My grandmother[1] was a political prisoner and her favourite pastime while in prison was poetry. Since the inmates weren't allowed to have any possessions, not even a strip of paper, she composed poems in her head. She later published them in a poetry collection and I know people who memorized the entire collection. She herself had a phenomenal memory for poetry. Her friends would often call and ask for her to tell them the lyrics of old songs and poems, and even in her late 70s she never failed to answer their request without consulting her library. My mum once challenged her and asked her to recite the 50 minute-long Máj[2]. If she weren't interrupted after 10 minutes, she probably would have recited the entire thing. She was able to memorize a poem after hearing it just once and it seemed that she retained poems indefinitely. I don't know whether this talent was the result of 6 years in an environment where memory is the only means to persist information, but it seems likely that it played a role.
Another less impressive anecdatum is my own experience of about a year with a phone that couldn't remember phone numbers. In the beginning I memorized numbers out of necessity. By the end of the year I had a mental address book of about 30 numbers and new numbers could be added effortlessly. The bewildered looks of people giving me their number without me pulling out a phone to write it down were priceless.
In ancient Indian mathematics, people would compose poetry based on tables of numbers, so that things such as sine tables, and the value of pi up to certain number of decimal places, were easier to remember [1]. A delightful example given in the site is "Milk is best for breakfast, when it is morning, it should be stirred. But Gopālan says there is no milk - the number of days of English months in order.", which in the appropriate alphabet, represents the number of days in the months of the Gregorian calendar.
There’s a literary organization/movement called Oulipo[1] that similarly works with patterns and algorithms to creatively restrict or generate writing.
"How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics" gets you a few digits further (but of course yours is plenty accurate for calculating)
When you memorized numbers that way, did you "see" the numbers in your mind's eye? And when you went to recall it, did you basically read it from that impression? I sometimes memorize numbers and other strings that way.
It feels as though I simultaneously remember and recall an image of the number as well as its numeric value. What helps me remember the numeric value is identifying its interesting properties and patterns.
This mental phone book improved my ability to memorize other types of random strings. On one occasion I memorized a 20-digit hexadecimal license key, though I had to read it about three times. The client who watched as I keyed it in was very impressed. On a second thought it isn't that impressive given it's 12 digits short of a UUID.
Not the GP, but for me, in the context of numbers that I use on a keypad (or, ahem, in the context of a rotary dial), the physical actions are linked into the memorization, along with some combination of aural and visual memory.
If anybody wants to play chess in their minds, Lichess has a option to turn the pieces invisible [1]. It's not quite as hard as playing by voice as you have the move list you can refer to but it's a start.
There is also an option to have the computer read moves to you and you can make moves and query the state of the board by typing commands. Streamers use this to play blindfolded, while the stream shows the board position normally to viewers.
This is really going to help Wally's quest to GM. Playing blindfolded is one of the best training tools in the box. They'll get better at being able to see deeper and deeper without needing to touch the pieces on the board.
"Becoming a GM" only seems possible for people who reached master strength by their early teens. Some people have attained GM later in life, 30s, 40s and even older - but all GMs have been child prodigies and most - if not all - attain International Master in their teens or early twenties.
Chigorin and Salwe were both born in the mid-1800s. With the prevalence of chess computers for training and studying, the amount of strength you need to play at a top level is much higher these days.
I don't think it is just the computers. The training environments and systems for learning advanced quite far without the engines. Kasparov didn't train with computers in his prime and he is still very strong by modern standards. More children were encouraged to pursue chess...in the 19th century many people (such as Paul Morphy) would consider a professional chess player in roughly the same social tier as a professional gambler. If you look at many of the games from that era it seems like only 20 people in the world even knew how to play chess.
On the other hand its never been easier to get that kind of information. It's probably easier than ever to reach Candidate Master (2000 Elo). GM, maybe harder, but definitely could see the argument otherwise.
The skill required for a particular ELO is relative to the strength of all the other players. More learning resources that are available to everyone can't provide a comparative advantage, which is what you need to move up. Part of the reason the Soviets dominated for so long is they had developed a training program that the rest of the world did not have access to.
It's plenty possible, but few have the desire to put in that much work as they get older. There are people who play at near-GM-level strength in tournaments reflected in their single tournament evaluations, but don't play enough to obtain 2500+ rating or score enough GM norms in major tournaments.
There's a even a guy from Russia who is 2550ish rating and isn't even an IM because he hasn't scored enough norms, and is 3000+ bullet/blitz on Chesscom, which is incredibly elite.
Someone picking up chess at age 25 could certainly become a GM. They just usually don't have the desire for it.
If it were possible it would have happened in the last 100 years. What people lack at the age of 25 (or even 17) is the neuroplasticity required to turn their brain into an analytical chess engine.
That's kinda true for most things in competitive arenas, right? Sports, chess, e gaming, etc. I hate it, but at mid life I'm way slower thinking than I was 20 years ago, there's no chance I could compete with young people on raw talent in many areas, I might win some online games because of superior strategy, but I'll never have the speed to beat young, experienced gamers.
At least since the 20th century I haven't been able to find an exception. Even GMs who did not get their GM titles until late in life were very strong players as children. For example Ben Finegold did not get his last norm to become GM until he was 40, but he was a USCF master at age 14. All the other stories I've seen are similar. I've also yet been unable to find more than two or three people who started playing seriously after age 25 and ever broke 2000 FIDE.
We used to play connect 4 like this in high school, it’s frustratingly difficult to remember the game state but it’s easy to play (you just call out the column). You can easily forget the board position if you think too long about a move and as the game progresses it becomes more difficult to keep track of the game state. But it’s a lot of fun, I can imagine it becomes a lot easier over time especially when they are so experienced in chess.
I had a friend in high school who would play mental chess while weight training. He claimed it was good practice for his golf game; I think he was just showing off.
Genuinely thought they were both going to get put in solitary and have their sentences extended for engaging in gang activities, based on their coded messages to each other. Good God, but I have low expectations of this prison system.
>"“alligator” for A, “baseball” for B, “constellation” for C, “dinosaur” for D, “elephant” for E and “golf ball” for G.
Shame there wasn't anyone to share "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, etc" with them. It works well in practice, has less syllables, and probably has many in prison that already know it.
I'm sure the words they chose sounded suspicious if heard repeatedly but if heard just occasionally they were probably less so than words like Delta, Foxtrot, Tango, etc.
On the other hand, using your own phonetic alphabet is a way to disambiguate your communications in a noisy channel. If someone hears someone say "Charlie 6" they could be talking about anything. But "constellation 6" is almost definitely a chess game.
Perhaps. "Constellation" is particularly odd to me though. There are lots of unique lesser used words with 2 syllables instead of 4. So I'm curious why they chose it.
Yeah, it's a shame there was no one to share the most well-known way to relate words to the alphabet that likely many of the guards would already be familiar with.
