[throwablePie]

> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi...

I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessive for most non-violent crimes. I'm American but I live in Asia so maybe I'm now an outsider. I'm not aware of any other country that punishes this harshly.

Serious questions: Does any other country routinely punish so severely? To what end? At what financial and psychic cost to society? If we're unique (exceptional?) why do we do this to ourselves?

[masukomi]

> I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessive for most non-violent crimes.

you miss the point. prisons are a massive industry with serious lobbying clout. Putting lots of people in prison for a long time isn't a punishment to the prisoner, it's a gift to the prison system. The "punishment" is just a side effect, and the longer it lasts, the richer the people in power get.

the harm inflicted by a crime has been detached from the relative prison sentence for a long time. Classic example is getting more time in jail (and loosing your house) for having a marajuana joint than if you raped someone. Fortunately this is changing in the case of marajuana but there are many other drugs for which a single personal dose will still get you more time than rape.

[koheripbal]

10 years of prison time for a single non-violent crime is extremely rare in America.

What can happen in certain states, is that repeat offenders are hit with escalating prison terms each time they are convicted (the classic example are the three-strikes-your-out laws), whereby someone can be sentenced to a life term.

In those cases, sentences don't translate to actual prison terms since non-violent offenders are routinely paroled.

There's still a lot of heavy handedness, and I question the justice of escalating sentencing, but the comments above create a false impression of the US justice system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law

[miracle2k]

I think it is fair to say that whether for violent crimes or non-violent crimes, sentencing in the US is considerably harsher than in many other countries.

I've rarely seen a prison term issued by a US court which I have not found to be excessive relative to my experience with sentences in Germany.

The statistic of the total number of prisoners in the US per capita is well-known and gives us a strong indication that sentencing must be a factor. Still, I'd love to see some official data on this.

[koheripbal]

The reality of crime rates in America are also harsher in America than in other countries.

It's not as if these laws arise in a vacuum.

[subdane]

Not rare in New York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Drug_Laws

[dylkil]

>10 years of prison time for a single non-violent crime is extremely rare in America.

Ross Ulbricht got double life imprisonment + 40 years for a non violent crime.

[haakonhr]

Didn't he try to hire a hitman to murder some associate of his?

[jki275]

He wasn't charged with that, although all reports indicate he did do it. All sorts of conspiracy theories as to why he wasn't charged, most likely boils down to LE or prosecutorial incompetence.

[dragonwriter]

> He wasn't charged with that

It was, in fact, pay of the allegations of the crimes he was charged with, and it explicitly was a sentencing factor. He wasn't charged with, say, attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder for the alleged murder-for-hire scheme, though.

[selykg]

I mean, paying to have someone murdered is, kinda sorta violent.

[rib3ye]

He wasn’t charged with it.

[selykg]

That's true. Wikipedia has this to say:

> Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people,[29] allegedly because they threatened to reveal Ulbricht's Silk Road enterprise.[37][38] Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred.[29] Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with any murder-for-hire,[29][39] but evidence was introduced at trial supporting the allegations.[29][38] The evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life, and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to affirm the life sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Silk_Road,_arres...

[kodt]

Some sentences are no doubt inflated in order to make an example of someone.

[C1sc0cat]

They did admit to hack scada system in a "clinc" - a some what serious offence that can have lethal side effects.

[ghostpepper]

I don't have a strong position on this but I am interested in some opinions on whether it makes more sense for the punishment to be commensurate with the actual effects or the potential effects?

eg. If you punch someone in an altercation, they might fall and hit their head and die - and people have been jailed for doing so - but if the same punch happens to not cause a fall, it will likely result in minimal bruising and perhaps a concussion that will heal in a few weeks.

Do these crimes deserve the same sentence or does outcome matter?

[lifeisstillgood]

I think this usually falls under two considerations - intention and "careless as to consequences"

If you shoot at me with intention to kill, and miss, attempted murder almost always carries the same weight as murder so outcome does not matter.

If you punch me in the face on top of a cliff, and I stumbke and fall to my death, your intention may only have been tissue damage, but you were careless as to (reasonable potential) consequences.

And yes the falling and hitting ones head is iirc seen as a reasonably predictable consequence.

