I'm not sure what else you can do :( it's a really big systemic issue. I think we just need more awareness, first?

Social life in prison involves having "friends" who can any day decide to try and rob or fight you (both happened to me with my closest "friend"). Nobody has real friends. It's dog eat dog, you lose the ability to trust, and don't have any trusting social connections. That's extremely painful. When you talk to people on the outside, every prisoner just tries to deceive them into thinking things are just dandy: I'm not sure why that happens, but it means those connections aren't real either. It's all so much worse psychologically than is conveyed in popular media. We don't know how to quantify psychological suffering though; as a society we rather put people through huge amounts of that than some visible physical suffering (which, again, is probably strongly preferable to the criminal).

Unfortunately most of the people suffering in the prison system are poor, so we don't hear what they have to say. If you're rich, you can afford your own lawyer and get a much better plea deal, and get out quickly. It's also very racist: you will really understand Black Lives Matter when you meet a black father who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, and realize there are 100,000s - millions of people in the exact same situation: it's destroying entire communities. I've seen the way black people who a judge has never seen before are villified from their appearance: go to a courtroom near you if you don't believe me, it's shocking. I'm talking about in San Francisco, not even a rural area.

Anyways, thank you for your empathy. I wish more people understood that criminals will commit less crime if they're forgiven and accepted by society, instead of villified. And it's also the decent thing to do. Prisons are bad cultures because the small number of actual bad actors push everything to this shitty equilibrium: most prisoners individually have a lot of shame about their crimes, and as strong a moral code as the average person. Some definitely do not: and it's hard for the justice system to make the distinction.

All things which are hard to believe until you have some real world experience with these things...

As someone who has gone through the legal system in the US and was illegally detained for activism and then later accused of false charges (with no evidence) and illegally arrested: I don't think awareness alone will do anything. Everyone knows the Police are corrupt and the city will do little to nothing if they are caught committing these abuses--the officer who stood on George's neck had several prior complaints for violence in his department and was still allowed to work as an officer.

The BLM movement to me is and will always remain a Police abuse issue first and foremost: one that was highlighted because of the death of George Floyd, but was yet another reminder that Police are in a position in which their crimes are exempt from actual punishment due to qualified immunity, and they know that and behave as such.

In CO after the protests from Floyd's death the Police had their quality immunity removed [0] for abuses they would commit against protesters and were recorded for everyone to see as it became very clear they had no intention of hiding how egregious things got but this only addressed the issues that happened from 2020 onward. There are cases of physical violence and as you said what is likely torture of people who were detained/restrained in which the State refused to prosecute the officers for despite having the evidence and had to be taken to the Supreme Court before it was heard [1]. This case was only settled out of court with the COUNTY paying $400,000 (which is really to say people like me in Boulder) and the police involved were not even punished. The female officer in the video seen abusing the women was the same person who handled my transfer to my hearing from my cell and refused to allow me to make a phone call at a time when they refused to tell me my charges when I was brought in.

Honestly, defunding the police and slashing their pay based on actual performance based reviews are the real starting point, and using social workers instead of Police for mental health cases has been experimented with favorable results in CO. Scaling that would be the next meaningful step to eventually have a bare-bones, non-militarized police force as that at least has the right incentives in place. But that may be a pipe dream in the US at this point.

One need to only look at France to see what and how Civil Society is actually maintained and it starts with keeping Police in a very confined and constrained leash and reminding them of their limited role, which sometimes means rioting and revolting against police abuse to remove poor legislation from passing.

> Unfortunately most of the people suffering in the prison system are poor, so we don't hear what they have to say. If you're rich, you can afford your own lawyer and get a much better plea deal, and get out quickly. It's also very racist:

Incredibly so, the DA of my last case never even bothered to look at the incriminating footage of the officer abusing his authority and clearly violating private property laws and abusing my civil liabilities for unsubstantiated allegations. And I HAD a Lawyer, upon release because I couldn't speak to one while I was arrested, and had it known I was willing to be compliant with the questioning process before being illegally arrested provided my attorney was present before I spoke to anyone, as its my (supposed) Right to do so.