Had you considered they chose these words for good reason?
I am curious, for example, why "Constellation" and not, say, "Comet". I've done quite a lot of volunteer work for jails and prisons, so yes, I'm dismissive that the guards would care about that. The article mentions they are using a chessboard, noting moves, etc. Nothing about keeping it secret. What was banned was face to face board games in common areas.
Issues with guards come from different scenarios than this one. The cell areas are typically very loud and chaotic from a noise perspective. That's mentioned in the article.
>> At the heart of our mental chess game lies a profound lesson: It is easy to play the victim in life, to allow your circumstances to dictate your disposition. But the difference between being content or distraught is a matter of perspective.
Good advice, but only as long as you don't let the bastards that screwed you up get away with it just because you got over it. Don't let yourself be fine with letting others treat you like dirt.
The vast majority of people are in prison on non-violent drug charges; it is horrific how society believes that they are all horrible people who deserve to be there and doesn't care about them at all.
Even under normal circumstances, the institution cares little for their rehabilitation, and now they are under atrocious conditions such as these. Many psychologists consider solitary confinement to be a form of torture, but as we know, in covid times that no longer matters.
I'm hoping there's some broad reform coming for jails and prisons in the US. Currently, there's no uniformity in the way prisoners are treated. It's not unusual, in the US, for a prison to have no television, no books, little actually edible food, limited human interaction, etc. You can't even write a letter if you don't have someone on the outside funding your commissary account.
That setup, of course, just ends up being a gladiator school and/or permanent psychosis camp.
Permanent psychosis camp is an apt description. The US makes its prisons as hellish as possible – and post-prison life as difficult as possible – as a form of punishment, and that results in some of the highest rates of recidivism in the world.
What's worse is that people get incarcerated for increasingly severe crimes. A drug offender spending a stint in prison is very likely to go back in for a more violent crime with a few years of release.
I broadly agree with you but I think you're ascribing too much coherent judicial intention to the way we treat prisoners. Sure, people are sent there as punishment, but it seems more like the way they're treated once they get there is mostly down to profit motive on the part of big prison-industrial players who outright run some prisons and provide services to most (all?) others, and individual depravity on the part of the bullies and sadists who are drawn to working in the industry.
Just the fact that I can reasonably call it an "industry" should be setting off major alarm bells. Our prison system is one of the most terrifying and evil things that exist in the real world.
I agree, though sometimes it's not actually bribery. If a company, for example, offers inmate telecom services to a prison, and offers to do it at "no cost at all to the state" or "revenue share", it sounds attractive. Of course, that means "exorbitant costs to the prisoner's families".
Revenue share isn’t bribery because the revenue isn’t shared with the judge. It’s a cost structure to make the municipality or whatever avoid having to outlay money to build something.
Similar to some joint public/private toll roads, red light cameras, etc.
If you can de-incentivize a behavior, you can prevent it. But just 'banning bribery' has already been done. Banning any and all perverse incentives from the justice system is actually very difficult to the point of near-impossibility. Hence the current system.
Except that when we hear of a for-profit nursing home abusing its residents, we are shocked, and set up an inquiry, and pass some laws about how people need to be treated.
When we hear about how prisoners are treated -- actually we hardly ever hear about how prisoners are treated, because most people don't care that much.
The way society is ok with the treatment of prisoners is the root cause of the way they are treated. Plenty of for-profit enterprises exist that aren't allowed to abuse those they have power over.
That's definitely part of it. The way they suck the prisoner's families dry is particularly shitty, for things like phone calls, letters (jPay), commissary, charges to see the doctor (yes, really), and so on.
Even without that it would be a vicious circle. You might initially lead a fairly normal life with some "side-hustle" to earn a little cash, and go to prison for that. Now when you come out you are an ex convict (with barely any assets because life in prison is expensive). So you look for a space to rent (that takes ex-cons) and a job (that hires ex-cons). Chances are you won't find a full-time job, so you turn to crime to pay your rent. But now crime turned from a side-hustle to a half-time job.
I’m not optimistic about it, but I do wonder if the experience of living through a pandemic will give folks a fresh perspective on just how rough imprisonment is, and a willingness to consider alternatives. If it’s torture to be stuck in your own home for a year—with your own bed, food, schedule, entertainment, family, and hot water—just imagine how much worse it must be for someone locked up in a cage for decades without even those basic freedoms. If you believe that long prison sentencing is a deterrent, and someone told you that breaking a law would cause you to have to live another year of pandemic life, does that not feel deterrent enough?
Unfortunately a large part of the population is conditioned to not see convicts as people, let alone citizens deserving of any kind of rights or freedoms
see: The consistent running "joke" throughout American pop culture of men getting raped on a regular basis
It's supposed to be a severe punishment, usually reserved for serious or repeat offenders.
If someone works their ass off at minimum wage for a week, just to have the fruit of their work stolen in a minute, and the thief got caught doing this for the third time (which means the thief likely also got away with it dozens of times), what then?
Most importantly, why should that person work their ass off for another week, instead of going somewhere else, stealing something, and enjoying the remaining 39 hours off?
House arrest exists, but it depends on that person not just ignoring it and running away, and is significantly milder for the reasons you listed.
> If someone works their ass off at minimum wage for a week, just to have the fruit of their work stolen in a minute
You're talking about white collar crime and financial exploitation, which generally is illegal but isn't punished, or is actually legalized. The kind of people who go to prison are lucky if they steal two or three days worth of your work.
> It's supposed to be a severe punishment, usually reserved for serious or repeat offenders.
First, prison in general, and long sentences in particular, are generally not used that way.
Second, why are you trying to punish people for what they’ve done instead of trying to help them so they can learn to do something other than crime and contribute to society?
> If someone works their ass off at minimum wage for a week, just to have the fruit of their work stolen in a minute, and the thief got caught doing this for the third time (which means the thief likely also got away with it dozens of times), what then?
Perhaps focus on why you live in a society where people feel like they need to steal low value things (necessarily, as you have said it was the fruit of a minimum-wage worker) to survive.
(A side note: as of 2017, prisoners in the United States with jobs get paid, on average, a maximum of $3.45 per day[0], if you want to compare yet another situation that is worse than working for minimum wage.)
> House arrest exists, but it depends on that person not just ignoring it and running away, and is significantly milder for the reasons you listed.
The point I was making is that house arrest is not that mild at all, and that maybe more people will realise this after being in house-arrest-lite for a year and have more reluctance to subject fellow humans to even harsher and more cruel conditions.
> Perhaps focus on why you live in a society where people feel like they need to steal low value things
There are antisocial and lazy people everywhere, even in places with a better welfare system than the US. The phone snatching and bike stealing gangs of London aren't doing it to pay for their mum's cancer treatment or to provide food for their kids, they do it because one fun night of robbery pays more than a boring week of work in a grocery or a building site.
