[tall]

This is a bleak reminder that prisons are a crime against humanity, no deserves to live in constant fear for their own survival. Not only that but prisoners are a very vulnerable population often exploited for labor, medical experiments and general abuse.

[umvi]

I agree there's a lot to be done to reduce the number of prisoners. But at the end of the day, what do you do about members of society who greatly harm others? (murder, rape, etc)? I can't think of any effective solutions which aren't prison, death penalty, or prison-disguised-as-something-else (like a hospital). Maybe exile? What's your philosophy in those cases?

[lhorie]

Well consider this: the legal system considers time served in prison as forgiveness, meaning that said murderers, rapists etc can go back to the streets once their sentences are over, regardless of whether they feel remorse or whether they are inclined to repeat their offenses. There's also stigma among employers etc against hiring ex-cons, which can help perpetuate vicious cycles.

There are places in europe, for example, where they focus on developing skills so that someone trying to integrate back into society has a more legitimate shot at being successful. Others have implemented non-policing systems such as drug addiction rehab programs, effectively diverting funds from a policy of handling certain types of issues as policing/legal issues and instead treat them as public health issues.

I also recall reading about a small town in US that was composed almost entirely of ex-cons, where they could start a normal-ish life in preparation to jumping back into the regular society, stigmas and all.

The topic of punishment of "lost causes" is itself sometimes a hot button. Some societies consider death penalty acceptable while others do not, for example. There's even differences in laws regarding things like involuntary manslaughter in driving accidents, for example (notoriously, the case of core.js maintainer going to prison for it). We could probably be here all day debating what is "beyond redemption" or not, and not come to an agreement, and we can see from the ratio of small crime inmates that we tend to err on the side of far too much caution / vengeful spirit.

You cannot treat miscreant behavior as if it was a movie, where you beat the bad guy and get a happy ending. Real people are complex beasts and life goes on after the credits roll.

[ashleyn]

The way I see this is, prison should not be taken lightly. The cavalier attitude of simply shoving addicts into prison glosses over the gravity of using this option.

There are appropriate use cases for prison, and violence in prison will be inevitable. The very least we can do is take that more seriously, and stop shoving addicts into the same place as violent murderers.

[cm2187]

But are you suggesting addicts can commit crimes to finance their addiction in impunity?

[hnracer]

> stop shoving addicts into the same place as violent murderers.

Isn't this already partly achieved by the delineation between low security & high security prisons, as well as delineations within the same prison complex (general population vs SHU)?

[asdff]

There are examples from around the world of prisons that aren't anything like the US model. It's not a hypothetical, it's a reality that isn't brought up in US political debate because moneyed interests favor the status quo.

[pnutjam]

Well, you're in luck. The majority of people aren't in prison for this, they are just exposed to this because they are in prison.

The guy in the article is in for 10 years for burglary due to a drug habit.

[ada1981]

Some sort of cooperative living space; rehabilitative; access to plant medicines and therapy; nature to farm.

[Broken_Hippo]

No to plant medicines. It is cruel to subject someone only to plant medicine, doubly so if it hasn't been rigorously tested: Give folks actual, up to date medicine instead. You know, the same quality that everyone on the planet should have. There is no reason someone should have to suffer more than they should. If you need anti-depressants, by all means, please have access. And to drugs that alter the course of auto-immune diseases to make them less of an impact on quality of life: Please give high blood pressure meds and insulin if needed.

Farming and nature isn't a cure, and does nothing to help someone adapt to the city they will likely be living in upon release.

[ada1981]

Huh? I’m talking about access to psychedelics which are the most effective treatment we have at healing trauma.

[gizmondo]

> access to plant medicines; nature to farm

Last time I checked unusual punishments were prohibited.

[postalrat]

You comment is a bleak reminder that the universe forces us to make our own rules.

[99_00]

True, and our focus should be on correcting the societal failures that lead to people ending up there. Because prisons aren't going to away.

But we can all agree that we should help people who need it.

[aaomidi]

> Because prisons aren't going to away.

They should. I don't think this is something I'm willing to change my mind on.

Prisons are literally one of the worst things we've made. They serve no purpose other than to dehumanize, rape, assault, and other fucked shit to "undesirables." It allows us to put problems to be solved to a later date, instead of addressing them head on and making sure it doesn't happen.

Prison should be an optional rehabilitation option for people, with it potentially being forced on a very very small minority of the population. No more than 0.01% of the population should be in forced rehabilitation, and no more than 1% in optional rehabilitation.

[mLuby]

> They serve no purpose other than to

Come on, you know that's not true.

Prisons exist primarily to control threats from society. And secondarily to punish people for getting caught breaking rules, partially for vengeance and partially for deterrence.