My case was eventually dismissed after 2 missed court dates by the DA who finally looked at the body cam footage and I had my career placed in jeopardy, an injury I still deal with to this day as well as well as the trauma from the abuse and the embarrassment of the arrest as it happen at work for all to see because an officer thought they are John Wayne and knew they never face punishment for their crimes... in addition to a significant legal bill for the privilege of it all.

My only recourse was to lawyer up again and pay 10s of thousands of dollars to a Civil Rights attorney after paying for my defense attorney and take the case as high as the Supreme Court like the other women did before a settlement would even be considered, at which point most of the legal/court fees had already eaten through most of the settlement money. There are no heroes in this system, and Lawyers are just as much responsible for perpetuating this corrupt system as the corrupt judges and officers.

And this is all told from an innocent person's perspective, actual convicted criminals get hung to dry and are seldom if ever allowed to return to Society without being constantly denied the ability to live a normal life in Society anymore, while the criminals with badges commit comparable crimes with impunity.

Honestly, BLM protests need to return and be far more targeted, as in localized to city counsels and mayors/governors offices/homes instead of looting department stores before anything serious is done. COVID may be dangerous, but Police are likely the greater danger to overall safety in Society if you know how the system really works--and while its an unpopular opinion for some, this applies to white people, too. We all saw how even members of International media were treated, and felt only the superficial outrage that people who have been victimized by the legal system have.

I have several horror stories of white middle class women in Boulder being abused by the Legal system, too, and further drives the point that this is not a solely a Black issue. I saw the systematic destruction of these People's lives during my arrest and the first hearing: armed police showed up to one woman's home for a reported car accident against a bicyclist days after it took place, and another of an owner of a home being arrested and forced out of her own home in cuffs when a guest made allegations of her threatening to use force to remove the guest who overstayed and refused to leave all while her underage children were still in the home with that person.

It's completely abysmal and terrifying to be honest.

0: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/12/18/colorado-tries...

1: https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/boulder-county-sett...

Reading stories like this just makes me angry.

- Removing qualified immunity from all LEO agencies and departments at the the State and federal Level and making them 100% personally legally and financially liable for all violations.

- Require a more stringent screening and continued training process to ensure they are mentally fit to do their job adequately

- Slash their budget and salaries by 50% until these reforms meet certain benchmarks that require unanimous approval in their city/county before any budget increase by no more than 5% each time, which is to be decided how it is funded without police union and lobbyist influence

- Using those funds removed by police budgets and allocated to social workers to act as first responders to calls that pertain to all mental health related issues, and contrast which solutions perform better and allot the budget/funds to those perform better using various metrics and analytics

- Mandate that body-cam footage be on at all times during an LEO's shift in office as well as on patrol and have it accessible to the people without interference--they tried to stall my process until my lawyer got involved which is typical to ensure that a case isn't brought against the officer

- Stop incentivizing mentally unfit and psychologically damaged people to enter LEO: most of them are ex-military veterans that saw active duty in illegal wars of occupation in Afghanistan, and Iraq and were trained for hostile warfare and not civilian Law Enforcement. Screening for certain mental and psychological maladies would probably reveal how mentally ill some of these people are as a result of their combat and trauma.

Personally speaking, I had high hopes for the BLM movement and the situation that unfolded (Blue leaks) in regards to Police brutality this summer but everyone just went back to the divisive identity politics leading up to the election instead of having a commonly held stance that transcends all party politics.

Most people do not realize that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have long history of further expanding the Police State. Biden passed the Crime Bill in the 90s that saw the expansion of the for profit jail system that led to lengthy sentences for petty things like drug possession crimes--all while his son turned out to be a drug addict that used his father's position to collude with other cronys for personal gain. And Harris was an immensely corrupt Attorney General that overturned many cases in regards to police corruption using unscrupulous methods and supposedly made evidence disappear to absolve police from wrong doing.

I don't know if and when people will have had enough to actually do anything and get involved anymore, but the issues discussed so far are simply symptoms of a much deeper systemic governance problem and begins with who and how elected officials are put into those positions of power and how limited options there are for any recourse for non-incumbents or established career politicians to be elected in the first place.

