First Maine inmate enrolled in graduate school conducts research in prison | Hacker News Reader

First Maine inmate enrolled in graduate school conducts research in prison

portlandphoenix.me

196 pointsbifrost195 comments

Portland, ME is a place where within an hour you could walk from the suburbs of the city to downtown to the very end of the peninsola.

I'm really glad he turned his life around, but I'm also terrified at the thought that someone got shot at a place where I've walked countless times at night after school. The Old Port is a very small district, and life just seems ridiculously safe there.

I think ideally this is the path that should be encouraged for inmates. We already spend so much feeding and housing them, what's more to try to educate them some more? Obviously not all inmates fit this description such as the Unibomber, but it seems like job training or preperation for getting degrees seems like a better investment than letting them out of prison without anyelse to do but more crime.

> I think ideally this is the path that should be encouraged for inmates. We already spend so much feeding and housing them, what's more to try to educate them some more?

Part of the problem, in my opinion (which may be wrong; this is just how I view it), is that our penal system focuses on punitive measures rather than rehabilitative.

It's the same for drug addicts. While rehabilitation might be most costly upfront, the reduced risk of repeat offenses would almost certainly pay for itself, not to mention the related drop in crime stemming from such activities. I recognize it's not perfect, but it's certainly better than throwing otherwise non-violent offenders into jail with no hope and no help.

Our system isn't really punitive or rehabilitative, though we pay lip service to both. (truly punitive would involve torture, and truly rehabilitative is simply impossible)

What we are really doing is called incapacitation. For a period of time, we eliminate the possibility of performing the crime. You can't rob a bank if you can't get to a bank. If a person does a mugging every week, but that person spends 80% of grown-up life in prison, we reduce muggings by 80%.

This seems like it's missing the punitive character of imprisonment.

But even ignoring the suffering inflicted by the prison system, both on the incarcerated person and their family, your example should make us ask -- when does it even make sense to put a person in prison to remove the opportunity to do crime?

How much do you think a person takes per mugging? People don't carry that much cash these days -- suppose one mugging gets you $100 (seems high). Apparently the cost of keeping someone in prison varies by a lot from state to state, but an average value is around $33k, which comes out to around ~$630 per week -- i.e. we're likely paying more to keep your hypothetical criminal in prison than they would cause in crime on the outside.

And when you look at stuff like drug crimes, it gets hard to even figure out what the actual cost to society is for the crime -- but we put a lot of people in prison.

Even if you disregard the suffering inflicted by incarceration, even if innocent people are never convicted, sometimes prison is a bad deal for _everyone_.

Also,

> truly rehabilitative is simply impossible

How did you reach that conclusion? Surely such a broad statement deserves some support.

https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...

People carry out muggings with the threat of harming and killing people. A mugging isn’t a mugging unless the person is willing to back up and sometimes follow through with their threats. The punishment for them is high because sometimes people die.

Muggings without violence or threats are called pickpocketing. Penalties are far less severe. If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

> If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

This is a good point!

But I think this effect is less about the "incapacitation" issue discussed above (i.e. we would have muggers on every train because we wouldn't have detained the muggers for long enough), and more about deterrence (i.e. we would have muggers on every train because pickpockets would lose a disincentive from mugging).

There are multiple dimensions to picking how societies respond to crimes:

- denunciation: we publicly send the signal that your behavior was bad

- retribution: we want you to suffer

- rehabilitation: we want to help you become a better citizen

- incapacitation: we want to stop you from committing crime

- deterrence: we want other people to be afraid to commit crimes

- ...

And all of these carry different associated values. My suspicion is that when people attempt to justify the prison system based purely on the incapacitation effect, they're trying to don some faultless, sterile, harmless guise. "I'm not a bad guy for wanting people to be in prison; I just want my neighborhood to be safe!" But I think often a desire for denunciation, or retribution, or even angst about deterrence is at play.

I wasn't trying to justify the prison system based on anything. We use incapacitation, but that doesn't justify anything.

I wasn't trying to don some faultless, sterile, harmless guise. To eliminate your suspicion: my preference is for a combination of retribution, deterrence, and restitution. I'm in no way ashamed to say that I prefer those over incapacitation. Sadly, the USA mainly uses incapacitation, probably because it causes the least outrage.

BTW, you left some items off your list:

- restitution: the criminal must pay back the victim or the society for the harm caused (with money, organs, etc.)

- religion: we must do something (crucifixion, stoning, amputation, etc.) demanded by God

Perhaps it is useful to separate means from ends. Of course, we both agree that we want less crime (as an end), but I might favor rehabilitation as an end - I want prisoners to find their way back to productive society because I care - but not as a means - I might not think rehabilitating inmates reduces crime.

Do you favor retribution as a end, or a means?

When the very natural human desire for retribution is not satisfied by the law, people will obtain retribution outside of the law. This is how you get people torn apart and burned by angry mobs. Civilization thus requires that the law act to satisfy that desire for retribution.

Because the desire for retribution is nearly universal, we can tell that it is in our DNA. It clearly offers a selective advantage. It works.

Retribution is the desire, but notice how it very effectively creates both deterrence (don't want to be torn apart by a mob) and incapacitation (can't commit crime after being torn apart by a mob). This is why it has the selective advantage.

So, unless you want brutal violence as a system of justice, don't oppose making the criminals suffer. People need to see criminals punished, and they will take matters into their own hands as needed to ensure it happens.

> If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

Do you really believe that? I honestly think there's a fundamental difference in character between willingness to commit non-violent crime, and willingness to commit violent crime. One's just selfish, while the other is likely to be negative-sum in utility in a way that makes most people write it off as a fundamentally unsound strategy unless they're true sociopaths.

There are countries where law enforcement is weak to virtually nonexistent. They’re not desirable living locations by any means.

Deterrence is one of the main pillars of law enforcement. There are plenty of people who reach the end of their rope and act out of desperation. Deterrence is something that limits that. There is a point where that effect plateaus and people will take the risk regardless of penalty, but lowering penalties to the point of being worthless does let crime breed.

Just look at countries where corruption laws are ignored or unwritten. They’re corrupt. Countries that don’t protect women have more crimes against women. It’s how it goes.

A lot of claims without any evidence... care to provide any?

Otherwise you just sound like a person who likes to lock up people as much as possible with hope that everything will be magically allright then. Well, as history shows, crime reduction unfortunately doesn't work like that.

The harm of a mugging is far in excess of the money taken.

Start with PTSD. The victim might never feel safe again. The victim might have many years of waking up in a panic from a recurring nightmare.

