[nolongerlowres]

Thank you for posting this. I couldn’t believe the other comments trying to equate schools with prison. It’s unbelievable how we treat prisoners in the US. I wish there was more I could do than vote and donate to causes like the ACLU. Starting to realize that my beliefs are in the minority re: how to treat fellow countrymen, even those who have committed crimes.

[throwaway998662]

I think it's because we as people tend to speak from our experiences, and I do agree that school is more authoritarian than it should be.

I'm not sure what else you can do :( it's a really big systemic issue. I think we just need more awareness, first?

Social life in prison involves having "friends" who can any day decide to try and rob or fight you (both happened to me with my closest "friend"). Nobody has real friends. It's dog eat dog, you lose the ability to trust, and don't have any trusting social connections. That's extremely painful. When you talk to people on the outside, every prisoner just tries to deceive them into thinking things are just dandy: I'm not sure why that happens, but it means those connections aren't real either. It's all so much worse psychologically than is conveyed in popular media. We don't know how to quantify psychological suffering though; as a society we rather put people through huge amounts of that than some visible physical suffering (which, again, is probably strongly preferable to the criminal).

Unfortunately most of the people suffering in the prison system are poor, so we don't hear what they have to say. If you're rich, you can afford your own lawyer and get a much better plea deal, and get out quickly. It's also very racist: you will really understand Black Lives Matter when you meet a black father who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, and realize there are 100,000s - millions of people in the exact same situation: it's destroying entire communities. I've seen the way black people who a judge has never seen before are villified from their appearance: go to a courtroom near you if you don't believe me, it's shocking. I'm talking about in San Francisco, not even a rural area.

Anyways, thank you for your empathy. I wish more people understood that criminals will commit less crime if they're forgiven and accepted by society, instead of villified. And it's also the decent thing to do. Prisons are bad cultures because the small number of actual bad actors push everything to this shitty equilibrium: most prisoners individually have a lot of shame about their crimes, and as strong a moral code as the average person. Some definitely do not: and it's hard for the justice system to make the distinction.

All things which are hard to believe until you have some real world experience with these things...

[Melting_Harps]

> I'm not sure what else you can do :( it's a really big systemic issue. I think we just need more awareness, first?

As someone who has gone through the legal system in the US and was illegally detained for activism and then later accused of false charges (with no evidence) and illegally arrested: I don't think awareness alone will do anything. Everyone knows the Police are corrupt and the city will do little to nothing if they are caught committing these abuses--the officer who stood on George's neck had several prior complaints for violence in his department and was still allowed to work as an officer.

The BLM movement to me is and will always remain a Police abuse issue first and foremost: one that was highlighted because of the death of George Floyd, but was yet another reminder that Police are in a position in which their crimes are exempt from actual punishment due to qualified immunity, and they know that and behave as such.

In CO after the protests from Floyd's death the Police had their quality immunity removed [0] for abuses they would commit against protesters and were recorded for everyone to see as it became very clear they had no intention of hiding how egregious things got but this only addressed the issues that happened from 2020 onward. There are cases of physical violence and as you said what is likely torture of people who were detained/restrained in which the State refused to prosecute the officers for despite having the evidence and had to be taken to the Supreme Court before it was heard [1]. This case was only settled out of court with the COUNTY paying $400,000 (which is really to say people like me in Boulder) and the police involved were not even punished. The female officer in the video seen abusing the women was the same person who handled my transfer to my hearing from my cell and refused to allow me to make a phone call at a time when they refused to tell me my charges when I was brought in.

Honestly, defunding the police and slashing their pay based on actual performance based reviews are the real starting point, and using social workers instead of Police for mental health cases has been experimented with favorable results in CO. Scaling that would be the next meaningful step to eventually have a bare-bones, non-militarized police force as that at least has the right incentives in place. But that may be a pipe dream in the US at this point.

One need to only look at France to see what and how Civil Society is actually maintained and it starts with keeping Police in a very confined and constrained leash and reminding them of their limited role, which sometimes means rioting and revolting against police abuse to remove poor legislation from passing.

