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Comment by Osiris | Hacker News Reader

Here in Denver there has been some debate about this issue [1]. The new prison chief put himself in solitary to try to understand how inmates feel.

"Rick Raemisch says he suffered mental anguish after spending only 20 hours in solitary confinement. The average in Colorado is 23 months."

[1] http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/colorado-pri...

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While it seems extreme, I'd love to see more public officals put them selves up for similar 'stunts': spend time in a prison, live on minimum wage, use a bicycle for your daily commute, be tazered, experience waterboarding.

When people can speak with knowledge about some of the horrors and dangers that we put our populations in, then I'd feel a lot more comfortable, and trust them to be more engaged.

> spend time in a prison, live on minimum wage, use a bicycle for your daily commute, be tazered, experience water boarding

One of these things is not like the others...

True, the levels of horror are mixed here, but the crying was something that hit me this morning. If more of out politicians, public servants and even taxi and bus drivers cycled a few days each year, I'm sure the roads in Britain would be a very different place.

Similarly I'd love to see people experience some of the pain and danger they seem willing to put others in. The cycling comment was flippant (and my personal bugbear) but I think it is part of a whole spectrum of engagement and understanding that we should expect from those that want to and chose to run and operate the mechanics of our countries.

In America, there's a very annoyingly direct correlation between "cities with good public transit" and "cities whose administrators use public transit routinely." So that argues in favor of your point. I wish it could simply be taken for granted that people who don't ride on public transit will do a worse job of overseeing it than people who do.

I think that was on hn a little while back, while looking for the (hn) link I came across this old story:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confine...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5796790

[edit: which is basically the same story as the main article here, but much more detailed (I guess less of a sales pitch for the book)]

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