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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

What a great story! Once a person has paid their debt to society, society should be forgiving and allow the person to have a second chance.

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The active word is "should". Society didn't forgive him. He worked his butt off, impressed the right people, and is the one-in-a-million success story of life after a felony. Society as a whole hasn't changed. He changed.

Read the comments on that article - it's full of hang-em-high sentiment.

They're mostly declarations of rooting interest against the half of American polity associated with universities.

Can you explain "hang em high" sentiment? I haven't heard this expression before

One of the comments amply illustrates the meaning:

"Once a violent criminal, always a violent criminal. That part of him will always be part of him. How dare our legal system release such dangerous people back into our world. Maybe he changed, but most all of them go on to harm many more people. Too bad he wasn't killed during the robbery. I only wonder how some of his victims are coping with his violent acts, and how many other victims he harmed before he was caught."

Aside from that comment being absolutely repugnant, it's also a very unfortunate and limited way of thinking. Thanks for clarifying. Hang em high sentiment indeed.

It's not really the way most of those people are thinking. If the fact pattern was changed to one with more conservative valence, like an ex-con running an important trucking concern, the roles in the thread would be reversed.

I like how there is one sentence between 'once a violent criminal, always a violent criminal' and 'maybe he changed', if they'd been right next to each other it would have been too jarring.

debt? sounds like you want retribution. As long as your mindset is on punishment, rather then to fix (if possible) what drove the person to such undesired behaviour, it's going to be hard to forgive. You want to lock up people because you have to, either as a WORKING deterrent, or to keep people outside jail safe.

And in some cases the debt is not repayable.

No, I don't want retribution. I've slowly come to the belief that prison should be to keep people who cannot function in society separated from society until they can function in society. It's punishment enough for such separation, I don't agree with "hard" time.

And what's so wrong with retribution? If you cause suffering to another during their short and precious time on this world, why should you not be made to suffer as well?

This desire for retribution is a central part of the human psyche. As we have done for our other wild drives, we have tamed it with process and institutions, but we should not deny our moral intuitions. If you reject the legitimacy of moral intuition, then you'd have a hard time justifying why blackmail should be illegal, for example.

The problem for me is, if they were a violent criminal, is your conviction that they are a changed person strong enough to override your fear that they are not a changed person, or that they might revert back to their violent tendencies at a later date?

Perhaps this will help. I've been mugged at gunpoint. The robber was satisfied with his loot, and did not physically hurt me. He was never caught. He should have spent time in prison for that, and I would be willing to forgive after he'd spent his time.

This isn't that much different from what this bank robber did. He robbed at gunpoint, but didn't physically harm them.

He was 21. People calm down and mellow out as they get older; violent crime is the purview of young people. So I'm not particularly concerned about it - and all of us harbor the potential for violence under the right circumstances. In his position now I'm sure he's well aware of what he'd lose if he robbed banks again, and I seriously doubt a sane person would take such a risk.

> He was 21. People calm down and mellow out as they get older; violent crime is the purview of young people.

This is one thing that is so often overlooked. Someone who is violent at 21 and gets a long sentence doesn't come back out at age 21.

> and all of us harbor the potential for violence under the right circumstances.

My mother said she could never hurt someone, in response to some article or other on the news. I said "yes you would - if I was about to be killed by an assailant, you wouldn't hold back". She then amended her position to outside of that situation, she could never hurt someone... :)

Violence is not solely limited as the “purview” to young people. While they represent the mean, they do not own the entire curve. Your statement is a generalization.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251884/murder-offenders-...

The reason english has qualifiers like "solely" and "always" is because without them, a statement is assumed to be a generalization, not an absolute.

Thanks for the link, it illustrates my point nicely.

Well, what about you then? What tells us you're not a violent person or you wont commit a crime against someone at a later date?

It's not like those that do become violent criminals are born with different DNA. Before they did the violent crime, a lot (most) were just like you.

Not to mention that you have comitted at least 10 felonies already, if anybody cared to look at it.

http://thecrux.com/the-more-corrupt-the-state-the-more-numer...

https://mic.com/articles/86797/8-ways-we-regularly-commit-fe...

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