> Perhaps focus on why you live in a society where people feel like they need to steal low value things (necessarily, as you have said it was the fruit of a minimum-wage worker) to survive.
“Need” is rarely why people steal. The calculus is, “I want this thing, I don’t have an ethical problem taking it, I think I can get away from it.”
Look, I understand the appeal of an argument that paints criminals as simply having poor morals, but it is a completely false and reductive argument that does not capture the complexity behind why people commit crimes. It’s easy to ‘be ethical’ when your needs are taken care of and you’re in an environment that supports you and guides you into being a healthy member of society.
When I say “need”, I don’t mean literally in the sense of “I need to steal that thing or I will die”. I mean it in the sense of a person being satisfied in enough aspects of their life, and having the necessary skills, to turn themselves away from committing crime.
>having the necessary skills, to turn themselves away from committing crime.
I grew up running with a sketchy crowd. I knew several people who stole things on a recurring basis. None of them did it because they were desperate or had “poor morals”.
You’re deriving this from an incorrect mental model where nobody “wants to steal” and they do it out of desperation. This leaves out people who steal for the thrill, steal because they literally have no moral problem with taking from huge corporations, etc.,
I think you’ll find nearly identical justifications between a guy that votes for someone to raise taxes on mega corporations and an anarchist who just steals from them directly.
> You’re deriving this from an incorrect mental model where nobody “wants to steal” and they do it out of desperation.
Wow, I’m not thinking that way at all. If that’s how it came across, I did a really bad job at explaining myself!
I don’t want to get into a huge thing, especially on an old thread, but what I was trying to get across is that I don’t think it’s good enough to just look at someone who commits a crime and say that it happened because they are ‘bad’, that all the blame is theirs, that society has no culpability.
When I say “need”, I don’t mean destitution. So take your example of stealing for a thrill. Why aren’t they getting enough thrill in other parts of their life? What easier or better thrill could be offered instead that doesn’t involve hurting other people? They clearly have an unfulfilled need for a thrill, and they are fulfilling it by stealing.
When I say “skills”, I don’t mean like job skills. I mean things like the skill of knowing how to talk through anger instead of physically attacking somebody. The skills of emotional regulation. Stuff that may be natural and intuitive for some, but foreign and unknown to others.
I believe that if we handled crime the same way we handle things like plane crashes—investigate without judging, look at more than just the individual, and help people instead of punishing them—there would be much less crime, it would be less serious, and suffering would be immensely reduced. But it’s way harder than just going “well, this person’s a piece of shit and they deserve be imprisoned until they’re 80 years old”.
Has pandemic lockdown really changed that many people’s views? In some countries it has become a faux pas to complain about lockdown conditions. Often that is because people don’t want to hear complaining about things we seemingly have little control over, but sometimes it is because some people honestly don’t see any problem with life in lockdown.
For example, when scientific advisors to some governments appear in national media and say there could be upsides to maintaining social distancing for potentially years into the future, and this evokes little popular outcry outside a tiny fringe of wacko “great reset”/antivaxxer conspiracy theorists on Twitter, then you start to wonder if a lot of the population has simply accepted the new normal. That might create less sympathy with prisoners, not more.
Extending COVID restrictions for years into the future would cause huge outcry, what are you talking about? I would immediately join protests and do everything in my power to get the current government out if that happened, and I'm not one for "viva la revolución!" normally.
Really? Because slowly pushing back opening dates and such leads people with no specific event to protest about.
I have supported 90% of the steps my fairly-restrictive government has taken so far, because they are backed by science. Would I be happy if they were extended indefinitely? Well, no. But, realistically, how would I know that was happening?
If schools are not fully-opened next fall I would definitely be raising a bit of a ruckus. But if Dr Fauci and all the other scientists were saying they really couldn't be re-opened because we were in the middle of another wave? Well, I'm not anti-science.
You can debate each step, but I really don't think that a continual drip-drip of extensions would raise a huge outcry at all.
This is a bit of a Ship of Theseus. When would you know they're extending lockdown indefinitely, if they keep extending it? Never, but that's besides the point.
Some are already quite annoyed with the extensions. Some keep getting more annoyed. Some are becoming accustomed. The question really is: what percentage of people will adapt, and what percentage will revolt?
Keep in mind that it does not need to a majority of people choosing (if choosing is the right word for what is more determined by innate personality traits) to revolt for it to happen. Even a relatively small percentage of sufficiently ravenous people igniting trouble is enough to aggravate the situation of the rest, causing more economic and social trouble. This would further push the society into disarray, and a surefire way to induce people to rise up is to create chaos in a system (historically, hunger was a good motivator).
My point is, I think you're watching the pot before it boils, and declaring it will never boil.
edit: actually, Zeno's paradox might be a better fit here
We're now going on year 2, with limited protests, and vaccines being promised "soon" with "soon" slowly moving further and further away.
That said, the restrictions are being released despite it being a bad idea, and I think the government realizes that they can't really tighten them without risking violent protests.
> vaccines being promised "soon" with "soon" slowly moving further and further away.
In March 2020, the US government said it would take 12–18 months to get a vaccine approved, and many people even doubted that was possible[0]. Instead, it happened just 9 months later[1].
In the United States, the current president first said it was unlikely everyone would be vaccinated before the end of summer[2], then they shifted to having enough vaccine for 300 million people by the end of July[3], and most recently an announcement that there will be supply for the entire population at the end of May[4].
I don’t know where you live, but at least in the U.S., things have been the opposite of “‘soon’ slowly moving further and further away”.
Not everyone here is American. Europeans have seen vaccination pushed back due to delays in supplies and issues with registering for the shot.
Also, some scientific advisors are saying that the present vaccines may be insufficient to fully lift restrictions, and we ought to wait for more advanced boosters to deal with variants.
We're coming up on a year of restrictions now, and many countries simply haven't seen much protest activity. Politics in some Asian and European countries is very much consensus-based, and if the main parties have converged on the idea of maintaining some level of social distancing, there isn’t much space for the populace to voice opposition to that.
Large protests in those countries tend to be unlikely because 1) protests have been banned on epidemological grounds, and the authorities have made it clear that any protest will be swiftly suppressed by the police, and 2) QAnon and antivaxxer conspiracy theorists tend to be very visible at protests, and normal people are unwilling to be associated with that. So, the bulk of the population is not going to be willing to go out and protest.
I live in the Netherlands, and there definitely has been a great deal of protesting and general mayhem. More than a dozen cities had large protests, vandalism.. we had a group chat where people told others about places where this was going to happen in my city, in our case to avoid them, but for others to coordinate.
Mind you, heavy lockdown measures have only been here for a couple of months. I have no doubt if the government makes a step towards keeping it for years, the protests will reignite.
Regarding 1), that stops absolutely nobody here. The city center is bustling with crowds, and protests for other issues still happen, there is no "police squashing".