The US showed itself to be a Police state over the Summer, that cannot be denied.

The question is what are YOU willing to do about it and how many people in your community can you get involved and start from there. I'd make an argument for private policing, but that would require a resolve for direct activism to serve as a counter weight to these atrocities that the US populace doesn't possess anymore. And honestly given what we've seen with Blackwater/XE in private military contracting I'm sure the US would find a way to normalize this same system in the Police all over aain

I was arrested in San Francisco back in 2011, it was the most violent act to ever happen to me by far. It was my first time in the city and I was at a protest. Usually it is really easy to avoid arrest in a protest, however that night the police did not give us a choice, rounded us all up and arrested the lot of us. I had my life with me in two bags, apparently you are only allowed to be arrested with one bag, the police suggested that I needed to abandon one (in civil terms this is called theft).

They put us in a petty wagon and drove us around for probably an hour, we couldn’t see out, so for all I know we were being driven out of the city (after being released I found out that we were driven 15min walking distance away from the protest site). I was really scared I wouldn’t be able to get back to the city during this.

We were all detained under a freeway pass in two cages, segregated by the gender the police assigned to us. While detained nobody was allowed water or toilet brakes at first, and then only one person at a time. I never got to go to the toiled during the whole ordeal.

They charged me with a misdemeanor called Illegal lodging (whatever that is). They assigned a court date 3 months into the future. As someone that didn’t live in the state (and even the country) it felt like they were setting me up to do an impossible task. However they dropped the charges before the court date (without telling me though).

Now I in the process of immigrating to the USA, and whenever they ask me if I have ever been arrested/detained, I have to answer “yes”, even though—as far as the justice system is concerned—I have committed no crime, and then I have to explain to them that, yes, I was arrested for a misdemeanor, and then provide documents from the courts that the charges were dropped. A lawyer once told me that many people fall for this and provide the arrest records in an attempt to disclose but fail to show the court records, and are denied as a result.

And when I think about all this, what sucks even more, is that my experience was pretty mild. Hundreds of people have far worse violence inflicted on them by the police then I did a decade ago.

My question is is always: “Why are they doing this, what is the point?” and the only logical answer I can think of is that they really love treating people like shit. The only logical explanation for their behavior is that they are facists. They hate people other then them self. The police really has to be abolished.

Smells like success...

„- An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.

- Almost half (47%) of prisoners who did not have an arrest within 3 years of release were arrested during years 4 through 9.

- More than three-quarters (77%) of released drug ofenders were arrested for a non-drug crime within 9 years.

„- Forty-four percent of released prisoners were arrested during the frst year following release, while 24% were arrested during year-9.

- Eighty-two percent of prisoners arrested during the 9-year period were arrested within the frst 3 years.

Source: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf

„

I got out over 20 years ago, and I was determined to do whatever it took to successfully complete my parole and put all that crap behind me.

I still have scars. I'm 47 now. Dentures are in my near future because of the fighting from my prison days.

I had nightmares about the fighting and killing (saw two guys get killed mere feet away from me) for 15 years after getting out.

As time goes by the memories are less and less, but they never go away.

It changes you permanently.

Yes, you can argue that some communities have support groups or employment opportunities specific for ex-prisoners, but this isn't available universally, isn't well funded, and most people won't turn to help even if it's offered. That last part is true of free people as well: think of how many people in need refuse to reach out.

The stigma is real and crime is only ever a few inches away from most people.

Here are the slides: https://www.bgcheckinfo.org/sites/default/files/public/5thMt...

"When criminologists examine prison populations, they see a concentration of repeat offenders, most of whom will recidivate. Low-risk offenders enter and exit prison once, so in any survey of a prison stock, low-risk offenders are underrepresented as a proportion of the offender population.

An analogy is helpful: A Mall Exit Survey

Survey researchers sometimes use mall exit surveys to estimate shoppers’ purchasing habits.

Suppose that:

•25% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day.

•25% go once per week.

•25% go once per month.

•25% go once per year.

A naïve one week exit survey of visitors exiting the mall will find that:

•85% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day.

•12% go once per week.

•3% go once per month.

