The American Police State | Hacker News Reader

The American Police State

chronicle.com

271 pointsdanso182 comments

> Men like him lived a paradox. The penal system was supposed to shape them up. But its tentacles had become so invasive that the opposite happened. Goffman argues that the system encourages young men to act shady—"I got to move like a shadow," one of Mike's friends told her—because a stable public routine could land them back behind bars.

> Take work. Once, after Mike was released on parole to a halfway house, he found employment at a Taco Bell. But he soon grew fed up with his crowded house and decided to sleep at his girlfriend's. That resulted in a parole violation. When Mike went back to the Taco Bell to pick up his paycheck, two parole officers arrested him. He had to spend another year upstate.

This passage described a poor black man in Philadelphia -- the tip of the iceberg in the story. Today I happened to read about Toronto's mayor and couldn't help compare the two.

Toronto's mayor is on video smoking crack, is drunk and disorderly in public, shoves (assaults?) a grandmother, more, and isn't even removed from office, let alone arrested.

How can anyone have faith in such a system with such gross inequalities? The differences in cities and countries pale in comparison to the differences in treatment between the two people.

EDIT: a couple comments point out the differences between the U.S. and Canada police forces. Fair enough, but as different as Toronto and Philadelphia may be and as different as Canada and the U.S. may be, I can't imagine those differences are lost on the men jailed for smaller infractions, asking "What does it take for a rich, white guy to have to go to jail? ... Why should I bother trying to stay out if nothing I can do can keep me out?" I'm sure we could just look at police on Philadelphia's Main Line, maybe ten minutes away, to find similar effects to avoid the U.S./Canada comparison.

I've noticed many airports have HSBC plastered all over the walls. This has been amusing to me after it came out that HSBC runs the world's largest money laundering operation for drug cartels. It's surreal thinking about how TSA and customs will put away recreational drug users for life but the bank that funds the largest drug cartels operates out in the open. Our system is broken at every level.

(For those interested in more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Money_laundering)

Never mind the fundamental fact that if your fine was less than the profit you gained from your illegal activity, you can just write it off as a business expense. Fines have to be punitive or they will have no effect; it's simple math.

I am always in constant bewilderment at how galling some of these corporate crimes are.

How does one even go about planning these?

Do the chief executives [1] [2] sit with the board members and discuss the tradeoffs of turning a blind eye to some hanky-panky stuff going on in Mexico? [3]

I know that they have legal counsels and all. But do they really sit down and weigh the legal ramifications and discuss who shall be thrown under the bus, if things should flare up?

Whether its a Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial [4] or a Maurice R. Greenberg[5] of AIG or even a Calisto Tanzi of Parmalat [6] [7]; do these people even have a good pulse of the prosecution climate of a given administration, the likelihood of getting caught and the possible fines and sentences before they choose to set these financially murky things in motion?

Or are they more like hot-shot, fledgling politicians [8] who think they are invincible and can never possibly get caught, in a scandal?

If anything, the public has come to be struck in awe of these people and their mettle, rather than find their actions, reprobatory.

The slap on the wrist fines and sentences ( if any at all ) that major executives and their houses have received, only reaffirms the notion that one -above all other skills and qualifications - has to be a skilled manipulator of fact, circumstance and public opinion, to head a large and highly profitable enterprise, these days.

After all the cake and watermelon, I am loath to admit that deviousness and calculated deceit has become sexy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Geoghegan

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Gulliver

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-16/hsbc-aided-money-la...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_R._Greenberg#Legal_issu...

[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmalat_bankruptcy_timeline

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmalat#Financial_fraud_.28200...

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards#Indictment_and_tri...

Edit: Citations

> I know that they have legal counsels and all. But do they really sit down and weigh the legal ramifications and discuss who shall be thrown under the bus, if things should flare up?

I come from a country where this used to be fairly widespread (I don't know if it is anymore; I imagine it is). Owing to my hatred (and no, I'm not using the wrong word; few things give me a more unpleasant, visceral sensation) for large organization and business crap, I wasn't involved in any stuff like this, but I know people who were.

Your supposition is in fact correct: yes, people actually sit and discuss which is actually more profitable and what they can do in order to make sure they don't get caught, either.

It's not usually a board decision, because a large board tends to spread its efforts far wider and, as you involve more people, the danger of news spreading (even for personal image gain) increases. It's usually something driven by two or three of the more important figures, who make sure (via bullshit, oh, sorry, I mean politics) that the rest of the board follows along -- not for free of course.

Things aren't ever written and are cleverly disguised under various contracts that are otherwise legal.

Obviously, this implies that the legislation lays the proper ground for this. Consequently, most of these things are usually done with political support from within the legislative unit.

One day, some forty-fifty years from now people will look back at this age and label it no differently than we now label the age of the robber barons. [1]

Far more importantly than that, they will observe that this was the onset period of a new era of disenfranchisement - somewhat like and some what unlike the eras before - where the individual's capacity to preserve his or her rights and privileges is far outmatched by the corporation's ability to do the same.

It is just so gosh darn enticing to form a corporation of some kind and reap the benefits that such a shelter offers. I don't know how you would form one, if you were, by profession, a X-ray technician or if all you did was make bee wax or farmed Tilapia. It wouldn't be large enough to offer you the legislative perks that a larger outfit would be able to lobby for. However, it sure as heck would be better than going it alone as a private citizen.

The things one - yes you and I, included - could get away with as a corporation that we couldn't as individuals, boggles the mind.

The sheer number of things you could skirt, is nothing short of astounding.

Tax-dodging is the juiciest aspect, of course.

Even blogs do it.

Blogs! Yes, blogs!!

Gawker is organized like an international money-laundering operation. Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where Denton’s mother hails from, and where some of the firm’s techies are located. But that is only part of it. Recently, Salmon reports, the various Gawker operations—Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, Gawker Sales LLC—have been restructured to bring them under control of a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, Gawker Media Group Inc.

Why would a relatively small media outfit based in Soho choose to incorporate itself in a Caribbean locale long favored by insider dealers, drug cartels, hedge funds, and other entities with lots of cash they don’t want to advertise? The question virtually answers itself, but for those unversed in the intricacies of international tax avoidance Salmon spells it out: “The result is a company where 130 U.S. employees eat up the lion’s share of the the U.S. revenues, resulting in little if any taxable income, while the international income, the franchise value of the brands, and the value of the technology all stays permanently overseas, untouched by the I.R.S.”[2]

I hope its sooner than forty-fifty years time that we could look back and observe in horror and exclaim at how all this was allowed so flagrantly for so long.

But that would be wishful thinking. Wouldn't it?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)#Li...

[2] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2010/12/ga...

> One day, some forty-fifty years from now people will look back at this age and label it no differently than we now label the age of the robber barons. [1]

I suspect the same.

> But do they really sit down and weigh the legal ramifications and discuss who shall be thrown under the bus, if things should flare up?

I would think they'd avoid putting down anything on paper for fear that it would be discoverable (in a legal sense) if/when the SHTF.

My point precisely.

It sure is a lot of stuff to keep unentangled in your head without ever so much as jotting it down in your daily planner for fear that it might someday be deemed admissible in court.

I wonder what kind of apps they'd trust to transmit or store information on their iPhones and iPads.

Speaking of technology that executives see fit to use, here's the billionaire owner of Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, pictured using a flip phone:

https://twitter.com/CorkGaines/status/386673573210750976/pho...

Makes me think of all the popular media about the mob where a major plot point is getting hold of the "books" (in which the money from all the dirty business dealings is tallied up).

Eh, I use a flip phone, too. My car is a '72 Dodge. Guess I like the classics :-)

Fines aren't a tax deduction.

I didn't mean "business expense write-off" in that sense, I meant "as a cost of doing business".

