[marta_morena]

This sounds fishy. He probably pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal, so law enforcement has a scapegoat and some meaningless "media success" in exchange for him getting a drastically reduced sentencing. They always do that, threaten people with insane penalties if they don't accept so shitty plea deal and if you are not super certain that you can win, you will likely accept that one, just because it seems "safer".

There are a LOT of cases like this, just most of them don't gain this publicity. Actually, 95% of court cases never reach court because of this. Innocent people plead guilty because they don't have the wealth and resources to win in court. USA is a shithole when it comes to law enforcement. Medieval and sad. Land of the free (as long as you are rich, that is).

[ChrisCinelli]

As a side note:

Promise (YC startup) was also saying that 70% of people in jails are waiting for judgement or are in for a technical violation (ex: did not show up to a hearing). And being in jails they end up losing their job, eventually they lose their house etc.

This is a space with a lot of low hanging fruits. And minor fixes may end up doing a lot of good.

[heartbeats]

It's not so simple.

Why do we have education?

Firstly, because there's needed some way to filter people. If you get 100 applicants, you can't make a detailed consideration. But if only 30 have degrees, it's much easier. So there is a signalling effect.

But secondly, and more importantly, because you need somewhere to have these kids. If there's ten million jobs and ten million two hundred thousand jobs, you'll get problems. This is also why many countries had military service, to further improve on the unemployment figures.

"We didn't raise [the school leaving age] to enable them to learn more! We raised it to keep teenagers off the job market and hold down the unemployment figures."

Prison is just a logical extension of this. If they weren't in prison, they would be unemployed and causing all sorts of trouble.

[appleshore]

In major cities like LA, bail for misdemeanors can be $80,000 if someone misses a court date. And the jails are horrific, they force you to be racist especially if you’re Hispanic or black.

There’s so many LAPD/LASD scandals that it’s hard to conceptualize. The FBI spent millions installing videocameras throughout the jails to stop the rampart torture and abuse of inmates by LA County Sheriff Deputies. The longtime Sheriff went to federal prison over it. And this was after a 10-year supervisory role of the DoJ and hundred million+ spent to stop police report. After it!

Good luck surviving that system without a serious bias towards authority.

[heartbeats]

Then they just go in again until they're either rehabilitated or dead.

It doesn't functionally matter what happens in there, since it's the same thing as with standardized tests: all tests are inherently fair, regardless of how poorly constructed they are.

[kebman]

The assumption that unenmployed causes all sorts of trouble, and thus should rather be in jail... Sure doesn't sound like a country that values freedom.

[coliveira]

There is a much simpler way to solve the problem: reduce the weekly working hours. Instead of working 40 hours, require people to work 35 or less. Instead, what governments around the world are doing is using the excuse of technology to increase the working hours, therefore causing hourly pay to go down and increasing poverty. It is a completely destructive social policy, and we're all paying the price in some way.

[taneq]

The problem here, as always, is that all of the routine jobs that require minimal employee knowledge are being automated. The remaining jobs, even in 'blue collar' areas, now involve job-specific knowledge which takes time and money to impart and which goes stale if not used regularly. It's far less effective to have two part-time engineers design a widget than it is to have one full-time engineer design it. It's even worse having two part-time electricians wiring up a machine, because the handover is going to be messier.

[coliveira]

I'm not talking about part time jobs, full time jobs should require less hours of work for the same full time payment.

[dmos62]

You might be responding to the wrong post.

[pests]

I think he's responding correctly but just doesn't touch on any topics in the GPs post besides the prison topic and completely misses the point.

[heartbeats]

No, I was responding to this: "minor fixes may end up doing a lot of good".

They won't, since the purpose is just to have somewhere to store people. The actual crime isn't very interesting, the thing of importance is that they have somewhere to store them.

[elliekelly]

We need to stop dehumanizing prisoners. Prisoners are people and they shouldn't be "stored" anywhere. They're humans. They live places.

[heartbeats]

Something has to be done. It's either the case that they are productive members of society, in which case they are rarely imprisoned, or that they are not, in which case they often are.

Children aren't productive members of society, therefore we store them in schools until they've grown up. Same principle - I'm not dehumanizing kids, for the record.

The reason there are more prisoners in America is because there's a larger underclass who are forced out of employment for structural reasons. As long as these issues persist (and indeed, they will get far worse), we have to keep the unemployment rate down somehow. Prisons are just the end effect of this requirement.

The important thing to remember is that the alleged crime doesn't actually matter. This is also why corrupt Wall Street bankers rarely get harsh prison sentences. Why would they, when they're going to be able to find a job without much trouble anyway?

[throwawaybbb]

These people are too poor to be a viable market. There is a lot more money in getting more of them in prison than getting them out.

[EE84M3i]

Isn't that like, the purpose of jail vs. prison? Who else is in jail if not awaiting judgement or in on a technical violation?

[dotancohen]

    > Land of the free (as long as you are rich, that is).

What did you think "capitalism" meant? Rule of those with capital.