[heavyset_go]

Most computer crimes fall under federal jurisdiction, and the convicted must serve at least 85% of the sentenced time in prison to be eligible for parole. The penalties are very steep for computer crimes compared to their physical crime counterparts that cause similar amounts of damage.

[KSteffensen]

Can those 'three strikes' happen as part of the same crime complex?

Not a perfect example, but let's say an addict robs someone on the street, buys a big score of her favorite drug and then sells some of that to an addict friend. Would that be considered three strikes?

[jki275]

No, that wouldn't work that way.

[kelvin0]

Yes definitely is more about making money than actually helping in reforming the inmates.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/08/11/139536686...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

[rapind]

It's also about "punishing" (as opposed to reforming) the individual. I'd say "reform" comes last on this list.

[peruvian]

Don't forget that a lot of companies, even "liberal" ones, make use of prison labor.

[koolba]

> Classic example is getting more time in jail (and loosing your house) for having a marajuana joint than if you raped someone.

Do you have a source for this ever actually happening?

[aardvark291]

Yes. Brock Turner got six months for rape.

Here's a selection of decade+ prison sentences for marijuana: https://www.boulderdefenseattorney.com/top-10-non-violent-ma...

[koolba]

The Brock Turner case, while horrendous, is not representative of how rapes are prosecuted or sentenced.

Skimming through your link, I don’t see anything involving someone with a single joint being incarcerated for anywhere near a rape charge.

Some of those sentences may be out of line on their own, but you also don’t have people being put away for 20 years for being caught smoking a joint.

[8ytecoder]

Only 33% of the cases even result in an arrest [1] and 6 in 1000 cases actually result in jail time. That only 384/1000 are even reported to police shows what people think their options are in getting justice. (US is not an exception by any means.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Pros...

[danaris]

> The Brock Turner case, while horrendous, is not representative of how rapes are prosecuted or sentenced.

Do you have evidence that it is not commonly how rape cases against affluent white men are prosecuted or sentenced?

[dragonwriter]

Well, sure, it's an outlier in such cases because it was prosecuted at all. But that's probably the opposite direction that the claim upthread meant to imply.

[aardvark291]

> The Brock Turner case, while horrendous, is not representative of how rapes are prosecuted or sentenced.

Indeed, my understanding is that rape is typically not prosecuted at all. :-/

[hota_mazi]

I understand there is some truth to that claim, but how real is it?

Sentences are delivered by judges. There have been prominent examples of judges bribed by prison systems to deliver harsh sentences, but that doesn't seem to be the norm.

Am I naive thinking that most judges deliver the sentence they believe is just, and that if something needs to be reformed, it's their perception of justice and not just the prison system?

[t-writescode]

Mandatory minimums are what primarily dictate a lot of sentences anymore; and, those can be very arbitrary, especially with 3-strike laws.

Often, legislature decides the sentence length due to mandatory minimums.

[chrisco255]

Sentences are basically tightly constrained within some guidelines. The judge has leeway for leniency, but not much. Otherwise there's a preset range for each crime (i.e. 6-12 months) based on offender's history (i.e. first offender's get less time, etc) and population risk, judge can lower that by up to some maximum amount.

So then it really needs legislative reform to adjust those minimum sentences.

[zinckiwi]

In the US judges tend to be elected. That's not the norm around the world. US judges must to a certain extent be politicans, and "being tough on crime" plays well to the electorate. Many probably do feel their sentences are appropriate, but if they are collectively anchored towards harsh sentences the end result is the same.

[ajmurmann]

The recent episode of the Ezra Klein podcast interviews Paul Butler who argues that prison does more harm than good and that we does replace it with a system that actually improves people.

He compares our current lease enforcement system to a chokehold: "Butler describes a chokehold as “a process of coercing submission that is self-reinforcing. A chokehold justifies additional pressure on the body because a body does not come into compliance, but a body cannot come into compliance because of the vice grip that is on it.” That, he says, is the black experience in the United States. "

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...