2), that is a USA-centric view. There is little QAnon talk over here.
A lot of the news coverage of the Netherlands protests has been saying that they aren’t principled people disagreeing with COVID policy, but rather just young and marginalized people enjoying a chance to go wild and engage in vandalism. (Just like the 2005 French car-torchings were only very slightly based on minority grievances, and otherwise just young people going crazy.) Meanwhile, polls show that the Dutch population broadly supports the restrictions. As someone there in the country, do you feel this is inaccurate?
And no, not an American-centric view. QAnon has become a very visible thing in anti-lockdown social media and protests here in Eastern Europe.
The news coverage of "rowdy" protests is always the same: "not real protesters, young people going crazy". Mostly regurgitations from the police chief and the mayor, who obviously have incentive to downplay the intentions of the protesters. They are not completely wrong, of course, but you should take what they say with a grain of salt.
> As someone there in the country, do you feel this is inaccurate?
It's split. Some support the current measures. Some do not. Privately, in my own experience, most are much more unhappy with the measures than they let on publicly. The common phrasing I hear from the hopefuls is "at least it might end soon". If it does not, they might have a change of mind.
> QAnon has become a very visible thing in anti-lockdown social media and protests here in Eastern Europe.
Yes, in Eastern Europe that might be true.. over here, I would be hard pressed to find someone who has even heard of it.
My view from the Netherlands is that days getting longer will be an issue. If the 9 pm curfew is still in effect when it's still light outside at 9 pm, it will be disobeyed much more widely.
Currently it has been extended until the evening of March 30 (which is two days after the clocks go forward for spring). That evening, the sun will set at 8.11 pm in Amsterdam.
A further (hypothetical) three-week extension would AIUI take it to the point where the curfew would come into effect before the streetlights came on.
Very good point! Due to the relaxing of rules around outside crowds and sports, I have good hope they will remove or at least extend the curfew past 9PM.
Instead of looking for protests, perhaps a better (though still imperfect) signal to gauge sentiment about living under pandemic restrictions is to look at how much vaccine demand there is, and how aggressively some governments have acted to ease restrictions. After all, there aren’t constant protests in prisons, either, and I don’t think you’ll find many people saying they’re better off imprisoned than they were on the outside. (Yes, there are outliers—let’s not argue making the exception into the rule.)
If most people were truly comfortable with the status quo, it seems pretty unlikely to me that there would be such overwhelming demand for vaccines, nor does it seem like there would be a constant push to (often prematurely) end pandemic restrictions in so many areas.
I’ve been unable to find any poll asking people specifically about whether they enjoy the restrictions, so I can’t give a definitive answer, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that if people could wave a magic wand and make the pandemic go away tomorrow, they would. And that’s after only a year of relatively minor restrictions on daily life, not 5 or 10 or 50 years of being held in captivity.
> And that’s after only a year of relatively minor restrictions on daily life, not 5 or 10 or 50 years of being held in captivity.
Not to understate the restriction involved in being imprisoned, but “relatively minor restrictions on daily life” is really understating the experience of many people over the past year.
I haven’t seen my parents, sibling, 1-year-old nephew, most of my friends, and any of my co-workers in over a year. I haven’t taken any vacation time because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. I’m fortunate that I’m comfortably employed, but none of my regular activities are happening, so my life is essentially in a holding pattern where every day is just some variation of working from home, cooking for myself, working out by myself, and reading.
> I can't believe you would complain about living IN YOUR OWN HOME nice and comfortable while PEOPLE ARE DYING. To compare this to prison is an INSULT to OUR HEALTHCARE HEROES. We're IN A PANDEMIC
There are enough loud voices from people with high Right-Wing Authoritarian Scores (which isn't a Republican/Democrat axis, before you decide I'm being needlessly political) that will shout you down.
As a personal test, I am buying GEO and CoreCivic to see how much I believe.
Yep. It boils down to rehabilitation v. retribution. Rehabilitation is effective at preventing recidivism. Retribution is politically expedient.
And this goes beyond prisons, too. Kinda hard to not turn to crime again if your chances at a career are gated behind criminal background checks that you're destined to fail.
"if your chances at a career are gated behind criminal background checks that you're destined to fail"
That's a great point that I haven't seen discussed in the media. When I was young, only "Fortune 500" type companies could afford background checks, so you had a fighting chance at getting a decent job.
Now, anybody can buy a instant background check online, and you can get not just felony data, but misdemeanor data, and even "just arrests, not convictions". And it's dirt cheap to do so. So, job prospects are dim, and even simple stuff like renting an apartment is difficult as well.
I'm sure there's more in play, but the concept of "At Will Employment" we have in the US creates an environment where only very specifically legally defined discrimination counts as such (race, gender, etc). Outside of that you can fire, or not hire, anyone, for any arbitrary reason you want...even for "no reason given".
So in the US there are rules around court data being public so companies scoop up that data and basically package it as a background check. This data is also enriched with voting data which is also public in most states which includes the people living in your home and other info. The company ADP which deals with paychecks also sells your income information to third parties so someone running a basic background check can actually know where you live, who you live with and how much you make.
Luckily the french did give us a tool to fight against this bullshit, it is called the guillotine?
Neither of those things need to be "done by the government". Unionization covers "protection of the job", and mutual aid covers "social protection".
Though yes, if the state is to exist, the least it should be doing is providing for its people - in my opinion via UBI + single-payer healthcare at minimum.
Socialism as a concept is super wide. Many Western European countries are socialist democracies (France, Sweden, ...) and proud of it. We actually like what we have (but we always protest anyway).
It seems to be the same in Australia from what I can see. We have "police checks" where the police certify that you have not been involved in any crime specific to the job you apply for. So if you have committed fraud, you could not get a job at a bank. And if you are a sex offender, you could not get a job with kids. But as far as I know, a fraud can get a job at a school and a sex offender can get a job at a bank and the employer would not know anything.
What makes this potentially complicated in the US is each state being a different jurisdiction. While states aren't really anything like "countries" in the European statehood sense of the word, they keep separate records by design, and there are often no interoperable systems for exchanging data. This is why there is no "USA marriage certificate" in the US, there's simply no nation wide record of marriages.
I'd guess the industry built around background checks and the like is partially a response to this. There isn't a national registry of crimes, at least not all kinds, so you could game the Australian system by just crossing state borders. Hence companies selling collections of people's (technically) public record. A solution may be to just create more national registries, but this seems antithetical to the US's idea of statehood. Maybe it'd be for the best, though...
It seems to be that the US ends up with the worst of both systems. States are not separate countries so they can not deny access like another country would deny a rapist from immigrating but they are also not unified so they can't take any collective action.
Seems to be the core of the covid situation too. There is no unified plan and guidance but states doing well can't shut borders to continue doing well.
> There is no unified plan and guidance but states doing well can't shut borders to continue doing well.
