he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away
Crime is often impulsive, irrational. Now this guy had poor impulse control and started from a difficult position in life. He then did stupid things like petty crime. The loss to these golfers was probably $100 - balance that against the cost to society of a life in prison. I disagree that's a worthwhile trade or is protecting society to any significant degree. It costs huge amounts of money, throws away a life that could be turned around, results in disproportionate and inhumane punishments, and doesn't even help the victims. This is little better than deportation for stealing an apple.
The US has 1.6 million of its population in jail, and that figure rose very rapidly in the last few decades, probably due to laws like this and jailing people for minor drugs offences, I'm not convinced that has saved US society any money or even made it much safer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/11/co...
The National Research Council's "Understanding Crime Trends Workshop Report," eds. Goldberger, A. and Rosenfield, R.
It's tricky to isolate other social trends in the research though. Steven Levitt did a major study of prison overcrowding legislation, which can suddenly change incarceration rates if the legislation is successful, but not if it fails, a bit of a coinflip not directly connected to social or demographic shifts. He found evidence of a link under these conditions.
Levitt, S. The effect of prison population size on crime rates: evidence from prison overcrowding litigation.
Obviously those aren't the only two studies on the subject, it's been a focus of criminology research since it's been a discipline. Levitt followed up with a good meta-analysis that covered ten different explanations for the reduction of crime over the last few decades:
Levitt, S. Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004. pp 163-190.
He cites John DiIulio (ie, DiiuLio) in that work. DiIulio has written a lot on the subject as well, usually arguing that incarceration rates have an impact on crime rates, but adding the nuance that three strikes laws rarely do much good.
Crime rates are very complex, and tied to many complex factors. Incarceration rate appears to be one such factor.
If that were the case, the US, Cuba and Rwanda should be the safest countries in the world (all near the top in incarceration rates) and Sweden one of the worst. The opposite is true if you look at (for example) homicide rates. I'm not sure there is any evidence of even a good correlation between higher incarceration and lower crime.
What does that even mean?
Ultimately, the point of letting him out is that he is still a human being who deserves freedom unless we can show some very good reasons why he doesn't. What would be the point of keeping you out of prison?
Sure.
> Once we agree that there is a line, then it just comes down to which side of the line a particular crime is on.
I actually don't find this to follow, because your example is exceptionally poor. I don't favor speeding tickets at all; as far as I can see, they're just a way for governments to capriciously collect extra revenue from people without giving it the politically unpopular name of "taxes".
Repeated-burglaries guy is obviously opting out of functioning in society. If the cost of keeping him out of it exceeds the cost he inflicts by his presence, I'd say we should keep him incarcerated and spend less, not just tell him "OK, burgle all you want".
> Repeated-burglaries guy is obviously opting out of functioning in society. If the cost of keeping him out of it exceeds the cost he inflicts by his presence, I'd say we should keep him incarcerated and spend less, not just tell him "OK, burgle all you want".
So reckless, dangerous driving is part of being a functional member of society, but 3 (apparently) non-violent and (in the scheme of things) minor thefts over 44 years gets someone thrown in jail for the rest of their life. That could be 30+ years on the dole. We (the taxpayers) are paying for his feeding, his clothing, his medical, his guards, his shelter. I seriously doubt another 3 thefts over the remainder of his life is worth that cost.
Having had 5 laptops stolen in one hit - because I was updating staff that weekend and the guy got lucky - the cost of changing passwords, and the nagging feeling I may have missed something somewhere and I may get hit with another internet theft....
Then the feeling that the guy(s?) were in my house while my partner and I were sleeping. Na. People who do this need to be taken out of society.
For the speeding point, you can kill people at 30mph if something goes wrong with the car or you do something stupid.
Wow.
- Driving below the speed of surrounding traffic is much more likely to cause an accident than driving at a "high" speed. The speed of traffic is essentially always above the speed limit. (Which might itself give you pause in characterizing it as "reckless, dangerous driving".)
- Reckless, dangerous driving is an independent offense, which can be (and is) charged separately from speeding.
2) For someone who wants long sentences for other offenses, it seems odd that you don't see that control of speed (particularly on city streets, my view on highway speed limits is different) and ticketing of speeders is also a pretty effective mitigator of reckless driving on those same streets. It doesn't stop it, we'll never stop crime until everyone becomes a saint (IOW, never), but reducing the occurrence is a nice tradeoff.
