[Quarrelsome]

That's some fine problem solving, albeit not the problems the prison wanted to be solved.

I sometimes wonder if these sorts of people who "succeed" in these odd ways on the wrong side of the criminal fence, would have had rather successful careers had just a couple of things gone differently towards the start of their life.

[alexpotato]

I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught."

I'm not sure how true that is but what I do believe is that the following is 100% true:

- smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison

How do I know this? I've worked with a couple people like this. Some ended up in prison, others almost went to prison and later on went to work in corporate America (no sarcasm intended here).

[qingcharles]

Some people really activate their brains once they get locked up. The things I've seen people construct from literal garbage in prison. Tattoo guns are a popular one. Obviously half the population has a way of making some sort of device analogous to a car cigarette lighter in prison by finding staples, bits of wire, foil etc that they can stick in a 110V outlet to heat up and light their drugs from. Necessity really is the mother of invention.

A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation. Knowing this would happen we'd come up with a way to communicate across the facility. We had these 5x5 grids of letters, no "K", where 11 on the grid was A, 15 was E, 55 was Z etc. They had these touchscreen commissary kiosks where you could order food. The quantity of each item allowed up to 4 digits, e.g. 9999. So that gives you two letters. 1121 = AF for instance. We'd start at the top, Beef Noodles, 1121. Chicken Noodles, 2412 etc and work through the menu. We shared our login IDs with each other. We'd place these huge orders into the cart but never checkout. Then we'd log in to each other's accts from our separate cell blocks multiple times a day, read our messages and write our replies. Got caught eventually, 10 days in the Hole. I FOIA'd their investigation and it was very amusing seeing the report from the facility "Intelligence Dept" trying to decode all the messages.

[nextaccountic]

> A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation.

Are they legally able to prevent inmates from helping the litigation of another? That's insane

The US is not a free society

[qingcharles]

Yes, especially when it is civil rights litigation, e.g. facility conditions. They will do everything within their disposal to interfere with litigation. A lot of county facilities in the USA will retain private counsel, not government lawyers, for these kinds of cases, and it is enormously expensive. I can remember one case where they took a newspaper from a prisoner and he sued, and the jail took it to trial and lost and had to pay not only damages of $15K, but also their legal fees, which were somewhere around $1.5m, but also the plaintiff's counsel, which was another $900K IIRC.

[_DeadFred_]

Don't forget if an inmate starts to look like they are winning all they have to do is change that one inmates conditions and the inmate no longer has standing and the case is dismissed (unless they have permeant damages and they are suing for damages), yet the system is designed for those lawsuits to be the check/balances. It seems like a good system, but in actuality the check/balance is easily negated by those in power.

And the 'change' of the condition is often the inmate getting shipped to a different prison, with the transfer/shipping process having the nick name 'diesel therapy'. So if you do are challenge, you are going to get punished, your safety is going to be put at VERY high risk (you are going to have to fight, and who knows who they lock you up with at night and what might get pulled on you), and you are going to be VERY hungry (meal times/shipping times often accidentally don't work out) you don't stay anywhere long enough to purchase commissary to make up for them not feeding you, etc.

Look at how upset immigration people are now that the Fed loopholes I point out are being made very public in immigration stuff (all the movement between facilities to limit court access). These are things that have happened forever, just no one cared when it was normal inmates.

[mothballed]

I'm aware of a businessman who did high profile pro se case, regarding some alleged white collar business license violations . They moved him to different jails 300 times in a year to sabotage his defense (SDNY, so they had unlimited amount of money to fuck with him). He miraculously still won the case.

[kelseydh]

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with approximately 541 to 614 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents as of 2022–2026. While representing only 5% of the global population, the US holds roughly 20% of the world's prisoners, totalling over 1.8 million people.

For many crimes, the U.S. loves giving eye watering long sentences for offences that would result in a tenth of the prison time in other countries.

[dnemmers]

I read ‘helping the litigation’ to mean they both may have been involved in the same crime, and they mean to stop collusion after the fact, before trial concludes?

[qingcharles]

Both ways. Mostly it is just helping with the legal process. Rarely is it a multi-plaintiff case as the courts don't like those from prisoners. It causes too many logistical nightmares. How are two plaintiffs to communicate their wishes to each other on how to proceed? How will they both appear in court together if they are in different buildings or even different institutions?

I remember being on one join-plaintiff civil rights case and the government lawyer told the judge they were going to criminally charge me with impersonating a lawyer as I "must have given legal advice to the other plaintiff." The judge asked how they thought the complaint was written. "As I see it, one plaintiff must have pressed one key, then the other plaintiff pressed the next key on the keyboard. That is our belief."