•Fewer than 1% go once per year.

The problem is that high-rate mall visitors churn, leaving an impression that most shoppers are frequent visitors."

Quoted from "Criminal Recidivism: Most Incarcerated Offenders do not Return to Prison", by William Rhodes, from the link in parent

But the slides still find evidence of recidivism using a less biased offender-based analysis. Moreover they find that the people are still more likely to return to prison the longer they have stayed in prison. The numbers are lower, but are definitely there. Ancestor’s claim about prisons creating criminals still stands.

Then there is the issue of low level drug offenders returning to prison for violent crimes in the next round. It would be interesting to see the numbers on that.

Yea, I bet recidivism is low in Norway, who also has a very small chapter of MS13 or whatever gang you like, coincidentally.

I disagree you can look to some other country and make a fair comparison. The only way to do it would be to look at rates before and after some policy change.

There’s a reason we have so many violent gangs in the US. We don’t take care of people the way other countries do, and we take advantage of every marginalized population we can.

A friend was in a therapy theater program that operated at San Quentin. They helped the prisoners write and act in theater pieces. At the end of the program, one of the prisoners, a lifer, told her that it had given his life meaning for the first time since sentencing. He'd been in for something like 15 years. I can't imagine how it would feel to find out you made such a difference for someone.

The US prison system is a terrible thing. That our society derives jokes about the atrocities within really shows the depravity of its citizenry.

1. Talking to prisoners doesn't mean it's not a deterrent for the rest of the population. This is a massive selection bias, it's like saying diet and exercise doesn't work because morbidly obese people say it doesn't work for them.

2. People sometimes lie (often first to themselves), especially about their motivations. This is like an angry teenager yelling that all their rebellion is because of their parents' rules, it's often a self-serving rationalisation.

3. There's no doubt that the US prison system is a bit weird if you compare it to the rest of the world.

So when I talk about deterrence I'm mostly talking about reoffenders. I.e, the prisoners I talked to coming back. I think they're more likely to commit crimes after prison, not less!!

Do you think people would lie, in a heavily monitored prison, about wanting to never come back to prison because they'll "die in glory" in a gun fight against the cops next time so they can't be arrested? Or about becoming a drug kingpin? Sounds like you think I'm saying these people were claiming nice things about themselves, but really they're mostly claiming quite bad things if it makes me think they're going to be back and were strongly negatively influenced by peers in prison.

On the topic of regular people who prison serves as a deterrent for, I'd look at other countries where crime rates are lower without the same hideous institution. Clearly it's not just horrible prisons which prevent noncriminals from committing crime, since so many countries don't have that? I guess that's up for debate.

If prison is as horrible as you describe, why do you think it's not much of a deterrent?

Think of it like this though: If harsh, dehumanizing punishments were an effective deterrent, crimes would've gone up when we stopped chopping off people's limbs for stealing, and in fact we'd have more stealing in modern day than at any time in history because public mutilation is not an acceptable punishment now.

Granted this was from studies done in the 70s and 80s that I recall from prepping for a debate on the death penalty.

I think it’s best for a society to implement policies to reduce crime not to scare people into complying with the law. The alternative is quite negative. Also, let’s remind ourselves that people are imprisoned in the US for stupid things like smoking pot, not paying tickets, scared into guilty pleas. Some of those people harden and become career criminals in prison and in the end it results in more crime.

The grandparent comment here is very good and I agree with all of it — comparing prison to high school is risible, at best — but that doesn’t mean we should fetishize expression of personal experience above any other kind of comment.

Secondly, you're wrong. "Lived experience" is not the same as "an anecdote." An anecdote is a story. Experience is interrogable. The man sharing his experience is right here on HN. The person who wrote was not repeating a story that he had heard, or describing a single isolated incident.

an·ec·dote

/ˈanəkˌdōt/

noun

a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.

Your key word in that definition is "real".

I'm glad it doesn't have a block button. Its for cowards who can't defend their points. I would grill you just as hard if you were sitting across the table from me at dinner and said this kind of nonsense.

Lived experience and an anecdote are the same. Its a single data point and more often than not, single data points are almost never indicative of what's actually occurring.

