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Comment by vivekd | Hacker News Reader

I used to think this way before I started practicing Criminal law. But after interacting with criminals, I'm starting to realize that these are not just otherwise innocent and good people who fell onto hard times or had trouble with an addiction. There are genuinely bad people out there, who just want to get what they want and are perfectly willing to hurt others to get it. It seems to me that, absent a desire to change on their own part (which very few of them ever show) they will just continue to commit crimes and hurt society.

Yes many of them are addicts. However, addiction is not one of those things that someone just tries a drug and gets hooked and turns to crime. There are underlying mental issues that create an addict and those same issues tend to make them very bad people.

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If that's true, then there are lots of genuinely bad people wandering the streets of the Netherlands. If that's true then either 1) they're doing terrible things all the time and the state just isn't doing anything about it (this doesn't seem to be the case), or 2) these "bad" people, bad as they may be, aren't causing much trouble by being amongst the general public.

Could it not also mean, at least in part, that Dutch people are different? We have this word "culture" in our language, but people seem to think it is a mythical word.

There are dutch people in this comments section saying that laws are too lenient and that harsher prison sentences are needed. That should count for something. There was one commentor talking about how someone had assassinated a front-running political candidate and gotten off after a measly 12 years. That suggests to me that something is wrong.

12 years is normal in most northern European countries if I remember correctly, and I believe that its a good thing. We as a society need to take responsibility, and locking people up for their entire life is not a solution. There are people who might be too dangerous to have in general population, but i would argue that they have physiological issues which cant be trained away (think serial killers). But for most "normal" adults, locking them away for the rest of their life will not solve anything.

The evidence that prison sentences are too lenient can't be "Look at this sentence that seems shorter than I'd prefer." Instead, if you want to convince people who don't already agree with you, you need to show that these short sentences create societal problems.

There are people saying that US needs harsher laws in the comment section of nearly every article on major US websites, so I would take that with a grain of salt.

Also - "measly" 12 years? I understand the upheaval if he got 3 or 6 years - but 12 is an issue?

There are plenty of 'Evil' CEO's, Doctors, and DBA's, that does not prevent them from functioning in society.

Addiction is very common on wall street, with enough money the external effects of addiction on society are less noticeable than you might think.

> "There are underlying mental issues [...]"

So in what way is incarceration going to help what you've identified as the likely root cause of the problem?

Incarceration only works if prisoners are given adequate care in all ways - especially mental. Rehabilitation should be the purpose. The Dutch system seems to believe that works best outside the walls of a prison cell.

How many of these genuinely bad people were born that way? How many were victims of crime themselves growing up? I'd hazard a guess that a large percentage of so-called "hardened criminals" developed their cynicism due to the climate of our atomized, uncaring society.

What makes you think there is a correlation between being prone to addiction and being a genuinely bad person?

Well, there are a lot of people who try drugs, even very hard drugs, and can go on without getting hooked. But addicts tend to get hooked because of a desire to escape themselves. I can't put my finger on it exactly, or point to a scientific study unfortunately, but addicts that I have met have been very self-centered and unpleasant people.

Beware confirmation-bias?

Is there really such a thing as a "bad person"? Sure, there are people whose proclivities, inborn or otherwise, make them unsuitable to be freely among the public, but I can't think of anyone who I couldn't imagine following a different, "positive" path.

You have to factor in bias in your job.

The people that are looking for a talented A-tier lawyer are likely the ones that are the most guilty. These guys and gals exhibit Dark Triad[0] tendencies far more than the average labor/service-class defendant does.

If you're a mediocre defense lawyer on public defender detail, you'd probably have a much different perspective on criminals. The poor can't afford lawyers, guilty or innocent.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad

Sounds like a description of many politicians. Or businesman. What is needed is a system that, game theoretically, shows those people that you can be a complete asshole as long as you are within certain rules of the law. Then you don't get locked up and that's the deal.

Your viewpoint is probably biased by whether you are prosecuting criminals or defending.

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