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The Death Row Book Club

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64 pointswowsig24 comments

For most of my life I wouldn't have seen it this way, but the HN community is sensitive to equal representation of the sexes in STEM fields. This story had only men in it. Does this story not illustrate sexism in the criminal justice system hurting men? All the more that people don't immediately call out the unequal representation of the sexes in every part of the criminal justice system: 100:0 in this story, something like 99:1 in many other parts?

I know there are calls to change the justice system, such as from the Innocence Project, which I support and recommend supporting, but nowhere near the level for working on areas of society that hurt women more.

I'm not suggesting putting more women on death row, but shouldn't there be some effort to approach equality in arrests, convictions, sentencing, and other elements of justice? More importantly on the burdens and social obligations we choose for our society to place on men as opposed to women? If you believe men are simply more criminal than women, do you only believe criminality is the only difference, that men are just worse than women and 100:0 is appropriate, or would you also expect other differences too?

This sensitivity only applies toward women and only on favorable topics such as making money or a career in STEM.

No one cares that there’s mostly men on deathrow because they are men, and no one cares that there aren’t more women doing woodworking because woodworking isn’t as glamorous as working in STEM.

The call for equality is not a call for universal equivalence in all things. Never has been, probably never will be.

The issue is that we don’t need more woodworkers or death row inmates, but we need more programmers. Expanding the talent supply by being more inclusive will be beneficial to the industry and humanity as a whole, though we can definitely argue about how it’s currently being done.

We don’t really need more programmers anymore than we need more woodworkers, or construction workers, or plumbers, but no one is calling for women to enter those other careers.

I don’t think that is really true. Both of the latter are apprenticed-based but otherwise easy to enter, and we are only having a shortage now because of the housing crash in the previous decade. Tech has been booming almost continuously now since the beginning of the century.

But tech work has many force multipliers, unlike those other careers. The right framework, or library, or product can make the work of one programmer feel like the work of 10, and that’s what many people do not take into account.

Also, demand for programmers at the salaries programmers want to work for is not that strong. Many companies that want programmers want them for a lot less. This cheaper labor can be harder to find, but can be substituted in many ways such as using an “As a Service” offering or scooping up a pile of Indians from Kolkata.

It is never that easy. Frameworks are kind of force multipliers until you want to do something new, then you are stuck.

Demand for programmers is high even at high salaries (depending on experience of course). The average google programmer pulls in around $1 million in revenue, which covers their overhead well enough.

What average google programmer pulls in $1 million a year?

I meant revenue for the company.

Revenue an employee makes for a company doesn't need to correlate with salary, that's based off market demand. If that's what people want they should work in sales on comission.

That's a myth. We don't need more programmers or STEM grads.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem-...

The issue for me is equality.

If women faced prison as men do, justice and prison reform would happen faster, as happened in medicine when women became doctors. If people pushing for equality in high-pay, low-injury fields also pushed for equality in low-pay, high-injury fields, they would sound more credible as desiring equality, not just to advance personal interests. We'd also likely see injury rates drop.

Let the rates of arrest, conviction, and time served reflect the rates of crimes performed. If society puts burdens on men in a sexist way that lead to them committing more crimes, then change society to stop putting those burdens on men.

If men inherently commit more crimes than women independent of social pressures, justifying different outcomes, then either say that the only difference between men and women is that men are simply worse for being criminals, or say that there may be many differences that may lead to different outcomes in other places too.

Blanket blind equality is never really our society's goal, we only care about just equality. High tech jobs represent the future of prosperity and society in general, not being equal there will have a lot more negative impacts than other professions that will probably die out much sooner.

Do you consider 100:0 just?

In which context?

What professions are dying out? Woodworkers, construction workers and plumbers aren’t going anywhere for a long time.

you've constructed a straw man- many people care about the inhumanity of incarceration and the death penalty and these men fall under the purview of that activism (not for want of equality but just basic humanity). but why would there be a call for universal equivalence? do we care if the Koch brothers feel marginalized because the world isn't a libertarian Paradise? do we care if Robert Mercer feels like he's not represented? to drive the point home: do we care if Oprah thinks there's not enough day time TV? no. we care about none of those things because those people are not by and large marginalized (neither the individuals nor the groups they represent wrt to those political positions). this is all to say that the people that are most consistently marginalized through out history (and in many meaningful aspects) should get the Lions share of attention. there is nothing odd or paradoxical about this

Isn't overrepresentation in the prison system an instance of marginalization? I often hear as cited as such regarding people of color.

you're asking me if men are a marginalized community. what do you think is the answer i'm going to give?

I'm not asking that.

I often see the fact that people of color are overrepresented in the prison system presented as an example of their marginalization. If overrepresentation in prison is an example of marginalization, then it seems contradictory to say that overrepresentation of men in prison is not a first-rate issue because they are not marginalized.

poc in prison isn't an example of marginalization it's a reflection

I would say the sex ratio of criminals is, itself, an expression of a male-centric society. Males are expected to be successful in order to attract mates and feel a social pressure to fight for their places in society, this is the so called "toxic and competitive masculinity" some chastise men for. In less educated and more violence prone individuals, that pressure is a very strong motivator for crime.

In this social model, females have less to gain from high risk behavior, since they are not selected based on material affluence, and a lot more to lose; a woman projecting a high level of self autonomy is labeled as promiscuous and a poor choice for what a female "should" optimize for: motherhood, a stable family, supporting her husband and so on. This goes on from early childhood, teaching girls to conform to social norms or be rejected, even (or especially) by other girls.

Meanwhile, "boys will be boys" and are expected to bend the rules.

No worries. The incarceration rate for women is catching up to men:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/17/women-incarc...

Mission accomplished?

How is this relevant to the article?

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