> Unfortunately most of the people suffering in the prison system are poor, so we don't hear what they have to say. If you're rich, you can afford your own lawyer and get a much better plea deal, and get out quickly. It's also very racist:

Incredibly so, the DA of my last case never even bothered to look at the incriminating footage of the officer abusing his authority and clearly violating private property laws and abusing my civil liabilities for unsubstantiated allegations. And I HAD a Lawyer, upon release because I couldn't speak to one while I was arrested, and had it known I was willing to be compliant with the questioning process before being illegally arrested provided my attorney was present before I spoke to anyone, as its my (supposed) Right to do so.

My case was eventually dismissed after 2 missed court dates by the DA who finally looked at the body cam footage and I had my career placed in jeopardy, an injury I still deal with to this day as well as well as the trauma from the abuse and the embarrassment of the arrest as it happen at work for all to see because an officer thought they are John Wayne and knew they never face punishment for their crimes... in addition to a significant legal bill for the privilege of it all.

My only recourse was to lawyer up again and pay 10s of thousands of dollars to a Civil Rights attorney after paying for my defense attorney and take the case as high as the Supreme Court like the other women did before a settlement would even be considered, at which point most of the legal/court fees had already eaten through most of the settlement money. There are no heroes in this system, and Lawyers are just as much responsible for perpetuating this corrupt system as the corrupt judges and officers.

And this is all told from an innocent person's perspective, actual convicted criminals get hung to dry and are seldom if ever allowed to return to Society without being constantly denied the ability to live a normal life in Society anymore, while the criminals with badges commit comparable crimes with impunity.

Honestly, BLM protests need to return and be far more targeted, as in localized to city counsels and mayors/governors offices/homes instead of looting department stores before anything serious is done. COVID may be dangerous, but Police are likely the greater danger to overall safety in Society if you know how the system really works--and while its an unpopular opinion for some, this applies to white people, too. We all saw how even members of International media were treated, and felt only the superficial outrage that people who have been victimized by the legal system have.

I have several horror stories of white middle class women in Boulder being abused by the Legal system, too, and further drives the point that this is not a solely a Black issue. I saw the systematic destruction of these People's lives during my arrest and the first hearing: armed police showed up to one woman's home for a reported car accident against a bicyclist days after it took place, and another of an owner of a home being arrested and forced out of her own home in cuffs when a guest made allegations of her threatening to use force to remove the guest who overstayed and refused to leave all while her underage children were still in the home with that person.

It's completely abysmal and terrifying to be honest.

0: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/12/18/colorado-tries...

1: https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/boulder-county-sett...

[Judgmentality]

What do you think is the solution to this problem?

Reading stories like this just makes me angry.

[Melting_Harps]

It's going to be a lengthy process and should be assessed from various approaches but I think the following would be a start:

- Removing qualified immunity from all LEO agencies and departments at the the State and federal Level and making them 100% personally legally and financially liable for all violations.

- Require a more stringent screening and continued training process to ensure they are mentally fit to do their job adequately

- Slash their budget and salaries by 50% until these reforms meet certain benchmarks that require unanimous approval in their city/county before any budget increase by no more than 5% each time, which is to be decided how it is funded without police union and lobbyist influence

- Using those funds removed by police budgets and allocated to social workers to act as first responders to calls that pertain to all mental health related issues, and contrast which solutions perform better and allot the budget/funds to those perform better using various metrics and analytics

- Mandate that body-cam footage be on at all times during an LEO's shift in office as well as on patrol and have it accessible to the people without interference--they tried to stall my process until my lawyer got involved which is typical to ensure that a case isn't brought against the officer

- Stop incentivizing mentally unfit and psychologically damaged people to enter LEO: most of them are ex-military veterans that saw active duty in illegal wars of occupation in Afghanistan, and Iraq and were trained for hostile warfare and not civilian Law Enforcement. Screening for certain mental and psychological maladies would probably reveal how mentally ill some of these people are as a result of their combat and trauma.

Personally speaking, I had high hopes for the BLM movement and the situation that unfolded (Blue leaks) in regards to Police brutality this summer but everyone just went back to the divisive identity politics leading up to the election instead of having a commonly held stance that transcends all party politics.

