> [IPP] was intended to protect the public against criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to merit a normal life sentence but who were regarded as too dangerous to be released when the term of their original sentence had expired. It is composed of a punitive "tariff" intended to be proportionate to the gravity of the crime committed, and an indeterminate period which commences after the expiry of the tariff and lasts until the Parole Board judges the prisoner no longer poses a risk to the public and is fit to be released. [1]
That last bit is even worse than it sounds: the burden of proof is on the prisoner to prove that they're no longer a danger to society, instead of requiring the Parole Board to prove that they're still a danger. Between that burden and the rest of the Parole Board's workload, it's taking forever to get anyone released.
IPP was eliminated in 2012 because it was unjust and overused, but politicians made the conscious decision to not retroactively undo it because of the bad PR it'd cause if some violent offender was released and killed someone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protec...
So it's ok if a violent offender jailed after 2012 gets released and kills someone. Typical politican logic.
It is. My comment was a (failed) attempt at sarcasm. If the new ruling is thought to be more just, it should be retroactively applied.
I can tell you that violent offenders causing subsequent problems is very common, at least in the US. Over the last decade many coastal cities have adopted policies where criminals are released with little to no consequence for many crimes, or relatively short sentences/early release even for bigger ones. And there are just so many cases of them reoffending or escalating the type of crime, that it’s almost a given these days that anytime you hear of a serious crime, some judge or prosecutor helped let them off previously. Many of these cases are absurd - someone with a record of 50+ arrests previously or a long list of felonies. But they were still released so they could prey on the public.
From my perspective I am happy to choose public safety instead of releasing inmates and subjecting everyone to risk. I don’t think it is fair, once someone has been convicted, to simply assume they’ll be a better person. There needs to be a much higher bar for release. Maybe it is unfair but it is more fair than the alternative, where there are more innocent victims.
Crime is enormously politicized. Whichever politician is in office can be attacked with any crimes that happened in their jurisdictions. Its easy to see it in alt-right propaganda bringing up horrific stories.... from years ago. As in, they had to go back years to find a story horrific enough of a story to resonate with people. I see this pattern common in European and American conservative news.
Between the media's "If it bleeds, it leads". Private prisons ties to politicians. Companies benefiting from slave labor. Many people's personal preference for excessive punishment. The data supports one story, and more and more people feel another one is true.
This has nothing to do with the “alt-right” or “conservative news” you brought up. Ironically it seems like you’re making this political, despite complaining about politicization.
You’ll need to back that up with facts, not “it seems to me…”. It’s easy to say “the data are wrong, think about it,” but that doesn’t make it true. That’s just a nice way of saying, “of course those people are criminals, just look at them, but there’s a conspiracy making reality say different.”
And the 'standardized' form has been messed with so much that increase or decrease for any particular line item is meaningless.
Personally, I know that shootings and other crimes I've reported on my property have been white-washed and don't show up in our city's 'open data' system.
Being 'open' with statistics just means they're much more careful about manipulating them first, or about what data is allowed in.
Hint: they had more than 0 murders in 2023.
I looked at homicide, location Louisiana, agency New Orleans Police Department for the last two years. There were multiple homicides recorded every month in 2023.
EDIT: I found that the New Orleans Police Department also publishes a daily Major Offense Log here:
https://nopdnews.com/transparency/major-offense-log/
It has a homicide reported as recently as 2024-09-21:
https://nopdnews.com/getattachment/2ed5b866-db79-4edb-aeda-7...
Which is not the way 'nodata' should be returned.
But the point stands- eg Jackson ms didn't submit this year. So your get a 'state total' that doesn't include the majority of the data for the state.
OK, so on one hand we have crime data going back decades and on the other we have HN user blackeyeblitzar saying "Trust me, bro". I know which one I'm going to believe.
Homicides are indeed lower than they were in the height of the cocaine boom of the 70s and 80s and crack wars of the 90s. But they're about 20% higher than they were a decade ago[1], and that's really bad. Murder is one of those things that should be zero tolerance don't you think?
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-h...
You can try to hand wave this away as “alt-right propaganda” all you want, but the government’s statistics don’t lie.
He got 18 months and has been in for 18 years. The article makes no mention of justification for the board's decision to keep him in prison or his behavior while in prison, but they are continuing to do so. They could be keeping him in prison purely out of spite, power trip, or actually be protecting society from him. We don't know.
Is this justice? Is this how it should work? Jailed for life for relatively minor crimes that resulted in a grand total of 18 months prison sentence. Hand waving someone's life away is different than hand waving obvious propaganda.
Why?
Having served their time are they dumped without resources and the stigma of a criminal conviction with limited ability for employment and support?
The US is outstanding extreme in the per capita imprisonment rate which speaks to some systemic issue, however to be fair the US is about middle of the pack for G20 recidivism rates after (say) four years.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...
~ 40% seems commonplace.
Obligatory context: the monetary value of wage theft alone (not including other types of white-collar crime, like embezzlement, tax fraud, securities fraud, etc.) is greater than that of every type of "violent" theft or burglary. Combined. Priorities.
So I think it's definitely with reason that violent crimes are receiving heavier sentences.