[desstap]

You are in Asia right? Let’s see

China - disappeared for comparing xi jing ping the dictator to Winnie the Pooh, or mention Hong Kong or Taiwan in a postiive light on wechat

Singapore - 2 years in jail for selling gum, death penalty for Having drugs

Vietnam - 34 years for drug trafficking

[esperent]

I currently live in Vietnam. Yes, they have very harsh penalties. They also have the least police presence I've experienced anywhere. I feel like when I do see a cop (besides traffic cops) every so often it's quite a surprise.

Also, a friend's weed dealer was busted about a while ago. He got 8 years, not 34 years, from what I heard.

I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture here. Theres huge corruption in the government and a lot of pollution and traffic problems. But it's not the dystopia that it's often portrayed as in the west. On the contrary, it's a beautiful and easy country in which to live, as long as you're above the poverty line. But food and necessities are amazingly cheap here and only about 10% are below the national poverty line here (in the US it's around 12%).

[devalgo]

Not defending Singapore which has extremely problematic laws on the books and I can't really speak for Vietnam but the US has far higher incarceration rates than any of those countries. Like 3-4x higher. China's numbers are probably suspect but at least on paper the US is still worse.

[non-entity]

> 2 years in jail for selling gum

What do they have against gum?

[fencepost]

Ever wondered what those black spots on city sidewalks are? That's gum. All of it is gum that's been spat out then walked on until it acquires a top embedded coating of city grime.

[coding123]

At least for sidewalks it probably had a helpful benefit of keeping it waterproof.

[IHLayman]

Are you seriously justifying a two year prison sentence for selling gum?

[fencepost]

Not at all, but nor do I choose to live in Singapore.

[detaro]

People sticking their used gum in random places, locks etc and breaking stuff with it instead of properly disposing of it.

[koheripbal]

It's extremely hard to remove from sidewalks and gets on people's shoes, and was a big problem in the 80's when they adopted the law.

[dathinab]

They are very fixated on clean streets, train etc.

Gum tends to end up everywhere and is super hard to relive once dried.

But there are other high penalities for dirting the streets/parks/houses related offenses.

But then it's a city where you could (theoretically) walk barefoot in the streets without worrying about dirt it similar. Through it's probably not legal either and you do have to worry about burning you feed on the hot asphalt ;=}

[st1ck]

Vietnam is also pretty generous with death penalty for drug trafficking. What makes it worse, it's not transparent about number of executions or even the reasons for capital punishment. See e.g:

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170420003622/http://thediploma...

[system16]

While one of the most famous things about Singapore, the law was introduced in the 90s to prevent vandalism of the then new metro system. Since 2004 pharmacists and dentists have been allowed to sell gum, including standard and sugar free gum. I can’t find verification: has anyone actually gone to prison for selling gum in Singapore?

[weggooi]

If the Chinese government wants to punish a citizen, they don't need to send you to prison: They can track or tap your phone. They know when you check into a hotel and will send the police over to search your belongings.

[st1ck]

Do you mean they can constantly harass you instead of imprisoning?

[mcv]

There are problably plenty of dictatorships that punish harsher than the US, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find democratic, freedom-loving countries that punish harsher than the US does. Except maybe when it comes to crimes by rich/important people with good connections.

[devalgo]

Us has the highest verified incarceration per capita in the world and the largest number of total prisoners. So at least by verified numbers it's not really even close, the US is by far the worst. Are the numbers accurate for China or other oppressive regimes? Who knows and North Korea doesn't release numbers but they're thought to be close to or slightly higher than the US' per capita numbers.

https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-popul...

[esperent]

So probably the only country that has very slight worse numbers in the entire world is North Korea, including all the other dictatorships and otherwise failed states. That's crazy.

[banads]

Looking at US incarceration data over time, the causes are plainly obvious. Mass incarceration began shortly after the civil rights movement was ended, when Nixon launched the War on Drugs in 1971, and then skyrocketed in the 80s as even harsher bipartisan anti drug laws were passed while at the same time the CIA was found to be facilitating the importation of billions of dollars of cocaine into inner cities at the inception point of the crack epidemic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_...

[an_opabinia]

Well, you could argue that all of North Korea is functionally an open air prison.

If you don’t get to live in a city because you lack the permit, is a rural Chinese citizen jailed in their home town?

