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Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by pessimizer on Sunday October 30, 2022 @01:38PM (#33396651)
Lock them up with other maladjusted people for years, then let them loose on society with a hardened attitude, extensive criminal connections, and no ability to find employment?
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by Ekaros on Sunday October 30, 2022 @01:50PM (#33396781)
The last part really leads to to question, what do people expect to happen? Them willingly starve or freeze to death?
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by thefounder on Sunday October 30, 2022 @01:55PM (#33396835)
The main issue is that we have time based sentences only for most crimes. Criminals should never be left back in society unless they prove themselves fit/worthy to come back. Of course I don't mind a minumum time based sentences as punishment on top of that requirement either. However betrayed trust cannot be repaid in full just serving time locked-up.
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by bryanrasmussen on Sunday October 30, 2022 @02:28PM (#33397187)
>The main issue is that we have time based sentences only for most crimes. Criminals should never be left back in society unless they prove themselves fit/worthy to come back.

So if this was the strategy of the U.S until about 2010 I suppose it would have been morally justifiable as an act of self-preservation to kill anyone that saw you smoking pot - assuming of course that there is such a thing as personal rights and people had the right to smoke pot, but the government prevented them from doing so.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by thefounder on Sunday October 30, 2022 @03:34PM (#33397798)
Why would you kill someone who sees you smoking pot? That may lead to a minimum life sentece as punishment regardless of your rehabilitation.

If you were certain that you can never quit smoking pot/rehabilitate in prison then perhaps your action "could be" justifiable.

You should be aware that drug use is not affecting only you. You also fund a criminal enterprise. If you want to use drugs then take the hard, legal way(i.e political activism). As far as I'm concerned all drugs should be legal and served in hospitals unpon request at reasonable prices or free for those who cannot afford them.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by bryanrasmussen on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:02PM (#33398087)
>If you were certain that you can never quit smoking pot/rehabilitate in prison then perhaps your action "could be" justifiable.

If you have a right to smoke pot then you should not have to rehabilitate yourself, just as you should not have to love Big Brother or any other number of things.

>If you want to use drugs then take the hard, legal way(i.e political activism).

here I'm wondering if you are using 'you' to refer to people in general or to me? Either way it's sort of silly, hardly anybody is going to say I will do drugs after my political activism to make doing drugs legal succeeds! If it's to me I don't smoke pot, but I do believe people have the right to do it.

So if you are going to be thrown in prison on an indefinite sentence for something you have the right to do then I would advocate extreme violence for anyone that was in danger of being arrested for smoking pot.

In the end your indefinite time until rehabilitation proposal is more extreme than the current American system.

>As far as I'm concerned....

reading your last paragraph I get the feeling your view of 'drugs' is they are all somehow the same as heroin?

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by thefounder on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @10:12AM (#33421484)
>> If you have a right to smoke pot

Well, if you have that right into law then I don't understand why you think you risk going to jail.

As far as I am concerned I believe people should be allowed to take any drug they want and even commit assisted suicide for any reason they want (as long as they are sane). After all we own our body and the gov should only protect us from abuse from others(i.e misleading advertising like they did with the tabacco).

That being said I believe in indefinite time until rehabilitation. If the law is wrong we should work to fix it instead to bend it at the expense of so many especially for crimes that lead to violent/tragic outcomes.

I also think people should own the effects of their choices. Buying from criminal or terrorist organisations does lead to tragic situations for many people regardless of the product you buy. Being ignorant shouldn't absolve you of guilt.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by cmehdy on Sunday October 30, 2022 @03:16PM (#33397622)
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by thefounder on Sunday October 30, 2022 @03:20PM (#33397660)
Mandatory minimums should be used as punishments only. Obviously the release should depend by rehabilitation(mandatory).
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by YZF on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:12PM (#33398177)
Who/how determines rehabilitation? If the prison benefits financially from a prisoner staying in prison how is that going to work in practice?

I goggled this: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

I think it's kind of interesting. The people one might concerned about are probably: "Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses" -> 3.2% of prisoners. "Robbery" -> 2.8% ...

I think the first question is what % of all prisoners should probably not be there in the first place and how do you deal with the root causes of them getting there. Then we can worry about when we let them out.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by pessimizer on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:45PM (#33398480)
Mandatory minimums do work. They don't work when they're draconian measures passed in law-and-order frenzies by reactionaries, but they work for decreasing sentencing disparities between sympathetic criminals and unsympathetic ones.

The fact that the mandatory minimums for crack were so much higher than for powder cocaine was a good thing. They're an admission that the system is openly racist, and a target to aim at. Without them, we'd just have judges sentencing white snorters to probation and putting black smokers under the jail on their own discretion, and we'd need statistics that we wouldn't be given access to in order to make a case. It's better when racism is out in the open rather than buried in a judge's latitude.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by cmehdy on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:50PM (#33398519)
Surely I must be misunderstanding everything you just said.

