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.
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.