[_DeadFred_]

The feds used to allow you to appeal your sentence forever. I mean if there are problems with a sentence, the government should want to fix it, right?

But then they decided it was too expensive giving convicts access to the courts. So they changed it to I think 7 days. But they decided that was too short.

So the compromise between forever and 7 days? 14 days. If you don't appeal within 14 days you can only appeal on a very narrow scope. Now realize, those 14 days after sentencing you are being transferred from a federal detention center (fed jail) to a prison, either via con-air or prison bus, cross country, staying in various country jails with minimal access to your lawyer or a legal library if you can't afford a lawyer.

The American Justice System is designed to appear like a justice system but to in actuality be non-navigable unless you have expensive paid lawyers working for you. It is very much a multi-teared system. Have you ever tried canceling the WSJ? Imagine if every single step of a Justice system was designed to be as frustrating/stiffling/delaying (when every day counts) as the WSJ canceling process. Oh, you are being transported, and you want access to the law library? Well we can only get you that during lunch hours, so chose if you want to eat. And oh yeah sorry that the morning transfer to the bus was messed up and you happened to miss breakfast. Sure you want to skip lunch? We might ship you again any time and you might miss dinner if we do.

[qingcharles]

Also, certainly for state cases, a lot of appeal routes are not available unless you are actively in prison. Post-conviction relief, and federal habeas corpus are basically only available while you are locked in prison. If you do all your time in pre-trial detention, or your sentence is too short to fully complete your appeal then your conviction is stuck forever, even if you have meritorious claims. For instance, if your lawyer was drunk, high or not a real lawyer, there is no way to appeal that after you're released, you just have to live with the conviction for the rest of your life and all the collateral reduction in civil rights that comes with that until you die.

[FpUser]

>"smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison"

I believe this to be true and some of my former schoolmates who were brilliant IQ wise and got high marks on math and physics still ended up in jails. Some were later able to recover and lead more productive life

[mothballed]

Crime is also just more accepted in "disadvantaged locales."

Drinking openly is illegal in most of Mexico and the USA. If the area is run down and the shops are broken I will crack open a beer on the street without a second thought. I wouldn't think of doing it openly in some yuppie neighborhood where some Karen will rat your ass out in 5 minutes.

[shmeeed]

Aka the Broken Window Theory.

[mothballed]

Sort of yeah, but in this case "broken windows" are used to determine the culture of an area, even if you fixed the "broken windows" I would use some other clues. I think the broken window theory relies on the idea if you fixed the broken windows crime would change, which I don't think is necessarily true.

[Illniyar]

The extra line supposes that being smart reduces the chances of getting caught.

Which from what I gather isn't very true - being smart can often lead to over confidence and making mistakes, and also a lot of crime is not premeditated.

[cjbgkagh]

The average IQ of a prisoner is 90-95 which is a long way from 100.

[Enginerrrd]

Prison IQ is a very different distribution. As I recall, the top 2% IQ of the general population makes up something like 20% of the prison population. You also have quite a few at the other end.

The gifted are more over represented in prison then black males, however, most of those gifted are themselves minorities.

[cjbgkagh]

I’ll have to see some evidence on that, in my search it’s basically a normal bell curve shifted 8 pts down. The idea that 130+ IQ individuals make up 1/5th of the prison population does not pass the sniff test, that would be a crazy statistical aberration. In my search I found reports that 130+ IQ individuals only represent less than 0.4% of the prison population.

[LAC-Tech]

Is the average IQ of the US still 100?

[cjbgkagh]

Roughly yes, it is declining. The Flynn effect was just smart people having kids later which has now normalized and reversed (with smart people having fewer kids).

[throwawaymobule]

Isn't it always 100, by definition?

[LAC-Tech]

I dont think IQ is based on american adults.

[throwawaymobule]

It's based on whatever population you're testing, IIRC.

[red-iron-pine]

isn't the point that 100 is roughly the average? or 100 at the year they made the test, anyway.

[red-iron-pine]

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

each ACE you experience ups the likelihood of all sorts of negative outcomes, with crime and addiction being very common.

strong linkages to bad health outcomes, too.

[mothballed]

I wonder if there are any benefits of the adaptations made by those with higher ACE scores. Surely the adaptations we've evolved to make can't be entirely maladaptive.

Here's one

   Emotional abuse: verbal threats, swearing at, insulting, or humiliating a child.[1][3]

I'm trying to imagine what someone would be like if they reached 18 without ever having been "sworn at, insulted, or humiliated." Given this is one of the gentlest ways of correcting anti-social behavior, I can only imagine such person would be a maladapted nightmare.

