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Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

I can understand how people might expect different behavior in the Swartz case. But what in the behavior discussed in this article is other than exactly what you would expect? Of course she is going to prosecute a credit card thief who has stolen tens of thousands of cards. How does this stack up as added evidence against her?

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Please 'know' before taking sides. It's easy to comment, and opine, than to know. Here are some insights from Wikipedia:

US has had the highest incarceration rate in past decade [1]. Why so? Does it mean more percentage of citizens are lately turning into what one would qualify as a criminal, a thief or a murderer? Or otherwise.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

A. "The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population."

B. "imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid"

C. A graph showing a strange spike: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-...

etc. etc. etc.

Also consider these - is it is profitable for a section/group of people (read prosecutors or ip enforcers) to persecute and push people over using tricks like applying one set of laws, if another set of laws couldn't be applied? Is it like we have provision for cheapness in trials, but none for justice or humanity. Is the intention of a trial to set an example, or to be fair? Is it not criminal wastage of money, time and talent this way?

I mean these are intricate details that reveal something is wrong at leadership level. Related to the direction of the country. This is not a working level problem which is where students, staff, entrepreneurs and hackers lie.

Ponder.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_James [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...

[Edits: Grammar, tone and with inputs from Ars below.]

What does this have to do with what jamesaguilar posted?

> No. Surely, something else is broken.

Really? There are no other options you can think of? Perhaps the US is simply stricter? I quote from the article this image is from: "Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists."

So yup, the US is stricter, but it does not have more criminals, nor does it imprison more people.

> A graph showing a strange spike

There is no spike, this is the result of using a linear graph when it should have been a logarithmic one. (A very common mistake, and also frequently employed when trying to make a point without support in the data.) In this particular graph even better would be to normalize to the population level, but logarithmic is also OK. Either way, if you fix the graph you will find no spike.

This graph is better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rates_1... It shows an increase, but no spike.

So why the increase? And especially why has it slowed down? Read this and you shall know: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006368

Increase ? Why does that look to me like a spike ? And are you denying either of these claims ? Because if not it seems like you are just nitpicking to me, the point of the parent is still fully correct regardless of the graph.

A. "The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population." B. "imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid"

No, the point of the parent is not correct.

The parent is implying that the US manipulates things so that innocent people go to prison. This is not the case. There is also no spike, but rather an increase followed by leveling off.

The US does keep people in prison longer than other nations, there is no dispute there. But it does not imprison more people than other nations. This is a subtle but very important difference.

The US does imprison more people than other nations according to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...

And whether the US keeps people in prison longer than other nations or not, doesn't really help you case IMHO.

Go back and read it again.

This list of not the number of different people who go to prison, it's the percentage at any given moment. So a longer sentence will inflate the numbers on this list.

Still, the US has more people in jail than any other country however you look at it. The fact that this is due to longer prison terms is relevant but doesn't change a thing does it ?

I wouldn't suppose that citizens of the US are more criminal than the avg citizen of the world.

It's just that you have the Prison Industry and legalized corruption (see lobbying)

The distinction is quite relevant to the narrative. If your narrative is that the laws and prosecutors unfairly put people in prison that don't belong there, then you want to compare the percentage of people who ever go to prison, not the percentage if people in prison at any given time. The latter fact is relevant to a narrative that our prison terms are too long, but that's a distinct problem.

Also, we do have higher rates of violent crime than our peers. You can't ignore that.

And while its phat to blame the lobbyists, I don't think that's the entirety if the distinction. Americans are simply more retributive than other people. Look at the death penalty. It's 2012 and half the country would be up in arms if the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. At the end of the day, prison terms are long because being "tough in crime" got a lot of votes in the 1970's and 1980's.

nor does it imprison more people

At any particular point in time, there is a greater percentage of the population in prison in the USA than there is in any other nation in the world. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. It is reasonable to generalize that to "the USA imprisons more people".

Nice non sequiturs with respect to graph scales and lead exposure, though! Our population hasn't been increasing exponentially: why would any population-based statistic be doing so, and why would we want to hide that fact if it were? Also, tetraethyl lead was used at some time in most countries, and indeed is still in common use in those that don't have strict environmental regulations. We still have the highest incarceration rate.

If you're brave enough to see the real explanation for these trends, take a look at this chart: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/exptyp.cfm

Are you implying that there's a direct correlation to people correlated vs IQ level/lead count in blood? Or is this just a case of pirates vs global warming? [0]

Thanks for the link,btw. That was fascinating.

