Hacker News Reader

Comment by fillskills | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I am wrong, I am no expert on this matter, but it seems like prisoners get stuck in a loop - Make one mistake, you are in prison. Once you are tagged a prisoner, you rarely get any jobs outside. When you are in prison you get caught up in the whole gang thing and your best friends are now other criminals/gang members.

What is being done to help prisoners rehabilitate and break out of this loop?

View on HN

In the U.S.? Not much. Some, such as Loïc Wacquant, don't really see a distinction between being in prison and not for some people:

> The 'hyperghetto' constitutes the fourth stage in the development of 'peculiar institutions', following (sequentially) slavery, Jim Crow, and the early ghettos. According to him, the ghetto and the prison are for all practical purposes indistinguishable, reinforcing each other to ensure the exclusion of African-Americans from general society, with governmental encouragement.

There are some attempts at what is called 'restorative justice' in certain situations in certain places, but the idea of prison as being rehabilitative is not on the mind of the public.

For those that like anthropology and boxing, this is a good read by Loic Wacquant:

http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Body_Soul.html?id=WFWY...

He joins a boxing gym on the south side of Chicago and as well as learning to box, "studies" his fellow gym-goers.

I second the recommendation. That book is fantastic

This is what happened to someone I know. He made a single mistake, hanging around with the wrong crowd, and then even though he was trying to change his life, he kept getting screwed over by "the system". There were lots of issues related to going to halfway houses or going to jail. He got sick and missed an appointment with a parole officer, which caused him to lose his job, which caused him to be thrown back in jail. He was trying his best to follow the rules, but after losing his temper and threatening to attack someone who had been bothering his father, he eventually ended up getting thrown out of the country (he lost his permanent resident). Obviously he made a few bad choices, but if someone is making a concerted effort to change his life, it feels like they should be afforded more of a chance to succeed.

With the privatized prison system in the US, it's more commercially viable to have people stay in that loop than not.

I'm not sure that there is any incentive to help people out of that loop with so much profit for everyone in the chain (police departments, lawyers, judges and most of all, the private company that runs the prison). The only net loss in this loop are the taxpayers who pay for all of it.

Everything you have said is false. Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay. There is no evidence for anything you have claimed, you simply use "privatized" as if it were a dirty word and we should knowingly nod our heads in assent.

> I'm not sure

The way to resolve an information need is to engage in an objective search of facts, not speculate endlessly and make unsubstantiated claims of criminal behavior of others without some kind of evidence to base it on.

If you want people to spend less time in prison, you'll want the laws changed because that's where all this come from. Some of the laws in California are the result of ballots.

"Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay."

You sure about that? http://www.dailypaul.com/312217/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced...

If that was your best link, then it kinda proves his point and not yours.

A PA judge was sentenced to 28 years for getting paid to put children behind bars and you're bitching about me picking the first link to an article on the subject I found from a quick google search?

It's a terrible link. It shows an outlier, not the normal situation.

If that's the best you can do then you have proved his point, not yours.

He said "private prisons are not colluding" I produce a link to a case that very clearly demonstrates collusion. You claim this proves there is no collusion. Yeah, we're done here.

Yes we are done because you can not seem to distinguish the singular and the plural.

Here is a bit more info on Ciavarella. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/books/review/kids-for-cash...

If I read the parent comment you seem to be saying that legal lobbying is the problem. However, the Ciavarella story concerns illegal corruption.

I'm not a fan of the American prison system, mainly because it promotes forced labour, or slavery. The 13tm amendment explicitly contains an exemption for prison labour, something which has historically been abused in America.

Quick general overview of prison labor: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/04/04/prison-labor...

More detailed account of prison labor in Nevada regarding casinos and construction. http://vltp.net/casinos-prison-labor-strange-bedfellows/

The slave market: http://www.unicor.gov/

You can even get slave labor to operate your call center: http://www.unicor.gov/services/contact_helpdesk/

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/america_on_lockdown_why_the_...

"Arizona is one of four states (along with Virginia, Oklahoma and Louisiana) in which state governments are bound to contracts guaranteeing a 95%-100% occupancy in facilities leased by private prisons."

It is misleading to refer to the US prison system as privatized, when the percentage of the total inmates that are in private prisons is only around 3% [1].

Privatized prisons do create a huge moral hazard, but currently the pro-prison groups with the biggest scope and influence are probably police/guard unions [2] and the "tough on crime" crowd.

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...

[2] http://www.economist.com/node/15580530

Those two groups still profit from prisons, regardless of whether the prisons themselves are privatized. Perhaps it's best to speak of prison profits and interests which exist in every prison and lead to the same problems as privatized prisons. Not to mention other profiting industries like the phone company who handles all the collect calls, equipment manufacturers, etc.

Bottom line is, it pays to send and keep people in prison regardless if the prisons themselves are privatized.

So the phone companies are in on it too? Maybe the problem is people commit crimes? Most crimes go unsolved. How many crimes happen before they are actually caught.

So, comparing US incarceration stats with other countries, would you then say the average US citizen is more likely to commit crime than other nationalities?

Crime rates are about the same. Sentences in US are way higher then elsewhere.

