Comment by ddtaylor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ddtaylor | Hacker News Reader

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That's an interesting perspective, however those Low/Minimum security zones account for more than half of the entire federal population:

Minimum 23,439 (15.4%) Low 55,133 (36.3%)

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_sec_l...

Also consider that there are inmates that didn't actually commit violent crimes that are labeled as such because they received gun enhancements to their sentence for the ownership of a firearm even if not on their person during the "furtherance of the crime". Yes, there are people who are sitting in prison longer than they should be because they had legally owned firearms at their house while they were growing a plant.

That article you linked tries to paint an invalid picture of how prison populations are kept artificially high to protect the jobs and industries that surround correction institutions. There are union groups across different sectors that rally hard to ensure that humans are warehoused to pay the bills.

To illustrate how full the low/minimum prisons are with drug offenders your first day there everyone will greet you and if you're there for drug related crimes the second anyone hears "drug" they just wave their hand because they have heard the story so many times and there is almost never any variation. I'm not a drug offender, I was there for a computer-hacking related charge, but I basically got to the point where I could guess all the different elements of their story like how much they were getting paid per drug run (it seems to be about $2,000 per run for the low level mules, if anyone is curious)

>however those Low/Minimum security zones account for more than half of the entire federal population

OK, but your claim that the "vast majority" of people locked up are there "because some plant is illegal" is still not valid. It would only be true if you're looking at only the people in camp/low classifications, which is why I argue that your perception is skewed. In reality, a little less than half of people in the Federal system are there for drug-trafficking offenses.

>Also consider that there are inmates that didn't actually commit violent crimes that are labeled as such because they received gun enhancements

This is not true. A 922(g) or other gun crime or enhancement does not count as a violent crime, it's a public order offense.

>firearms at their house while they were growing a plant

You keep circling back to this "growing a plant" thing, do you have information on how many people are imprisoned on marijuana charges? From all the drug-traffickers I met in the federal system, none were there for marijuana offenses. Every drug-trafficker I met was there for methamphetamine, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, or some combination thereof. Can you show some data on the breakdown of substance types that backs up your claim?

>That article you linked tries to paint an invalid picture of how prison populations are kept artificially high to protect the jobs and industries that surround correction institutions. There are union groups across different sectors that rally hard to ensure that humans are warehoused to pay the bills.

The article mentions public-sector employee unions being the ones with an interest in keeping prisons open and staffed, do you have examples of the union groups in different sectors that do so? It would seem to me that a union in a sector that doesn't rely cheap prison labor would have no interest in keeping those prisons open.

I'm not even disagreeing that the prison population should be reduced, but your numbers and assertions are wrong.

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