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Comment by fergie | Hacker News Reader

> Put aside the moral and ethical cost here, just the shear financial cost or this punishment is unbelievable.

Yes, it is very odd. It seems like a lot of people have gone to a lot of effort to keep Ian Manuel in prison- but why? What is the motivation here? Profit? Revenge? Public safety? Who benefits when kids are incarcerated for decades?

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Racism. I guessed before I clicked through that Ian was black, and I was correct.

There will be one or two long serving white child prisoners, but it will be far rarer. The UK had exactly one case of children being given effectively life imprisonment, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger , and that was for a horrific murder by 10-year-olds on their own initiative.

>The UK had exactly one case of children being given effectively life imprisonment

UK life imprisonment is not the same as American life imprisonment, as in the latter you will in most cases be dying in prison.

You are probably right about the racism, but it occurs to me that most people probably view the situation somewhat incorrectly. Most people probably believe that whoever treated Ian unfairly are racists in that the punishers believe the worst about black people, and therefore want to punish him more severely. I would guess that the situation is slightly more nuanced – the people punishing Ian harshly probably don’t think about Ian being black at all, except that they believe that other people will view Ian (and other black people) with less sympathy, and therefore it is safe to deliver a harsh punishment; they will appear (they believe) as being tough on crime, with no appreciable drawback. Of course, this backfires when more people than they thought do have sympathy with Ian, but this might not make they themselves racist. They might merely lack a conscience, and also believe that the public is predominantly somewhat racist. (The action is the same as a racist would have done, but people can do the same thing for different reasons.)

I.e. racism might not be as widespread as commonly believed, and, furthermore, perpetuating this belief will probably only make unscrupulous people behave more in line with what they think racists would want. It is, in theory, a self-perpetuating cycle.

I live in a 99,9% white country where punishments are not as excessive as in the U.S., and yet prosecutors will fight tooth and nail against setting people free, especially if the cause attracted a lot of media attention.

Don't discount the role of ego and face saving. People wielding a lot of power hate being challenged publicly.

Effectively life?

> They were sentenced to detention at Her Majesty's pleasure until a Parole Board decision in June 2001 recommended their release on a lifelong licence aged 18.[5] In 2010, Venables was sent to prison for breaching the terms of his licence, and was released on parole again in 2013.

Just recently there was a case on the front page of HN where a white boy was groomed into the drug trade by the FBI since he was 14, and served more than 32 years in prison, "the longest sentence of any nonviolent minor in Michigan history" [1].

Moving away from anecdote, black males receive on average 19% longer sentences for similar crimes compared to white males [2]. 0% would be better, but 19% does not strike me as over-the-top racist as we are told the system is. For comparison:

Black female offenders and Other Race female offenders also received shorter sentences than White male offenders during the Post-Report period, at 29.7 percent and 35.4 percent shorter respectively - page 9 of the report.

That's considerably more than the black-white male disparity. But is this piece of data going to convince you the justice system's anti-male bias is a bigger problem than its anti-black bias? Is it going to affect you at all? The next time someone brings up how viciously racist the system is, will you correct them and say it's only 19% racist, compared to ~30% misandrist?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28020253

[2] https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...

Worth noting "life" here was ~8 years (1993-2001) and both killers were released on parole (age 18).

The killers have repeatedly had their identity revealed and, one of them, after serving time for child pornography charges the police were seeking to move abroad; I'm not sure how all that works with the sex offenders registry, seems like the police are keeping hidden a known sex offender in order to protect them from potential consequences of a prior murder.

All sentiments aside, some kids and teenagers are extremely dangerous. It could be that such a punishment came out of the desire to protect others (e.g., own kids).

Society does not have an answer to the more extrem cases of deviants, sadly.

But that consideration aside, putting a 13 year old into solitary confinement for years is a crime against humanity. The barbarian nation that does this should get a good old-fashioned regime change.

> Society does not have an answer to the more extrem cases of deviants, sadly.

This society does have an answer and it's the same lazy answer it gives to every problem that it can't empathize with, lock it up and keep it out of sight for as long as possible. It has never cared to seek another answer.

Frankly, things only change when enough people do research and be obnoxious and cantankerous about the answer. I doubt there is much funding for that research as it takes no effort to see how little this society cares about those that need the most compassion.

Why should society be concerned with rehabilitating the most violent of offenders? To be a bit more specific, assume we are talking about a parent that has brutally beaten their child to death, or someone who has knelt on someone else's neck until death was inevitable. This person has killed someone, an action that is absolutely irreversible. Why should that person be allowed back in society? I don't want society spending time and money rehabilitating this person. In my opinion, this person has forfeited their right to live in society when they chose to take someone else's life.

To be clear, I'm not talking about non-violent crime or even most types of violent crimes - I'm referring to the most violent of offenders. There are 7 billion people in this world, I think society will carry on just fine if we remove the tiny fraction of people from society that commit the most heinous of violent crimes (i.e wanton murder).

So what's society get out of rehabilitating this person? Let's assume this person can add moderate value to society, such as being capable of working an average job decently well (thus bringing value to their employer, the customers they help, and greater society through taxes). Now weigh that value added against the fact that their victim will never re-enter society again. Is that value added worth it, and is it fair to their victim?

I am open to having my opinion changed on this topic so if you have a good argument for why we should be concerned with the most violent offenders, please do share and I will weigh what you say carefully. However, please make sure you are addressing the case of deliberate, unprovoked murder since my response is only addressing this form of crime.

Because in the long run rehabilitation, when possible, is the better outcome for everyone involved

Because society does not only have to protect its weakest from criminals, but also itself from its justice. If the society only ever punishes, it begins to hurt itself at some point.

Sounds good includes police officers and the state itself right?

Yes it does - I do not believe in the "rules for thee, but not for me" type of thinking

> how little this society cares about those that need the most compassion.

Two college professors are walking along and chatting when they come across a man who has just been brutally beaten. He is bloody and groaning with pain. The professors look with horror upon the sight. Finally, one turns to his friend and exclaims, "We need to help the man who did this!"

The motivation in general is to appease the "tough on crime" voters. Cases like this are simply the inevitable consequence of laws and policies that flow from that.

Public safety. Commission of violent crimes is a strong signal of underlying violent tendencies. These are largely congenital, and there is no known social intervention to fix them. The rest of us benefit when such individuals are warehoused, preferably for the rest of their lives. Their moral claim to a second chance counts little against my right to not be brutally victimized.

> It seems like a lot of people have gone to a lot of effort to keep Ian Manuel in prison

What makes you say that? I find that in cases like this, people are generally incentivized to do the least possible, out of a combination of laziness and fear of liability. I haven't read the book, but from the article, I don't think anyone had an agenda to keep him locked up. It's just that nobody in the system cared to get him out.

The us correctional police justice complex is a system that has reached a complicated equilibrium. This isn't the whole story but the easiest way to understand is that it pays a lot of salaries, gives a lot of people access to big budgets, and gives a lot of people political power. This accounts for 100s of thousands of people every one of which potentially adds resistance to systemic change.

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