Can't or won't? If California can get away with its agricultural checkpoints without running afoul of e.g. the Commerce Clause, then it seems like restricting interstate border crossings is at least hypothetically possible.
In practice, it's pretty trivial to bypass those checkpoints if you really want to smuggle produce into the state (e.g. the I-80 checkpoint, where you can take the Hirschdale Road exit and follow Glenshire Drive to 287, then get right back on I-80). I highly doubt COVID checkpoints would be any harder to bypass.
No it doesn't. It's perfectly fair to be against the lack of uniformity in how prisoners are treated without being against retributive justice. That prisoners' lives should not depend on "the whims of the prison's management" (as another poster put it) is just common sense.
You're right in theory, but in practice, being in favor of retributive "justice" tends to go hand in hand with an acceptance of arbitrary application of said "justice", for reasons typically along the lines of "if you wanted humane treatment then you should've thought about that before being a hard-bitten criminal scumbag" (exaggerating, obviously, but not by much).
I think you can have a level of both. Obviously we don't want crime to be free of consequence, but we also don't want inmates to commit crimes again after their sentence(both for the sake of others and their own). In the US, we mostly care about retribution, even when we say that we want reformation. All the time I hear from people about how we need to focus on rehabilitation, but then hear a lot of the same people shout "lock 'em up!" even for property crimes.
I'm not one to be in the "America is bad at everything" camp, but I think one of the most negative aspects of our culture is that we act entitled to everything like the world is Burger King and we should get everything our way(or your money back). Fries too cold? Send 'em back and don't tip the server! Someone backed into our rear fender? Sue 'em for all they've got! Someone stole your TV? Lock 'em up and throw away the key! It all stems from materialism.
I live in Canada although did visit US few times. In my opinion the United States is great. Problem I think is that it is great at too many things. It had accomplished incredibly good things. It had also fucked things up royally. And keeps doing all of this. For the people I think it would be worth paying more attention to the dark side.
Years ago I read an interview with a prison warden. The interviewer at the end asked him what he would want the public to understand. The warden said, I would like the public to understand that everyone here is going to get out eventually.
- I was more referring to job opportunities after release; even if an inmate received a bunch of hands-on training while incarcerated, a lot of public and private sector employers alike consider a criminal record to be a disqualification. This makes getting a job harder, which makes supporting oneself legitimately harder, which makes crime more attractive to put food on the table, which drives recidivism.
- On the topic of inmate vocational training and prison labor, the primary objections to said labor revolve around the lack of compensation (we're talking multiple orders of magnitude less than federal minimum wage) and poor working conditions; it's legal slavery (quite literally; the 13th Amendment carved out prison labor as an exception to the abolition of slavery). Prison laborers need the ability to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, and this negotiation is currently impossible because prisons can compel them by threat of violence to accept any terms, no matter how unfair to the worker. Indeed, if prisoners were fairly compensated for their labor, they might be able to save up enough money to not feel as strong of a need to return to a life of crime should they remain shunned by employers, per above (and hell, they might even be able to bootstrap themselves a startup and sidestep said shunning entirely).
>I was more referring to job opportunities after release; even if an inmate received a bunch of hands-on training while incarcerated, a lot of public and private sector employers alike consider a criminal record to be a disqualification. This makes getting a job harder, which makes supporting oneself legitimately harder, which makes crime more attractive to put food on the table, which drives recidivism.
That's irrelevant to the question of whether prisons are wrong to provide it.
>On the topic of inmate vocational training and prison labor, the primary objections to said labor revolve around the lack of compensation (we're talking multiple orders of magnitude less than federal minimum wage) and poor working conditions
As in the cousin thread, this may be your objection, but it isn't the popular objection; Bloomberg was famously forced to drop prison labor, regardless of the terms offered.
> That's irrelevant to the question of whether prisons are wrong to provide it.
And that question was outside of the topic I was originally discussing.
> Bloomberg was famously forced to drop prison labor, regardless of the terms offered.
Because there was no real option to provide better terms. As pointed out by myself in that very same cousin thread, prison labor compensation in the state of Oklahoma has a monthly cap of less than $30, which is pathetically low, even when deducting room and board (which would itself be coercive, given that prisoners by definition can't exactly opt out of said room and board), and especially when factoring in price markups in prison commissaries.
The popular blanket objection to prison labor exists specifically because there are few (if any) prison work programs in the US that pay prisoners anywhere close to a fair wage. Indeed, if they did pay a fair wage, and weren't coercively presented to inmates as "you either work or you rot in the cell", then what reason would there be to object?
That sounds like a straw man. There's a big difference between practical "practical job training" and "breaking rocks."
If the labor is entirely volunteer and something that actually requires some training, it's job training. If it's forced (which is legal in many states) and it's entirely grunt work like janitorial duty or highway cleanup, then it's prison labor.
> John Scallan, a ProCom co-founder, said his company pays the Oklahoma minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, which then pays the incarcerated people working in the call centers. The Department of Corrections website lists the maximum monthly wage for the incarcerated at $20 dollars a month, but another policy document says there is a maximum pay of $27.09 per month.
> When asked if their total monthly earnings are capped at these levels, Scallan said incarcerated people who work for ProCom make far higher wages. “I can tell you unequivocally that is not us,” Scallan said. “Some of them are making that much every day.”
> The Oklahoma Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment to clarify the discrepancy, nor to answer questions about ProCom’s arrangement with the Bloomberg campaign.
Given the refusal to clarify that discrepancy, it ain't unreasonable to assume - barring concrete evidence to the contrary - that these prisoners are being paid a pittance for their labor, and Bloomberg - and ProCom, and the state of Oklahoma - definitely deserve any flak coming to them for that exploitation. The very fact that there is a maximum monthly wage for prisoners at all, let alone one as pathetically low as $27.09 per month, is barbaric.
Oh, so Bloomberg's primary objection -- and the outraged people's primary objection -- was that they weren't get paid a fair wage, not to the mere fact of prison labor? Then why can't I seem to find anyone saying anything to this effect, anywhere?
Because as best I can tell, the objection is exactly the "strawman" I originally alleged, that prison labor shouldn't be used, even when rehabilitative and helps the prisoner find employment after release.
> Then why can't I seem to find anyone saying anything to this effect, anywhere?
Because that's strongly implied to be the reason for any objection at all - i.e. the coercion of prisoners into working for a pathetically low wage, and the exploitation of that coercion for financial gain. Unless you can think of some other reason why people object to prison labor other than it being coercive and exploitative?
They're not independent. Sufficient skills can overcome the stigma of a criminal record. But providing prisoners skills usually involves some on-the-job training to be useful.
> Sufficient skills can overcome the stigma of a criminal record.
Not when there's an HR department in between the applicant and the hiring manager. People with "sufficient skills" get rejected all the time for reasons far more benign than e.g. having killed someone 30 years ago.