If you don’t get to do stuff like drive without your male guardian present, is that Saudi woman watched over by a prison guard?

If you’re a German kid and you’re just tracked into trade school, did society put you to work for it below what you’re worth? Like prisoners being paid below minimum wage to make Victoria’s Secret underwear?

I’m not a hack, I know these things are different than jail. Coercion and incarceration takes many forms around the world though. Expand your mind beyond the formalism of the jail cell and you start to see it everywhere. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - that’s the self awareness this writer is asking for.

Besides, there’s also Belarus.

[esperent]

No. You're trying to use whataboutism to make the crazy incarceration rates in the US seem less bad. Don't do that.

[mcv]

The moment anyone is comparing the US to a dictatorship to make the US look good, it's not making the US look good.

[devalgo]

Land of the Free indeed.

[scottlocklin]

Yeah, so's the murder rate.

https://www.statista.com/chart/3848/the-us-murder-rate-compa...

[watwut]

And then you have countries that execute much higher amount of people, cut their hands or whip them. Incarceration rates are not the only thing in play.

[devalgo]

True but we also execute people in the US, our prisons have despicable living conditions and we routinely use solitary confinement which could be considered a form of torture by some.

[risyachka]

> I was arrested in 2009 for installing botnets and commercial remote access programs on a handful of sensitive clinic systems, which included a critical SCADA system

Hacking an online store and a sensitive clinical system should be punished with very different levels of punishment.

[TallGuyShort]

That does jive with our sense of justice, yes, but I think the point is what are we achieving. Is it actually disincentivizing the crime? Is it preventing recurrence of the same individual committing future crime? I would argue that US prison statistics point at a massive failure in one, both, or is simply incarcerating people unnecessarily in the first place. This article is touching on the second one specifically.

[risyachka]

We don't know what will happen in the future. Prison time at least ensures this won't happen for multiple years, and gives you a chance to think it over.

If medical systems he hacked could have hurt people then this is basically conscious intention to hurt others, and it doesn't matter that he didn't. So in this particular case its really hard to stand on his side. If we were talking about some credit card scam - than I would gladly support you that we better try and change a person, and prison is super overkill for this type of crime. But if we are talking about hurting others - this can't be justified.

[TallGuyShort]

I think you're missing the point of the conversation. I'm not excusing or justifying what he did at all. The point of this is, other than our sense of justice and desire to punish someone for doing something bad, what is prison supposed to achieve?

I'd like prison to achieve the kind of justice that yes, does provide some sense of justice to victims, but aims to reform criminals and reduce crime. Now, independent of this case, America is clearly failing, because our recidivism rate is (depending on the study you look at) between 40% and 70% over a matter of months and years, which is pretty terrible [1]. Many other first-world countries are achieving far better rates. And for per-capita imprisonment, America is literally the worst in the world according to Wikipedia [2]. Last I checked, a couple of years ago, it was second.

But back to this specific article. Yes, this person was convicted of a serious crime and went to jail. But while there they were isolated in a way I consider a violation of the 8th amendment without due process. Not only do I consider this a failing of "justice" in its own right, but it's left this person less able to go and rejoin society in a productive way. Poverty is one of the strongest predictors of criminality: how is this helpful to anyone? Just because you want to punish it and doing so seems fair, doesn't mean the way the US justice system will implement that punishment is doing something good in the end. You can reform that system without just excusing serious crimes.

[1] https://atlascorps.org/recidivism-united-states-overview/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

edit: I feel like this is the same kind of misunderstanding everyone's having with the #BlackLivesMatter vs #BackTheBlue stuff right now. People complain about the way some police are doing their jobs, and point out ways some other police departments or police in other countries do it much better, and the alternative we consider is no police. What the actual fuck? Can't we just have police tone down the tactics and approach the problem a different way? Since when is saying that police are killing people too easily and too often saying that they just shouldn't have even arrested the person?

[pdonis]

> other than our sense of justice and desire to punish someone for doing something bad, what is prison supposed to achieve?

To keep a person from doing something harmful again when we don't know any other way to make them not do it and we aren't willing to risk more harm.

