Comment by gcd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gcd | Hacker News Reader

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> once we get away from "non-violent drug offenders" i think the argument loses force.

I disagree.

97% of federal convictions and 94% of state convictions are the result of plea bargains. At least 4% of death sentences are erroneous. In 2007 there were 2.4 million prisoners in the United States.

I'm guessing death row convictions receive much more attention than normal convictions, especially convictions from plea bargains. In this case, we can conservatively guess that the rate of false conviction is higher for plea bargains.. let's say it's 6%. Extrapolate that to the entire prison population, and that's 144,000 people who are wrongfully locked up. That number is far, far too high no matter how you look at it, and I'm guessing it's even worse than that in reality. The way our system abuses the plea bargaining system is morally reprehensible. This alone should be enough to warrant reform.

> people are capable of really heinous stuff.

People who were raised in shitty circumstances tend to do shitty things. 68% of prisoners don't have a high school diploma. I think that's pretty telling on its own.

The real question is: what is the point of prison? Is it a place wherein troubled individuals can receive treatment and be corrected so that they may be reintegrated at some point and become functioning and productive members of society? Or is simply a place that we punish people indiscriminately?

Recidivism rates tell the story. In California, 60% of the formerly incarcerated end up back in prison. Prison is obviously not a place for treatment or healing or anything that might improve the lives of the people who enter it. It is a place that society simply locks the people up that it doesn't like - for the most part, poor black people.

But there is hope. When I see things like this: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/05/13/rehab-program-boas... , it gives me hope that people will realize that the way we're handling 'corrections' produces more criminals than it stops. Our system currently doesn't work if the goal is to reduce crime in the long run. I wonder how many criminals we have created because of false convictions. Or because of the war on drugs, since the number of federal prisoners has jumped 790% since 1980 (do you really think people have been committing 790% more crime since then?)

I agree that current prison sentences are too high, many drug offenders don't belong in prison, current plea bargaining practices make a mockery of the very idea of justice by essentially turning a criminal prosecution into a game of high-stakes poker, and it is currently far too difficult for convicts who have served their sentences to reintegrate into society in a positive way.

But your analysis leaves out the idea of deterrence.

Heavy consequences for serious violent crimes like rape, murder, assault, etc. keep those violent crimes from being seen as viable options for resolving disputes by people who have self-interest but little-to-no empathy or ethics.

A free democracy with a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, can't really do much to criminals other than attempt to rehabilitate them, lock them up, or punish them financially [1]. Enduring sentences of rehabilitation and financial punishments are probably things that a rational, self-interested sociopath would be willing to endure as the price of being allowed to maim or murder someone who gets in the way of what they want. OTOH the prospect losing a few decades to prison, would probably convince our hypothetical sociopath to try to find a lawful way to deal with their situation.

[1] The death penalty is an interesting and complex topic, and I think the consensus is slowly moving toward ending the death penalty. My view is that it obviously does nothing for rehabilitation, it's not cost-effective at keeping criminals off the streets (it's less expensive to imprison a defendant for life than to do all the legal maneuvering courts and legislatures have found necessary to properly protect the rights of the accused), and its deterrence value is not that great (because it's so expensive, relatively few cases go through the process, and it takes a long time, so the additional deterrence provided versus a life prison sentence is questionable at best). Since life imprisonment does a better job of satisfying those three main objectives of criminal penalties, it should be preferred.

In other words, the death penalty either has to get a lot faster, cheaper, and much more widely applied, or we need to give it up entirely. I think the first path is a political non-starter and fraught with constitutional issues, making the second path the only real way forward.

I agree - I certainly did leave that out. I still think we need to have consequences for crimes with victims, especially violent ones. But that's still only part of the equation: we need to have deterrences and corrections in the same way that there's preventative medicine and treatment.

Even for violent crimes, I don't think that locking people up should be the only response. Victim-centered approaches, like restorative justice circles for example, could and should be used more where applicable. The victim is mostly left out of the equation in our current justice system. We should also try to view instances of violence not as deliberate evil actions taken by people, but instead culminations of bad circumstances and bad choices. This is not to say there shouldn't be repercussions for the bad choices, but we should also offer support and rehabilitation to try to improve the circumstances.

Of course, there will always be the people who are beyond rehabilitation. Even then, for these kinds of people, 'prison' doesn't sound quite right to me.. 'mental institution' seems more appropriate.

On [1], I don't support the death penalty because there are so many errors made in sentencing. Even if we managed to make the error rate much lower, I personally don't think the cost of innocent lives would be worth the potential extra deterrence the threat of death provides over life imprisonment. Hell, even if the rate were 0%, I still wouldn't support it for moral reasons.

> what is the point of prison? Is it a place wherein troubled individuals can receive treatment and be corrected so that they may be reintegrated at some point and become functioning and productive members of society?

It's never been the first objective of prison. Prison exists to ensure the people who are dangerous or detrimental to society remain excluded from roaming in the streets and causing more trouble.

This whole idea of "prison to reeducate people" is very much a creation of recent history.

> who are dangerous or detrimental to society remain excluded from roaming the streets and causing more trouble

This is not the point of prison. Whites and blacks, for example, use drugs and sell drugs at the same rates. Yet blacks are incarcerated at a much higher rate relative to their representation in the general population.

Throughout the entire criminal justice process, from arrest to prosecution / plea bargaining to sentencing, blacks are discriminated against and receive much harsher treatment than whites.

More accurate would be, 'people who we perceive to be more dangerous'.

The number of federal and state non-violent drug offenders have increased by 750% and 1100% respectively since 1980. Do you really think that these people are so dangerous?

On top of this, a good portion of felony convictions are erroneous, and recidivism rates are near 67%, meaning our prisons are actively creating criminals.

Regardless, I was asking the question to try and inspire thought about what prison should be. I should have been more clear.

Strawman reply. I was commenting about the key goal of prison in the first place, and you are replying as if I was inferring that who goes to prison was fair - that is not at all the point I raised.

Before prison, the common practice in antiquity was to exile people. Which has the exact same effect as prison: to remove people from everyday society. That's why the primary goal of prison is to achieve the same thing: removal of individuals who cause harm (whether they are actually doing harm is a different discussion).

If you want to reeducate people, I'm not sure prison is the right place to do so.

> Strawman reply. I was commenting about the key goal of prison in the first place

Before crying straw man (by the way, that's a great way to stifle the discussion), remember that you first said: "Prison exists to ensure ...". There is quite a difference in meaning between that and what you are talking about here - my response was hardly a strawman if you interpret "Prison exists ..." in a certain way.

> Prison exists to ensure the people who are dangerous or detrimental to society remain excluded from roaming in the streets and causing more trouble

Yeah, and this has always been the primary goal of Prison. Prisons were never made to be places to reeducate people. It was always, at the beginning, seen as both a practical "exile" form society and a form of punishment. And I maintain that your reply was indeed a strawman, because it was not at all answering to the point I raised, no matter how you look at it, there was no implication that Prison was fair in any way in my comment.

> And I maintain that your reply was indeed a strawman, because it was not at all answering to the point I raised, no matter how you look at it

No matter how you look at it. When I first read your sentence, I unintentionally read what you said differently than what you intended. If ambiguity in language allows for many interpretations of a statement, responding to one instead of the other is not a strawman.

Again, regardless, the purpose of my question was not about what prison was originally intended to be but instead what it's purpose should be.

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