Now that that's out of the way, care to respond to the part where you suggest the cost of life in prison (to the taxpayers) is worth preventing 3 more non-violent burglaries (if he keeps to his average)?
Party of the second part (indignant): But condition C holds!
What's your point?
On the other hand a guy who has comitted 2-3 non violent crimes in his life because hes probably broke and has mental issues. I am not saying thats ok, but spending the life in prison for that? He wouldnt even have to go to prison for that in the country i live in.
This guy obviously has issues and they need to be looked at; locking him up has no use whatsoever besides 'making the public feel safe'. While it makes things less safe; if I know I'll go to jail the rest of my life, i'll make sure to kill the people in the room so I have a chance of escaping; what have I to lose? This guy didn't think like that, but with this kind of strangely harsh punishment, why would I hold back on any crime I commit?
Also, I believe you are implying that the guy from the OP got life in prison for the single burglary. I appologize if I get it wrong but in case you really are: even OP says it is not so. It's been his third strike i.e. he had been convicted for two more violent/gun/drug related crimes before (more burglaries in his particular case).
> Burglary is punished so severely because, like you said, the end result can be much worse than just stealing property.
Also you:
> We don't punish some future consequences. We punish dangerous and harmful behavior.
Please help me make these two statements make sense together. In this case, the severe penalty is only justifiable with a view of what might happen or what might have happened (that he might steal again, that he might become violent in future thefts, that he might have hurt those men). Now to the first might, I'll grant it's actually pretty likely. But to the second might, it's hardly clear, every summary I found suggested none of the past thefts or youthful cocaine charge (possession? couldn't find specifics) were violent. And the third might is the justification you offered in the earlier post. Which means, what, punish people for how bad their crimes could have been rather than how bad they actually were? I was in a car accident (my fault, rear ended a guy), it could have resulted in a fatality had it been at higher speeds (we were, at most, moving 10mph), should I be treated as if I had committed vehicular manslaughter?
What might happen in a crime ought to be irrelevant, what did happen is the important part. And again, in this case it appears that violence didn't enter into the equation. Might the victims have felt there could have been violence? Sure, but fear of violence (in this case he didn't even threaten violence, he came up with a lame story and ran off) is not the same as being the victim of violence.
Also, we don't punish every possible outcome of every action. We, however, punish more likely and more harmful (= more dangerous by definition) outcomes more. In your example, if you had been at higher speeds or if you had been drunk you'd had been punished more even for the same outcome.
>What might happen in a crime ought to be irrelevant, what did happen is the important part.
You are free to believe this. I hope you vote libertarian to remove all kinds of licencing (starting from driving and ending with medical), various safety inspections, crimes like stalking, conspiracies to commit other crimes, blackmail, death threats etc.
Break my door down in the middle of the night? I may blow your head off.
Big and important difference.
You do realize that it costs $40,000+ per year to incarcerate someone, right? So to meet your justification for imprisonment, this guy would have to be an excellent criminal. Why not just give him $40,000 per year and let him be free? He'd probably not need to burgle anymore.
As I understand it's substantially more than 40k GBP per year per prisoner. If the American system is costing less in the order of half what we're paying it must be absolutely horrendous.
Which is a side point to the absurdity of whole-life mandatory sentencing. It's incredibly expensive and pure vengeance; there's no way the cost to society in cash or emotional harm terms is minimised by spending MILLIONS of dollars depriving these people of their liberty for decades. So why does the Land Of The Free do it? Short, often community based sentences with strong rehabilitation would be orders of magnitude cheaper and have a very similar effect on the ultimate crime rate.
If we did this, I suspect we'd see a sharp rise in burglaries.
As to the figure itself, another commenter noted that the low end of prison costs seemed to be Lousisiana, in which operating a prison cost $13K / year. That would make the per-prisoner cost much, much lower than that.
Food for a year is barely even noticeable in $13K; if they cost $5 / day to feed that would come in under $2K / year. Where's all the money going?
Honestly, I didn't (and don't) expect that to be a controversial prediction.
So the more-generous question is, would being at least 5% better off financially reduce crime more than the 50%-shorter sentences for crime would increase it? I have no idea.
There's a reason we don't let victims decide criminal penalties.
What is happening lately? The quality of discourse on this site has become absolutely atrocious.
The strong aversion to politics was one of the things I liked about Hacker News. A lot of political issues are important, but they always turn discussion sites into dull point-scoring. Hopefully the moderators clamp down before it's too late.
