News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
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?