[red-iron-pine]

resilience is talked about in the wiki article.

there are strategies that can be taught to increase resilience, and sometimes that may include some tough love.

but there are differences between some tough love to build character vs. years of emotional and verbal abuse. one of the big kids calling you a loser on the playground is not ACE; your mom telling you're worthless and she hates you and you should have never been born for most of your childhood is.

put another way, 8 weeks of military boot camp teaches you to handle some of the stresses you might encounter; it builds resilience. but 18 years of it would create someone deeply screwed up.

[coldtea]

>I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught."

This includes white collar crime and all kinds of non-violent crimes though.

Is it the same for the violent crime subset?

[cortesoft]

Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes?

My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence.

[9x39]

IQ is positively correlated with impulse control.

Example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

[alphawhisky]

IQ is negatively correlated with reactive violence, but positively correlated with premeditated violence, per the evolution of our species. Despite our greater emotional regulation and lack of reasonable contextual circumstances to support the need for violence, we're still killing people all the time just like our ancestors.

[coldtea]

>Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes?

For starters there's the lead exposure relation to violent crime, that is accepted as a factor, and which is also known to lower IQ.

That lead-affected criminal population would drive average violent criminal IQ down, even if the lead exposure worked through a different causual mechanism and lower IQ was just an orthogonal effect.

Besides several studies have found the general correlation.

>My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence.

Choice of outlet for the outburst, impulse control and other factors however are related to intelligence.

Besides you're just covering "crimes of passion" here. There are career criminals doing homicides, gang shootings, etc, plus physical violence unrelated to passion, but related to intimidation, theft, etc.

[alphawhisky]

Don't forget indirect violence, like electing politicians that use your tax money to blow up kids.

[conradev]

My initial instinct would be that the higher IQ someone is, the better they are able to do most things including control their impulses.

[wat10000]

Higher IQ would correlate with an increased ability to predict the consequences of one’s actions. “If I stab this person I will go to prison” versus “if I stab this person everyone will think I’m great because that person sucks.”

[Melatonic]

And possibly also getting away with hiding the consequences of one's actions

[jcgrillo]

Yes. The biasing function is that (mostly) only the less smart ones get exposed and caught.

[AngryData]

Most certainly many could. You don't get 25% of the world's prison population without spending every effort to screw over your own citizens.

[roughly]

This is the other side of the coin of Uber violating state and local regulations for the better part of a decade to get their business off the ground or HSBC laundering money for the cartels.

[frakt0x90]

Of course they would. A criminal is just a person. And with such an extraordinary percentage of the US population in prison, you can expect the full spectrum of ability, intelligence, passion, compassion, and everything else. Our prison system is an extreme tragedy that most people are numb to because it's been that way forever.

[mothballed]

There are way too many people that think the human condition can be fixed through powers of the state. The overly broad application of the "justice" system is one aspect of that.

Unfortunately there's no clean way to prove this right or wrong, it is a religious like belief the populace holds. Therefore changing the status quo probably requires a religious like message that anyone coldly analyzing it with facts is incapable of delivering. The very method of changing it is out of the hands of those that might recognize what's wrong.

[jmyeet]

I want to point out just one example.

There's a guy by the name of Michael Lacey who is popular in Tiktok under the name Comrade Sinque [1]. He spent 21 years in prison. It was a much longer sentence. I'm not sure what happened to get him out much earlier.

What was his crime? Felony murder. Sounds bad, right? So what were the details. At age 19 he and a friend burgled a house. The homeowner killed his friend. That was it.

Many Americans don't realize how this works and how insanely unjust it is. It's called the felony murder doctrine and it is unique to the US. It means that if a felony is being commited and if anyone dies then you, as the felon, can be charged with murder regardless of how they died. In states like Alabama, all burglaries are felonies. So if you and a friend break into a house, the police respond and kill your friend, you can get convicted of murder and sentenced to 30-years in prison.

Not a made up example [2].

Anyway, Comrade Sinque is better read than probably at least 95% of Americans. He is thoughtful and intelligent. He wasn't born a criminal (that's 18th century thinking). He's certainly not low IQ (as some would have you believe criminals all are). No, the issue is material conditions. Poverty and a lack of opportunity.

We probably spent about $1 million convicting and incarcerating him for 21 years. This doesn't really seem like a good investment.

[1]: https://www.tiktok.com/@comrade_sinque

[2]: https://apnews.com/article/felony-murder-officer-shooting-al...

[nomel]

Convictions/punishment is also meant to be a deterrent.

That one being: don't rob a house in a state with a castle doctrine where the owner is allowed to fucking kill you. If you first hand help someone get killed, you're at fault. Sounds reasonable.