I'd like to hear more about this. Imagine that I, a sole proprietor, take in $10 million in a year, with deductible expenses of $1 million (if the numbers are rosy, well, it's my scenario ;) ). Imagine that I get hit with a fine of $8.5 million. How am I supposed to pay taxes on my $9 million of income with my $500K cash? Taxes get paid quarterly, so imagine I've already paid them when I get hit with the fine. Will the fine be discharged in my inevitable bankruptcy? Do the courts have to stand in line with my other creditors?

I don't think the fine would apply instantaneously. Also, the money you give back (the not punitive part) is clearly not income, so why would you pay taxes on it?

More like you have to return 6 million you didn't earn. Your profits are now 3 million. You owe taxes on 3 million, and the remaining 2.5 million fine comes out of what's left.

If I owe taxes on $3 million, and I also owe a $2.5 million dollar fine, then I owe a lot more than $3 million total. The fine can't "come out of what's left"; it's bigger than the amount that's left.

>>How can anyone have faith in such a system with such gross inequalities?

The system is working as designed and as intended.

I think people need to rid themselves of this romantic notion that the government serves "the people" and cops in particular are supposed to protect the innocent. Both of them are ridiculously childish beliefs. The reality is much harsher. Adam Smith laid it out more than two centuries ago in his book Wealth of Nations:

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

> I think people need to rid themselves of this romantic notion that the government serves "the people" and cops in particular are supposed to protect the innocent. Both of them are ridiculously childish beliefs. The reality is much harsher.

That may be so. But if we don't stick to these ideals and try to enforce them again, and again, and again we'll end up for sure in a much worse situation.

What ideals? The institutions' roles? The government's structure and architecture? The people working for the government? The policies being passed?

The ideals you reference are vague. Do you mean Democracy? Surely you don't think hierarchical/technocratic institutions legitimized in the use of force is a necessary arm of Democracy or Liberty?

The idea that any of these institutions commit any morals good is hilarious. There are people, and there is power. Some people commit acts of moral good with power (Some Police, Most Firefighters, Most Medics, Some Teachers, Some Doctors, Some Lawyers, etc..) but many abuse that power to dangerous levels.

But sure. Let's assume the people at the absolute top fight for our interests. I would much rather have a discussion on power/authority, and what the absolute minimum is we need to function.

> What ideals? The institutions' roles?

Yes, the Institutions' roles.

> Do you mean Democracy? Surely you don't think hierarchical/technocratic institutions legitimized in the use of force is a necessary arm of Democracy or Liberty?

Are you referring to the US democracy or the democracy I have in my european country ? What are you really talking about ?

> [..] But sure. Let's assume the people at the absolute top fight for our interests.

Not what I said. Don't make it look like I mistake people who abuse ideals for those ideals, thank you.

edit: Do you really think life was so much better before humans came up with some institutions to rule themselves ? The outback isn't that far.

PS: of course ideals are vague. We aren't some machines that would just need the right code to run as an "ideal" society.

Ultimately, the whole thing comes down to trust.

My point was that power corrupts, and that centralizing that power will only serve to expediate the process.

That said, if you trust your government, then the whole thing is awesome. Central planning leads to tough decisions being made to benefit the collective as a whole.

The problem with this is that I see this collective force being used to subvert the populace putting it's time/money into it. I know you're probably coming from a different perspective, but I'm talking about Western Politics in general.

I understand the goal of trying to make government work, but I just can't see people having any effect on the government's decisions in Britain and the US at present time.

Again, I'm mostly speaking in economical terms. The people do get social progress from time to time with protest and reform. But all economic policy since the labour uprisings of the 20's/30's/40's, the upper most classes have been tearing down all of what our (again general Western politics) ancestors fought for.

Ah, I now understand your outlook on these matters a bit clearer. I do agree with all your points, our governments are failing and betraying us.

Frankly, it would take me thousands of words to express my opinion on the subject but in the end it would just amounts to "I don't know if it can be fixed or if humane nature will prevent us forever to live together".

The absolute minimum we need to function is less than the achievable minimum. A power vacuum will always be filled.

Engineers tend to overestimate the impact of "intentions" on "systems" as big and complex as societies and economies. I doubt that the results the US is seeing were indeed foreseen and designed by anyone.

And I would like to add that civil governments also protect the poor from the rich. Just look at undemocratic systems to see who needs protection from whom.

> Engineers tend to overestimate the impact of "intentions" on "systems"

Everyone does. The comfort of the loonier conspiracy theories is that someone, somewhere, however evil, has a plan and is in control. And you can blame 'them' and their competence for your misfortune.

Denying that conspiracies exist by people who do have some influence and leverage over systems is the other wrong extreme.

There are plenty of good and evil intentions and plenty of conspiracies. Some of them kind of work out, rarely exactly as intended, and there's also lots of chaos.

I think that romantic notion is just a part of childish naivety. When most people grow up they realise the government doesn't serve the public's interests. However, I don't think we should abandon the romantic notion that the government SHOULD serve the people. It's not entirely clear how to make that happen (or if it is possible), but I think along with social change, technology could help (e.g. crowdsourced political debate, security for whistleblowers, personal surveillance, etc.) So I'm all for hackers being a bit idealistic :)

I agree with the "those who have some property against those who have none at all" part, but in modern times the "rich against the poor" doesn't hold as strongly, given the existence of the middle class.

But in a way isn't it tautological? If you create a system of "private property" obviously it's a system to protect those who have property from those who don't. The same thing is true for systems to protect bodily integrity. Obviously they protect those who are strong from those who are not.

I think the "romantic notion" that people need to lose is that the civil government is some neutral level playing field, even in theory. Giving preference to certain kinds of people is part of the system by design.

They may not be true in the current system, but the problem is with the system, not with those beliefs. The government should serve the people, and the cops should protect the innocent. That they don't, is a sign of corruption in the government and the police force. It needs to be fixed.

I don't think it's reasonable at all to reduce the entire function of modern government to a platitude written 200 years ago.

> How can anyone have faith in such a system with such gross inequalities?

Keep in mind that you only consider these to be travesties because you're in the 21st century. You've had the benefit of hundreds of years of philosophy and public discussion, now passed onto you as an obvious truth. That would seem like a perfectly sensible inequality to someone three hundred years ago, who wouldn't.

It would also seem like a perfectly sensible inequality to a lot of people today. These are the same people who will back tough-on-crime bills and political platforms. Not politicians, who are taking up their vote. Find these people. Talk to them. Figure out how to convince them. Show them the human faces and human stories. Explain the systemic problems that are causing this. Bring them over.

Break the support for these policies.

> That would seem like a perfectly sensible inequality to someone three hundred years ago, who wouldn't.

That would depend on which side of the inequality they were on, would it not?

They are more likely to be on the "wrong" end. However, for many such people it's the lack of imagination that defines their opinions; they just can't imagine themselves on the short end of the stick.

It's like arguing with Stalin apologists which are now abundant in Russia. "OK, many innocent people were prosecuted. But we can forgive him for that, because he made us a superpower!" - that's how their logic usually goes. When you ask them what if they were among those wrongly prosecuted - would that change their opinion - they are usually genuinely incredulous: "Why would they come for me?"

It's partly that. It's also worth noting how many ways you can be on the wrong end. "I'm not black," is a legitimate form of reasoning on how you wouldn't be hurt by American slavery, but that doesn't actually express how you're still on the short end of the stick because it turns out you're Chinese or Irish.

> isn't even removed from office

Canadian here. I know this isn't the point of your post but I feel obliged to make excuses for the fact that Toronto's mayor has not been removed from office. The reason Toronto City Council and the Ontario Provincial Government don't have the power to do this is that under the parliamentary traditions on which the Canadian political system is based, it is inconceivable that a politician could behave in so utterly disgraceful a manner and not have the basic human decency and shame to resign on his own volition.

Also, for what it's worth, Canada's record of judicial fairness with respect to race is not much better than America's, and our Conservative Federal Government has adopted an American-style tough-on-crime stance that has embraced mandatory minimum sentences and so on - some of which has already been declared unconstitutional.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/minimum-gun-sentence-ruled-unc...

