation doesn't expect imprisonment in such cases) is stupid as well, since it hurts victims.

What should we do with such people? I've no idea. Exile from society seems somehow appropriate, but we can't do that.

> So the question is what do we do with people who commit small crimes as a lifestyle, and have proven repeatedly in practice that our rehabilitation doesn't work on them?

Do you think the US system offers sufficient rehabilitation mechanisms to make the case that rehabilitation doesn't work?

Personally, I don't. To European eyes, it looks revenge-heavy, and rehabilitation-light.

> The main issue is that the punishment does not fit the crime.

The punishment certainly does not fit the description of the crimes given. But what were "the crime[s]", and how accurately have they been represented in the descriptions given in this article?

It seems to me that the article has been written to be lenient with the truth, so I think it's acceptable to question the truth about the crimes represented here.

We should have more information about these specific crimes before judging these specific cases.

There's a principle in justice: A punishment fitting the crime.

As the document points out, people who raped or murdered, sometimes more than once, can leave prison after 5-15 years, depending on behavior. Meanwhile those people listed will never be able to leave, even if they spend 50 years with impeccable and absolitely perfect behavior.

Can I ask where the document states that? Ctrl-F doesn't seem to find the word rape and says nothing about 5-15 years. That being said, I am not for anyone convicted of rape or murder being let out after 5-15 years. Being ok with someone convicted repeatedly of things being sentenced to long terms does not mean I want short terms for even more serious crimes. Feel free to argue for longer terms for rape and murder. Unlikely to find too much dissension. This article on the other hand is for shorter terms for different crimes. The two things don't REALLY have anything to do with one another.

Crimes. Plural, not singular. Three strikes laws exist for a reason.

Does stealing a wallet justify sitting in jail for life? No.

Does getting caught committing your third burglary? Well, that's a much more interesting question and everyone is obviously entitled to their own opinions. But no one is entitled to completely twist the facts and then demand everyone agree with them or feel sorry for their own positions on it.

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