Sure, if we could magically change the person so they would see what they did before as bad and never do it again, we wouldn't have to keep them in prison. But we don't have any way of doing that. What techniques we do have for "rehabilitating" people are simply not very reliable, so there's a limit to how much we are willing to depend on them as an alternative to incarceration.

[TallGuyShort]

Except you're missing the point that other countries have less-horrible prisons and programs to keep inmates somewhat connected with other human beings and better prepare them to resume a normal life after their sentence.

It doesn't matter that we can't see the future when we can look at the present in other locations and see better results. We do know another way - the US prison system is just blind to it.

[Grimm1]

Just because something can hurt someone doesn't mean it's conscious intent to harm someone. That's a gigantic leap. That's the difference between negligence and pre meditation.

[stickfigure]

Maybe? I mean, there are a lot of factors that go into sentencing including intent and harm. In this case, the HVAC system was already compromised and the guy seems to have done nothing particularly malicious with it.

It doesn't seem like it was in the state's interest to lock this person up for 10 years. Two years would have been plenty to get the point across, for a fraction of the cost, plus the potential generational damage caused by a kid growing up fatherless in the formative 2-12 years.

[scarface74]

He hacked central control systems used by utility companies. This could have caused all sorts of disruptions including to traffic lights and hospitals. This was definitely not a "victimless crime".

[Frondo]

Did it? did he cause any of the mayhem you're saying did happen?

[Grimm1]

"could have" but it didn't so it was victimless.

[scarface74]

So it’s okay if someone shot someone and missed a vital organ where he could have killed someone but didn’t?

[Grimm1]

That analogy doesn't fit here at all. In your case they intend to cause harm to someone at the start by literally shooting someone. You are presupposing intent and harm of a person and certainly there were neither in the hacker's case.

A better analogy, that maybe is more fitting, is you blow through a stoplight and kill someone.

That's definitely negligence but there was no intent to hurt someone, the intent was to speed to a destination.

The intent here was to use computing resources to launch an attack on another hacker group, nothing that would have intently harmed a person at the clinic. They could have accidentally hurt someone though.

And if they did it would be recklessness, certainly negligent , but their intent was not to kill someone.

And this is why we in the US have different laws for different situations that take into account negligence, intent, premeditation etc.

None of them are alright but the state of mind the person committing the crime was in makes it varying degrees of bad.

Someone who accidentally kills someone and someone who plots a cold blooded murder have both taken a life but, the one who killed on accident isn't as heinous or maybe as morally reprehensible.

Life is mostly varying shades of grey and not strictly good or bad and that's why society has complex laws to dole out different punishments depending on situation.

And finally, the hacker never harmed anyone in this case arguing on what they might have done is an abuse of the system imo. I might get up right now and burn my neighborhood to the ground, but you cant condemn me of it before I actually do it. (I won't)

[scarface74]

You can easily commit a traffic violation either out not paying attention or just thinking what’s the harm.

No one mindlessly hacks a utility control system.

[Grimm1]

I'm going to believe you are willfully missing the point here and leave you to your own devices.

[nybble41]

Even if no one died, there were victims: the owners of the hacked devices.

[Grimm1]

In the context that people have been talking about is did he physically harm someone, the answer is no, in that sense there was no victim. I don't sympathize with him but he didn't cause physical harm to anyone and besides what it cost to remove the botnet from the clinic's machines he doesn't seem to have done any real economic harm here either. There was no patient information stolen, no damage to the clinic's reputation and no permanent damage to their systems.

10 years is egregious and heavily punitive. The prosecutor that speculated that he "could of caused harm" and that was what the entire punishment was predicated on. Our legal system is entirely draconian when it comes to computer crimes.

This should have been criminally probation or a few months in jail and a civil suit brought by the client for any actual damages.

I'm not saying there was no wrong doing but you're not going to convince me that the minor damages were worth 10 years of this guys life.

[nybble41]

I agree that 10 years (any years) in prison is excessive for what he was accused of, but the term being thrown around in this thread was "victimless crime". The mere fact that someone had to pay to clean his botnet from their systems means that this crime had a victim.

A more reasonable sentence would have been 2-3x the cost of the cleanup—and details on the systems that were compromised—plus a certain amount of (extrajudicial) social ostracism along the lines of ISPs not being willing to sell him Internet access based on his past history of abusing such privileges.