Muggings cause violence. The mugger threatens it. The victim doesn't know if payment will appease the mugger. Both the mugger and the victim may initiate actual violence. They and the bystanders can end up maimed or dead.

Muggings cause people to prefer commuting all alone in SUVs. You could say that this has a cost in smog, road repair, road widening, and the price placed on safe commuting. Safety becomes something you have to pay for, and not everybody can afford it.

Walkable neighborhoods can not exist if muggers are free to operate.

You're really fixated on your hypothetical habitual mugger. By appealing to some unquantifiable suffering on the part of the victim, you seem to want readers to accept an implicit claim that any cost to imprison a person, for any duration, under any conditions must be acceptable and justified.

Prisoners also are victims, and suffer trauma. It seems roughly 1/5 male inmates are assaulted by guards, and roughly the same number are assaulted by other prisoners. And then there's sexual assault, which has glaring gaps in reporting.

I think there's an obvious question we should be asking here -- when does incarceration cause more violence than it prevents?

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/attacks-and-ass...

To clarify, how would you suggest we factor in the non-monetary harm caused to a mugging victim?

It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other. There is no pleasing everybody, and some people can't ever be pleased.

> It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other.

Solitary confinement is cruel. It isn't protecting one prisoner from another.

Solitary confinement increases the chance of heart attack, hypertension and stroke by 30% [0]. That's because it is a stressful environment that people are not meant to function in.

[0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...

Dude have you been every been mugged? I almost have been (ran away before they could corner me), and the damage being done is not about the possessions. It is a scary and even traumatic experience when a group of people follows you and tries to surround you at night when you are alone.

It damages your feeling of safety when outside (and I live in a very safe country). It cost me a year to lose my anxiety to go out when darkness sets in, even when just getting groceries. And I sometimes still am paranoid.

> suppose one mugging gets you $100 ... cost of keeping someone in prison ... around ~$630 per week

These aren't useful numbers to compare. Even if the criminal gained zero material value from his crime (say he just enjoys setting cars on fire) the rest of society may be willing to spend a small fortune to stop him from doing so. Even a completely cold-blooded insurance company would be willing to spend money on that.

The relevant value isn't what the criminal gains -- it's what society loses (e.g. the cost of the property damage from burning the car). Yes, the rest of society does seem to want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. But is that a wise choice? And is it really to prevent harm (crime)? If the goal is crime prevention, aren't there less extravagant ways of achieving the same impact or better?

Have you ever been mugged?

I have. I escaped without losing anything - I can cross "jumped out of a moving cab at gunpoint in Panama City traffic" off my bucket list - but it left an emotional scar. Nothing lifechanging, but there's a little bit of anger that wasn't there before.

I'd love to explore evidence-based alternatives to incarceration. I'd also consider caning - but only if it really hurt.

As the earlier poster said, half of the point of prison is that it keeps people out of the general public and thereby temporarily unable to commit crimes against them. Now, we'd certainly like to reform them in prison, but the idea that we can simply, e.g., lift everyone out of poverty and eliminate crime is unrealistic. Certainly, it might remove some portion of crime, but it's not going to stop, say, the serial killers who are primarily motivated by sexual gratification.

Dahmer, for example, killed because it gave him a sexual high and he didn't like having anal sex performed on him, so his gay boyfriends didn't work out and he sought to create a zombie who would never leave him via a crude lobotomy technique. I suppose there's some argument that even he reformed in prison--he converted to Christianity and later helped those studying serial killers--but I wonder how many people would have been willing to let him move in next door to test the extent of his reformation had he not died in prison?

None of this is to say that prison is good or even desirable. One of the worst things it has done is to create a culture for criminals and criminal gangs and thereby facilitate the growth of criminal organizations.

I don't have any grand solutions to any of this, unfortunately, but neither do I believe some of those offered by others.

> it's what society loses

That's incalculable. You can't reduce the effects of crime to basic capitalist mechanics. Crime doesn't only impact the fair market economy - there's a wealth of second order effects both on people and at a macro level.

You're right that there's other levers we can use to reduce crime that don't involve simply bolting a door shut on them, but it seems an odd way to argue the point to me.

> society does seem to want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. But is that a wise choice?

If I told my right wing, tough-on-crime uncle that keeping people in prison was expensive, he'd say we should just shoot them as bullets are cheap, or possibly that we should cut 'luxuries' like gym equipment and free education, charge prisoners rent and force them to do hard labour.

I think people who would advocate for a more Scandinavian system are unlikely to convince my uncle on cost grounds.

I like your uncle.

Bullets don't need to be cheap. China solved the cost issue: simply charge the family for the cost of the bullet.

No, society does not want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated.

About half of society strongly opposes letting criminals run free, out causing mayhem and destroying our civilization.

About half of society strongly opposes letting a judge order a bailiff to fix the issue with a $0.25 bullet as soon as the verdict is in.

That leaves us with the option nobody likes, which is that we spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. Most of society grudgingly accepts this.

Have they tried paying them directly to not perform muggings? Or better still in programs that reduce the desire/necessity to mug. The current system does not appear to work, probably worth trying something else...

The harm from having your life threatened and losing $10 is much more than $10. I’d vote for a political system where muggers are executed, and so would many others — you won’t find much support for catch and release.

> ...truly rehabilitative is simply impossible

-While comparing the US to Norway is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, I'd like to point out that our (vee-eery rehabilitation-oriented) correctional system does have one of the lowest recidivism rates world-wide, at approx. 20%. (This is an overall value; I assume there are significant differences between various kinds of crime, but couldn't find any statistics)

Almost from the day your sentencing starts, the prison staff cooperate with social services to ease your return to society - inmates are offered education or vocational training.

As your release draws nearer, security is lowered if you've behaved reasonably well - to the extent that many prisoners serve the last part of their term in halfway houses where they need to observe a curfew, but are allowed to leave in the daytime to apply for jobs, go to work or school; you may also have visits from family or (I believe, vetted!) friends in evenings - all to make the transition as gentle as possible.

There's no such thing as truly rehabilitative for a group - had it been, recidivism would be zero - but for many individuals, I believe a more rehabilitation-oriented correctional system may be just what they need to turn their lives around and become productive members of society.

I believe this approach is strongly beneficial both to the imprisoned individual as well as to society as a whole.

> truly punitive would involve torture

And it does. Methods like solitary do classify as torture under international laws.

The not approved, but still happens, "code red"s that get employed by both staff and inmates, are very clearly torturous.