[0] http://blog.lib.umn.edu/farre212/f11psy1001ds1415/Correlatio...

It's not me implying it - the article I linked to did, and pretty conclusively too.

That graph you posted is messed up (yes I get it's a joke), but the spacing between dots randomly changes from 20 to 40 years. That graph actually demonstrates that there is no correlation, otherwise they would not have tried to mislead people.

This is totally irrelevant to what I said.

Yeah actually the relevant line got weeded out as I progressed with editing, research and more editing. While suggesting to 'know', I got to know it myself too.

If the defendant kills themselves before trial, that's a failure to prosecute. If the prosecutor caused that suicide, that must count against them, no?

Why would it count against you if you are performing your duties both morally and legally, and something outside of your control and responsibility happens? So, no. This does not count against.

I have difficulty seeing driving a (apparently innocent) defendant to suicide as morally defensible. Besides, their goal should be conviction, not death. They failed to secure a conviction. They failed.

RT is a Russian national news service. They're quite anti-US, anti-NATO, etc.

I actually quite enjoy the RT TV station - they have some rather amusing reports. However, like all stations, they have their bias. So it's worth noting that their reports against the US should be taken with a pinch of salt (much like how I wouldn't trust any reports from Fox News).

RT is seemingly biased yes, mostly on the Russian issues. I think ALL reports from ANY news source should be taken with a pinch of salt, but if anything, you want to read about your nation from non national and possibly independent news outlets.

But how can you blame them for criticizing US foreign policy ? Informed people usually see the US foreign policy as very bulling, strong armed and imperialist, and rightly so IMHO.

And don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of the US and many people from the US, unfortunately is very hard to be informed and as such the administration is influenced by the few for the benefits of the few.

    > I think ALL reports from ANY news source should be taken with a pinch of salt

I'd already said that: "However, like all stations, they have their bias."

    >  but if anything, you want to read about your nation from non national and possibly independent news outlets.

Which is why I follow RT ;)

    > But how can you blame them for criticizing US foreign policy ?

I wasn't.

I was only advising people about a bias. Which is only fair given the likelihood of myself being one of the few in this thread who actively follows RT - so other readers on here may not be familiar with their editorial style (and let's not forget that the commenter before me did ask why RT may have ran this particular story).

Plus, to be fair, if you followed RT yourself, then I'm sure you'd agree that they are very one sided (almost to the degree of Fox News - albeit delivered less like a cabaret!). Where as many other stations and publications (eg BBC News) are a lot more balanced. I'm not trying to imply that the BBC doesn't have their own biases as well - but they are less polarised by it. So it's often worth noting which reporters are more reputable than others (another example: any health scare published in by the Daily Mail has to be treated with a huge amount of skepticism as they have a long history of adding dramatised editorials, skipping over vital facts and misquoting scientific research).

I follow RT sometimes, aljazeera and in fact any source of information on any topic that interests me. All in all, I think I agree with what you're saying. The best way to try to remove bias is merge the stories and take it from there.

Anyway, I think sometimes there is some truth in the daily mail, fox news, the sun and all that junk media and I wonder if the truth that gets published there is published there such that it can be discredited :P

Craprags don't exist to discredit the truth. They exist to sell their version of the truth. Sometimes that means distorting reality a little, by promoting statistics that appear -to the uninformed- to support their argument. However sometimes their version of the truth can be served verbatim.

However sometimes, the truth is distorted simply because the reporter isn't educated on that subject. It's a common problem with articles on legal proceedings, and with science papers too (the reporting on the "faster than light" neutrino is one great example of the press not understanding their subject!)

More often than not I'm not that upset either way between malice and stupidity.

The issue I have is, mostly and particularly on important topics, with their arguments themselves.

Because with big topics, you can excuse errors with stupidity (or malice as you will) but truly can't excuse the rhetoric and central message they try to convey.

On big topics and high profile news you would suspect the message is not the journalist's independent bias but is instead the management's or dare I say administration's, not just some slipped piece of news that hasn't gone through central editing and review.

    > On big topics and high profile news you would suspect the message is not the journalist's independent bias but is instead the management's or dare I say administration's, not just some slipped piece of news that hasn't gone through central editing and review.

All bare one of my points* was about the managements bias.

* re science reporters

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