Like, this ain't about "stigma". This is about Kafkaesque corporate bureaucracy actively driving crime rates.
Less than 9% of prisoners are in private prisons, so I don't think that would make a significant difference. I mean it might be a good thing to do, but won't help the vast majority of prisoners.
The "food" providers, communication "providers", the companies paying virtually nothing for labor, etc. The folks focusing on the raw percentage of prisoners forced to stay in private prisons are missing the forest for the trees.
Sure, but the grandparent was talking about how it's not uncommon to have no TV, bad food, etc. in prison. Given that private prisons are uncommon, clearly privatization isn't the main cause of these problems.
> I'm hoping there's some broad reform coming for jails and prisons in the US.
Doubtful. Prison reform isn't popular at all amongst voting blocs that matter to politicians and it's a hard sell to the public tuned into a "safety first" and "lock 'em up and throw away the key" attitude.
I say I'm hopeful because there have been meaningful changes in bail reform and decriminalizing drug possession recently. Some attitudes do seem to be changing.
I think suburban America broadly does not want psychopaths running around which is what burglars and drug dealers become when they spend 10 years in prison.
I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t send people to jail for more than 3 months if they’re not going for their entire lives. I don’t want people coming out of a place like that into my suburban neighborhood.
I don't think I agree with this, but it has made me think about the problem differently.
We don't send somebody to the hospital for "30 days", or "1 year". We don't do it when putting somebody under the care of a psychiatrist either. We deal with the patient until they're recovered.
Perhaps this should be the approach we take with prisoners. They're in prison until a professional determines they're rehabilitated and ready to reintegrate back into the rest of society. With—potentially—minimum and maximum durations to ensure some safety rails on the system.
I have to admit I don't know what this looks like, and I don't mean to gloss over the fact that there are incredibly difficult questions this raises that don't have good answers (what does it mean for a murderer to be "rehabilitated"?), but I do wonder if at least considering the problem from this perspective might prove helpful.
Of course, but that's the whole problem we should be addressing. We need to stop thinking about prison being the adult version of sitting in time-out and start thinking about it in terms of rehabilitation so that released prisoners can better reintegrate.
This is interesting. Is the 3 months number something arbitrary? Are there major groups advocating this? Beyond limiting the harm if prison, short stints could make gangs harder to form in non-lifer prisons.
Sure, send the rapists and murderers and child molesters to life without parole. The rest of the violent criminals to Singapore style whipping which is actually far more humane than prison.
One of the biggest in progress "reforms" is decriminalizing marijuana and end of the "war on drugs" in general. Keeping 20% of prison population from ever going there.
To be fair, that's not true everywhere, but it is true in many places. Though in some places where it is allowed, someone on the outside has to buy it for you. Not everyone has someone on the outside.
Unlikely. Far too many people willingly short-circuit all rationality in favor of ineffective, but emotionally-satisfying stances like being "tough on crime".
Treating prisoners as crappy as they can get away with is usually something in favor of a US politician with any ability to do something about it.
I sometimes wonder, since prison is meant for those who commit crimes, so presumably when society decided prison is appropriate for certain crimes, didn't that mean automatically no social interaction for prisoners, since the ideal society would not have (any other) criminals?
If yes, that would mean solitary confinement is the only real imprisonment.
There are lot's of other ways to take this question with this line of reasoning but I'll leave it at this for now.
This comes from a common mindset that people in prison deserve no rights because they broke the law. They don't take into account the fact that there are people there who don't deserve to be (either because they are innocent, or because the law they violated was unjust), and if incarcerated people have "no rights", then they can't fight for their freedom.
The abolitionist movement has been mostly dormant since the reconstruction era, but seems to be alive again this past year.
We need to ensure that these dots are connected; prisons are not only the moral successor to slavery, but the literal legal framework by which it continues.
Strictly speaking, slavery is not against the law in the United States; this carve out in the 13th amendment was seized upon immediately and remains with us today.
I meant uniformity of rules across institutions. I don't have an issue with different rules for different types of prisoners. Just that those have some uniformity across the various places. Right now, you can do prison time in a county jail (yes, serving an actual sentence in jail), in a state prison, or in a federal prison. The state prisons, particularly, are all over the place on rules and environment. And those serving sentences in county jails are also typically getting the short end of the stick, as the facility rules aren't made for long-term inmates.
Is there a prison review website? Let's say I wanted to get sent to the "nicest" prison in the USA (not a white collar "tennis-camp" prison). What crime would I need to commit where to have the highest chance of getting sent there?
Interesting. I once had a language professor from cold-war era Czechoslavakia. He was in the military and had to stand around in formations for hours. He found a like-minded friend and played chess 'in their heads' as they stood.
Extra: After he moved to the USA, he applied his mental skills to poker where he became a world-class lowball player.
When I was I high school I played some mental chess against the school’s star player. (He could beat me when he alone was blindfold.) I’m not a great chess player but I was surprised how far it was possible to play before making a mistake. Gives me hope in case I should end up behind bars.
To me the state of US prisons reveals a really dark aspect to US culture and that is there's a real penchant for... cruelty. Like here's just a partial list of major problems just off the top of my head:
- The essentially institutionalized use of rape as a means of controlling inmates;
- Ridiculously long sentences for relatively minor offences as just another casualty of the disastrous war on drugs;
- commissaries as a profit center with ridiculously marked up prices;
- ridiculous costs for telephone calls as another profit center, making it more difficult for inmates to maintain social ties to family;
- prisoners count as citizens but can't vote. Also prisons are jobs. This makes prisons the perfect tool for gerrymandering and pork barreling;
- being charged (not convicted but _charged) with a felony while on parole violates your parole and can send you back to prison to serve the remainder of your sentence. I don't know how this passes the due process test;
- Overcharging to force plea deals;
- Paying prisoners <5c/hour;
- Forcing prisoners to pay a co-pay to see a doctor. $2-5 might not sound like much but it is at 5c/hour;
- Female prisoners may need to see a doctor to get adequate tampons or sanitary napkins. See above for why that's a problem;
- 5c/hour incentivized individuals and private companies to use prison labour to undercut real competitors;
- You don't really have a choice: working is typically mandatory;
- Prison food. 'Nuff said.
- The "are you a felon?" scarlet letter you'll carry for the rest of your life. This actually causes problems even for the ultra-rich. As one example, it has caused real problems for Mark Wahlberg, such that at one point he sought a pardon from the Massachussetts governor for what was a fairly vicious assault when he was young. That effort failed. I absolutely oppposed the Wahlberg pardon. He shouldn't get an exemption. Reform this stupid system instead;
- Early release prisoners having to pay for their own drug tests where they have huge problems even finding a job as a felon in the first place;
- Disenfranchising felons in fairly stupid ways that are clearly a form of voter suppression ie they can't vote for really no good reason;
- Overcrowding;
- Privatizing of prisons;
- Having a delay between parole being granted and the prisoner being released. This is so dumb. This allows other prisoners to "tax" the parolee as any infraction during that period may violate their conditions of release. In comparison I saw a show about a prison in Mexico where a prisoner was called intot he warden's office, told he'd been freed and he was immediately free to go (probably for this "taxing" reason). I was honestly surprised at how humane Mexican prisons seemed in this show (compared to their US equivalents);
I don't think it's an understatement to call the US prison system to be a humanitarian crisis and a blight on the soul of the country.