Societies have tried other methods of controlling threats beyond imprisonment, including (but definitely not limited to) ankle bracelets, public shaming, shunning, exile, offender registries, altering brains via chemicals, brainwashing, torture, or surgery, altering bodies via sterilization or mutilation, death, even collective punishment.

So prisons aren't great, but they're better than many of the alternatives.

On a personal note: that crime of any kind is even possible in a 100% controlled environment speaks to the malicious incompetence of those administering the prisons, and to our shameful collective thirst for vengeance. As with people, judge a society by how they treat the least powerful.

[int_19h]

It's very much the other way around. Prisons exist primarily to punish, and secondarily for isolation. But they were originally - as a concept - intended to be about rehabilitation. The end result is something that doesn't rehabilitate, is a very expensive way to punish someone in a way that makes it hard to control the severity of the punishment, and does a lot more than what's needed for simple isolation.

On top of all that, it gets severely overused, not the least because of this broad assumption that it's "better than many of the alternatives", even when that's not actually true - in many cases, prison sentences that replaced one-off corporal punishments for minor crimes can be a lot more disruptive for the life of the person undergoing them.

[somebodythere]

The societal failings like prisons existing in the first place? The police and courts who supply a steady stream of fodder to the prison-industrial complex? The legislators who create innumerable and overbroad laws to give the above carte blanche to abuse vulnerable groups?

By all means, let us get rid of all of these things.

[hnracer]

> The societal failings like prisons existing in the first place?

Prisons existing is not a societal failure. You can't have a society with 330 million people and not have at least 1 murderer who is relentlessly violent, who needs to be physically confined to protect everyone around them. As soon as you have 1 individual like that (which is almost guaranteed by the law of large numbers irrespective of how good that society is), you've already agreed that some kind of prison (whether or not you label it as such) is necessary.

Every large country has some kind of supermax prison, including Scandinavian countries, because it's a simple reality that individuals like the above exist in small numbers.

[aaomidi]

We're not talking about 1 individual though. The US has the highest prisoner per capita in countries that report this stat.

How many of these people are the Dexter type murderer?

[hnracer]

All I was disputing was the original statement that prisons existing = societal failing.

[99_00]

I'm suggesting helping people before they interact with the police and courts.

[bigbubba]

What help would or could you give to an unrepentant rapist before they are captured by the police?

[99_00]

I'm suggesting a government, medical system, and community focused on helping people before they get to that point in their lives.

I'm focusing on the part I think we can all agree on and therefore is solvable.

[bigbubba]

When that inevitably fails, where do you put the unrepentant rapist, if not in a prison? This is a simple question, if you find yourself unable to answer it, it's because your proposal is moronic.

[Nasrudith]

You might want to look at the historical status quo before prison - I highly doubt you would approve of public floggings, mutilations, and quickly carried out (from trial at least) executions. Prison requires cheap enough food or a high ransom to be viable as an institution to allow keeping them working and some means of ensuring they cannot escape or fight successfully - potentially guards as well.

It can be a historical running dark joke - "Sadly <x> still qualified as an improvement." such as slavery technically being a bit better than early human warfare ending in genocide either directly or indirectly (forced out of all territory capable of sustaining themselves).

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do better (ones with far better recidivism rates should be a model for one) but given the history it isn't a failing in itself - that would suggest a shift away from widespread killing and mutilating people was a mistake.

[bigbubba]

Where would you put a rapist, if not in a prison?

[lhorie]

If you look at California, for example, you can literally verify that many registered sex offenders live just a few blocks away from any given person. The thing with prison mentality is that people forget that most crimes don't carry life sentences and that ex-cons eventually go back to the streets.

So the question becomes how do you reconcile the secretly dark desire to wipe undesirables off the face of the earth forever vs a legal system that says that people do have the right to live normal lives after they've paid their debts to society. There isn't really a viable middle ground here. The current status quo is to just spend ungodly amounts of tax dollars deferring the dilemma to X years in the future. But when the time is up, either you wait for a relapse and go through the whole thing again, or you just accept that society wants undesirables banished and just kill them all all the time to free resources, or you come up with some reasonable reintegration strategy where people are ok living near ex-cons. Most people would probably balk at the idea of unconditional life/death sentences, under some tautological idea of justice. You can see small scale cases where reformed murderers claim to have found god and built families, and whatever. The challenge is that there's a lot of very strong stigma as soon as you leave tight social circles and that's where the relapses often come from.

[bigbubba]

That's a whole lot of words to not answer my question. Where would you put unrepentant rapists, if not in a prison?

[lhorie]

It does answer your question: you kill them (e.g. law systems that stone them to death) or reintegrate them into society or just keep doing the prison/release/relapse dance indefinitely, burning through tax dollars all the while.