[libertine]

Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime?

Because you seem to be focusing on the outcome/consequences of someone that committed a crime and got caught.

It's not like the punishment is the result of "bad luck" or "unexpected circumstances", it was a deliberate conscious action, right?

Also some of these actions aren't a burst of irrationality and poor thought process - they are planned and recurrent, done through stretches of time in a consistent manner.

So on one hand, it seems severe punishment, on the other hand, people severely push boundaries while knowing it's wrong and with severe punishment - what would they do if it was less severe?

Edit: just to make it clear, I'M NOT SUPPORTING HEAVY SENTENCES.

[cptskippy]

> Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime?

Harsh punishment fosters resentment.

Isolation is a form of torture.

Cutting off prisoners from society makes reintegration and rehabilitation difficult.

A person who is incapable of participating in society is going to be pushed to the fringes and will more than likely become a drain on society rather than a contributor.

Severity is a huge factor. We don't really have a gradient of consequences, and much of what we do have is limited to privileged individuals. When was the last time you heard of a nonviolent drug offender being given the option to serve his sentence over weekends or in a minimum security facility?

Unless you're a wealthy elite with a very expensive team of lawyers, you're going to "Pound me in the ass Prison". We even make jokes about how extreme the conditions are in our prisons and use those poor conditions as deterrent.

On top of that, we've privatized our prisons so the operators are constantly looking for opportunities to profit. In the post the author talks about per minute charges for email. Some prisons no longer allow face-to-face visitation and instead require the use of video conferencing technology that costs money. Beyond nickle and diming inmates, they're reducing staffing and quality of everything to save as much money as possible. That in itself is punishing torture.

[jmcqk6]

When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions.

Harsh punishments do not seem to actually function as a determent in real life. From my perspective, harsh punishments is more about revenge than anything else. They're a simple way to feel like you're doing the right thing, as long as you don't examine it too closely. And most people don't want to examine it too closely.

[the_af]

> When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions.

Agreed. I'm not saying their approach was exactly unbiased or scientific, but Penn & Teller in their "Bullshit!" show put forward the following considerations:

- If a violent crime is "spur of the moment", by definition it never takes the judicial system into consideration. People who violently murder their loved ones in a fit of rage don't think of the consequences. People who shoot strangers over a car accident don't, either.

- If the crime is planned with anticipation, such as in many white collar crimes but also planned robberies, kidnappings, etc: the perpetrators always think they are smarter than the law and won't get caught. The possible consequences are irrelevant to them, because they simply don't think they'll get caught.

[ThrowawayR2]

That might be true for first time offenders but what about repeat offenders? They can't be said to not be familiar with the possible judicial consequences of their actions.

[dragonwriter]

You are conflating “aware of” with “considering in their decision making” (that is, you are assuming rationality-but-for-limited-information).

That's a nice idealized model of human decision-making except for that it's not even approximately how people actually make decisions.

[the_af]

That's possibly a third category to add to "spur of the moment crime" and "I don't think I'll get caught": "I don't care what happens to me". A lot of crime done out of desperation, by people with nothing to lose, is precisely that: they are so desperate they don't value their life or the lives of others [1]. In that case, prison and even the death penalty is a poor deterrent; if you expect to live hard and die young, what can they threaten you with anyway?

[1] A journalism/essay book from my country (not the US), depicting the lives of youngsters in shanty towns, interviewed many of them. A surprising number of them claimed they didn't expect to live past 30, and didn't make any plans because plans were meaningless to them. If they died for whatever reason, "so be it". (By the way, in my mind this isn't an indictment of these people, but rather of the society which makes them believe they have no choice and no future).

[the_af]

> Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime?

There are different opinions on what the main purpose of incarceration is (punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, protecting society), but let's for a minute assume it's deterrence, aka "stop people from trying to commit a crime".

How well would you say incarceration as deterrence is working so far? Regarding shootings, muggings, robbery, murder, rape, even "white collar" crimes. Would you say prison (and even the death penalty) as deterrence has significantly helped reduce or stop crime in the US?