>Toronto's mayor is on video smoking crack, is drunk and disorderly in public, shoves (assaults?) a grandmother, more, and isn't even removed from office, let alone arrested.

How can anyone have faith in such a system with such gross inequalities?

I couldn't agree with you more.

Every time I see a celebrity, or politician, or insanely rich person breaking the law it disgusts me. Not only are they not arrested and punished for their crimes as everyone else would be, but the media actually celebrates their flouting the law.

I'm only 31 and I honestly think the system is too far broken. I personally believe we're heading for some massive, massive upheaval.

They are the often singled out for harsh punishment, actually.

See: Celebrities Lohan & Hilton & Martha Stewart, all singled out for harsher punishment than normal.

Politicians Cunningham, Spitzer both given harsher punishment (or more ink) than a typical person would get.

Rich people like the entire Enron board, telecom CEOs, numerous lawyers and execs you've never heard of charged with insider trading, trivial securities infractions, trivial tax infractions, and hounded.

Spitzer was not punished at all. All charges were dropped.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/governor-eliot-spitzer-face-...

Unlike Spitzer, the telephone operator of the Emperor's Club was charged.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/hooker-booker-plead-gu...

As NY Attorney General, many others were also charged with prostitution by Spitzer.

http://www.artharris.com/2008/03/11/bald-truth-exclusive-ag-...

Spitzer seems to have gotten off a lot easier than everyone else.

And how many more rich people commit similar crimes and get away scot-free? How many poor minorities get the book thrown at them for far lesser crimes?

"Getting tough" on the rich and powerful is very much the exception rather than the rule, and we play right along with it by eating up headline after headline about Martha Stewart while ignoring the thousands and thousands of people who are rightfully afraid of the police on a day-to-day basis.

By the way, you mention "more ink" as if it's comparable. Being hounded by the media is certainly unpleasant, but it's not any part of the operation of the justice system, or shouldn't be.

Spitzer's involvement in the prostitution scandal was leaked by the ""justice system"". The 'normal Johns' remained anonymous.

>See: Celebrities Lohan & Hilton & Martha Stewart, all singled out for harsher punishment than normal.

Harsher punishment than normal? Than normal what? Black and latino persons, for one, have been shot or went to jail for decades (and/or life) for similar crimes.

And Mark Cuban. See this week's WSJ oped: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230328990...

Cameron Douglas, serving a 10 year sentence for nonviolent offenses.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/michael-dougla...

"Why should I bother trying to stay out if nothing I can do can keep me out?"

Well, for starters, living by the conditions of the parole... I'm not trying to be too snarky about it, but given the choice of "fed up with a crowded house" and the chance of going back to prison for a year, the choice seems evident.

The question is whether the person really cares. Stuck in a crowded apartment, maybe it was a calculated risk: I can either get away with it, or I'll go back to the big house. In the end, maybe he doesn't feel that he lost that much.

If only it was that simple. Life isn't, unfortunately, but parole expects it to be.

Could you explain the relevant complexity, particularly as it applies to this example?

"It isn't that simple" is an utterly vacuous assertion that, while trivially true, is not even wrong. Of course life is more complicated, something on the order of 10^30 atoms were involved!

Is JonFish85 incorrect that the person in question could have chosen to abide by the terms of his parole?

I think it's a bit like saying all morbidly obese people can simply stop eating food and then they will lose weight. It's technically true, but it's unrealistic to the point of being vacuous in itself.

In this case saying "it isn't that simple" means that we live in a completely different world, and experience completely different aspirations and incentives than the person in the article. You and I might think it simple to abide by the terms of parole if we were ever arrested. However, in reality, the people discussed in the article, black people trapped in poverty, do get drawn towards crime and do find it hard to stick to their parole. If you think that means they are deficient as people, then that is more than a little self serving. You might as well puff yourself up and tell yourself they are poor because they deserve to be poor, not because they were born into it.

The simple truth is, if there is no incentive for a people to participate in mainstream society then it doesn't matter how hard you harry them, they won't participate. If jail seems like an inevitability, and meaningful work an impossibility, then the decision to inconvenience yourself in order to stick to the terms of your parole is not easy.

If you want to modify a person's behaviour through punishment, then bad behaviour has to be punished fairly and then forgiven, followed by a chance to earn rewards through good behaviour. The situation described in the article is one of nothing but punishment, with inevitable results.

Poor black men are not helpless babies unable to make choices for themselves. And if a given individual (regardless of race or income) is a well-muscled 200lb helpless baby with uncontrollable violent impulses, he needs to kept away from the rest of us.

The same is true of all sorts of other people with different experiences, aspirations and incentives - for example, child molesters, serial killers and radical islamic proponents ofhonor killings and FGM (don't google it if you don't know the acronym, you don't want to know).

Asserting that people can't make choices about their life is, in legal terms, asserting their incompetence. Generally speaking, we institutionalize the incompetent. We don't allow them to run around harming themselves and others, sign contracts, and the like.

You might as well puff yourself up and tell yourself they are poor because they deserve to be poor, not because they were born into it.

Lets make this issue slightly less morality-based (striking the word "deserve") and more empirical. What evidence (if any) would convince you that poor people become and stay poor primarily as a result of their own choices?

then bad behaviour has to be punished fairly and then forgiven, followed by a chance to earn rewards through good behaviour.

The man in question was rewarded for good behavior, with parole. Taco Bell further rewarded him for good behavior with money. His bad behavior was punished, and at his next parole hearing further good behavior may be rewarded again. Does he also deserve cash prizes or trophies for not committing crimes?

It's a public policy issue. The guy in the example, from what we know, isn't a threat to society or involved in any crimes. He's working. Yet the system's on him so tightly that a single paperwork slipup from him and he's back to prison. I screw up on paperwork all the time, I'm sympathetic.

Is this a good use of our tax money? Guy got out of prison and has a job, let's ride him with the parole system and put him back through the grinder for a year, see if he's a little harder and more bitter when he gets out, maybe gets into dealing drugs or armed robbery instead of that honest job BS.

We have a big problem in this country with the most prisoners in the world and a pretty bad recidivism rate. We should be looking for opportunities to move those numbers in the right direction, not the wrong direction, and anyone can get behind that for entirely selfish reasons. Would you rather be paying to lock this guy up or having him pay taxes out of his paycheck?

I don't know if it's good policy or not, nor was I arguing anything about that point. I was simply objecting to girvo's logical fallacy, and onetwofiveten's paternalistic assertions of black male incompetence.

As for what the best policy on this matter is, I have no clue. That's a quantitative problem: is P(commits crime | violated parole) x cost of crime + value of deterrence > cost of incarceration? I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but I doubt anyone else here does either.

It doesn't take paternalistic assertions of black male incompetence to notice that the environment people come from shapes their options and eventually their decisions. Greenwich connecticut produces more stockbrokers than the marcy projects. Why? We could talk all day about it and probably argue on the particulars but certainly there's something there.

You're missing some upside variables in your calculation, future tax revenue from paychecks and participation in the economy contributing to GDP. And what about future crimes from some kid who got locked up for typical teenage idiocy in a neighborhood with a high arrest quota and comes out of prison with few job options and a thorough criminal education? Locking someone up costs a lot more than the bill for jail time.

The folks a couple of blocks away perceive him as a threat to society: they shoot holes in his car if he comes around, and it seems likely he would return the favor. No, I'd rather he was out and working, but I think it is reasonable he should abide by the conditions of his parole.

Sigh.

Look, I like to look at things as simply and logically as the next developer.

But the entire point of the OP (and sociology in general) is that while personal responsibility is of paramount importance (the guy in question finally got his stuff together and is now on the right side of the law), often there are forces outside of your control, or situations that you can end up despite your best intentions that make things harder than normal.