Slave labor, could also classify as torture. Especially when those meager wages are decimated by the basic costs of things. Such as the per-minute charges to read free ebooks that has been rolling out, or the ridiculous charges to connect by phone or email to anyone not living in the same hell that you are - something that has been shown to help the mental state of the incarcerated.

Anything other than solitary is torture. Exposure to other criminals is cruel. Having a cellmate who could kill you in your sleep is especially shocking; sleep deprivation is unquestionably torture.

An inmate died after being locked in a scalding shower for two hours. His guards won’t be charged.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/2...

Just one of the many cases of institutionalised torture.

And it is the states, the prisons responsibility to find a humane way to incarcerate people, if you fail so miserably at it, it just shows how morally bankrupt your country is.

Solitary confinement increases the chance of heart attack, hypertension and stroke by 30% [0]. That's because it is a stressful environment that people are not meant to function in.

That's 30% up when compared to those prisoners who might be fearing that their cell might kill them. Solitary is more stressful than that environment, objectively.

[0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...

> Solitary is more stressful than that environment, objectively.

That entirely depends on the person. Go talk to a corrections officer. Some folks go mad in solitary, others find relief from the daily threat of physical violence and do OK.

Countering data with anecdotes is useless. It doesn't aid any discussion. Any piece of data can have a contrary anecdote. Gravity can have anecdotes that say it doesn't exist.

Some may well find solitary helpful. However, if the vast majority of data finds that it is harmful, physically and mentally, then we should not use those outliers to gauge whether or not something is effective.

Question: do you know anyone who has served in prison? What do you propose to do with those inmates with life sentences who are raping and murdering in open population? And thank god protective custody (in same place/conditions as solitary) is available, for the sake of the people at risk of rape and murder in open population.

I don't doubt that living in a small area has measurable effect on the mental and cardiovascular health of many inmates. But what is the alternative? Let those inmates live in open population? Try for a moment to imagine being a physically weak inmate in a prison where some psychopath has decided you're a snitch. Can you imagine the fear that induces? And then when the violence happens, the weak inmate will be lucky to come out alive.

Seriously, that's a real question. What's the alternative for murderous, raping inmates who pose an active thread to inmates and wardens? Maximum security prisons have many of them. Where do they go with no solitary?

> Question: do you know anyone who has served in prison?

Yes, but that's irrelevant to the conversation at hand. That solitary is torture and hurts people far more than it helps them. That that's what the science says.

As I've said, anecdotes are irrelevant. Data is.

> But what is the alternative? Let those inmates live in open population?

> ...

> Maximum security prisons have many of them. Where do they go with no solitary?

Maximum security prisons don't just have the two extremes of solitary and open population. Normal prisons usually have more than gen pop and solitary.

If rehabilitation is the goal, and not just punishment, then prisons tend to be less violent overall. These statistical outliers who go around attacking everyone also reduce in frequency.

Happily, your efforts will likely be for naught. Even if most people don't care about the many incarcerated victims of prisoner violence, powerful people do care about violence against prison wardens and staff, so solitary is unlikely to go away.

I'm 100% for significant prison reform. We have far, far too many nonviolent offenders, or offenders who made a one-time really poor decision in a bar fight or something similar, housed together in prison with psychopaths, gang members, and ultra-violent inmates. But until the day comes when only habitually violent prisoners are housed together in prison, facilities for solitary confinement are needed, not only for violent prisoners, but for people in protective custody.

The study applies to "a third of individuals in solitary confinement". I guess those were the extroverts. What about the other two thirds of individuals in solitary confinement? It seems likely that those people don't support the desired conclusion.

Whatever the case may be, there is also the matter of them being a bad influence on each other.

1/3rd of people is more than statistically significant, so yes, it does support that conclusion. That solitary is bad for your health, and worse than general prison life.

> 1/3rd of people is more than statistically significant, so yes, it does support that conclusion.

It decidedly does not support the conclusion. The percent of the population studies were those who had filed a lawsuit about solitary confinement. This is the definition of a biased sample.

> Anything other than solitary is torture.

This point is completely proven to be false by the fact that people are having their QOL indicators trashed.

1) You're replying to the wrong comment.

2) Your basis for "This point is completely proven to be false by the fact that people are having their QOL indicators trashed" is what? The statistically-biased study you posted?

> 1) You're replying to the wrong comment.

Are you not in this thread? [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176652

> 2) Your basis for "This point is completely proven to be false by the fact that people are having their QOL indicators trashed" is what? The statistically-biased study you posted?

You didn't like that study? And thus refuse to have any other conversation? Fine. Lets have some more.

[0] https://www.themarshallproject.org/documents/3234404-Aiming-... - The government knows it is harmful, and is tracking and pushing for reduction of its use.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... - It increases mortality after release. (Study where N=229,297).

[2] https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us1012ForUpl... - It stunts the growth of juveniles and leads to a variety of mental health problems.

[3] http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2015/spring/co... - Here's an earlier study that also covers the hyptension systems already mentioned.

[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cbm.627 - In juveniles, it increases recidivism, and causes mental and physical health problems.

QoL indicators from all studies are showing problems. Solitary Confinement is above the threshold where it can be safely used against any one person.

> And thus refuse to have any other conversation?

Where are you getting this stuff? I never said anything about refusing to have any other conversation. And you responded to the wrong comment above. You quoted another commenter and responded to it in a reply to me. That's not how threaded forums work.

Are you confusing me with other HNer again here?

> Are you confusing me with other HNer again here?

Nope.

> You quoted another commenter and responded to it in a reply to me. That's not how threaded forums work.

That's exactly how thread topics work. That's the context of the conversation.

Yeah, this really gets me. How can a civilized society allow for systematic torture of people. The two are mutually exclusive.

I've read that another reason is to try and get people who are a bad influence out of the area. For example, some parts of Baltimore are so bad that there is almost no chance for kids growing up to have a life not influenced by violence, so they just try and lock people up as long as possible so they won't be a negative influence on the people in the area. Trying to rehabilitate them would probably be pointless because they are going to go back to live in the same shitty situation that led them to a life of crime in the first place. It'd be like sending an alcoholic or drug addict who just finished rehab right back to the same people and circumstances that made them need rehab.

It's too bad there's no free land to exile people to any more. (I mean, we could build walled-off exile colonies inland, but that'd be pretty dystopian, unless they could somehow get from there to other countries that aren't exiling them.)

Honestly, the situation in too many places- okay, one is one too many, so way too many places- is like taking someone home from rehab and dropping them off at a liquor store.