But, I also wish we had far far more deterrents, and far more deaths, when it comes to robbers.

[jmyeet]

The uS has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prison population. We have a higher rate of incarceration than, say, Russia or Iran [1].

If deterrants worked, why do these incidents keep happening? Why isn't this the safest country on Earth?

Poverty costs all of us but rather than lifting people out of poverty, we'd rather spend way more on the prison-industrial complex, slavery 2.0 (ie convict leasing) and law enforcement.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

[nomel]

You're putting too much meaning into that data.

Look at the low numbers in Africa. Is it because they elevate their criminals out of poverty? Maybe their police have good relationships with the community? Maybe they're good at re-habilitating convicted criminals in prison? Or maybe it's counseling to heal generational trauma?

Nope. Strong deterrent of immediate mob justice: https://www.dw.com/en/mob-justice-in-africa-why-people-take-...

Obviously, stoning all the criminals isn't the solution, but having society rigidly define acceptable bounds of behavior that get you removed from that society if crossed (temporarily or permanently), isn't unreasonable.

To understand that high number in the US, I think you would have to look at who is in prison, and what they did, to understand. Good luck. They collect the data in a way so you can't do a multivariate analysis, because that would be unethical!

[dullcrisp]

That’s a fair point about Africa, but is Europe also contributing another 25%? Or is that also a lawless place?

[nomel]

I don't know, we would have to look at the data. Again, due to ethical concerns, they don't record or report the data in a way where more meaningful conclusions can be made.

I think many many things contribute to the difference in imprisonment.

But, federal imprisonment is 42% drug charges [1]. Just looking at that, US has a cartel run country, with a near 20% GDP based on drug trafficking [2], at its poorly controlled border, with a whole continent below that containing exactly zero first world countries, some having > 40% GDP from drug trafficking! I've walked across the Mexican border. I've seen caravans of cars driving across. It's near fiction. Now, try to smuggle some drugs into an inner European country! Or, alternatively, just hop over to Amsterdam to avoid your countries laws. And, we also have the benefit of corporations fueling drug epidemics [3]. Is that imprisonment a deterrent? I didn't look up numbers, but have some useless anecdotal evidence: I knew two drug dealers in high school. They both stopped because their buddies were arrested, and lives ruined.

For direct evidence to answer the question "is punishment a deterrent" (I find it hard to believe this is an argument), see California Prop 47 [4].

[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

[2] https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2023-09-21/f...

[3] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

[4] https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/prop-47-36-califor...

[Quarrelsome]

Deterrents assume criminals make good decisions though. While deterrents matter for career criminals who have the experience to make good choices about their crimes, I think they're almost entirely ineffective against initial offenders.

[nomel]

Is the argument here that punishment isn't a deterrent for crime?

[wat10000]

I mostly think the US system is too punitive, but I don’t see a problem here. Someone died because of what he did. He did it deliberately and the death was a foreseeable outcome of what he did. I’m not too upset that he spent two decades in prison as a result.

[red-iron-pine]

with respect, if I'd spent 21 years in prison with nothing else to do I'd probably read a ton of books, too

[Grimblewald]

I'd argue prison iq distribution is more flattering than that of most c-suits, with less crime to boot.

[stackghost]

You'd be incorrect. It's been well established that lower IQ is moderately associated with higher rates of criminality.

I have no comment on whether C-suite types commit more crimes than prisoners, but I'd wager they don't.

Not everyone in jail got busted for benign stuff like selling a joint. There are lots and lots of incarcerated murderers, rapists, fraudsters, drunk drivers, etc.

[jMyles]

> Not everyone in jail got busted for benign stuff like selling a joint. There are lots and lots of incarcerated murderers, rapists, fraudsters, drunk drivers, etc.

In US federal prisons, drug offenders make up over 40% of the total population, by very far the largest group. The next largest tracked category, "Weapons, Explosives, and Arson" is 23%. [0]

Granted, these are almost entirely US federal offenses, which have of course been flux throughout US history with respect to proper authority, and drug offenses have tended to grease the wheels of jurisprudence so as to be regarded constitutional (albeit with a very inconsistent set of underlying principles). Murder for example is not generally a violation of federal law absent (a fairly long list of) special circumstances.

I do not believe there is any state where the number of people incarcerated for fraud convictions is in the same order of magnitude as drug convictions. In Ohio, where this story takes place, drug offenders are about 14% of the population while "fraudsters" are about 1%.

I think it's pretty reasonable to assert that a significant portion of prisons in the USA are convicted of offenses that are not easy to understand as a moral affront to society or an infringement on the rights of anyone else.