Look, I doubt I'm going to convince you otherwise, but I used to think the same way you did. Then I ended up on the wrong side of life for a particularly long time. Once you've lived like that, it all starts to make sense. I was lucky, I pulled myself out of it. Others weren't, or couldn't.

Generally speaking, we institutionalize the incompetent. We don't allow them to run around harming themselves and others, sign contracts, and the like.

We also rehabilitate them. Jailing someone for minor infraction does not qualify.

onetwofiveten is not saying that poor black men are unable to make choices. He/she is saying that those choices are made in a context in which "bad" choices -- choices that you and I would not make -- nonetheless seem to make sense to them.

That context is not something we can control, but we as a society do have some impact on it through our public policy choices.

As for the parole violation, I don't think we can evaluate it as "bad behavior" without knowing what restriction he was under and why he was under it. Did it really serve some valid purpose, or was it somewhat arbitrary?

> Could you explain the relevant complexity, particularly as it applies to this example?

Maybe it's simple if all a parolee has to do is to make sure he spends every single night in the halfway home. That might not make a lot of sense, but if that was the _only_ rule he had to follow, it might be simple.

My guess is there are many rules to follow, and a lot of them don't make sense to the individual parolee. A rule like having to spend every single night at the halfway home is there for a reason, but the reason (probably) is not to prevent parolees from seeing their girlfriends. So it's easy for someone to think that they aren't doing anything wrong when spending the night at their girlfriend's, even if they might be aware that they are -- technically -- breaking a rule. They might also (naïvely) expect to be met with some kind of reasonably response to said rule violation.

People have difficulty with rules that don't make sense to them. It's very easy to think: "This can't possibly apply to me in this situation".

Finally, one more thought: I know this is borderline Godwin, but this reminds me of rape and blaming the victim. Like in, it was her own fault for wearing a short dress. This is a case of someone who was the victim of an injustice. Does it really make a lot of sense to talk about what he, the victim, might have done differently?

People have difficulty with rules that don't make sense to them. It's very easy to think: "This can't possibly apply to me in this situation".

When a convicted criminal demonstrates an inability to follow rules they don't agree with, that's an indicator that they might commit additional crimes. For example, "this law against rape can't possibly apply to me in this situation where she was asking for it".

Parole is intended only for criminals with a low probability of committing additional crimes. The burden is on the convicted criminal to demonstrate that they are unlikely to commit new crimes.

Look, if he was convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, I agree he is a victim. But he's a victim of drug laws, not the parole system. The parole system is doing the right thing here.

>"When a convicted criminal demonstrates an inability to follow rules they don't agree with, that's an indicator that they might commit additional crimes."

Since you are so keep on empirical evidence, perhaps you can supply us with the academic articles and/or papers that prove your hypothesis.

This is simply my prior - an assertion I find plausible about the world.

I'm a bit curious, though - out of everyone using priors and reasoning to discuss this story, I'm the only one you've demanded academic articles from. Why is that?

You aren't using priors or reasoning. You are, IMO, making sweeping statements that are mildly bigoted. Besides, life just isn't that simple.

Please keep your autism in check.

Or you could use your imagination and empathy to try and try to understand how "It isn't that simple". Both are important engineering, design and entrepreneurial skills.

I think we can agree that we don't know the facts about what"the person in question" (mike) chose to do that led to the terms of his parole being violated.

Maybe he was stopped and questioned by police, and couldn't get transportation back to the parole house in time. Maybe he was doing a drug deal our saving a burning bus full of children.

Parole officers aren't required to make exceptions for these things.

Reality its complex, which is why some networking algos have which is why h and failure modes.

He can choose to try, or choose to do his best, but he can't choose to amide by the terms any more than you can choose to catch the bus.

It said he decided to sleep at his girlfriends. Where does the bus full of children enter the story?

In the article it stated that names and events were changed to protect people from the crimes committed.

Maybe he was breaking the law, maybe he was helping children, maybe he was the victim of a crime like the other fellow who had his face smashed in and had reasons not to go to the hospital.

If I were writing such an article and needed to change the reason why he couldn't go to the halfway house, I would make up another reason why he couldn't go instead of making up the fact that he decided not to go. That's just sloppy journalism.

"living by the conditions of the parole"

That's well and good, but there are numerous shit luck things that can happen that might result in a technical parole violation, right?

"My neighbor asked me to walk their dog..."

A rich black guy, Eric Holder, had been found in criminal contempt of Congress (I have a vague idea what it is but it sounds more serious than grandma-showing), he is still free and keeps his job. So it takes as much for a rich white guy to go to jail as takes for a rich black guy to go to jail.

Criminal contempt of Congress carries a jail term between one and twelve months, and a fine between $100 and $1000.

Suffice it to say, it isn't very serious.

Holder is still free because it's unclear from a constitutional standpoint where Congress got the authority to hold anyone in contempt, let alone a member of the Executive.

Congress certainly has the authority:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/contempt_of_congress

>Contempt of Congress is defined in statute, 2 U.S.C.A. § 192, enacted in 1938, which states that any person who is summoned before Congress who "willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry" shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a maximum $1,000 fine and 12 month imprisonment.

Holder is free because he's the head of the agency that's supposed to prosecute these kinds of crimes. The only way forward for Congress is to impeach him, and that's not going to happen as long as the Democrats control the Senate.

> Contempt of Congress is defined in statute, 2 U.S.C.A. § 192, enacted in 1938

... by Congress, presumably? If so, it seems to me there might be questions about whether Congress can give itself increased authority when it comes to compelling the executive branch.

> who is summoned before Congress who "willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry"

Hmm. 5th amendment?

>... by Congress, presumably? If so, it seems to me there might be questions about whether Congress can give itself increased authority when it comes to compelling the executive branch.

This is settled law. People have gone to jail for contempt of Congress. It's true the branches of government are co-equal, but Congress has a legitimate oversight authority. The problem is Congress doesn't have a way to enforce the law independent of the executive branch, so as I said the way forward is to keep impeaching Attorneys General until they get one who does his job. It's not politically practical without overwhelming public support.

>Hmm. 5th amendment?

Sure, but just like in court the 5th amendment isn't an absolute protection against being force to provide testimony. It only protects you from self-incrimination. If Congress gives you immunity you can be jailed for refusing to testify, just as you can be jailed by a court until you agree to testify under the same circumstances.

1. [Not^] all rich guys should not^ go to jail.

2. Eric Holder is rich.

3. Eric Holder should not go to jail.

— http://www.fallacyfiles.org/scopefal.html

[^]: It is not the case that...

Canadian and US law enforcement are pretty different...

Edit - response to your edit: The US white incarceration rate is ~5-7x the total incarceration rate in Canada.

Great, I did not know that. Which one works better? That is, which style of law enforcement produces a safer civil society?

I'd say, experimental results show that the canadian way produces safer civil society. But then, I'm completely biased, being Canadian.

Anyhow, I do feel much safer in any Canadian city than in the places I've been to in the US. Just compare crime rates for major cities and you'll see for yourself.

Actually... Crime rates (homicide rates) are starkly similar across the border:

http://www.unitednorthamerica.org/images//MurderRate2007.jpg

The dangerous US cities in some other border states throw off the perception, but there is a heck of a lot of difference between Detroit and Toronto other than law enforcement!

In general, it's the rust belt and deep south and Mexican border states which skew US homicide rates; the parts which border Canada have similar homicide rates to Canada (again aside from rust best + Illinois).

It's actually a bit funny - states near Canada have similar homicide rates to Canada. States near Mexico have similar homicide rates to Mexico (much lower than Mexico, but higher than some other states). States near the Caribbean have rates like the Caribbean (again much lower than the Caribbean, but again higher than other states).

Not sure how the mid Atlantic states work into that analogy, haha :)

If you compare the population density instead of a map, the situation is different. Québec, British Columbia and Ontario are the most populous areas yet they have to lowest murder rate. Compare that with Texas, California, New York, Florida, ...