Gonna be honest, it doesn't sound like you have a lot of relevant experience on the effects of incarceration.

I'm no expert either, but prison is a lot more than just making sure people can't commit crimes. I also think reasonable people could disagree about whether the treatment of some of our prisoners constitutes torture or not.

> truly punitive would involve torture, and truly rehabilitative is simply impossible

Wait, the only true punishment is to torture someone, and it is impossible to help someone move away from a life of crime? What system of belief is that derived from, because it doesn't derive from any modern rights-based cultural or legal tradition.

The world is full of examples of people who didn't commit crimes after receiving mild punishment, and were successfully rehabilitated away from crime.

I think the charitable reading of GP is that revenge/rehabilition/removal are the three possible objectives, for which the purest forms would be something like torture / re-education / exile.

Every real system is some mix of these functions. We don't want to do torture, but we do talk about retribution, a bit. Perfect repair is unattainable, but we do talk a lot about rehabilitation. We don't talk much about removal, but (GP argues) this is in fact a rather large part of what our system is actually designed to do.

> Perfect repair is unattainable

It is unattainable because "perfect" is undefined for both the imprisoned and free people.

Arguments involving the idea of achieving perfect rehabilitation are the enemy of the good in this case. It's just as pointless to talk about perfectly repairing prisoners as it is to talk about perfectly repairing any of us. We're all variously damaged goods.

I agree with the GP that the system is designed for removal, but disagree that a system geared towards rehabilitation is impossible, if only by the existence proof provided by the number of people who have been rehabilitated to the point that they are no longer a danger to themselves and society.

I'm not sure what the GP thinks is the value that torture brings to the discussion, at least in societies that presume to operate on a foundation of human rights. Torture is literally psychopathic behavior, itself warranting punishment by removal via imprisonment. And with some notable and terrible exceptions, our laws back that up.

Can it not simply be defined as making them unwilling to commit further crimes?

As for torture, in my view, they're simply saying that our goal is not really punitive because we're not actively trying to make prisoners miserable. Our incompetence, uncaringness and willingness to allow prisoners to be taken advantage passively creates misery, though.

No one is suggesting that we should torture anyone, only using it to point out that the prison misery comes more from apathy about prison conditions rather than some active attempt to create misery.

It's helpful to think about pure forms, sometimes, even if you completely understand that the real world is all shades of gray. You don't have to be wielding them as "the enemy of the good", just trying to understand the different components of what you're doing.

Explicitly mentioning that the purest form of retribution would be torture is (IMO) a way to argue that this ought to be a smaller component of what we do. Being sent to prison by definition involves a loss of some freedoms, it's not going to be pleasant. But exactly how unpleasant, this is at least partly within our control.

> Explicitly mentioning that the purest form of retribution would be torture is (IMO) a way to argue that this ought to be a smaller component of what we do.

Why should it be any component of what we do? You don't have to be religious to recognize the need to call it unacceptable as a basic societal principle.

I think you have to qualify “basic societal principle” with regard to any measure of penalization for crime being “torture.” There are posts in this thread who say solitary is torture, saying high monetary fines are torture, the whole spectrum...

So you need to define torture, and then find a punishment which you find to not be torture and convince general society that it is both proportional and effective punishment for some specific criminal act.

How about $10-13k in fees / mandatory education classes for a DUI in California? That is pretty punitive AND crippling.

The classes are given by for profit companies.

Also does nothing to stop the small percentage of hardcore repeat dui offenders. They still find a way to drive.

If those fees were linked to wealth or income that would seem reasonable. $10k is going to really cause problems for an average person, for a holywood superstar though it should be more like $1m

A firefighter who's DUI because they had a couple of beers on a Friday night, then got called to hospital 50 miles away because their daughter had just been stabbed, and instinctively jumped in his car to get there asap, shouldn't be treated in the same way as a $900k/year architect who's been guzzling champagne at a product launch after launch party, then drives their $400k car 3 miles home

> How about $10-13k in fees / mandatory education classes for a DUI in California? That is pretty punitive AND crippling.

Slate Star Codex talks about that in their Moloch article. Long story short, no politician can be for the reduction of these sorts of things. The first one that tries will be lambasted in public when someone who did less fees or less 'for-profit training' has another bender and kills little Timmy.

Sentencing will always go up, unless acted upon by actors who aren't subject to voting forces. So will fees and fines and plenty of other torturous actions.

The underlying assumption of the incapacitation argument is that people can't change. Which evidently is wrong as other countries achieve much lower recidivism rates.

This essentially moral assumption (that people are inherently good/evil) is shared with the punitive approach.

If a country actually wants to lower crime, bank robbers and muggings, the empirical evidence clearly points in one direction: A focus on rehabilitation, and in the long run lowering of inequality through wealth redistribution. The latter isn't really plausible at first glance, but has been a stable observation for decades. Example source: https://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Crime%26In...

Not sure why you are downvoted, what you say is literally the thinking behind current criminal justice in the US. The idea is that the person is completely evil and the only thing is to stop them from following their nature is long term incapacitation. I think this fundamental fact about how the system is structured and how the people in it think is really lost on people pushing reform. Getting literally millions of state and federal employees to change their beliefs on this is something that will happen over generations, not with the passing of a few laws. This philosophy is cooked in for some decades to come, unfortunately.

This is an interesting thought though the math in final sentence feels off.

we reduce muggings by 80% of that individual's potential to commit muggings

Yes. We also keep other individuals in prison. If they are similar (once per week, 80% in prison) then the 80% applies in general.

The numbers vary and the specific values are unimportant to understanding the basic idea. The point is that keeping criminals away from victims is how we actually reduce crime.

Our system does involve torture.

> I'm also terrified at the thought that someone got shot at a place where I've walked countless times at night after school.

Why would you be terrified by this? There were 36 homicides last year in Portland and 49 traffic deaths, yet almost nobody says they're terrified of cars. And even of these 36 homicides, most were perpetrated by someone the person knew. Studies put it at around 90% where the person killed knew the attacker rather than just someone unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

So you're 13 times more likely to die from a car than from a homicide in Portland if you're not involved with dangerous people.

And yes, you're right: life is ridiculously safe there.

Its a nonsequitor but Its pretty absurd that people are much less afraid of dying by car or drowning than by being shot. The hysteria around it is pretty insane.

Agree with your point but is there a reason you used the Unibomber as your example? He was a math professor at Berkeley, surely if anyone in prison can produce good research he probably can...

I think the point was that you probably couldn't rehabilitate him by teaching him maths.