You had so many more points to make, but your first one stuck out to me:
> - The essentially institutionalized use of rape as a means of controlling inmates;
It's super messed up that, although we make a big deal about rape in our culture, when it comes to someone going to prison, even for nonviolent offenses in some cases, it's socially acceptable to joke about men being anally raped in prison. I suppose there are some especially bad people whom I'd care less about being raped, honestly, but I think it's kind of sick to wish that upon someone. In some ways it's worse than admitting to wanting someone dead because it's intended to be especially sadistic and humiliating. It's sexist as well; just imagine the kind of response someone would get if they joked about a woman getting raped in prison. If you're a man, Americans believe you deserve to get raped if you commit a crime, or are at least callously indifferent to it.
But of course these can't be right since you saw a television show that portrayed them in a grand humanitarian light, and how could that possibly be inaccurate?
Your sarcastic and condescending tone detracts from your point and from the conversation. You could say the same thing in a polite and genuine way and be more likely to attract meaningful responses.
Perhaps presenting the for-profit system with more profitable uses for the space is the way out, for better or worse. For example, Louisiana has filled empty space with ICE detainees at a higher rate per resident. Something to take into account with reform.
That seems like the new "reason" -- at least it's more valid than the old reason of "stopping gambling". There was a documentary, Netflix maybe?, where guards would routinely do sweeps and find any game pieces that prisoners has made - paper folded to make dice, notes and score sheets for D&D, etc
The problem is that they're not only deciding for themselves, they're also deciding for their cellmates, and anyone else they will be in close contact with (which, in a prison, is likely "everyone")
This is a generic, indeed a cliché tangent that points straight to a dumbed-down, predictable flamewar. Please don't do that on HN, regardless of how you feel about criminals.
Not having access to adequate forms of mental stimulation and activities for normal socialization, however, can reach the standard of torture, before long. Ramp it up enough, and eventually you're inflicting irreversible brain damage.
Whether it's either cruel or unusual is a subjective question.
What I asked was whether it's ok for a prisoner's quality of life to be determined by the whims of the prison. I'm of the opinion that whatever the right quality of life is, it should be consistent across the board. If I commit a federal crime, the punishment shouldn't vary based on which prison I get sent to.
In other words, if you think it's perfectly reasonable for, say, a murderer to be placed in extended isolation (as an example), then that should be applied evenly to all murderers.
Surely we agree on that much? Or do you believe being a criminal means you should be subject to arbitrary punishments at the whims of your captors?
It's pretty cruel to allow a person's mind to decay due to lack of stimulus. Prisoners need something to do. Books and board games are cheap and keep people occupied.
"Not having access to entertainment is not cruel or unusual"
Do you mean by some legal definition, psychological, or personal opinion?
Personally, I don't see how spending most of your day in a cell without a book or game, for years, wouldn't result in severe psychological damage. Damage that might have consequences for others once you're eventually released.
You could excuse literally any punishment with that line of reasoning. It's nonsensical, designed to appeal to emotion instead of presenting a coherent, logical approach to sentencing.
At some point we need to think pragmatically about what kind of society we want to create, rather than spending all of our time worrying about whether or not people are getting what they deserve.
> At some point we need to think pragmatically about what kind of society we want to create, rather than spending all of our time worrying about whether or not people are getting what they deserve.
To me, these two things are the same.
I want to live in a society where people are held responsible for their actions. If they commit a crime, they should be punished in proportion to their crime. This is a kind of humanism because it respects individuals' freedom of choice (i.e. you choose to commit a crime...or not).
To be concerned "whether or not people are getting what they deserve" is the definition of justice. And it goes both ways: if the punishment is too severe, too random, or inflicted on the innocent, that is also a problem.
Justice can't be separated from rehabilitation. If your punishment system predictably increases recidivism rates for crimes that have real-world consequences, then you basically are punishing innocent people for other people's actions.
Unless you plan to keep every prisoner in prison indefinitely, then the state that they are in when they leave prison matters. It doesn't just matter for them, it also matters for everybody else who lives alongside them in the future -- people who don't deserve to live in a worse, more dangerous society just because we determined that somebody else completely unrelated to them didn't suffer enough yet.
Prisoners who leave prison without being properly rehabilitated are a liability and a risk for everyone else outside of prison -- and even if you don't care about the prisoners, you should at least care about the other citizens who live around them.
> Justice can't be separated from rehabilitation. If your punishment system predictably increases recidivism rates for crimes that have real-world consequences, then you basically are punishing innocent people for other people's actions.
If we grant humans responsibility then this is not true. If we jail someone for knocking over a liquor store and then he gets out 5 years later and kills an old lady, the responsibility for those crimes is his. Not "society's," not "the criminal justice system's," only his.
My argument is that humans can make choices and therefore we are responsible for our actions. You argument is that humans cannot make choices, we are rag dolls tossed around by fate (or whichever system you feel like attacking).
> Unless you plan to keep every prisoner in prison indefinitely, then the state that they are when they leave prison matters. It doesn't just matter for them, it also matters for everybody else who lives alongside them in the future -- people who don't deserve to live in a worse, more dangerous society just because we determined that somebody else completely unrelated to them didn't suffer enough yet.
> Prisoners who leave prison without being properly rehabilitated are a liability and a risk for everyone else outside of prison -- and even if you don't care about the prisoners, you should at least care about the other citizens who live around them.
Talking about "prisoners who haven't been properly rehabilitated" makes my skin crawl. Criminals are human beings and you don't have a right to mold them according to your whims just because they broke the law. You only have a right to punish them in proportion to their crime, nothing more or less.
You believe that through empirical and rational reasoning you can "rehabilitate" criminals in order to reduce crime. I don't think this is true. I think your perspective is driven by emotion, a distaste for punishment, and a sense that the downtrodden are always right. But even if it is true, I'm against it on humanistic grounds.
A society where criminals are punished proportionally to their crimes is an end in itself.
> You argument is that humans cannot make choices, we are rag dolls tossed around by fate (or whichever system you feel like attacking).
We can with a high degree of confidence say that a focus on rehabilitation, training, and safer prison environments reduces future crime rates, the same way that we can say that putting air bags in cars reduces automobile deaths. You can take from that what you will about free will, but there just is an obvious relationship here, I don't think anyone can dispute that.