I think simply looking at this map is misleading.

You think that California and BC have similar population densities? Not even close.

I don't know where you read that.

My guess would be that law enforcement doesn't do much at all for public safety and the level of violence in any given area is probably driven by economic or other factors.

I'd put my money on Canada, but the truth is probably hard to distill.

Not sure what Canada's crack smoking, grandmother-shoving mayors have to do with this. I am sure African warlords do worse, and Russian mafia is in bed with their government. The story is about the US justice system.

Wait, Canada isn't a US state?

Not to downplay the inequalities that exist on both sides of the border, but don't underestimate the differences between the United States and Canada - especially when it comes to things like drug enforcement and the prevalence and nature of ghettos.

>"What does it take for a rich, white guy to have to go to jail?" Ripping off other rich white guys, e.g. Bernie Madoff.

I've come to a realization that rules and laws only apply to the "little people".

> This passage described a poor black man in Philadelphia -- the tip of the iceberg

It's not the tip of the iceberg, it's the base of the pyramid.

In 2003 I was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt; I was in Saratoga NY; I had just moved out of my apartment.. having gone to school in Troy, NY and I was working as a "quality assurance analyist" looking for bugs in some lotus software. My license plates were from TX because I never registered in NY; I probably was supposed to, I just never did.

The cop pulled me over and was immediately convinced I was running drugs from Canada to TX. I had been across the border somewhat recenctly, maybe he could see that(?). I had no previous convictions other than a speeding ticket. My car was dirty and filled with crap; but I was pretty clean cut and just came out of an office job like 3 minutes earlier.

I did in fact have a couple pipes and a couple grams of mid grade bud; and I was dumb and didn't insist on my rights and essentially "let" him search my car. I made my mistake when he found the little jar and I got cocky; as NY had recently decriminalized.. so I just told him to give me the ticket and leave me alone.

He promptly arrested me for "driving while ability impaired"; impounded my car, nicked my license, I spent the night in jail, was humiliated, I still can't go back to Canada; I had been detained for 3 hours by the time I was given a 'sobriety' test; I was literally in the police station by then.. reflecting on it, it was clear I was being fucked with; walking a line with my arms spread out, bent ninety degrees at the waist, told to turn around without lifting my feet.

I hired the only lawyer I could afford, who basically did nothing but show up for me; paid him 500 bucks and about that in fines; but it has haunted me ever since.. and I was literally 100% sober in every way. I have never trusted cops since then as a whole; though I have personally come to know a couple that have eased my deep hatred somewhat.

My story here I know isn't directly related to the article; but it was an extreme abuse of power by a cop exerting his authority over what was genuinely a punk-kid; and I just wasn't in a position to do anything about it, both financially and because I didn't know then what I know now.

> but it was an extreme abuse of power by a cop exerting his authority over what was genuinely a punk-kid; and I just wasn't in a position to do anything about it

This brought up a big one for me. When I was 13 I snuck out of my house one night with some friends. We ran all over the neighborhood and eventually ended up in the empty parking lot of a grocery store. There were four of us, all walking together side by side. I was the youngest.

One of my friends turns around to look behind us and yells out "RUN!" The rest of us turn around to see bright headlights pointed at us. We're not in the nicest of neighborhoods and for all we know, it could be anybody looking to mess with some kids. We panic-scatter and start sprinting in every direction.

Two seconds later, a police car pulls around in front me. I'm completely out of breath, scared out of my mind, and now I know I'm going to be in trouble with my parents because this particular town has a curfew for kids under 18. Two cops get out quickly and approach.

"Why were you running?" yells the big one. This is my first non-friendly interaction with a cop. I'm still out of breath, and paralyzed with fear.

"Hey ASSHOLE! Why were you running?" He punches me in the chest. I start stammering about not wanting to get caught for breaking curfew. I start pissing myself while I'm standing there. I'm totally humiliated and scared. Why would a police officer punch a kid, I'm thinking.

They put me in the back of the squad car. We drive around to the 7-11 next door to the grocery store. They go in and come back out with one of my friends who has gone in and bought himself a Slurpy. They start questioning him. A couple minutes later, my other two friends walk up on their own and start talking to the cops. One of the cops gets me out of the car and brings me over with the others. We all tell our various stories. Where do we live, ages, parents, et cetera. They tell us to go home.

So we start walking home. I'm soaked from the waist down. And you know what I'm thinking? God, I hope my friends don't tell anyone I pissed my pants.

> I have personally come to know a couple that have eased my deep hatred somewhat.

I have quite the opposite experience if you wish. I was never personally abused or treated unfairly by the cops during a stop. But, I still distrust cops. If anything because of the ones I met in an informal settings. In my extended family and network of acquaintances there are 3 cops. And 2 of them physically abuse their wives and kids, are very brutal and scary. In fact if I didn't know they are cops they could just as well fit the profile of street thugs.

Just to throw another anecdotal counterpoint your way: I also know several cops (detectives and a Sergeant, actually), and they are the definition of good people. the conversations I have with them generally either revolve around the stuff they're doing with their kids (and me trying to get them to some of the youth programs I help with), and them dealing with the frustration of not being able to do enough.

not all cops are good, maybe most of them aren't good. But they definitely aren't all bad, and the good ones hate the bad ones at least as bad as you and I do.

The good ones might hate the bad ones but theres nothing they can do, or nothing theyll do. Look at that stop and frisk video from new york, they interview a "good" cop, he admits theres lots of wrong things but hey, thats how things are, thats what makes the "good" cops as bad as the other. In the end theyre just dogs for the states and are trained to follow orders.

They're people who have been trained to be afraid of normal citizens and feel an obligation to protect those who understand their stresses and burdens from those who don't.

You want sympathy from a cop? You want to get the good cops to push out the bad ones? Show them that you understand what they go through. Show them that you're not exceptional in that respect. Show them that they have nothing to fear from you and yours. Show them that you'll back them up if they do the right thing.

It's like hackers. They're all spoiled white neckbeards living in their parents' basements slobbily eating pizza, right? Just like all the cops are donut-munching bullies cruising around in their cars banging on doors because it's funny, right?

I don't understand how LEOs have been trained to be afraid of normal citizens? Do you perhaps mean criminals when you say citizens? I'm struggling to think of any reason a LEO would be afraid of a normal citizen, or any instance in recent memory of a normal citizen's complaint compromising a LEOs position/lively hood.

Your comment might make sense, and the attitude you suggest might be appropriate, if police ever took the initiative to take care of the abuses within their own departments. Unfortunately time and time again its been shown not to happen. When it takes people like Frank Cerpico to get anything done (at great risk to themselves) the sort of attitude you propose doesn't really cut the mustard.

Show them these things before they tase you, bro.

It's a bit different. For one thing we know that in many countries other than the US, the performance of police is at a much higher standard. It's plausible the US has a systemic failure and a unique culture problem. Society does not owe more than to demand better for what they now pay.

For another thing, the stakes are a bit lower if your problem is brogrammers and neckbeards.

Yet Alex vehemently resisted being taken to the hospital. Police crowd the emergency room, running the names of young black men through their database

Seems to me that the hospitals that let this happen in their ERs have forgotten their mission -- to heal people. They may have come up with some rationalization that says it is not a technical violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, but it sure as shit is a violation of the intent of that precept which is if you can't trust your doctor you won't get medical treatment.

As a comparison, after the PATRIOT Act was passed librarian associations stood up to the surveillance state by starting to redesign their computerized lending systems to be resistant to national-security-letter searches. Instead of keeping a lending history, as soon as a book is returned all records of it being borrowed are purged. That privacy is important for exactly the same reason, a borrowing history can be very revealing - medical books, law books, financial books, they can reveal quite a bit of personal information and if people feel like they are being watched, they simply won't borrow the books they need. You'd think doctors would stand up for their patients at least as much as librarians.

http://www.ila.org/advocacy-files/pdf/Confidentiality_Best_P...