And as far as what the word "interrogable" means... 1) you're arrogant to assume I don't realize its the adjective form of interrogate and 2) I knew you meant, "Something that can be questioned." Lived experience CAN be questioned. Just because we live in a world full of people who think they have the right to never feel uncomfortable doesn't mean otherwise.

I actually was searching for a response to GP claims about prison not being a deterrent and if nobody had mentioned it would commented it myself.

To add to the arguments: GP even contradicts himself by stating how bad prison is and that you really don't want to be there while claiming it's not a deterrent.

Criticizing that point was absolutely fair and doesn't mean the rest of GP's comment is bad or untrue.

Even if that part is useful though there's no real reason to impugn the integrity of the people the GP references, and the reply does not tell us why we should find those people more likely to be prone to self-rationalization, which it needs to.

So our best theory of behavioral modification states that prisons is not a deterrent for crime, nor is there any evidence for it in the records. All the while prisons are an inhumane and terrible way to treat people. Can we just please abolish prisons.

Also your logic if flawed. Confining people after the deed seem logically a really poor and inefficient way to reduce crime. While one criminal is confined, there will always be another. So your 50% crime reduction is closer to 0%.

It would be a contradiction if people only ended up in prison because they wanted to go.

In reality many people commit crimes for other reasons, like lack of food and shelter.

Its much harder to get a job with a criminal record, so many former criminals end up forced back into criminal activities for food and shelter.

This is the part which is a personal attack. You have some time to edit your comment to restate that, if you're up for it. :)

Ugh. That's not really any better. You're still effectively saying the person is an idiot / incapable of reasonable thinking. :(

I don't actually have a problem with people being wrong or not very bright in the comments they make. I have a problem with the arrogance and self-involvement that I feel responding to someone like this — someone who has literally signed up to HN so that they could share a few paragraphs about their life — represents. So if you can do a better job of making the problem with that clear to people who might otherwise make such a mistake, then that would be even better.

Hmmm, I think we're coming at this from different places.

Personally, I have no problem at all with people coming to HN to share their life experiences. For me, that helps my understanding of the world. :)

This kind of thing only gets solved one way. And it's not pretty.

The only useful thing about it IMO is preventing truly dangerous/sick people from interacting with the rest of society. Most prisoners are not that

I don't think it's a stretch to suggest the US has gone long on the "retribution" angle in their approach to criminal justice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Theories_of_punishment_...

Rehabilitation: should be obvious, nordic countries are well known for prioritizing this.

Deterrence: again obvious, as noted elsewhere imprisonment has been found to be a poor deterrent in studies but the concept remains as a political argument in favor of harsher sentencing.

Incapacitation: keeping the public safe by preventing dangerous individuals from having the ability to endanger others.

and Retribution, which we just discussed above.

Only on paper (or more accurately as a self delusion). E.g. Iceland still uses excessive solitary confinement, even though it has shown to have negative rehabilitating effects and is under every definition a form of torture. The fact that the Icelandic prison system still engages in torture suggests that they are still in the retribution camp of punishment.

I don’t know about the other Nordic countries but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear similar stories from there.

We don't need you to change your views but we do need you not to post like this. A more substantive, less aggressive way of making your point would be fine.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They don't seem to improve the world, when they do crap like this. :(

What a shitty and presumptuous assumption to make.

I think you are under-estimating the extent that many urban schools are preparing students for prison though, and have some structural features in common, even though of course schools aren't nearly as bad as prisons. Contemporary urban schools are often really terrible places, stockhousing and controlling children, preparing them to be stockhoused and controlled.

(And that's without touching the problem of actively violent, disruptive students, who would probably need to be expelled far sooner than they are to protect a non-controlling environment.)

Federal prisons are well known to be cake walks. State prisons are the worst but again differ widely - even within the same state. Typically those with different types of crimes and sentences and ages get put in different prisons, so as you can imagine a nonviolent offender under 35 with a 10 year or less sentence gets sent to a much better prison then a serial killer who's 51 with a life sentence.

