Study: All non-violent criminals jailed on minor drug offence should be released

The very notion of a "career criminal" is driven by the lack of a social safety net and inability to secure a job on release. I can imagine if you're homeless and targeted by the police it would be very easy to rack up 50 arrests in a year.

If it was possible for everyone to make a living wage the vast majority of "career criminals" would choose a less dangerous way to make a living.

Not necessarily in a "received 4 counts of xyz" situation, but maybe increasing punishment nonlinearly in situations like "received a 4th count of xyz in the past 10 years". Chronologically/temporally separate incident #4 should carry more weight than #1, since the offender probably should've learned their lesson after #2.

we all make mistakes and break laws (often unknowingly) all the time. (harsh) punishment escalates the resentment cycle, pushing it to fester and metastasize, and is counterproductive to stable and harmonious societies. as such, you'll never completely segregate away injustice-fueled resentment, so the better strategy is to dissipate it away using compassion and care. much less than 1% of humans (and probably less than 0.001%) are truly irredeemable, requiring segregation from the rest of us. most petty crimes are of immediate, and often temporary, circumstance.

the crimes that need harsher punishment are those committed from positions of power that affect many people (like environmental disasters and corruption). by harsher, i mean take away all the money and status garnered from the crime and provide full restitution to victims (not lawyers), not longer prison terms.

My home town had a deputy that wanted to be a sheriff or had won the position. However, they had a minor record.

Parents filed statutory rape charges because he was 18 and she was 17. They just didn’t like him and they were eventually married later. Still, he carried they charge for 20 years.

The sealing or removal was made public notice and of course everyone talks.

In the grand scheme of things it was his wife and the age difference issue was amended in law. Because people recognize kids don’t magically not socialize on 18.

But you are right, in that there can be a good bit of coin to be had with furniture building, especially if you can draw on some standardized design principles to output good customized pieces. Think things like a closet organizer that is "perfect" for a customer's bedroom. Or things like cranking out desks needed by students doing school from home.

In fact, I probably could have made a killing in selling "pandemic" desks (there were absolutely no desks to be found at the beginning of the school year). I made a couple for family members, made out of real hard wood (no partical board) for about $130 in lumber and connecting hardware -- nice 3-drawer desk units. I basically used rail-and-stile frames to make the back, sides, and drawer box using pocket screws, then 1/4 inch plywood tacked from the inside of the drawer box. Took about 3 hours to cut, drill, and assemble everything but the drawers themselves. If I was out of work I probably would have made a bunch and sold them for $350 a piece.

I’m in my 40s now, and I realized last year I’m utterly burned out. The passion for programming is just gone. I get home from work now and the last thing I want to do is look at code again. My garage is filled with Arduino projects I can’t bring myself to finish or throw out.

Unlike you, I haven’t found another career path, but I did find solace in making music. At least it is much more permanent than software and something I can share with my kids.

Art, in general, survives time, whereas it has become apparent that software does not.

Even after expungement where possible, there can be problems with records being inappropriately cached by background check services, and a background check after expungement may still show the conviction. Yes, this can be appealed, but still puts an undue burden on the applicant and may ultimately be a deciding factor between similar candidates even though it should not be used

Incidentally, I've also once been told by a Hiring Manager family member of mine that for minor charges it might be best *not* to seal them, since that would leave a potential employer guessing and likely assuming that it was something serious as opposed to something small or common, e.g. a marijuana-related misdemeanor.

IANAL, obviously.

Would you trust your personal banking to an institution with history of leaking/mishandling/selling everything about you, or losing records of your balance?

Would you trust your health information to a doctor with previous history of kickbacks, malpractice, lax HIPAA compliance?

You do make an interesting suggestion that, if we do put a scarlet letter on someone for a past crime for which they are deemed "safe" enough to be in the public, that they should be compensated for that in some way. Shit, look at the movie "Heat" for one of many examples. If someone is trying to get their life together but can't find decent work on parole, or is abused and looked at as a criminal despite paying their debt, what motive might someone have to stay out of a past life?

I am parent and I understand what you mean here and It makes complete sense to me. But I am having a little hard time with this, some part of my brain just wont' accept it.