And I don't see any reason for these stories not to be on HN. Human rights matter for everyone.
When I say something doesn't belong on Hacker News, I don't mean it's unimportant or doesn't matter. I just mean that it isn't what this site is for. There are many, many stories that are relevant and important to me personally that are still not appropriate for every site I go to.
Think about it this way: Would you go on a My Little Pony fan site and post this stuff there? Human rights are just as crucial for My Little Pony fans, but it's easier to recognize that they aren't appropriate for a single-topic site. Hacker News is not a single-topic site, but it is still a site with a focus. If you look at the guidelines, politics are explicitly called out as being off-topic.
HN, in contrast, is mostly known in educated circles and so does not attract as many trolls and idiots as Reddit does.
True, but the process for determining what criminal penalties should be is heavily based on "imagine you're the victim".
Is that seriously the best fucking option you can come up with? A massively expensive revenge-trip that causes far, far more damage than the theft of a wallet?
Perhaps there's some kind of much, much more effective way to get him to stop taking things that don't belong to him. I say perhaps; of course there are. Lots, that are cheaper, more effective and build a better society; but no, (parts of) the US is happy doing this. Cutting off its own nose to spite its own face and destroying a life in the process, behaving like children.
If we have to pay to keep a criminal like this off the street, then I'm OK with that. We're paying for protection.
Not to mention, there's lots that could go wrong with lacking the 'impulse control' to enter someone's hotel room.
It's not humane and it restricts liberty - but it's more humane and less liberty-restricting than the corrent "solution" of permanent imprisonment.
The sheer lack of imagination and knowledge you exhibit is astonishing. If I don't think it's smart to imprison him, I must want to cut his hand off? Let me guess; you're a US citizen and you don't travel much, so all you've ever seen regarding prison policy is identical US politicians posturing over who can be more "tough on crime"?
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-pri...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-p...
You're thinking about this the wrong way.
First, ask yourself: Why is there the justice system and prisons?
The answer: To reduce occurrence of crime.
Now why are prisons meant to help reduce crime? By scaring people into not committing crimes? That obviously doesn't work, especially when many people live lives so bad that they can't see a way of improving their lives but by committing crimes, which is pretty much all the people in that document.
Now how would you actually get those people to stop committing crimes? The document actually shows that:
Educate them. Once they know enough to actually be able to meaningfully participate in modern society they see life entirely differently.
Only problem is: These people have reached that point and are barred from actually acting upon it.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-p...
http://www.studyineurope.eu/study-in-sweden/tuition-fees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits_in_Sweden
The primary way prisons reduce crime is by people who commit crimes.
The problem is generally their personality. Habitual criminals are impulsive, aggressive, and bad at thinking ahead.
It's unfair to expect everyone else to put up with a lifetime of offenses, even if each one isn't particularly horrible individually.
You realize there's a virtually unlimited supply of people that could potentially qualify to be locked up because they are criminal for violating some more or less arbitrary law, right? Are you proposing locking up each and every one of them to get to a crime-less nirvana where all criminals are behind bars, and everyone outside is perfectly pure and honest?
The fact that there are people here defending the idea you should be sentenced to life for 3 offenses like stealing a wallet makes me sick. He who is without sins throw the first stone, some of you saying things like this would probably be in jail yourselves if this kind of 'justice' was the norm
If we made wearing socks a three-strikes-eligible law, the same people would go to prison. Normal people would adapt, impulsive and dull people wouldn't. American criminal law is basically a test of certain neurological abilities. If you fail the test, they hit you with the banhammer. Psychiatrists would be cheaper and better, but democracy produces popular myths, not rational plans.
That said, please consider a counter-theory to your theory: Due to the fact that many people imprisoned for long terms do end up obtaining their GED and one or more vocations, it seems quite probably that american criminal law is a test of education more than one of genetic factors.
It merely proved a correlation between mental ability and educational success in the current educational system.
It does not show whether the cause of crime is the actual lack of mental ability, or the failure of the education system to properly prepare them for adult life.
In other words: You've not shown that more effort to educate people would result in the same crime levels as with the current effort.
The point of prisons is to provide a place to isolate people from society that have been deemed not fit for society (permanently or temporary.)
Neither one is there to reduce crime. They're reactive not proactive systems. Society uses them as examples to deter future crime, but that does not make that their job.
Maybe, just maybe, the ACLU account is deliberate fuzzy on the details? It's difficult to conciliate the claim that the accused "borrowed" the truck with the allegation that the co-worker found the truck missing.
