Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

HM Inspectorate of Probation's review on IPP prisoners released on license paints a very different picture - of people with complex problems, chaotic lives and a high and ongoing risk of reoffending.

IPP prisoners can't be arbitrarily detained forever. There has to be a reason for the refusal of parole or for a recall to prison. There are clearly significant shortcomings in how IPP prisoners are supported, but it's also clear that a cohort of people who are living with drug addiction, severe mental illness and behavioural problems are going to struggle to stay on the straight and narrow even in ideal circumstances.

https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-cont...

View on HN

Thanks for the link - will take some time for me to digest.

> people with complex problems, chaotic lives and a high and ongoing risk of reoffending.

Surely that applies to almost all prisoners?

I don't think that you have addressed my point though, which is that the people who have been given these sentences are not those supposedly targeted by the law.

I couldn't disagree with any of the points that you make, but I think we're talking past each other. There is a threshold at which these sentences might make sense, and we risk conflating discussion about those cases with the much larger number of problematic cases where the logic is - at least quantitatively - different.

> Surely that applies to almost all prisoners?

The slippery slope argument can be made that this power could be abused (and likely is to some degree anyway) and that justifications could be made to apply to just about anyone. But if we assume the best intentions here, then something like this does make sense. There will always be a small percentage of people in any large society who are just going to commit violent and criminal acts over and over again.

I think most prisoners are in the category where they are regular people who made a bad choice due to things like environmental factors, poor judgement, and the like. And there are a few prisoners who are just wired differently - they will never not be dangerous. The trick is correctly sorting between the two.

>But if we assume the best intentions here

Why would you do that?

Because on the other side of the coin, in every large society there will also always be a small percentage of people who will try very hard do the right thing.

The incentives involved in incarceration as it's practiced in our society - as a means to secure the living of the people doing the incarcerating - means that you're implicitly not going to find any of that small percentage involved with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com