That's just it though. The US prison systems, as a general rule, don't rehabilitate; they punish. There is no reason to trust that a person who spent time in prison is more safe after than they were before. In many cases, it's common for people to become more dangerous because of stay in prison.

We need to work towards the prisons rehabilitating before we can trust the people coming out of them are "safe" (understand that a lot of people that get sent to prison _are_ safe... the term has a vague meaning the way I'm using it).

Doesn't this contradict the whole idea of parole? My understanding is that people who are out on parole are deemed not safe to be fully left to their own in society, they often have not served their full sentence, but are given the chance to ease back into society earlier.

Wouldn't a more hard-line approach of either 100% safe or unsafe result in even more time spent in jail?

I worked with my Dad growing up and going to school, and I’m fortunate enough to have worked along side people that had felony records.

Some of them for some scary sounding crimes.

I’ve learned just how much nuance is lost in our current “scarlet letter” system (as well as how a crime is judged changes significantly over time).

I can see the notion that somebody should have some kind of re-integration or probationary period, but until we can have an objective and perfect means of conveying the nuance behind every crime, sentence, and rehabilitation (which I say facetiously, because I don’t believe that’s possible) then we should err on the side of not having any scarlet letters.

I was talking to my friend over the weekend and a funny story came up. My friend is a chess player and made friends with an elderly gentleman at a local starbucks over a game of chess. They became chess buddies and played many games and my friend even visited his house to play a games after the man developed a severe joint disease and had difficulty moving.

It turns out he was playing chess with Nicholas “Nicky No Socks” Facciolo a convicted mobster and murder who learned and fell in love with chess while in jail. My friend told me that after learning that he continued to play with Nicky until he could no longer play due to his disease. He never felt threatened or uncomfortable. As far as he was concerned Nicky paid his debts and was no longer the person he was.

Does that mean we should just lock them up forever? Or do you really think having someone like that live next to children is a necessary gamble?

Where should people stay before then?

I think the incarceration for drug crimes and such should be stopped, but I am also a-ok with stigma following repeated and/or violent crime. I personally think people who have repeatedly shown to be too dangerous to live in society should never be released into said society, but if that mechanism is broken due to "compassion", at least I prefer to never interact with them.

Suggesting a policy prescription in the title of a scientific study puts the legitimacy of the study in complete question. The researchers must approach the question as one which can be falsifiable, else it's not science.

A scientific paper is a report on the state of reality and should not contain a case for any sort of action.

In this world, you should expect downvotes for arguing that science informs us about objective reality, because people of a certain mindset see scientific results that contradict their worldview as just another form of oppressive discourse intended to subjugate the powerless. To them, science is just one of many equal and arbitrary forms of rhetoric and power gaming.

> 'Discussion' is normally an invitation to scientific discussion, not a political one

To think that those are so distinct is perhaps naive.

Thanks for the link, it does seem to be a call to action as you said, but backed by many studies across many disciplines. Which would make it both a scientific and political.

What is your complaint exactly?

I heard it was popular to use the old books of stamps. So five doses on a stamp book is a silly about of weight. Then over a certain weight it is considered distribution and boom the sentence is jumped. Thanks to the war on drugs I’m not sure how much can even be reasoned by a judge.

Now, keep in mind, I’m not necessarily on the side of no more crimes. I do see the cracks in how the offenses wer e codified.

Things like marijuana outside distribution should probably be ignored. I was horrified watching someone on a cop show get arrested for a roach they found nearby on the ground. This was also a person who was strolling through a walkway in the forest between residences.

See "Mandatory sentencing" aka "Mandatory Minimums"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_sentencing#United_St...

Watch "My 600 Pound Life." People can destroy their lives with food, they can destroy their lives with alcohol. One is merely legal, one is a necessity. People make terrible life choices constantly and selecting heroin -- once prescribed for asthma -- as a no-go is just hating the newcomer versus giving traditional old alcohol, a civilizational favorite, a pass.

We should spend the money from the war on drugs on instead trying to prevent the root causes of these kinds of disastrous decisions. We don't even have a great grasp on why people make some of these choices yet. I'm not saying we just set up a Needle Park or anything, but frankly we've lost the war on drugs. It's time to re-evaluate our priorities.

And I wouldn't include the BLM protests of the summer as anti-establishment in the same vein as the Qanon/1776er crowd that wanted to overthrow the government.