At what point does society get to tell people "you know what, knock it off"?
If you believe someone deserves life in prison for two burglaries and a case of theft, you are being inhumane. You need to change the system or these people, such that they don't feel the need to steal. That takes time and several moments to check whether it worked. Hell, most countries don't even have true 'life in prison' sentences and they manage to be safer than the US.
Personally, I would rather just be shot and get it over with, than spending 40 years with no personal freedoms. You are literally condoning a fate worse than death for non-violent offenses with a relatively small impact on the victim. Please take a step back and listen to what you're saying here.
What baffles me most is the idea that someone can value 'stuff' so much that the resulting damage (be it emotional, financial, or practical) justifies such a harsh punishment.
Sure, 'stuff' can be important. If someone cheats you out of a large sum of money that you've been working hard for, the damage can be considered large. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here. And even then I'd say 40 years in prison is way out of proportion.
30 years in Louisiana is just over 2 years in new york city.
I don't find it so odd that cost varies - consider land price, cost of living (for prison staff), heating (much more expensive in northerly latitudes), and so on.
I should have mentioned that states like NY als have more extensive rehabilitation programs (which cost money); on the upside, as far as I recall NY has one of the lower rates of incarceration and recidivism (but I might be wrong, don't feel like delving into the stats right now).
What could have happened: Aaron requests truck for a day from room-mate. Room-mate agrees. But the company finds out about it and frowns. Mate says Aaron stole the truck, out of fear.
There are any number of ways this might have happened; and perhaps the case docs talk about it. But, in any case, life sentence seems harsh.
This is the ACLU; they are both biased and good at spin.
(Which is not to say they are quacks, but know what you are dealing with)
How do you end up concluding that petty theft is a good reason to torture this guy for the rest of his life? People do things they're not supposed to all the time.
I suspect it had something to do with driving a "company vehicle" to Louisiana from Florida, without telling the actual owner of the vehicle. There are some details missing obviously.
His prior convictions were armed robbery, negligent homicide, and issuing worthless checks. According to the ACLU, the docket number for the LA court of appeals is supposedly: 2000-KA-2117. I couldn't find anything on it though.
in most cases, i think details are pretty important. here, not really.
let's say he straight up stole the truck. does he deserve life in prison? doubtful
> Declined to press charges?
Also, i'm pretty sure this isn't a thing. Only prosecutors can decide whether they want to press charges in criminal cases.
Yes, but it generally helps if they can produce someone who says "yes, my truck was stolen".
> in most cases, i think details are pretty important. here, not really. let's say he straight up stole the truck. does he deserve life in prison? doubtful
This is reasonable, but I think the details I wondered about are important to another issue, that of "how the heck was this guy jailed at all?"
Lacking any other evidence, I tend to lean toward the theory that he did straight up steal the truck, and the ACLU is whitewashing him, which (a) is weird, since they're not apologizing for much less sympathetic prisoners, and (b) implicates a third important issue, "can we trust the ACLU to describe its own cases?"
> Anthony Jackson has a sixth-grade education and worked as a cook. He was convicted of burglary for stealing a wallet from a Myrtle Beach hotel room when he was 44 years old. According to prosecutors, he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away. Police arrested him when he tried to use the stolen credit card at a pancake house. [...] Because of two prior convictions for burglary, Jackson was sentenced to mandatory life without parole under South Carolina's three-strikes law.
Emphasis mine. I can't get too worked up about a system that sentences this guy to life in prison. What would be the point of letting him out? He knew he wasn't supposed to walk into other people's hotel rooms and take their wallets. At what point does society get to tell people "you know what, knock it off"?
> After serving two years in prison during his mid-twenties for inadvertently killing someone during a bar fight, Aaron Jones turned his life around. He earned an electrical technician degree, married, became an ordained reverend, and founded the Perfect Love Outreach Ministry. Years later, Aaron was hired to renovate a motel in Florida, and was living in an employee-sponsored apartment with two other workers, one of whom had a truck that was used as a company vehicle by all the co-workers. Jones decided to drive this truck home to Louisiana to visit his wife and four children. When Aaron's co-worker woke up to find his truck missing, he reported it stolen. Aaron was pulled over by police while driving the truck.
I don't understand this one at all. Shouldn't the truck owner have testified on his behalf? Declined to press charges?
I made a cursory effort to look up the case itself, but I have no idea how to do that.