>"In modern history," Goffman writes, "only the forced labor camps of the former U.S.S.R. under Stalin approached these levels of penal confinement."

That's actually a pretty offensive comparison. Stalin's regime resulted in an untold number of completely innocent people being worked to death. There was no due process, no hope of any humane treatment. Just terror and dumb luck that kept people from being picked out of a crowd.

Maybe my views are biased by growing up in Russia, but such rhetoric seems to use horrors of the past to advance a particular agenda, that has little to do with the horrors themselves. It also denies the respect and dignity to those innocents that died.

The very introduction admits that there were drugs and guns in the apartment, so crimes happened and unfortunately, people are being prosecuted with somewhat questionable methods. But how is this the same as NKVD coming for you in the middle of the night and you are never heard of again?

>"There was no due process"

If you have an unjust law on the books, you can have all the due process you want while being arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, and jailed, and that doesn't help you one whit.

Actually, that was exactly the case in the Eastern Block. All those laws for "crimes against the state" were on the book. Most of the GULAG prisoners were in fact jailed after a "due process". And I think it's the same now with the US. Tons of laws that you can never be sure you are not breaking. Tons of laws that everyone is breaking (copyright law, anyone?) etc. Every empire will collapse eventually. Under its own weight.

The laws were on the book, but the due process, as understood in the western societies, includes the presumption of innocence and proof of the crime.

For most victims of the GULAG, the charges were false, confessions obtained with force, and witness testimony made up. Essentially, if I don't like somebody, I just make an anonymous report to NKVD, and 99% chance is that they'll disappear. That doesn't sound like the due process we all know in the US...

You're missing the point. If the crime on the books is "criticizing the government," you can have all your procedural due process safeguards of presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But I'll still get you convicted and thrown in prison for the rest of your life, Gulag-style.

Again, folks: it's necessary to ensure that criminal laws on the books are just and reasonable (see malum prohibitum vs. malum in se) and that due process is followed when enforcing those laws. Due process when enforcing a law that's unjust leads to unjust results.

So there's no added justice in the due process we offer in the U.S. over Stalin's caprice? C'mon.

Ok... so what is unjust about a drug dealing prosecution?

Decriminalizing drug use is smart, but everywhere it is decriminalized, but the sale is considered illegal, prosecution for dealing is quite harsh.

Again, comparing an outlet to an economic problem with ideological repression or downright made up charges is very strange to me. No one is denying that there is an economic problem that is driving people to commit crimes. That needs to be addressed, and brutality is not the answer. But please, don't make this into a Stalin comparison.

The question is whether the federal law criminalizing the sale and possession (not just sale!) of certain pharmaceuticals is just, sensible, and constitutional.

I'm from the US but I thought similarly when I read that. Absolutely disgusting that she'd compare arguably the worst human rights violator in history's regime with the US's rather humane prisoner treatment. Inexcusable alarmism from an academic. And most people here already have an imaginary chip on their shoulder concerning the US (most of them actually American) so of course they'd passively agree.

And a keystone of this madness is the War on Drugs. End it, and the police will have a lot less to do...

Even if the War on Drugs was cancelled today, we'd still be dealing with the criminal effects for decades. When prohibition was repealed, all the criminals who had been bootlegging didn't decide to start living straight lives, they switched to other criminal enterprises. Prohibition was a big part of how the mafia got a foothold in the US.

Its even plausible that massive decriminalization would lead to more work for the police. I'd like to think it would be more productive work though, instead of just hassling easy targets like so many do now.

Yeah, the criminals will become bankers.

I'm almost scared of what happens when we have so many bored police and unclear laws in this country.

Doesn't matter much, it will only take about a year before everyone is arrested and put into jail. The jails will become the new America

Alice Goffman might be one of the bravest women of our generation. She's a true revolutionary.

I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, she was very brave for wilfully going into that sort of an environment, and a very intelligent person. But remember that there are thousands who live in a similar manner in just that city alone - people who have been living in these environments for their entire lives, and who come to much of the same conclusions that she has, only without academic language or a parent's name. After a run-in with law enforcement that left me with a bitter taste (I was arrested for a crime I wasn't guilty of), and seeing first hand many of the horrors of the justice system I had only heard or read about, I asked a friend of mine who had spent a decent amount of time in jail what he thought the justice system believed it doing for him by sentencing him. He responded that jail time was never about changing the people inside, it was about how everyone else felt outside. This is arguably the entire premise of Goffman's work: the police crack down on frankly minor charges in predominantly black areas has nothing to do with actual safety or reform for those individuals. "But after braving violence and intimidation to get this story, Goffman now faces a different challenge. How can she keep the focus on black poverty, and not her own biography?" Indeed. No, Alice Goffman is neither the "one of the bravest women of our generation" nor a "revolutionary," she's an academic who is well-off enough to get in the paper and sell books. Who knows, maybe her book could be the "Silent Spring" of the prison-industrial complex, but don't deify her like that - it belittles the people who actually do get coerced, imprisoned, and killed for living their lives.

Honestly I'm sure it's great and all that but these conclusions are hardly earth shattering. They are basic conclusions educated and uneducated but streetwise people have held for years anyway. Nothing groundbreaking. Sorry to say but the story is what is interesting, not the revelation of the war on drugs or whatever.

I've put her book in my amazon shopping basket. Will pick it up when available.

In the meantime you can read her ASR article, which someone was kind enough to make available here: http://www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen/Goffman_ASR_09.pdf

> "What her research shows is that these institutions may be self-defeating and may carry very significant social costs," Western says. "And so the whole effort to improve public safety through criminal-justice supervision and through incarceration may have significantly backfired, and may in many ways have contributed to the ongoing poverty and shortage of opportunities that we see there. That's a fairly new story."

Everybody with half a brain has known this forever.

So what do we do? It's all good and well that we've made this observation, but what do we do about it?

Kind of ironic that the article talks about how she is annoyed that the story is focusing on her.

At which point the article basically starts focusing on her.

On a similar topic, I would highly recommend the book The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault. http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-The-Birth-Prison/dp/...

I hold a degree in Sociology but I lack the teary eyed outlook on life which seems a requirement if one if going to make a name for themselves in the field of Sociology in this era. For that reason I also earned a degree in engineering and opted for a steady income instead. But, like so many other sociology majors, I read nearly everything Erving Goffman ever published. For a time I was a nearly complete fanatic of his work and style. Unfortunately, Alice Goffman's writing lacks the depth of her father's studies; indeed American Police State is just another Martinique Hotel handwringer complete with all the hopelessnes and despair as the subtext. Why can't sociology majors ever concentrate on the individuals who grow up in ghettos and get on with life? Surely they must represent the majority.

I believe that as long as sociologists continue to write in the Martinique Hotel manner an undue number of tears will be shed without any real work being done. In physics such a machine would be one-hundred percent entropic, i.e. fuel in, nothing out. Or, in the case of Alice Goffman's piece, tears in, nothing out. It is time for a new generation of sociology majors to concentrate on the winners and do research on them to see what makes them different, i.e. such as making the right decisions before acting.

Pitiless in Seattle

This is a pretty misleading title. As to its actual subject, best of luck with the book.

edit: Just pointing out the clickbait aspect. It's hyperbole, not the technical usage.

Not to make light of this serious subject, but this isn't what a Police State is. A Police State refers to use of the police for political ends. Like arresting dissidents or placing armed guards next to voting booths. It does not refer to overly aggressive enforcement and certainly not to the enforcement of laws some people don't like. Drug prohibition was a response to public outcry and we live in a democracy.

It is argued in one of the comments (on the link) that this is a response to the civil rights movement of the '60s - if you can't legally exclude the Minority Ethnic community from voting, lock them all up instead.

I'm not saying that's a true analysis, but it's certainly one way to make this story seriously political. Even if you just make it about stopping poor people voting, instead of some other subdivision, it's still leaks out of the "law and order" debate.

