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Comment by nf05papsjfVbc | Hacker News Reader

If you ended up in prison from your own mistakes (whether it was breaking the law, appearing to break the law, getting caught or something else entirely), it does warrant thinking about whether the choices you made are suitable for where you want to go in life. Of course if you were partaking in civil disobedience, it's another matter and my comment here assumes we are _not_ talking about civil disobedience.

This has nothing to do with whether the law is good/fair etc.

Even if you the have right of way at an intersection, wouldn't you wait for the truck to pass if you see that it has no intention (and/or chance) of stopping to let you pass?

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So you think it is ok for a person's life to be ruined by a prison sentence just because they appeared to break the law?

You're ignoring the most fundamental assumption of the American criminal justice system. The presumption of innocence.

You also miss the lesson that can be learned from the article. If prison is treated as rehabilitation criminals can change their path to go in a positive direction. What your comment supports is the idea that consequences have permanent and devastating consequences on future potential. This is an attitude that hurts everyone.

Your last paragraph makes no sense to me. Presumably the truck driver is breaking the law and should go to prison?

I did not make a judgment on any of those options. I was just saying that if one were in such a system and had that kind of an outcome, one must question one's choices.

I'll clarify again that I've not stated which side of the fence I'm on when it comes to who should go to prison and what prison's purpose is. I was just saying that as a rational being, if you end up in prison and do _not_ want to be in prison after you are out, you should do something about it and not expect that doing the same thing will not have the same result again.

As for the hypothetical truck driver, I was trying to say that, in such a situation, saying "I have right of way" and just going ahead is not going to save you from the accident. Though, at that point, it is unfair to you, it is still the safer option to let the truck pass. How much effort one is willing to put into doing something about the errant truck driver depends on the individual who's experiencing this and his/her circumstances.

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