Most people do not realize that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have long history of further expanding the Police State. Biden passed the Crime Bill in the 90s that saw the expansion of the for profit jail system that led to lengthy sentences for petty things like drug possession crimes--all while his son turned out to be a drug addict that used his father's position to collude with other cronys for personal gain. And Harris was an immensely corrupt Attorney General that overturned many cases in regards to police corruption using unscrupulous methods and supposedly made evidence disappear to absolve police from wrong doing.

I don't know if and when people will have had enough to actually do anything and get involved anymore, but the issues discussed so far are simply symptoms of a much deeper systemic governance problem and begins with who and how elected officials are put into those positions of power and how limited options there are for any recourse for non-incumbents or established career politicians to be elected in the first place.

The US showed itself to be a Police state over the Summer, that cannot be denied.

The question is what are YOU willing to do about it and how many people in your community can you get involved and start from there. I'd make an argument for private policing, but that would require a resolve for direct activism to serve as a counter weight to these atrocities that the US populace doesn't possess anymore. And honestly given what we've seen with Blackwater/XE in private military contracting I'm sure the US would find a way to normalize this same system in the Police all over aain

[runarberg]

I want to chime in here and reiterate your words. Being arrested sucks, and the police in general sucks. Out of say the 10 most violent acts to happen to me personally, the police is responsible for like 7, and did not help in the other 3. When I see a police me go to reaction is to be afraid and try to minimize the risk of interaction. How is it that we allow an organization to walk freely that terrorizes many (most?) people they encounter?

I was arrested in San Francisco back in 2011, it was the most violent act to ever happen to me by far. It was my first time in the city and I was at a protest. Usually it is really easy to avoid arrest in a protest, however that night the police did not give us a choice, rounded us all up and arrested the lot of us. I had my life with me in two bags, apparently you are only allowed to be arrested with one bag, the police suggested that I needed to abandon one (in civil terms this is called theft).

They put us in a petty wagon and drove us around for probably an hour, we couldn’t see out, so for all I know we were being driven out of the city (after being released I found out that we were driven 15min walking distance away from the protest site). I was really scared I wouldn’t be able to get back to the city during this.

We were all detained under a freeway pass in two cages, segregated by the gender the police assigned to us. While detained nobody was allowed water or toilet brakes at first, and then only one person at a time. I never got to go to the toiled during the whole ordeal.

They charged me with a misdemeanor called Illegal lodging (whatever that is). They assigned a court date 3 months into the future. As someone that didn’t live in the state (and even the country) it felt like they were setting me up to do an impossible task. However they dropped the charges before the court date (without telling me though).

Now I in the process of immigrating to the USA, and whenever they ask me if I have ever been arrested/detained, I have to answer “yes”, even though—as far as the justice system is concerned—I have committed no crime, and then I have to explain to them that, yes, I was arrested for a misdemeanor, and then provide documents from the courts that the charges were dropped. A lawyer once told me that many people fall for this and provide the arrest records in an attempt to disclose but fail to show the court records, and are denied as a result.

And when I think about all this, what sucks even more, is that my experience was pretty mild. Hundreds of people have far worse violence inflicted on them by the police then I did a decade ago.

My question is is always: “Why are they doing this, what is the point?” and the only logical answer I can think of is that they really love treating people like shit. The only logical explanation for their behavior is that they are facists. They hate people other then them self. The police really has to be abolished.

[bitcoinmoney]

Wow. No words. Thank you for sharing this.

[jollofricepeas]

For those who were wondering here’s the US recidivism rates as of 2018.

Smells like success...

„- An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.

- Almost half (47%) of prisoners who did not have an arrest within 3 years of release were arrested during years 4 through 9.

- More than three-quarters (77%) of released drug ofenders were arrested for a non-drug crime within 9 years.

„- Forty-four percent of released prisoners were arrested during the frst year following release, while 24% were arrested during year-9.

- Eighty-two percent of prisoners arrested during the 9-year period were arrested within the frst 3 years.

Source: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf

„

[anonyfelon]

I am one of the lucky ones who never went back.

I got out over 20 years ago, and I was determined to do whatever it took to successfully complete my parole and put all that crap behind me.

I still have scars. I'm 47 now. Dentures are in my near future because of the fighting from my prison days.

I had nightmares about the fighting and killing (saw two guys get killed mere feet away from me) for 15 years after getting out.

As time goes by the memories are less and less, but they never go away.

It changes you permanently.

