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Comment by gustavus | Hacker News Reader

Here's something I've noticed recently is that people on different sides of the issue usually end up talking past each other.

I'll start by pointing out I feel that the prison system is incredibly in humane and we need serious prison reform to a large degree. But I think there needs to be some understanding that there isn't a one size fits all solution, on one end you have a kid of a crack addict who gets in with the wrong crowd and ends up getting busted for being involved in an armed robbery because his buddy asked for "help" with something. Is the proper solution to throw the book at this kid and put him away for 20-30 years? Probably not.

On the flip side you have serial killers like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer, those people don't need rehabilitation they're simply monsters and deviants that need to be removed from society forever.

Any discussion that fails to acknowledge both of these groups exist is probabaly fallacious.

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Its especially frustrating, given that Ted Bundy was seemingly lab-grown as an argument for the death penalty. And he was executed.

What are we even doing comparing how the system effects him and some kid who didn't find out he was an accessory to an armed robbery until after his friends got back in the car? Like one is clearly the premeditated threat to society, the other found out the hard way that he had rotten taste in friends.

Isn't that already handled by juries recommending, and judges proclaiming, different sentences depending on the crimes committed, circumstances around the crime, and the person that committed them? There isn't a strict rule of "found guilty of X crime = Y years in jail sentence". It's all circumstantial.

You are correct to an extant although there are mandatory sentencing guidelines, and plea bargains play into this.

But at the end of the day my point is to help introduce nuance to the discussion which often seems to be an argument between a loud group that advocates that everyone in prison is just a misunderstood jan valjean that was a victim of circumstance and should be helped instead of punished, and those who feel that criminals are need to be punished for violating the social contract and are sociopath threats to an orderly and just society. The first group likes to point to young people who had incredibly difficult environments as justification for their point whereas the latter group points to child molesters and cold blooded gang members for their point.

Both exist, both should be taken into account, and trying to depict all criminals as one or the other leads to nonsensical, impracticable ignorant solutions that come more from a desire to feel right than actually doing good.

> Any discussion that fails to acknowledge both of these groups exist is probabaly fallacious.

I'm pretty sure basically every debate about incarceration has considered all these factors. They are the some of the most obvious factors to consider after all.

IMO what is disingenuous is that the vast majority of prisoners belong in the first category, but when discussing any kind of reform the standard argument used is "but we can't let the Ted Bundys out!" and that kills all further progress.

> IMO what is disingenuous is that the vast majority of prisoners belong in the first category

I'm not sure evidence bares that out. I always like to reference this great project when discussing this topic[1]. Some 63% of people in state prison in the US are there for some violent crime, which is an unfortunately muddy category. I don't have the exact stat at hand but something like 70% of people incarcerated for the first time have 5 or more priors.

My point is there is a vast middle where most prisoners have some kind of violent conviction and half a dozen or more priors. It's a thorny problem to think about how to best keep communities safe, and to best serve these people who are falling through the cracks. However I think its fair to say that some of them probably need a few years to cool off where they can't be a danger to others. And I say this as someone who is highly critical of the carceral state and generally doesn't want to see any person lose their freedom.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

It's going to be a lot more meaningful to look at the reasons for peoples' first incarceration, because that's where the problem needs to be addressed. Because of the way the legal system works it is all but guaranteed that successive instances will be more and more severe (the primary one being that no one is going to employ you once you get a record).

Aggravated assault is the most common violent that turns up in the stats, with a rate of ~250 per 100k, and about half of those result in convictions. So that's pretty common among first incarcerations. I don't have the stat at hand, but most people entering prison have multiple priors before the thing that lands them in jail.

"Who are you scared of and who are you angry at?"

If you're angry at someone for using/possessing IV drugs, why lock them up in prison with the violent offenders, e.g, the people we're scared of?

If you inject people with non-violent crime histories into a violent prison, what do you think the outcome is going to be? More people we're scared of.

I noticed that too. In Canada they've introduced sweeping rules that have increased time for pardon eligibility to be 10 years instead of 5. All because of a one fucking case of Homolka. If it was up to me I'd rather see politicians responsible for these changes to be in jail. Why is this imbecilic tendency to keep punishing people long after they've paid for their crimes?

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