That's a roundabout argument and I don't think you can prove any criminal intent about that. Unless you can prove that the political process encourages the targeting of minorities, then it's just an enforcement issue. And not every state will ban you from voting for a non-violent offense.

It doesn't have to be "criminal" on the part of the law makers/enforcers to be a political issue - your bar is too high there. cf "institutionally racist"[1].

On the point of who bans you from voting, I think that's hardly the point - the types of crimes that are common in these communities are felonies.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

I can't help wondering what the black women in the neighborhood thought of Miss Goffman.

It's quite possible the purpose of the criminal justice system is to remove the young male (and dare I say black?) population from the breeding cycle.

Is that a falsifiable hypothesis?

Well, they do breed just fine even in the current system.

Bad conversion strategy for the publisher. I was on Amazon ready to buy. Maybe don't publicize this until it's available to the public (book comes out in April next year)

Right. Okay, Upstartuppers, let's play Reconstruction of the Bottom Line.

If an African American man walked into your startup, given some negligible* felony history and a "shady look", but showed you an SPA he built in prison, how would the "culture fit" measure factor in your decision procedure to hire him?

*: And [if] you do hire him, do you poke and prod for social metadata until you discover this feature of his personality?

Depends on the felony. Selling drugs? Fine by me. Theft, fraud, or something involving dishonesty or harming people against their will? Not a chance.

I probably will subject him to extra scrutiny given that different criminal behaviors tend to be correlated, i.e. P(dishonest|drug dealer) > P(dishonest).

In contrast, if they have a postmodernist epistemiology [1] (or even worse, an inconsistent one), they've got no shot. A die hard frequentist would also have a hard time compared to an honest drug dealer.

[1] http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html

Thanks for that link, I've found explaining that difference to people to be difficult sometimes. There is some helpful stuff in there.

Excellent link. Exactly why I read the comments here on HN.

I would hire him on the spot.

Then again, fully 7 out of 10 people who work for my technology startup are women, so I guess I'm just missing something, or I live in a parallel universe.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-weese-moll/i-am-not-afraid...

What sort of felonies do you consider negligible?

The only meaningful response is to tell you that your question is rhetorical.

Every product is a snowflake, etc. Your product's brand will inform the structure of the content for that answer.

That said, sprinkle on a little hegemony, you've got yourself State Source (code) — as opposed to Open Source (code).

How should I know ?

Wait a second here. He asked you what a "negligible" felony is, and you say:

> How should I know ?

He's asking because you wrote "If an African American man walked into your startup, given some negligible* felony history". Are you now implying that when you wrote that, you had no idea what you meant by it?

"shady look" — "shady look" — "shady look"

As I said above, even a negligible felony can be augmented or skewed by the felon, thus making them appear "shadier".

What you ultimately find out about the felony is irrelevant to the fact that you've just breached the trust of a potential relationship.

How about we stop speaking in riddles.

The point isn't about the content of one person's definition of felony.

It's about the lengths we will go to break a stacked deck. It's about prima facie privacy.

[EDIT: And who should be afforded that prima facie privacy. (We're obviously going to cherry-pick based on arbitrary characteristics like "shady".)]

Also:

    The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, 
    then it can also be answered.
    —Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

I'm not saying these things to entertain or prompt a hackers' game of philosophy. I'm showing you the problem. My definition of "felony" is irrelevant, and (again) not the point. — "What is a 'felony' to you?" is not a real question; I am not a legal system.

You weren't asked for a definition of "felony" you were asked a reasonable question about what you meant by "negligeable felony" - most likely because most of us would be willing to accept someone done for shoplifting a pack of cigarettes when they were 17 (as an example). Why are you dodging the question? At least to me, it makes you seem like a shifty politician trying to hide her agenda.

In uni a number of young philosophers attempted to sound intelligent by saying nothing in a cryptic manner. It worked pretty well for them.

Oh, I've said that before.

In the end, nothing beats a Classical education.

Classical works are generally quite clear and lucid, once you understand the language.

It's postmodernism you're thinking of.

Clear and lucid. Is that stuff anything like Descartes' "clear" _and_ "distinct" ideas?

Fascinating.

Do you know of posey? It's right good stuff, even on Sundays.

No. "Negiligible felony" and "felony" will incite the same quibble. The point is having a history as a felon, period.

I'm dodging the question because you should be focused on the "shady" characteristic. Even a morally reprehensible felon can appear non-shady. And a "shady" person with "negiligible" felony probably overly skews or augments their own perception of it, which makes them appear even "shadier" than they would without the felony, whatever its stripe.

Whatever the case, "felony", whatever its qualification, has a legal (non-personal) meaning, and it only has a meaning in that sense. Look at GEM Anscombe's distiction of institutional and brute facts. There's no such thing as a "brute fact" of felony.

No, they won't incite the same quibble, because "felony" has a very precise legal definition. A "negligible" felony is going to have a different meaning for each person that uses it, so you're going to need to define what you mean when you use the word. I agree with the other commenters, why are you dodging this so much?

I think the point is that it doesn't matter what the OP's definition of a "negligible felony" is. His question is probably better stated, "would you hire someone who has what you consider a negligible felony on their record?"

What matters is what you think is negligible. The question is intended to tease out whether or not you believe absolutely that felony = no hire, or if there's some nuance to it.

I think there are some mental health issues to be worked on.

This is insanity.

How is this helpful? Did you not see the slides on the pervasiveness of mental health problems in the hacker community? Are you not aware of the sociological and psychological problems that come with widespread surveillance? (What do you say to someone who genuinely asks you: Do you think technology is going to take over?)

What is "healthy" supposed to look like? Do you even know? I think it's a sign of an uncritical mind that simply makes unjustified value judgments, with loaded, quasi-medical terminology, in the face of an increasingly apparent reality.

Dude, grow out of your IDE. You have no right to say what is "insanity".

Why do you afford him no right to label something 'insanity'? A word you yourself say is quasi-medical?

I like how you try to tie this into startups (hackernewserizing the thread as it were) Kudos!

Actually, I think it was an interesting observation. It is a relevant example to illustrate a point. Say, if he was talking in a car mechanics's forum, he would have have used body shop instead of start-up.

The interesting thing is the personal dissonance between ideal principles and concrete experience. Pretty sure most here fancy themselves as not being racists. Going out at night and seeing a group of black young men start crossing the street and heading towards you, would you be scared? Would you be less scared if they were white and wearing argyle sweaters instead of black hoodies and baggy pants? Thinking about it, yeah I would be afraid. Rationally I know I am not a racist but in that case, I can see myself running as fast as I could.

Back to a black person walking into the start-up. Well that is kind of interesting, because of the way it is presented. Walking in? Almost sounds like he "breaks" in? How often do you hire people that just "walk in" to your startup off the street. The hypothetical example is already biased and infused with stereotypes the way I see it. Did we already do a phone Skype interview and passed? Hey he might have a good chance. I also don't see "felonies" as being a clear cut yes or no differentiate. I can see looking more into what those felonies were and balancing it against other aspects.

Pretty sure most here fancy themselves as not being racists.

If that's the case, I'm pretty sure most here are delusional. Most people (of all colors) are racist to some degree. I hesitate to say "everyone is racist", but certainly racist attitudes pervade our culture, even unconsciously.

Going out at night and seeing a group of black young men start crossing the street and heading towards you, would you be scared?

Well, yes. A few months ago I was roughed up and mugged by three people matching that description exactly (including your later-mentioned hoodies and baggy pants). The question that I struggle with now: is my new-found suspicion a racist attitude, or am I just pattern matching? And even if I'm just pattern matching, is that still racist? Does my single experience make it more likely that random black men dressed a certain way will turn out to be violent toward me?

Would you be less scared if they were white and wearing argyle sweaters instead of black hoodies and baggy pants?