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

[mothballed]

The weapons offenses are by a longshot "felon in possession of a firearm." That one is crazy to me. You're going to send people out into the free world, where guns are legal, and owning a gun is legal, and they are supposedly off the books, and then just tempt them with owning something to defend themselves that everyone around them already has but then lock them away for a decade for doing so? Obviously most of the drug ones are just as absurd -- you're locking up drug dealer A who is immediately replaced with drug dealer B with absolutely no change to drug operations or consumption but at great expense to yourself. Thankfully we've pretty much stopped putting drug users in federal prison.

You could probably wipe out over half the federal prisons without any real change to greater society.

[t-3]

Go to your local county jail lockup, by far the most common charge is driving on a suspended license - because many crimes will get your license suspended as a matter of course, and others will give you payment plans and paperwork filing dates and if you aren't on top of everything well enough you will get suspended for missing a payment or failing to submit your stuff properly, then enjoy violating probation with an additional misdemeanor, impound fees, court fees, and possible jail time.

[stackghost]

The assertion was that prison populations commit less crime and are higher-IQ than CEOs.

Drug crimes are still crimes, irrespective of public opinion.

[coldtea]

>You'd be incorrect. It's been well established that lower IQ is moderately associated with higher rates of criminality.

Consider who is doing the "establishing" and what criminality they ignore because those doing it do not even go to prison or jail 99% of time.

[stackghost]

>Consider who is doing the "establishing" and what criminality they ignore because those doing it do not even go to prison or jail 99% of time.

Ah yes, I'm sure it's just a conspiracy to keep brilliant people in prison, and let stupid CEOs off the hook.

Look, a quick jaunt through my comment history will show you I'm no corporate bootlicker but this is ridiculous.

[constantius]

Parent meant that almost no white collar crime gets prosecuted or results in jail time for defendants. Which is a very fair statement to.make, no conspiracy involved.

The claim is that the makeup of the prison population would be different if the law was as expeditive and indiscriminate with the well-to-do as it is with the poor: the entirety of Enron in prison, of VW, of Uber, etc.

Your correlation is by and large about criminality among the poor. It would still probably hold in the above scenario, but you can't claim it looks at "criminality" full stop.

[coldtea]

No conspiracy required, it's perfectly open.

[kdhaskjdhadjk]

"A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes the ruler of a nation." - Chuang Tzu

[FpUser]

>"C-suite types commit more crimes than prisoners, but I'd wager they don't."

On behalf / or covered by corporations they openly do things for which any normal person would be criminally charged and put behind bars. Wake me up when people who for example were involved in Bradley development scandal are punished. Or ones involved in DuPont PFOA contamination case etc. etc. So they do have criminal mind. They just know they would personally get away with it and in a worst case the corporations get fined.

[AnimalMuppet]

"For the little stealing, they give you prison, soon or late. For the big stealing, they names you emperor, and puts you in the hall of fame when you croaks. If there's one thing I've learned from from twenty years on the Pullman cars listening to the white quality talk, it's dat same fact."

From "The Emperor Jones", quoted from memory.

[Geezus_42]

I read that in Jar Jar Binks voice. :D

[ButlerianJihad]

I wonder about the IQ distribution in mental health facilities. The mental health system is basically a penal system in white coats.

My parents often pointed out a very tall bearded homeless man who would stand in the intersection and shout at cars. They called him “Bigfoot”. Mom explained that he had multiple college degrees, such as physics, and indicated that he was a waste of a life.

[Avicebron]

Maybe he realized screaming at cars was more productive than being an actuary so someone who inherited their way through Yale and Blackrock could make the world a worse place.

[hackable_sand]

Still pushing that pseudoscience crap from a century ago?

You guys just can't let go

[itsthecourier]

I have dealt with many criminals through my life.

some simply wanna be Pablo Escobar and become a reggaeton poster child. they don't do it for other reason than become their mental image of a gangster.

yes, they are intelligent but they insist and insist into do what they consider cool, and that coolness come to be a "hacker" or a criminal

so far from top of my mind I remember a serial corporate scammer, a social media middle man who constantly sell access to people working in meta (unlocking/locking accounts), a drug precursor middlewoman, a money laundering mule/scammer/errand boy. every time it was the same. they wanted to show a gangster luxury life in ig. the middlewoman was something else, never got to understand her. 60 years. probably she was just for the thrill of it.

had they opportunities to do something else? repeatedly. specially after prison or with family help. but they refuse, the next business will be the one. they will become millionaires for sure. jail again.

[jzemeocala]

"we are all just a few mistakes away from becoming the people we pity and frown upon"