News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on From a life prison sentence to a computer engineering job. Parent comment

Re:From a life prison sentence to a computer engineering job by coldtea on Sunday October 20, 2019 @09:10PM (#21308554)
Well, that's less an excuse for having more inmates, and more something for the US to do some thinking on what they do wrong as a society to get both of those things higher...

If they have both harsher penalties and more crime and recidivism, then the former are clearly not working much.

And one would need to wonder why have more crime in the first place.

Either we go with the "lower quality people" explanation (bad genes?), which I don't think has many takers, or there's some bad cultural and systemic shit going on.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:From a life prison sentence to a computer engineering job by rayiner on Sunday October 20, 2019 @10:18PM (#21308864)
It’s culture, but not the modern stuff (harshness of penalties, reducing recidivism, etc.). By 1800, almost all of Western Europe had a homicide rate under 2 per 100k. At that time they had no welfare states, and punishments were harsh. France, the Netherlands, and England all punished many property crimes with death at that time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:From a life prison sentence to a computer engineering job by lonelappde on Sunday October 20, 2019 @09:33PM (#21308678)
The poster you are replying to has a very well established HN reputation for a hard-line worldview that assumes government is almost never wrong about anything it does to citizens.
[ Parent | on HN ]