Probably. But I think if any group of people, regardless of race or manner of dress, started walking directly at me from across the street, I'd at least be somewhat worried. Their appearance would likely only change the level of that worry.

How would you feel if it was a bunch of black guys in argyle sweaters?

How would you feel if it was a bunch of white guys in hoodies and baggy pants, who suddenly cross the street and start heading your way?

Yes you have correctly identified the flaw with such analogies, they are constructed with some biases in them and enough whitespace such that everyone will insert different meanings (you can see in my last (3rd) paragraph I kind of explain that a bit). The point in the 2nd paragraph was that stereotypes sometimes work on a subconscious level.

Here is apparently even a project that investigates it,

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/

Give it a try, about 10 minutes or so for the test. It is a very raw test and doesn't test for secondary signals (clothing styles and so on), just race based on photographs cropped to show only the face. Anyway the point being, as original poster said, "cultural fit" is sometimes used to reflect these biases.

This is called "performativity."

This seems like one of those divisive topics where if the person refuses to answer the question, for any reason whatever, they've failed, significantly so.

It's like non-trolls don't make it to the future... Like, there's no place for anyone who fails to follow up with something like:

(rejects the question on its face): But what about an intermixed group of guys and one girl wearing argyle garments of various types?

I mean, as a very real, practical problem: either the question absolutely fails or absolutely succeeds at its purpose, and its purpose is determing whether or not the asked absolutely fails or absolutely succeeds at something — but what? The question clearly has lost its value at its first iteration, and really only serves to entertain programmer-types.

For instance, if I were to ask anyone two generations back, they would clearly lose all patience. And the further I take this line of questioning back in history, the fewer the number of folk becomes for whom it is relevant (all the way back to, say, Aristotle, who probably has exactly the classically wrong answer). But as we ask it, we clearly see it as a template question. It isn't informative in any practical sense, and it does not directly modulate our practical ethics.

It's like we've already begun the post-future nostalgia: "Oh, remember way back when racism was a thing?" — But, paradoxically enough... It is still a thing!

Like, tomorrow I'm going to have to politely grimace in response to at least one racist joke — of which 10 years ago it did not exist as a class of joke, but 40 years ago probably would've incited a minor riot (just given its phonetic appearance).

My post was not intended to sidestep the parent's question by suggesting some random permutation of its elements, with the goal of titillating programmer-types the world over.

My post addressed the fact that the parent's question was flawed from the start. I do think it is worthwhile to try to understand how our racial attitudes affect ourselves and others. However, while the parent's post appeared to do just that, it was actually set up to trigger false positives and more superficial discussion of the type society has been holding for too long.

So, I am not altogether certain whether you and I agree or disagree.

>Like, tomorrow I'm going to have to politely grimace in response to at least one racist joke

Look, I know this is kinda more of the same wankery you were just (rightly) dismissing, but you don't have to.

Would you be less scared if they were white and wearing argyle sweaters instead of black hoodies and baggy pants?

Funny you should say that, because in the UK an argyle sweater was at one time the uniform of football casuals. In certain places at certain times it would create far more fear than hoodies and baggy trousers. The signifiers do change all the time and this is a good example of how weakly tied to behaviour they actually are and how troubling our assumptions based on them are.

But your point on the dissonance between ideals and actions is quite valid - we make all sorts of judgements about people based on appearance alone (their culture, their education, their background, their likely behaviour etc), before they've even had a chance to introduce themselves or show us who they are. Casuals in the UK exploited this for some time to avoid scrutiny by the police.

Agreed! It is indeed an interesting question, and more to the point, it helps to relate this article to the topics relevant to HN. I believe many social issues can be relevant to these boards... But too often they are shouted down with "Why is this on Hacker News?"

And if he "breaks" in wearing an argyle sweater?

(Or if you bump into him outside your office building, monitoring the logs of his app on his iPhone via http://www.loggly.com/?)

(I don't work for Loggly. I'm just adding to the droll.)

> And if he "breaks" in wearing an argyle sweater?

I feel that enough won't quite cut it, must be also wearing tight jeans, an emo hearcut and a leather messenger bag. ;-)

"Did a murderer and a sex offender just save Oklahoma $20 million?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6664588)

Let's connect the dots.

(The obvious follow-up is: Are these men African American?)

((Obligatory response: Point still stands. Change all the variables. Make them androids with upgraded and legally "blessed" virtual mental cores for all I care.))

Why does it matter if he's black? I'd probably treat him the same way I would if a white guy with a felony history and a shady look walked in.

And ultimately culture fit is about more than someone's appearance.

Yeah, this is what happens when people defer to government authority as a consequence of looking to government to solve all their problems. This leftist shift will only make the situation worse.

By that logic almost all Developed nations in the world should be a lot worse of than America (they're almost all more left leaning that America).

This is not the case, your logic is flawed.

Hilarious.

Would you rather leave this to capitalist corporations or the free market? I mean, maybe we should just have lots of Blackwaters running around performing "protection" services for the highest bidder.

> "capitalist corporations"

"Capitalist corporations" are the direct result of corporate states serving corporate law. The irony in your comment is strong. Blackwater and its derivations became powerful specifically because of [the many] having their labor (e.g. taxation) and choice (e.g. systemic control) forcefully deferred to [the few] of the state (in its singular, arbitrary version of existence). The rest of the US military is already nearly wholly dependent on so-called private interests. Realistically, there is no difference between private and public entities on this same platform. Either an entity is accountable to such oligarchical 'control' or it is not.

> Free market

Like most terms that become distorted and perverted through political propaganda, a "free market" can have wildly different meanings. You may find that you support a freer market.

A free market as some people define it is one in which groups of trade (businesses) are less powerful because "corporations" would not exist in law. People would exist. Business would exist. Legal buffers from responsibility of actions would not exist. Those buffers currently afford the largest corporations of today the luxury of exploiting people and land through the use of government -- not only protecting directors from their violent actions but also increasing the platform where police/military force serves their corporate law. In a free market where abstract entities are not state-protected, all actions fall under the same domain of scrutiny. Frameworks of law as far as business is concerned would be relegated to protecting people from direct contractual fraud or abuse, only to the extent financial or physical damage is actually taking place. Therefore, egregious economic fines and prison sentences for non-violent actions that disobey corporate law would be a token of more brutal eras. Systems of this sort are often paired with models that give people, the public, more direct control over the flow of their own labor/money, thereby making it harder for abusive or surreptitious entities (e.g. every war/surveillance company) to gain vast power through the current top-heavy, centralized money pools of a government's taxation. A transition to more human freedom such as this isn't possible overnight; but it is worth aspiring to in the evolution of governmental systems. That's humanist.

Other people define a "free market" as a system in which corporations are still greatly protected yet even less susceptible to recourse by people. That's problematic.

There are few comments without links that are worth reading. I think this is definitely one of them.

Thank you. I truly appreciate your kind words.

I agree with your underlying sentiment.

However, it's narrow to use a term like leftist. An arbitrary left vs. right political spectrum is completely fallacious and antiquated. There are only cosmetic differences for beliefs built upon the same underlying ideology of an allegiance to a current state system. People with philosophical backbones strong enough to have independent thoughts do not fall into rigid scales. They have varying thoughts and tolerances. Such political terms continue to become undefined, propaganda, and contradictory depending on the person using them.

Who else is supposed to "solve" this mess? Yelling at the government to change its behavior isn't very effective overall, but extraordinarily more effective than yelling at society as a whole.

On the other hand, for some people there only seem to be two options: Government has no power or the government has all power. No middle ground. No trying to design more effective policies.

This submission is not "Hacker News".

It is how HN is now. It is not up voted because because they want America to improve, it is upvoted because they want to pretend America is failing. I can sort of understand the attitude as Europe should really have more power in the world but don't for reasons that are unclear.

Did I accidentally stumble onto /r/politics on reddit or what? A bunch of first worlders complaining about "police state" in their first world country. Give me a break.

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