The homicide rate is more than 50% higher than the european average: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

If by "in on it too," you mean have an interest in keeping the current prison status quo, then yes, absolutely. The rest of your rant is irrelevant.

The percentage of private prisoners is single digits. The policies that lead to high incarceration rates today, namely long drug sentences and three strikes laws, were promulgated in the 1980's and early 1990's, when the industry was essentially nonexistent.

Are drugs as big a component of incarceration rates as the C.W. suggests? The overwhelming majority of IL inmates were sentenced for property crimes (which in the uniform crime classification do not include drug crimes of any sort). Certainly the C.W. on the impact of marijuana legalization isn't accurate; cannabis accounts for a tiny fraction of all incarcerations (significantly less than 1%). I checked a few months back, and a plurality of Cook County incarcerations were due to domestic violence.

Three strike laws and Kafka-esque probation policies could definitely be a big part of the problem.

(N.B.: I'm a strong supporter of cannabis legalization, and of decriminalization of all but a few of the rest of the recreational drugs).

Drug convictions are 20% of the national prison population. That said, you can link many of the other crimes to the drug trade or drug abuse.

Cannabis to drug dealers is like ground beef to your butcher -- it's often the base of the business. Harder drugs attract more profit and police attention.

Where are you getting the number 20% from?

From a summary of federal survey data: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

Note than many cannabis associated crimes are misdemeanors that don't call for jail time. In a "tough" state like New York, possession of very small quantities of cocaine or heroin often result in felony conviction. But at the same time, drug distributors move a lot of weed (hence the ground beef analogy).

I think the CW overestimates drug crimes, and also overestimates what those sentenced for drug crimes would be doing with their lives otherwise. Having read through quite a few criminal files, I can think of only a single example of someone that made me think: "gee, he's in jail solely because drugs are illegal."

I support legalization and oppose three strikes laws because they fuck over a small minority of people who don't deserve it. But it's a small minority.

Some property crimes are caused by people trying to fund their addiction to hard drugs.

So if we just legalized drugs, people who are so fully addicted to them that they'll burglarize houses to pay for them will, presumably because drugs will be so much cheaper, get a job at McDonalds instead?

Also, if drugs are something that cause otherwise law-abiding people to burglarize houses, isn't that a strong argument for making them illegal?

It's part of a strong argument for making them illegal. You'd also need to show that making them illegal actually decreases the rate at which that happens.

It is the price. Not many people addicted to cheap legal drugs become criminals. To buy cigarettes or grog, it is enough to work a low-paying job or just beg for money. Personally, i don't believe you should be able to buy hard drugs in the supermarket, but there should be a cheap legal way to buy them from a doctor and get help at the same time.

Probably. Decriminalization and being able to get hard drugs from a doctor would go a long way in reducing drug-related crime. I don't think society is ready for hard drugs in the supermarket aisle. At least i'm not ready for it.

Are you actually insane enough to believe that the (tiny number, 3% quoted below) of privately run prisons are managed by companies who are somehow colluding to ensure that the prisoners all re-offend once they finish their sentences? Because there isn't enough crime to keep them in profit currently?

I doubt the companies running the prisons are actively doing anything to 'make' prisoners recommit crimes after they leave. They can just not spend more than legally required to house, educate, care, and support them though...

San Francisco has recently passed the Fair Chance ordinance - http://sfgsa.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=12136 - a step towards limiting disclosure of previous convictions.

>'What is being done to help prisoners rehabilitate and break out of this loop?'

Not much that I'm aware of. Being "tough on crime" is still pretty popular depending on political affiliation, Joe "Concentration Camp" Arpaio is still a sheriff and GEO is up 15% YTD [1].

However, there's been a fair amount of recent coverage around stepping back from some of the policies that got us here [2] so there's reason to be hopeful.

1: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AGEO&ei=5BgaVMjANtOQ8...

2: http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6139819/bill-clinton-violent-cr...

Spot on, and not very much. For instance, only 32% of inmates have a high school education or higher. Getting a job with both a prison record and almost no education is nearly impossible. What option do a lot of former inmates have that won't lead to recidivism?

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf

Not sure about other states but there are small efforts to rehabilitate some of the inmates in Colorado. The programs are unfortunately small but quite successful. I think there are many in prison who could stay out if they just had something to look forward to on the outside.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/how-dair...

https://www.coloradoci.com/serviceproviders/puppy/index.html...

The connection with another living creature that they're responsible for seems to do these guys a world of good beyond anything else we can offer them.

After reading the links, seems like they are paid very little (60 cents/day). Also, I feel training them to get higher level jobs could be more beneficial. e.g. Freelance PM/Designer/Dev could earn a lot more while working remotely with little background checks.

Or just basic literacy and numeracy for some.

Recidivism is literally in the private prison companies' business plans, as pitched to investors.

https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=last+week+tonight+prison&tbm...

Wow, that is just sad

@gohrt: Can you provide a reference or cite of this claim?

Almost nothing is being done. In the US the model of how our criminal justice system handles the guilty is one of revenge, retribution, and punishment, not of rehabilitation. This works about as well as you'd imagine given that most inmates only spend a few years in prison.

Not to mention the gangs that profit or get their own employment from keeping prisoners in this loop...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com