Damn good reason to teach him some philosophy then,

Pretty sure he already has a path there...

I used the Unibomber as an example because, like solveit said, lack of an education or jobs available to him probably wasn't part of the reason why he chose to commit crimes (out of desperation).

Getting a database error currently: https://web.archive.org/web/20200128215945/https://portlandp...

Probably slashdotted by HN users heh.

The United States is a prison, the world's largest prison. You don't realize how quickly you can be accused of a crime you didn't commit, standing in front of a judge that doesn't care about truth or justice.

It's crazy how easy it is to end up in prison in the US compared to Europe. Most people don't realize this. The consequences are also radically different. Former inmates are fucked for life in the US.

IIRC, the main culprit of the awful incarceration rates were mandatory minimum sentencing / sentencing policies that were introduced in the 80s.

I guess it was a result of the "tough on crime" attitude that came after the 70s, and came just in time for the drug epidemics, and war on drugs.

It just got worse - many states around the country introduced laws that can strip you of your rights with no due process, incarcerate you and you have no recourse. This recently just got used on a police officer in Colorado.

Its pretty terrible.

http://web.archive.org/web/20200128215945/https://portlandph...

>At the last graduation ceremony at Maine State Prison, Brown delivered a speech in which he spoke of the potential for prisons to become hubs of education, because of the power of education to change lives.

Brown is on to something here. Our current prison system could use a lot of improvement, current recidivism rates are out of control. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6266

For profit prisons create incentives to boost recidivism

Okay so what’s driving recidivism in the 92% of the former prison population that wasn’t housed in a for-profit prison? What’s driving recidivism in states like Illinois and New York where private prisons have long been banned? Or the 23 other states where, although private prisons aren’t banned per se, private prisons hold 0-1% of inmates?

What many people seem to miss in the "only 8% of prisons are private prisons" claim is that large amounts of services and functions are run by private contractors and companies even in "public" prisons. Just because the land and building are owned by the state doesn't mean some CEO is raking in the money off of pseudo-slave labor, extortion for basic things like phone calls, and profiteering.

I don't know if it's true, but I've heard that the guards at public prisons are unionized and that their union lobbies for much of the same that the private prison industry lobbies for. That they both have an incentive to create more prisoners. Do you think this is what's happening? What's your theory on it?

For profit prisons are irrelevant when the entire system is pay to play with bail bonds, plea bargains, attorneys fees, and so forth.

Even in the absence of those factors, the perverse incentives of our current system of for-profit prisons would indeed remain relevant.

Do you have evidence of that?

It’s like claiming that a person farting contributes to global warming. It’s not statistically relevant with consideration for other factors present, even in the face of perverse incentives.

Inmates have nothing but time on their hands. We should give the mathematically inclined unsolved problems to turn over, and simple Raspberry Pis (even disconnected from the internet) for the means to code new software. If you have nothing but a wall to stare at for 12 hours a day, you may create something useful.

If I had the power I would free every non-violent prisoner. Any person in jail for putting a substance into their own body, or for selling such a substance, does not deserve to be there. Such a waste of society's resources and talent.

I argued this with my dad saying that people deserve our compassion and someone could discover a cure for cancer.

He said he'd rather die from cancer than help someone who committed a felony.

I actually don't have a problem with him choosing to die rather than helping a felon. What's important is that he not be allowed to determine criminal justice policy.

this is one of those old biblical sayings, one who bites off their nose to spite their face. The face who is given to them out of the goodness of someone's heart if done through the process of enriching society with their work, I guess we'll be damned if they've helped the public let everyone die so we can punish that one person.

Revenge never improve the lives of anyone besides providing a momentary moment of peace, but society can be vengeful as well when you eliminate a brain who could improve the lives of others. This conundrum exists everywhere. Every religion, every person on the planet has seen this happen.

Incarceration as a form of punishment is absolutely not 'revenge'.

Unfortunately a very american view. Hope new generations can right our wrongs.

I've heard this from the EU, China, Australia, India, Canada and Japan... It seems to be popular in "law and order" societies.

I am not sure if i call all of the countries in this list "law and order".

It kind of just sucks that people and their offspring has to suffer through a bad decision this bad. I wish we had better use of the downtime they have in prison, to societies benefit, onstead of the private corp that is the prison operator.

You are making an unfounded assumption that prisoners on the whole desire to benefit society. I certainly know convicted felons and former inmates who truly do fit that mold, but I also know vastly more who could not be bothered to give a single seconds thought for society or what benefits it.

I too have personal examples on both sides.

I have an acquaintance who was convicted of fraud, sentenced to 5 years, got out early due to performing community service in jail. Haven't heard much from him after he got out though.

I have another friend who was convicted of manslaughter, he's been a very productive member of society since he was released and I feel that he's very trustworthy. I've known him for 15 years and maybe he's had some parking tickets...

A former peer was convicted of sex crimes in the early 2000s, he's reoffended in multiple countries.

A friend of a friend was convicted of eco terrorism, they've been on the run but keeping in contact somehow, they've apparently destroyed millions of dollars in properties and have yet to be caught again.

If you look at the police blotter in my city, its pretty much all repeat offenders.

That's tough :(

Judging from comments in all of the posts about psilocybin and MDMA that reach the front page, a nonzero population of HN is guilty of a felony.

Or driven over the limit 3 or more times.

Outside of maybe DPRK and France (I kid but they do take their speeding seriously) speeding is a civil crime. Speeding by some large amount (20+ in most of the US) can be a misdemeanor at the cop's discretion. You'd have to do something far beyond speeding, like provoke a police chase or something, to catch a felony. I'm unaware of any state where you can catch a felony charge from speeding and only speeding (delusional prosecutors trying to charge people with things that have zero hope of sticking notwithstanding).

Sorry, I wasn't clear. By "over the limit" I meant blood alcohol content, not speed. In many states, the third time you drive over the legal BAC limit, it's considered a felony.

That said, I do know someone who was driving recklessly (30+ mph over the limit). His kid was in the car, so they did charge him with a felony (endangering a child) and he served prison time.

Is this really true? I doubt many HN users are much above 'simple possession', which is a misdemeanour in most states, including California.

Simple possession of a federally classified CDS I (which all psychotropic substance are) is a felony in almost ALL 50 states. It may be a misdemeanor in a few, but that is not ‘most’ states.

> If you have nothing but a wall to stare at for 12 hours a day, you may create something useful.

No one in prison has 12 hours to just stare at a wall, being in prison is an involved affair. It's also presumptuous that prisoners are at all in a position to manage their time or availability. Further, even if they did have the time to just stare at a wall.. what quality of work would you honestly expect? No collaboration, no hope, no incentives. Sounds like misery to me.