[ddrt]

The better question is has it abated the act of these crimes to a significant level? If a 10 year sentence crime is commonplace then that’s a dark mark on the police and judges. If it’s a crime not often committed how can we correlate the punishment to the practice? The incarceration is a punishment for the one who commits the crime, but is also there to set an example. If the example isn’t made then the loop continues. Crime without (known) repercussions is a crime that will continue. If that is okay in the eyes of lawmakers then this is now about money. This is just top of mind thinking, not stating as fact.

[nybble41]

> also there to set an example

Imposing a disproportionate punishment "to set an example" makes you more dangerous to society than the person you're punishing. I'm not saying that actions which harm others should not result in repercussions, but the punishment must fit the crime for the law to be legitimate. Even if that occasionally means that some people weigh the risk of getting caught and decide that the odds against being punished are low enough to make the risk worthwhile.

[FerretFred]

In the UK, crime against property regularly attracts harsh sentencing; crime against the person not so much. Why? I think it perpetuates our historical values. The Government believes we're expendable, although useful enough to pay tax.

[C1sc0cat]

Not for hacking though rob a bank of 70k you get much longer sentences than a hacker stealing the same amount by hacking email and redirecting a payment.

Arguably the UK is soft on hacking as there are several News international Hacks that should be doing 5-10

[bluedays]

It’s because our system of justice is designed to protect Capital, not people.

[dathinab]

The US is the country with the highest ratio of their population being imprisoned.

The idea behind their long sentences is that if you know you get super long sentences you won't commit crime. Rehabilitation isn't in the agenda. That this is known to not work well is ignored by large part of the government.

The lawmaker in the US panicked when making hacking laws as they didn't understood it and people told them that is viable that expert hackers can literally singlehandedly start amagedon by having nuclear missels. Through unreasonable penalties for hacking are not unreasonable.

Or at least that's how it looks to me.

[rib3ye]

Think about a time you really messed up. Did it take 10 years to come to the conclusion you were wrong?

[risyachka]

If you knew you could hurt others when you intentionally messed up - then probably it is a good idea to lock you up for a few years, because clearly you are very bad at thinking, no matter to what conclusion you will come in 10 minutes. He didn't just slip and hacked medical systems by accident.

[dathinab]

It's important to rehabilitate you in whatever way works best.

The way people get looked up in the US is known to be one of the worst approaches to rehabilitation, it's bad to a degree that it's making it more likely for you to commit crimes when you come out instead of less because you have become totally out of touch with socity and normal life.

[n_e]

> If you knew you could hurt others when you intentionally messed up

Not many people are locked up for a few years for a traffic violation

[malodyets]

North Korea is harsher

[Fauntleroy]

Did you know the recidivism rate in the US is around 43%? Maybe it would be better for us a nation to work on making the justice system more about rehabilitation than punishment.

Setting the bar at "North Korea" is simply childish and unhelpful.

[devalgo]

Is this how low we've gotten? The only thing you can say is that the US is at least better than the most oppressive and isolated Regime in the world? I don't know what that says about your world view or the US.

[jackpirate]

The US has more prisoners per capita than North Korea.

[karaterobot]

Honestly and without sarcasm: from what I understand, it seems like pretty much everybody in North Korea is a prisoner of North Korea. Not having control of your own life, being constantly monitored, and not being allowed to leave are all hallmarks of prison life. Add to that starvation and retributive acts against your family by the state itself.

[the_af]

Let's not get caught up in hyperbole here. North Korea is a harsh dictatorship, but even then, you get to live, breathe the outside air, have a family, raise kids, and you don't risk being raped at every turn (as in physically raped, let's not mince words here and go on a tangent about "mental rape by the state" or whatnot).

It's probably choosing between two kinds of hell, but if given the chance, I'll 100% no-questions-asked go to live in North Korea rather than be incarcerated 10 years in a US prison. (It goes without saying that I'd rather live free in the US, I hope this doesn't need saying. Also it goes without saying that I'd rather live in another country rather than North Korea; this is a thought experiment where these are the only two options).

Of course, prison in North Korea must be hell too, but that's not what we're talking about.

Finally, comparing the US to North Korea -- is that really the bar we want to use?