As for the relative stress of high-value white collar crime versus low-value "violent" (I put that in quotes because many of these crimes only involve threats, and sometimes even no contact between parties, e.g., pick-pocketing)... Yes, it sucks to feel violated or to be injured. That's on a completely different level from the all-encompassing, debilitating effects on one's life that not being able to pay for food or medical treatment, or getting kicked out of your home, or living in a culture of hopelessness that actually encourages violent crime, has. All are effects of the unfettered economic corruption in this country. White-collar crime is WAY worse, and further, fixing it often goes a long way towards ALSO fixing violent crime.
Again: priorities.
You should read more about SF, Portland, Seattle, and LA (while under district attorney George Gascon). Being soft on crime is normal in some parts of the US, and it predictably leads to lots of crime. These soft on crime policies have come so far that my local retail store locks up detergent behind glass now, and this is common on the west coast at this point.
I am willing to bet that you routinely violate the law. Somehow in your culture that is acceptable. Maybe you ignore a speed limit. Maybe you fail to disclose some income. Maybe you pay a kid to mow your lawn in violation of Child Labor laws. Maybe you take a swing at somebody during a pickup game of basketball. In U.S. culture these are tolerated and even encouraged.
If you arrested people for these things and sent them to jail do you think they would re-offend when they got out of jail? If you haven't changed the culture into which you return them, there is a high probability. Is there anything about prison that changes the culture outside prison in a positive way? I don't ask that in a "See how pointless prisons are?" kind of way. Mostly my attention there is on the environment outside prison.
Yes, this right here is the key people are missing. This varies from person to person, from political affiliation to political affiliation. But it also varies within a person. Someone black is not going to be viewed in the same light as someone white. As much as we like to believe this isn't the case, it just is, and we have to account for that.
The problem with IPP is that we start with the assumption the violent are violent and they must prove otherwise. When we begin at a baseline of disadvantage, the potential for corruption is strife. Racism is trivial and invisible in such a system.
Notice that I haven't revealed the identity of the "victim"? Context matters. Identical actions are treated differently in different contexts. Even at the football game, a fan who assaults another fan is treated differently than an athlete who assaults another athlete.
If you don't change the culture in the locker room and the practice field, etc. you will probably not change behavior. If you fine an aggressive athlete then sign them to a big contract because you love their agression, fines just become part of the culture. This isn't black or white. Just ask Larry Bird about every Pistons player and see which one he detests the most. It won't be based on race. But it will be part of their "identity".
Nice try, but it's not clear-cut like you say. Crime varies state to state.
Most drug policy was just a thinly veiled attempt to throw black people in prison, and it worked. There's a reason street drugs, like weed and crack, are treated differently than white-collar drugs like cocaine.
Lots of people got literal decades in prison for smoking weed. Do you believe that was fair? Let's not play stupid. The motivation was racist, and continues to be racist.
I mean, some states like Georgia have modern slavery. That's not a euphemism or exaggeration. Prisoners, almost all black individuals, are forced to work in establishments like McDonald's and Golden Corral for well under minimum wage. They have to work their 40 hours, and if they don't work they stay in prison perpetually.
The rate of parole in Georgia for non-violent crime is 8%. It should be 80%. There's a prison-industrial complex here. It's no wonder then we lock people up for petty crimes like smoking weed and then turn around and let people get away with white-collar crime.
It's not that I'm caught up in "identity politics" (lol). It's that y'all are unable to comprehend institutional, systemic racism exists even when there's no debate. Even when there's mounds and mounds of evidence. Even when we can literally trace modern prison-work program back to Jim Crow. You see all of that (or maybe you don't), and you refuse to acknowledge it.
If we give people the power to perpetually imprison people, they will. It's not a coincidence that the people today in modern slavery are almost all black. It's not a coincidence that the drugs black people are more likely to do come with multi-decade sentences, even if not dealing. It's not a coincidence that program intended to release those on good behavior are also used to justify perpetual deprivation of freedom of self via "bad behavior".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_prot...
Basically, the “18 month sentence” is a minimum sentence for the crime(s). But after that period, a parole board is supposed to rule on whether this person is fit to rejoin society.
What I don’t understand:
- are parole boards just denying for any reason? Why are people serving such long sentences?
- is it a backlog of cases to review to blame?
- or is this similar to “cash for kids” scandal in the US? Basically, teenagers were sentenced harshly under the pretense of “zero tolerance” and sent to prison. But, in reality it was motivated primarily by the need for private prison systems to fill the cells and many judges getting kickbacks.
Yes. There's guidelines for parole but they're just guides. Personal bias, as well as potential monetary values, keep prisoners in prison. For example, Georgia, based on statistics, should have a parole rate of 80% for non-violent offenders. The parole rate is 8%. This is for non-violent offenders. That's an order of magnitude of difference.
The culture around parole and personal biases fuel this. Ultimately, the community and parole judge can only LOSE by allowing parole. In the best-case scenario, they break even - nothing bad happens if you let someone loose. In the worst case, they commit a crime. They're heavily biased to preserve the interests of themselves, the prisons, and their community. The well-being of the prisoner is least important because they are a criminal.
> motivated primarily by the need for private prison systems to fill the cells and many judges getting kickbacks
There's some of this as well. Some of these prisoners in (again, Georgia) are being coerced to work. Parole is a carrot above their head. They're paid less than minimum wage to literally flip burgers at McDonald's. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. The prison makes money (garnishes half the wages), local shops get cheap labor, and "dangerous" people are kept locked up. Only the prisoners lose.
But the gov't has been slow to review people's cases and so folks are stuck.
That's in the first paragraph.