> Such a waste of society's resources and talent.

Those resources don't _belong_ to society. They belong to the individual.

>Those resources don't _belong_ to society. They belong to the individual.

>Currently it costs an average of $52.61 per day ($19,202.65 per year) to keep an adult inmate incarcerated in the State of Indiana .

https://faqs.in.gov/hc/en-us/articles/115005238288-How-much-...

>SUMMARY: The fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates in Fiscal Year 2015 was $31,977.65 ($87.61 per day). (Please note: There were 365 days in FY 2015.) The average annual cost to confine an inmate in a Residential Re-entry Center for Fiscal Year 2015 was $26,082.90 ($71.46 per day)

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/07/19/2016-17...

Households in Indiana have a median annual income of $55,746, the national median annual income is $61,937.

Federal minimum wage is 7.25 an hour, or $15,080 annually. That doesn't even cover 1 inmate.

Where do you think the money comes to fund those prisons? Taxation of everyone which is definitely society and not an individual.

The tax dollars I pay to house, clothe, feed, and provide medical care for people who have no reason to be imprisoned are the resources that belong to society that are being wasted. The waste of talent limits his or her contributions to the world.

What about people who have ignored safety laws and put people in risk or who have committed fraud?

For drug usage it would probably make sense to use some kind of alternative prison which is focused on getting people off drugs and not punishment.

Make them pay restitution, bar them from the career they committed fraud in.

I don't know - it seems like we jump to prison way too early for so many offenses, why not try more reparative approaches first.

One of the people killed in the recent London Bridge stabbing was Jack Merritt. He was involved in a programme to train prisoners in law. This was called "Learning Together" because it put prisoners alongside law students. Some of those prisoners were dangerous men who'd caused real harm to people.

It was transformative, and really helped people turn their lives around.

There's a radio interview here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00035vj

Just want to note that "risk" is a highly malleable term, and "risk of risk" is not unheard of either.

Criminalizing the risk of a bad outcome is a slippery slope toward losing a heck of a lot of freedom. Damn near everything is risky on some level. This is why we generally asses civil penalties and fines when people do dangerous things but don't actually hurt anyone.

Letting the citizenry speak their minds, bear arms, and be safe from unwarranted searches all comes with some level of "risk" to everyone.

> We should give the mathematically inclined unsolved problems to turn over, and simple Raspberry Pis (even disconnected from the internet) for the means to code new software.

This reminds me of the ReiserFS story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

How so? He developed ReiserFS before he was convicted, so I’m not sure what the connection is.

I'm with you about the first paragraph. People, even violent criminals like the guy portrayed here, deserve a second chance. And in general, sentences in the US are very harsh in my opinion. But I disagree with your extreme statement in the second paragraph.

> I would free every non-violent prisoner. Any person in jail for putting a substance into their own body, or for selling such a substance, does not deserve to be there. Such a waste of society's resources and talent.

Drugs are a waste of society's resources and talent. So many bright young people turned into junkies.

Also, giving hard drugs to someone is a form of violence. The britons did that to weaken China in their attept to colonize it. Pimps often get their women on drugs to make them not leave. etc etc.

The extreme thing to do is to put people in prison for consuming/selling drugs.

Consuming drugs may be a vice but so is gambling. You don’t put gamblers in prison just because they gamble.

It is also possible to have a healthy relationship with drugs (or gambling). Most people can and do have a healthy relationship with drugs already e.g. alcohol.

Again, throwing people in prison because of your judgement of their choices is an extreme thing to do.

Imagine if we threw people in prison because they were eating to much sugar and becoming obese!

Giving people choices about what they want to consume is not violence. Forcing or coercing them to do so, is. This is what Britain did in China and what pimps do to prostitutes.

There is a difference between gambling (which is illegal in many forms and in many places, so is punishable in similar manners to drug consumption) and drug use. That difference is legality. The prevailing theory is that people who deviate from what society deems (as a whole through a representative legislature) acceptable behaviors are to be punished, and since incarceration is the prevailing punishment it is imposed. Not saying I agree with the position, but there is a clear difference between legal and illegal actions at a societal level.

As for what you termed selling drugs, a person who sells clearly illegal, potentially toxic, and often addictive chemical agents outside of the lawfully prescribed means of doing so are in a very separate category than the consumers of those drugs. Individuals selling heroin, fentanyl, or crack are clearly acting outside the law and in many cases doing so without regard (and sometimes explicitly benefitting from) the massively harmful effects of these drugs and the addictive attributes they possess.

I wouldn't make my worst enemy try to program without the internet...

Programming without the internet isn’t hard. It’s like driving without a GPS. You have to commit more to memory, or, you know, use offline resources.

If you're able to set things up beforehand, it's not even that hard to get crutches like offline copies of Stackoverflow and Wikipedia via DB dumps

I got started with python via a book on a plane, no computer, no internet (a looong time ago)...

Did similar once... but hadn't run through the first setup piece where it ran through installing all the dependencies for the approach in the book.

Which (obviously) couldn't work, as there was no way to download those dependencies mid-flight.

Made some progress with the book during the flight, but it was mostly theoretical rather than being able to do the things. ;)

My introduction to programming in the 90's was a phonebook-sized tome called "Learn Visual C++ in 12 easy lessons" or something like that. It came with a CD with Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0. For some reason, it didn't work; I couldn't compile hello world.

So I learned C++ just by reading the book, learning all about complicated object oriented features without ever having written any code. About six months later or so I got access to a Borland C++ compiler, and at that point I could actually do stuff.

It's possible to learn to program that way if you don't have any better alternative, but it's not a path I'd recommend if you do.

Ah, working through K&R was such a pleasant time, back in undergrad.

Which book?

They’re referring to K&R’s The C Programming Language [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

I learned to program without the Internet. There was just a blocky image on the TV, a rubber keyboard, and 16K of RAM. The overwhelming majority of the available memory resided in the programmer's head.

While I'd never consider trying to impose that approach on someone, I'd certainly suggest it. It really encourages attention to detail and total focus, which are increasingly valuable skills these days.

Yeah, but you can't provide the Internet because there are those who will use it to coordinate crimes. So that leaves choices:

* No programming

* Programming with no Internet

Preload it with books.

Dave Beazley did it AND talked about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ4Sn-Y7AP8

Summary: he was involved in patent litigation and had to analyse a codebase on a computer locked in a vault. He couldn't bring in any electronics but he did discover that Python was installed on the machine he was using. The video describes the rest.