> The fact that the mandatory minimums for crack were so much higher than for powder cocaine was a good thing. They're an admission that the system is openly racist, and a target to aim at.

So you're saying the system is racist and we're seeing it in the value of mandatory minimums, therefore we should aim for more mandatory minimums to even out the racism? Do you believe the same thing when it comes to police shooting black men, i.e. that more white men should also get shot in order to live in a world that's more fair? Therefore making it a "good thing" that people get shot at all?

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by concordDance on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:14PM (#33398791)
> Criminals should never be left back in society unless they prove themselves fit/worthy to come back.

How could this be done in practice?

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by throwaway894345 on Sunday October 30, 2022 @03:23PM (#33397682)
Well, we tried pulling back policing and slap-on-the-wrist prosecution policies and violent crime is surging. How long until friendship, positive energy, and rainbows kick in and bring crime levels down? There are more constructive solutions to the prison problem--notably solving frontend problems + prison reform, but locking up violent offenders is part of "solving frontend problems" so we can't exactly stop doing that and hope to make up the difference by investing in after school programs. Any serious solution to crime has to be "lock up offenders and X" rather than "letting offenders run rampant and X".
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by PuppyTailWags on Sunday October 30, 2022 @03:55PM (#33398017)
> we tried pulling back policing and slap-on-the-wrist prosecution policies and violent crime is surging

Firstly, where is pulling back policing happening? I don't know of a single city that has actually reduced their police size to any real sense?

Additionally, how do we know this isn't just correlation and not causation? Inflation is higher, more people are addicted to things, housing insecurity is rising.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by alex_sf on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:15PM (#33398204)
> Firstly, where is pulling back policing happening?

Most metropolitan areas. Seattle [1][2] and Minneapolis [3] have both established public policies of not responding to, citing, or arresting for a wide range of offenses.

> I don't know of a single city that has actually reduced their police size to any real sense?

Minneapolis has reduced the number of police officers, through various means, by 30%. [4]

> Additionally, how do we know this isn't just correlation and not causation?

Because we have multiple studies proving a causal relationship. [5][6]

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/sea...

[2] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-police-bellevue-oth...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...

[4] https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-supreme-cou...

[5] https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rssa.12142

[6] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/426877

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by PuppyTailWags on Sunday October 30, 2022 @05:51PM (#33399171)
If this is true, then why are the places with the least crime also not the places with the most police? I'm genuinely asking out of curiosity.
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by alex_sf on Sunday October 30, 2022 @06:58PM (#33399907)
Crime has multiple causes, and multiple solutions. One proven solution is increased police presence. It isn't required, though.
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by PuppyTailWags on Sunday October 30, 2022 @07:59PM (#33400388)
Thanks for educating me about it!
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by rmasters on Sunday October 30, 2022 @07:02PM (#33399960)
I'm not the person you asked, but if I rephrase your question to "Then why do some places with low crime have less police?", then the answer just seems to be common sense.
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by YZF on Sunday October 30, 2022 @03:59PM (#33398049)
"Crime is surging" seems to be the current thing in the political discourse. That's how conservatives are attacking liberals these days in the US and in other places. It's mostly not supported by numbers (at least I checked where I live).

Crime rates have multiple causes to them, many go years back.

Maybe we should try to address the root causes instead of locking up more people? We have tough times economically, many reasons for people to despair, endless incitement to violence as means of resolving disagreements or other problems.

At the very least, a harsher approach to law enforcement has to be coupled with some path forward to address the other issues.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by pessimizer on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:39PM (#33398423)
> That's how conservatives are attacking liberals these days in the US and in other places.

Primarily as a completely organized and funded way to attack recently elected "progressive" city officials. After the enemy prosecutor/sheriff disappears, the crime wave evaporates as fast as the complaints about kids in cages did when Biden took over.

Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by YZF on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:50PM (#33398525)
You mean migrants at the border ;) Elections in the age of social media.
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by alex_sf on Sunday October 30, 2022 @04:17PM (#33398219)
Sure, let's try to reduce the crime rate. Let's also not just ignore crimes and refuse to imprison people for them.
Re:How I Survived a Year in ‘The Hole’ Without Losing My Mind by throwaway894345 on Monday October 31, 2022 @10:56AM (#33406651)
You are mistaken. Homicides are up 60% in the US since the pre-BLM era. This is widely acknowledged among criminologists and isn’t some “conservative misinformation”. Lots of research indicates at a causal relationship between the BLM protests and crime surges, including research that compares crime rates in individual cities before and after a major BLM protest. At some point I should just compile a canned list of papers so I don’t have to dig up links every time this talking point comes up.