So take that dude's experience with a grain of salt. The state wants you to believe prison is hell, but as with most things it depends. The positive experiences I had in prison changed my life. If I had a choice between my prison experience and my experience as a master's student all over again I'd choose prison every time a million times over.

You answered your own question.

The purpose of prison is not reform. It's not even punishment or deterrence. The purpose of prison in the US is:

1) First and foremost it is a profit center. Caging human beings is a multi billion dollar industry in the US.

2) A storage facility for political dissidents and out groups. We just make up laws to target certain groups we don't like, and use that as pretext to lock them away (you know, that pesky first amendment always getting in the way).

3) To reify the carve out in the 13th Amendment which states:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Gotta keep slavery alive and well in the USA.

Americans with nice lives, particularly the types to frequent HN, are insulated from the effects of our criminal justice system. Concern for schooling takes precedence.

It's called selective application of the Law, and the US has 3 possibly 4 tiered systems depending on Class strata from what I can tell.

The first level applies to the affluent and politically connected classes that get to legalize their crimes and somehow still get rewarded for their behavior with continued contracts with Government.

FAANG workers have to recognize they are part of the problem: they work for employers who actively abuse privacy laws, labour laws, tax laws, and God only knows what other clandestine operations they have with military and intelligence agencies and yet its some sort of talking point that those people are proud to remind you of any chance they have that they belong to this class (of only vicariously) as though it had any merit or prestige. Until that sentiment changes, I doubt any well constructed from of oratory on HN is going to do much if anything to that end, its definitely a cultural and social issue and class and your affiliation to it seems to be a much bigger component than anything like skin colour or living in the right neighborhood, zip codes.

If the environment is so violent, why wouldn’t you want solitary confinement? (Is there a downside?)

Excessive and prolonged solitary confinement will pretty much result in the death of the individual. The psychological damage inflected upon the victim will be so great that they will return another person (and not in the reformed sense).

Humans are social animals, to deprive us of company for a prolonged periods is as dangerous to our health as depriving us of food. We need love to survive just as we need warmth.

Prison was HELL.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: Also, it looks like you've only been commenting on HN for the purposes of ideological battle. That's not what this site is for, it's against the rules, and we ban such accounts. Please review the guidelines.

Edit: I go on to elaborate that I see their value as lower than that of pets and farm animals, whom we summarily execute all the time.

Edit: I should clarify that I was using "you" in the general sense, not referring to the parent specifically.

That includes not using HN primarily for ideological or political battle any more.

> I'd like to express a controversial opinion.

The opinion that follows this line is basically the fundamental guiding principle of the US's undeniably beyond broken justice system.

Outside of extremely liberal social enclaves the view that violent criminals should be locked up is probably one of the least controversial views on US criminal justice reform.

The view that violent criminals are not worth defending is so uncontroversial that even prison reform activists almost always preface their appeals with statistics about the huge number of non-violent offenders, as if to say: "yes, we at least aren't breaking the conventional view that Violent Offenders Are Bad".

> And in my eyes it is these choices which dehumanize them.

Bottom line: Does it really matter how you feel? I care about the safety of innocent people, including myself and my family. You can feel like violent prisoners are subhuman, that's fine. But insisting on institutions that net out your retribution -- even at the expense of reducing recidivism and saving future victims of violent crimes -- isn't that a tad selfish?

It's entirely consistent to both feel that violent criminals are subhuman and also realize that crafting institutions which treat them as such is net harmful to the rest of society.

I did go on to suggest reforms and a model in Japan, which has very low crime and recidivism rates, especially when controlling for population density.

Edit: It seems we agree that the US system is broken. We just disagree on how to fix it. To elaborate, I think the main problem in the penal system is that prisoners are allowed to freely associate, share experiences, and form a culture. This should under no circumstances be permitted. It is this culture which gives people ideas about what sort of criminal they will become once they leave the system. Instead, if we do insist on giving people a second chance, they should effectively be reprogrammed. With every aspect of their routine controlled in such a manner as to produce compliant, law-abiding citizens to re-integrate into society.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Now why don't people apply this to everything else? You think HN knows what it's like to be a plumber('s apprentice), janitor, drive a floor buffer for min-wage, etc?