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Comment by throw1234651234 | Hacker News Reader

98. In prison. I imagine there is some theme about how luck and genetics still play a much larger role in health than stuff like sleep, diet, and fitness that I comfort myself with. No idea who this guy is btw, but back to the basics. 98. In prison - pretty amazing.

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"he has spent closer to 85 years in the justice system. He is very likely the longest-serving prisoner, ever, in the United States. .... He seems to believe he is still in prison, though he was paroled to the nursing home in 2020. In fact, he could technically leave — to go get lunch, or visit one of the nearby towns — but someone would have to request permission and sign him out, which no one appears to have ever done ... Almost everyone he knew before he went away is dead."

The Cracked article says he escaped in 1967, was recaptured and briefly paroled in 1975 for 10 months.

He could have been paroled in 2012, but was either paranoid or in a mental state where he didn't understand what they were asking and refused to sign the papers.

The system is designed to “rehabilitate” you. That is, to make it so you’re dependent on the system to live. Most offenders, repeat, sending them back to jail. Some have argued because it’s easier than out on the streets trying to survive. In prison you have a bed, food, shelter (though not from others). On the outside, you had to provide that.

Shawshank redemption talked about this a bit when Brooks (the librarian and old man) was released to a halfway house. He monologues “On the inside, I was the man you would come to if you needed something brought in. I was somebody. On the outside, I’m an old ex-con. A nobody.”

I always considered it an issue with the usually longer sentence in the US (compared to where I'm from in France), particularly when taking into account the stacking of sentences (where we instead have "the longest one apply and trump others). Each year, well each day really, passed behind bars makes rehabilitation harder and it feels a bit counter productive to put people for (often several) decades behind bars, at this point they have a very very small chance to be able to reintegrate properly.

Not that I consider my country a paragon of virtue on that front mind you, since we're still struggling with the concept of rehabilitation instead of punishment.

Yeah. I think having a system where society is responsible would be best. Instead of private institutions that charge the tax payers. Systems where through hard work and service to the community they can learn to survive. Those that are a threat to the community can be given their own. This was the original idea behind these prisons. Only wall of the ones who would physically harm others until deemed they are no longer a threat. It’s a mental health issue and not a criminal vs non-criminal black & white situation as the layman to the law would have you believe.

It’s not about what is right or just, it’s about what you can prove. And us Americans love a good outlier to form stereotypes about a peoples.

Think of it this way. The world is PvE. Inside a prison it’s PvP. That should give you the clarity.

Some people like pvp. Some thrive on it. Others like PvE (maybe with agreeable refereed PvP) and don’t like PvP. They want their game to follow the same rules each time they play it. Predictable. Safe.

Others thrive on the chaos that each new day brings new victims and spoils. As well as threats to their own. (Hi Eve-Online players!)

It’s a mindset, a choice, probably something to do with childhood. Most definitely trauma based.

Shawshank redemption is a movie, a fiction. It never happened and characters are made up.

That being said USA have rather high reoffending rates while Norway has a low one. And Norway has more pleasant prisons (and makes it easier to find a job after you have been in prison).

Yeah no sh*t it’s a movie. There’s inspiration taken from real life. The reentry is the most important part and I’m glad to hear that Norway takes that seriously. We are all still humans. Not dogs or animals (though in some rare cases here… not so sure).

And it seems he was innocent.

https://www.cracked.com/article_34310_connecticut-put-a-prob...

I feel like there must be a better source for this information

Because you are offended by Cracked's font? They have a long reputation of good research.

Literally just look at their homepage - it's entirely bottom-of-the barrel top 10 lists about celebrities.

I miss old Cracked.com when they had a consistent set of good writers but even in the good ol' days they were making comedy articles and not serious journalism.

I would be very interested in how you define them as having a "long reputation of good research", given that they don't do research so much as pointing to various links without checking their quality and make sure to specify may/could/potentially/... All over their long form articles specifically to not be making any claim since they don't research them enough.

I'm not blaming them at all for it by the way, they're a comedic publication not investigative, I'm just weirded out by your perception of them when they themselves go out of their way to not purport themselves as any kind of authoritative source.

>They have a long reputation of good research.

They had good writers at one time, but that time has long passed.

https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/Francis-Smith-lon...

They’re listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_prison_sentenc..., but I’m unable to find a Wikipedia page for them (Francis Clifford Smith).

Read the article linked by the post, it discusses it as well

Caloric restriction is one longevity-enhancing technique that prison supports.

Also, activity restrictions means exercise is one of the few available hobbies.

Caloric restrictions was my first thought as well.

Also, the fact that we’re talking about this person means he’s an extreme outlier. I’d expect reaching 98 is much more common outside of prison.

Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet are also one of those outliers in terms of diet, exercising and work rate.

Granted they receive the best medical support money can buy, but they are on record saying how much they binge on fast food, and Munger in particular mentioned on several occasions how he never intentionally did any exercise (no cardio or weightlifting) since he was a teenager. They are both also crazy workaholics working a rigorous 9-5, very little holiday for the last 7 decades.

About the one burger a day I think from Buffet, I always wondered if it was something they said to be more relatable, or if it true.

From what I remember in Snowball, it's true. He really doesn't like unusual food and sticks to the familiar, which generally means burgers and soda.

Anecdotally, I have seen stress be a major factor. I know businessmen who are under a lot of stress, and even in their 40s they had major health problems.

Others who seemed naturally inclined to be a bit carefree (not careless) seemes to only start having problems in their late 70s.

All anecdotal of course, so we'd need lot of data to come to a conclusion.

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