How about providing web access through remote desktop that has a browser with websockets, flash, and non-GET requests disabled and only retrieving pages through a squid cache?

They could just solicited donations of programming books for prison libraries. There are a few million prisoners in America, getting one programing book for every ten prisoners would only mean a few hundred thousand books. I'm sure that many could be scrounged up. That's really not that many books in the grand scheme of things. And for such a worthy cause, I'm sure you wouldn't have trouble finding people to donate a book.

Sounds like it'd be a variable result. eg depending on the skill and personality of the person involved, over time they may or may not learn to exploit that system too.

Me: working full time just to make ends meet, not a lot of time for college and don't want to take on more than a year of my income as student loan debt that will take a decade or more to pay off.

Convicted criminal: all the free time, working on masters degree (possibly considerably subsidized, if not for free as there are various programs that provide college courses for free to inmates).

Good for them I guess. Rehabilitation is truly a great thing, doesn't make it sting any less though. I play by the rules and have to struggle to attempt to get ahead, they break the rules to the point of being ordered to live in a cage for a period of time and are afforded the opportunity of unlimited studying time and degree programs.

And before someone says "but their crime will make it hard for them to get a job" so does my bankruptcy from 7ish years ago. Anything dealing with money and companies won't touch you with a bankruptcy and anything requiring a security clearance wont touch you either.

It's time to move to what criminal reform activists call 'restorative justice'. We lock you up, possibly contract your labor to some shady organization, and don't provide enough tools for those who've served their time to get back on their feet and contribute.

We can see these effects in the economy if you look closely, the labor participation rate among men is declining, most new jobs (which are service jobs) go to women, millions of men are missing in our society due to this system which throws away human capital. For what?

> We can see these effects in the economy if you look closely, the labor participation rate among men is declining, most new jobs (which are service jobs) go to women, millions of men are missing in our society due to this system which throws away human capital. For what?

Unless you think the declining labour participation is due to people being incarcerated I'm not certain how it's related?

I, morally, think that the only justifiable punishment for a crime is what is needed to prevent recurrence - either through the same societal member or from other societal members. The fact that murder is highly punished definitely dissuades some proportion of potential murderers from murdering. From what I've seen of the efficacy of restorative justice I'm excited - it seems to greatly reduce recidivism while also lowering societal ostracization and coming home from jail to find a community that rejects you can directly contribute to higher recidivism.

That all said, I also think that's it's pretty reprehensible how we treat criminals today - subcontracting out housing and care has been shown to greatly increase recidivism which increases costs in the long run. I think this stance is acceptable if you consider all criminals to be lost causes that are just running out the clock on their lives since they're defective, in such a case minimizing costs/day with the assumption that the term of punishment is fixed serves to minimize the cost to society... But I disagree strongly with the assumption that all or, even, most criminals are lost causes.

Is that the cause? I've always heard it was due to changes in education policy/practice that resulted in lower graduation rates for males (I know some people here will reflexively think I'm challenging something; I'm not, this is a genuine question, and for the little I know about it, restorative justice sounds like a pretty good idea).

I don't believe the cause has been definitely described. Education plays a part, the transition to a service economy plays a part, perhaps even video games play a part. I do believe that it's clear that labor force participation among males has been declining in past decades while the number of folks incarcerated has risen and that there is no doubt a relation between the two.

> labor force participation among males has been declining in past decades while the number of folks incarcerated has risen and that there is no doubt a relation between the two

Would be interesting to look at male education outcomes, labor force participation, and incarceration rates and compare them against their female equivalents. I know for fact that female education and labor force outcomes have been improving at the expense of male outcomes, but I'm not sure about female incarceration rates. My guess is that they are also increasing, but perhaps not at the same rate as male rates?

I could see restorative justice being effective for many crimes. However, for crimes resulting in permanent harm (murder, maiming, rape, etc.) I don't see how restorative justice can work if the harm cannot be restored.

Beyond restorative justice, there's also transformative justice that people in radical circles advocate for:

https://savethekidsgroup.org/defining-transformative-justice...

A large part of this is video games and the legalization of pot. Why work when you can get high and play games all day?

Citation: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-video-games-jobs-...

It's one of more than two dozen...

Citation definitely needed. At the end of prohibition, one could have just as easily said something like "Why work when you can drink and play cards/horseshoes/whatever all day?"

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-video-games-jobs-...

> A few decades ago, an unemployed person might be stuck on the couch watching TV, isolated and depressed. Today, cheap or free services such as Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube and Netflix provide seemingly endless entertainment options and an easy connection to the outside world. Video games, in particular, provide a strong community and a sense of achievement that, for some, real-world jobs lack.

I mean, this is absolutely equivalent to "Young people today aren't doing any work because it's so easy to entertain themselves - the wide availability of books is ruining society."

Reading deep into the article, there aren't any specific income related analysis and their examples are all people that are living at home - so these are people who have the financial freedom to choose not to work (possibly by placing an undue burden on their parents). The gender split is interesting but might tie back to the same source, next time you're getting lunch with coworkers try asking how many chores people did as a kid, among my coworkers the women had much more responsibility (including one coworker who was responsible for making sure her brother did his chores and would have to do them for him if he shirked them).

I think this is much more of an educational issue and much less something tied to video games... I'm also seeing no links to mj other than the broad assumptions that anyone who has ever touched mj is lazy.

Definitely some surprising numbers there, thanks for the link

But I don't know if you can blame the video games and weed when the common factor seems to be free room and board through family, why work indeed.

I get Error establishing a database connection

Does the website not work for anyone else

As a fellow graduate student (but not inmate), I also feel like I am conducting research in prison.

It’s honestly insane how a prisoner gets free healthcare, education, shelter, food, etc. and yet those who do not commit crimes are (ironically) “chained” by debt instead to pay for all those things.

Honestly if you’re in bad health, old, and have limited savings it would probably be better to just commit a white collar crime and go to prison than to die in sickness and poverty.

I think you're vastly over estimating the quality of those services delivered to prisoners, especially if they're incarcerated in a private prison where mold/maggot ridden food[1] is served on a regular basis.

Still, I think it's important to note that some proportion of these criminals turned to crime out of desperation - the system that squeezes the poor for every dime they can't spare is the same that profits from their incarceration and privatized healthcare is a super twisted kind of awful.

1. https://www.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2018/02/07...

On the federal level you would not have any of those issues. You'd be at a medical facility or a minimum security. I have been to one of them. It's certainly better than what most people would expect.