You may put a rapist in a prison but then they serve their sentence and might go on to become your neighbor, regardless of whether they repent or are willing to rape again. Where do you put them then? Who gets to decide who's unrepentant? You see how the question gets uncomfortable?

I get that you're trying to just imply that some criminals should just rot in prison, but that's exactly the blindsidedness that I was talking about when it comes to discussions about prison systems.

[goatinaboat]

By all means, let us get rid of all of these things.

Unfortunately the American people voted otherwise. See what Harris was up to in CA. Expect it to be rolled out nationwide. Biden created the laws that made it possible. They are a right pair.

[thisisnico]

As a Canadian, 10 YEARS for a non-violent property crime??? What.

[Clubber]

This is typically what "tough on crime" means in the US. Not that they will catch violent criminals faster or better, but they will prosecute minor crimes as if they were violent crimes. It's how many politicians leverage the fear of crime to get elected.

Our criminal justice system is broken where innocent people should fear getting incarcerated because: 1. Almost everything is a crime and 2. Every crime is prosecuted harshly for political points. (look at me, I'm tough on crime, I imprisoned 300 criminals).

[the_only_law]

And the most frightening part... the public who eats it up with glee.

[paganel]

Came in here for this comment.

As an European the United States needs proper reform of its judicial/law system, or whatever you call the dreadful thing where you can imprison a person for 10 years because of non-violent property crime. Unfortunately I've read that the new VP had built her career partially on being tough on crime, hope that those people were wrong/lying or (if they were correct) that she'd be able to see that that's not the best road going forward.

[garmaine]

Not just the VP. The new president-elect is the one behind the “tough on crime” laws that brought us to where we are: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/j...

[MaxBarraclough]

Doesn't this depend a great deal on which prison? I imagine a Dutch prison is very different, for example, but this isn't something I know much about.

[tyingq]

Yes, It's highly variable in the US. Most prisons are run by a US state, and conditions vary wildly even within the same state.

[watwut]

Even American prisons tend to have offenders split into violent and non-violent institutions based on offence. In here it is burglary, so I guess they counted it as violent.

But, that UK hacker that got arrested after black hat was in non-violent section.

[gatvol]

Indeed, most of the incarcerated are very poorly educated and often simply mentally ill to boot. This is a medieval system.

[kanox]

Prisons containing too many people for bad reasons is a separate problem from prisons being violent.

[sleavey]

And the fact that smoking remains legal indoors in prisons. I get that there would be extra stress from withdrawal for new inmates, but it might let them quit a nasty, expensive habit while they're in. Plus, it's bad for the health of everyone in there, whether they're smoking or not, including the guards; they have no choice in being able to get away from smokers like you would do on the outside.

[Emphere]

Sorry but this is ridiculous. Your solution to inmates having crappy lives is to impose even more arbitrary restrictions on them? This would make sense only if they could voluntarily go outside for a smoke whenever they want or go to a special smoking room or whatever.

[sleavey]

> Your solution to inmates having crappy lives is to impose even more arbitrary restrictions on them?

What about the other prisoners and guards who don't smoke having smoke imposed on their lungs? Isn't that ridiculous? I'm suggesting we make this fairer, by not forcing inmates to breathe poisonous fumes in addition to serving their sentences. What makes prisons special compared to every other indoor public space (in most western countries) where it is banned - why are they exempt?

[nsp]

For one, prisoners are generally not allowed to step outside for a cigarette at their leisure

[notsuoh]

In a small space like a prison where people by definition can't get out, it seems draconian to let people smoke in light of the fact that there are others who don't want to inhale that and may have medical conditions exacerbated by it. By default, the recreational hobby of smoking should be disallowed.

[bigbubba]

The right of nonsmokers to not breath second hand smoke has moral precedence over the right of smokers to smoke.

[tyingq]

There's plenty (most, even?) of US prisons that don't allow any kind of tobacco. It's hard to make generalized statements as they are all different.

[sleavey]

The one in the article mentions it. I shouldn't have generalised to the whole US, but my point stands for that particular prison and others like it.

[throwaway0a5e]

>And the fact that smoking remains legal indoors in prisons.

This is like saying "OMG, <thing that is regulated by the states> isn't illegal in the US". Prisons are run by the states. Jails are usually run by the counties. Banning tobacco across the board for prisoners and staff is common because it becomes one less potential avenue of illicit trade between the guards and prisoners. Just because there isn't a law against doesn't mean it's not usually prohibited in practice.

[sleavey]

No need to overreact. My point was that prisons are often exempt from local legislation regarding smoking in indoor public places, in the US and elsewhere [1]. I find this to be strange - it seems to punish prisoners who don't smoke over and above their sentence, and staff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban#Effects_of_prison_...