[secabeen]

Okay, this are good numbers. However, I would also draw your attention to Table 7. Only about half of the prisoners released who were re-arrested were re-arrested for violent crimes. So, the question I ask is, are these released prisoners actually getting the support they need to succeed after release, are are they so weighed down by the stigma of prison that they can't reasonably obtain a non-criminal life?

[fckthisguy]

Absolutely the latter. There simply isn't any support for the vast majority of people.

Yes, you can argue that some communities have support groups or employment opportunities specific for ex-prisoners, but this isn't available universally, isn't well funded, and most people won't turn to help even if it's offered. That last part is true of free people as well: think of how many people in need refuse to reach out.

The stigma is real and crime is only ever a few inches away from most people.

[jqgatsby]

I recall there was a study a few years back that claimed real recidivism rates were actually much lower than commonly stated due to a selection bias effect.

Here are the slides: https://www.bgcheckinfo.org/sites/default/files/public/5thMt...

[cantrevealname]

That PDF you gave makes such an excellent argument that I thought it would be helpful to quote the best part:

"When criminologists examine prison populations, they see a concentration of repeat offenders, most of whom will recidivate. Low-risk offenders enter and exit prison once, so in any survey of a prison stock, low-risk offenders are underrepresented as a proportion of the offender population.

An analogy is helpful: A Mall Exit Survey

Survey researchers sometimes use mall exit surveys to estimate shoppers’ purchasing habits.

Suppose that:

•25% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day.

•25% go once per week.

•25% go once per month.

•25% go once per year.

A naïve one week exit survey of visitors exiting the mall will find that:

•85% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day.

•12% go once per week.

•3% go once per month.

•Fewer than 1% go once per year.

The problem is that high-rate mall visitors churn, leaving an impression that most shoppers are frequent visitors."

Quoted from "Criminal Recidivism: Most Incarcerated Offenders do not Return to Prison", by William Rhodes, from the link in parent

[runarberg]

Interesting.

But the slides still find evidence of recidivism using a less biased offender-based analysis. Moreover they find that the people are still more likely to return to prison the longer they have stayed in prison. The numbers are lower, but are definitely there. Ancestor’s claim about prisons creating criminals still stands.

Then there is the issue of low level drug offenders returning to prison for violent crimes in the next round. It would be interesting to see the numbers on that.

[zermelo]

what's the counterfactual? How can you tell the difference between "criminals are undeterred by prison and will commit offenses no matter what" and "prison hardens criminals and does not help with their reinsertion"?

[endominus]

You can test that by looking at data from countries with less abusive prison systems. IIRC, they typically have much lower recidivism rates.

[SV_BubbleTime]

That 100% ignores cultural, education, diversity, and tons of other issues.

Yea, I bet recidivism is low in Norway, who also has a very small chapter of MS13 or whatever gang you like, coincidentally.

I disagree you can look to some other country and make a fair comparison. The only way to do it would be to look at rates before and after some policy change.

[efnx]

It sounds like you’re claiming that the US just has more criminals per capita.

There’s a reason we have so many violent gangs in the US. We don’t take care of people the way other countries do, and we take advantage of every marginalized population we can.

[endominus]

Except that you can't do that either because someone acting in bad faith can just say that there were other confounders, because there will always be other confounders, since we can't make a proper control group out of a society. Immigration/emigration, other policy changes on county/state/federal level, delayed effects of 30-year old policies (such as Roe vs. Wade or banning lead in gasoline), etc. There's no such thing as fair comparisons in the social sciences; we can only and have to act on imperfect information.

[mbrodersen]

What has diversity got to do with anything? Australia is a country of immigrants with people for all over the world living with dramatically less crime per capital than the US. Are you claiming that certain races or cultures are somehow inherently more criminal? If yes please provide evidence.

[alsetmusic]

See if you can get involved in a community outreach program or similar.

A friend was in a therapy theater program that operated at San Quentin. They helped the prisoners write and act in theater pieces. At the end of the program, one of the prisoners, a lifer, told her that it had given his life meaning for the first time since sentencing. He'd been in for something like 15 years. I can't imagine how it would feel to find out you made such a difference for someone.

The US prison system is a terrible thing. That our society derives jokes about the atrocities within really shows the depravity of its citizenry.