At the state level.. you're going to be hurting.

If you’re old and poor and have a chronic illness you can’t pay for, having mediocre government healthcare is better than nothing, obviously. The point is I would 100% commit a white collar crime if I were put in that situation.

This has happened in Japan [0], where old people have retired and run out of money or succumb to loneliness. They then commit petty crimes, and repeat until they are sent to prison. Often the judge has compassionately given them a prison sentence.

0: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-47033704

If you're old and poor you're probably a Medicaid/Medicare dual eligible already and are receiving a decent level of care - it's not great and it should be higher... but it's better than what you'd get in prison... that said - your chronic condition might still go untreated.

You’re giving the government too much credit. Medicare has a 20% coinsurance. Who knows if you have a chronic illness if that 20% is $20 or $200k.

And if it was that simple then people in this country would not be bankrupted by medical debt.

I’m also speaking of people younger than 65 who aren’t eligible for either.

>You’re giving the government too much credit. Medicare has a 20% coinsurance. Who knows if you have a chronic illness if that 20% is $20 or $200k.

Exactly, my mother needs several new artificial teeth. She's going to have to pay just shy of 900$ to get them with medicare retired via disability.

Then there was her thyroid cancer, her gall bladder removal, the 2 ambulance rides to the ER-only facility then to a proper hospital 2 weeks ago when she had pain so bad she couldn't even make it 2 rooms over to wake me up and I woke up to medics pounding on the door, her wire mesh installation, the second surgery from her wire mesh causing problems after they removed the gall bladder, multiple oral/dental surgeries and caps (one of which broke off at the post last at the beginning of the month), the umpteen trips in the past few months for liver issues she's having (apparently quite a bit of scarring potentially as a complication of her diabetes and the drug they gave her when her bones were rapidly deteriorating).

All of that adding up that she has to pay 20% of.

I was excited I overpaid on taxes and was going to be able to pay down a card, now I get to hand the money over to her for her teeth and it still won't be enough to get them so I'll have to try and squeeze that out of my income with a wedding in May that we're already doing basically for free. While also trying to figure out how we're going to start paying down whatever the ER/surgery/hospitalization bills end up being from earlier this month.

My mother is far more fortunate than most though, my father died just before I turned 13 and she never remarried so she gets his survivor's pension (state police) which IIRC is like 60% of his salary at the time. Without that and me she'd properly be screwed. I feel truly sorry for people less fortunate than her, she's got it rough and miserable but still orders of magnitude better than some that rely on medicare and disability.

Medicare is great! /s.

Bankruptcy is still a life of luxury compared to prison.

Debatable if you’re sick and elderly with little savings.

Not at all, that sounds like the most ideal candidate possible for bankruptcy. The situation you describe would likely be a "no-asset" chapter 7, where the person filing doesn't have to surrender any assets. The majority of chapter 7 cases are.

The worst part of the process would be getting together the few hundred bucks you need for the lawyers fees.

On the other hand, if you're young, one route is to join the military for a lot of those same benefits. That's what I should do honestly, but I value my free time and peace of mind as a civilian too much.

You should look at it this way. You either pay in money through debt, or you pay with your mind and body as a military personnel or a prisoner. Both sucks ass and none of us are any better under this rotten system.

Your assertion that military service in the US “sucks ass” is rather inflammatory. The United States Military has provided a life changing means and opportunity for many. I’m not denying that the risks and imposition is not substantial. Speaking for myself, I am permanently disabled as a direct result of my period of service in the Army. But, I would not change that decision for anything.

I know people will make a judgement about the sacrifices entailed in service, but “sucks ass” is too broad and too far a generalization.

Context here matters a bit. Having to choose between going to prison or joining the military just to get education, shelter, and food is a very "sucks ass" situation.

I don't think your context is as vindicating as you might think.

That's not a decision, let alone a difficult one.

Very true. I would whole heartedly agree that joining for those purposes is a sucks ass situation.

Move to another country. Seriously. Not all places are this bad. Some have free healthcare and education.

Thank you for the encouragement. That is actually one of my wishes I'd like to fulfill myself some day. I need to do my best for now with what I have until I can make it happen.

Moving is hard. Especially the first time.

If you're young, many countries have young peoples visas that are valid for 1-2 years. Which would allow you to work & some time to get set up and figure out your next steps.

All you really need to get started is a non-tourist visa, somewhere to stay, and a plane ticket. As for actually making the above happen, no one is going to hold your hand, you have to want it bad enough to make it happen.

If you’re not killed or injured the cost is high probability of lifelong PTSD

There are many non combat roles in the military.

I don't expect it's very high quality healthcare/education/shelter/food, tho maybe it's a prospect to make it available without committing a crime... hard up for cash or don't much care to participate in society? Check in to the local penitentiary.

Again, if you have a chronic illness and you have no money in old age having government healthcare is better than nothing. I’m not actually sure the quality is that bad.

Maybe the problem you're seeing is not in the prison system, but rather in the non-prison population of citizens. Maybe healthcare, education, food & shelter are basic human needs and something any decent society should provide for its citizens.

If you’re old, you get Medicare. The median age of felons at the time of conviction was just 30. People in their 20s make up 20% of adults but 40% of felons.

Medicare doesn’t cover 100% of medical costs. You still have a 20% coinsurance you have to pay, which could be any amount.

They'd just kill you via lack of care.

In my very limited but not non-existent experience with geriatric prisoners, your suggestion here is roughly on par with suggesting that an elderly person step out in front of a bus and hope that they can win a lawsuit.

Hardly...this is not even novel. There are stories of this happening over the years.

Also...Chelsea Manning got gender reassignment surgery in prison? The government cannot just neglect you if you have a condition.

First: Chelsea Manning was a Federal/Military Criminal inmate housed in a Federal prison, her case is in no way controlling in the state correctional system

Second: Manning was a high profile prisoner, who secured loud counsel to argue for what is a popular talking point medical issue (I do not mean to imply that her issue and those also seeking similar surgeries are not important or deserving of attention for their desires). If she had diabetes and wanted a pump instead of daily insulin shots the outcome may have been different.

Yeah I would strategically commit a serious enough white collar crime to go to federal prison

If you think it's such a good deal, you're welcome to join them...

Like I said, if I’m when I’m old I am poor and have a chronic illness I would.

I don't know, I wouldn't trade freedom for money. I'd rather find another way.

There's a Shawshank Redemption joke hidden in the headline, but I'm just going to go with heartfelt congratulations instead. Good job on turning that spiral upwards!

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