I don't think I'm attacking the concept of free will if I say that adding guard rails on a twisty road will reduce automobile deaths. I don't think I'm attacking the concept of free will if I say that areas with high job opportunities and housing rates tend to have less crime, and that investing in public infrastructure can lower crime rates. Similarly, I don't think I'm attacking the concept of free will if I say that prisoners being able to get a job after they leave prison is heavily correlated with recidivism rates.
> Criminals are human beings and you don't have a right to mold them according to your whims
Okay sure, but giving prisoners access to educational and recreational materials and programs isn't "molding them" against their will. They want this stuff too.
It's not for a prisoner's benefit that jails are charging money to make phone calls to their family -- that's not a policy that's born out of our commitment to avoid changing their minds against their will. We're not talking about "reeducating" people, we're looking at very obvious statistical data that says people who don't spend their entire prison sentence wasting their minds, who have training to get a job after they leave prison, who aren't regularly placed into dangerous situations that reinforce fight/flight responses while they're in prison, are less likely to hurt other people.
And you can look at that and say that it's distasteful, or that they don't deserve a job, or that you don't like the idea that environment and resources have an obvious statistical effect on crime rates; but if you do, then I think that you should also have to grapple with telling ordinary people who have committed no crimes that you're deliberately putting prisoners into situations where the math says that those prisoners are more likely to commit future crimes.
----
To add onto this, we already do have policies in prisons that are designed to mold prisoner minds, many of them really problematic -- we knock off jail time for prisoners that take on dangerous jobs (often for little to no pay), and the excuse we use is that it's good for them. We've put prisoners into extremely dangerous situations fighting wildfires in California even though many of those prisoners on release are not eligible to be firefighters because of their felony records. Less on the problematic side, we also regularly commute drug sentences if prisoners will enter rehab programs and do community service, a judicial policy that pretty much everyone thinks is a good idea.
So it's not like I'm proposing some kind of dangerous unprecedented idea here, we are already more than happy to talk about rehabilitation as an excuse for policy when it suits us. I'm not proposing a brand new unheard-of idea, I'm just arguing that giving access to books, educational materials, and entertainment will also very clearly make society safer -- and that whether or not you think it's anyone's responsibility to keep prisoners from re-offending, it is still kind of messed up to tell ordinary citizens, "we're going to have policies that make you less safe because we're worried somebody somewhere isn't suffering enough." As a citizen, even isolated from my beliefs about how justice actually works and how it's different from punishment, I still think it's pretty understandable and pretty logical to be upset about that.
> We can with a high degree of confidence say that a focus on rehabilitation, training, and prison environment reduces future crime rates, the same way that we can say that putting air bags in cars reduces automobile deaths. You can take from that what you will about free will, but there just is an obvious relationship here, I don't think anyone can dispute that.
Comparing social engineering to an air bag is silly. We can ram cars into walls in labs over and over. We can't fit society in a lab and so we can't model it very well. But even if we could reduce crime using these strategies, the strategies themselves fit my definition of a crime because they violate my definition of justice.
> I don't think I'm attacking the concept of free will if I say that adding guard rails on a twisty road will reduce deaths. I don't think I'm attacking the concept of free will if I say that areas with high job opportunities and housing rates tend to have less crime, and that investing in public infrastructure can lower crime rates. Similarly, I don't think I'm attacking the concept of free will if I say that prisoners being able to get a job after they leave prison is heavily correlated with recidivism rates.
You previously blamed the justice system for recidivism instead of the criminal (because it should have reformed him). That's quite different than "guard rails". What did I say that made you think I'm against "investing in public infrastructure" or "allowing ex-cons to get jobs"?
> Okay sure, but giving prisoners access to educational and recreational materials and programs isn't "molding them" against their will. They want this stuff too.
> It's not for a prisoner's benefit that jails are charging money to make phone calls to their family -- that's not a policy that's born out of our commitment not to accidentally mess with their minds against their will. We're not talking about "reeducating" people, we're looking at very obvious statistical data that says people who don't spend their entire prison sentence wasting their minds, who have training to get a job after they leave prison, who aren't regularly placed into dangerous situations that reinforce fight/flight responses while they're in prison, are less likely to hurt other people.
I said that the punishment should be proportional to the crime. I didn't say that prisoners should sit in their cells going insane. I didn't say the author here should not be able to have a chess board. It's reasonable to question whether a punishment is proportional to the crime, whether it is cruel and unusual, etc.
Overly cruel punishments (China executing drug users for example) are exactly as wrong as punishing criminals "for their own good". If you could prevent all theft by, say, cutting off the hands of thieves, would you be okay with that? (I wouldn't, because the punishment does not fit the crime).
> And you can look at that and say that it's distasteful, or that they don't deserve a job, or that you don't like the idea that environment and resources have an obvious statistical effect on crime rates; but if you do, then I think that you should also have to grapple with telling ordinary people who have committed no crimes that you're deliberately putting prisoners into situations where they're more likely to hurt them.
I never said ex-cons don't deserve a job. I don't think that ex-cons should have to announce themselves in job applications. That is exactly the kind of dehumanizing strategy that I'm arguing against. When you've done your time, you've paid your dues, the world is set right, and you should be able to go on your way.
Believe me, I know what you're proposing is not "brand new". It's very old. And you're correct to say that it already exerts a lot of influence.
My argument is that, as it gains more and more influence, the value of human beings will gradually be lost, because we will be treating people as means to some end (a better society, a safer society), rather than ends in themselves. Humans will be viewed as "products of their environment" rather that free-willing, free-acting agents. Anyway, this drama is not new, it's as old as time and I'm sure it will keep playing out for as long as there are people.
I understand you didn't write this, but this is the context my original comment was made in -- the context of a series of posters who were very explicitly denying the humanity and agency of the prisoners in question. Again, they weren't you, but still, understand that the context I'm talking about and the entry point I had into the discussion was people arguing that denying prisoners mental stimulation and leaving their brains to rot was a fair and just punishment.
My argument was that even if you didn't care about the inherent humanity of a prisoner, you should at least care about reducing recidivism rates, which mental stimulation and job training absolutely does.
And I understand now that you aren't arguing against that. You came into this conversation with a different perspective and you're annoyed that I'm treating it like the same perspective. I apologize for that. It's hard for me to context switch so quickly, but I should have made more of an effort.
But similarly, the perspective I have is not at all that we should treat human beings purely as a means to an end, and I don't think I said anything to that effect; my argument has consistently been that even if someone doesn't care about human beings as an end to themselves or as beings with basic human rights, at least they can care about the society surrounding them. Because that's the context that this thread started in: people literally arguing that making sure a victim was satisfied was the only goal that mattered.
I haven't advocated for any of the extreme positions you're talking about: I'm not saying that people don't have responsibility for their actions, I'm saying that in responding to those actions we as a society are capable of hurting more people than just the guilty, and we have some degree of moral duty to prevent innocent people from being unnecessarily hurt when it's possible and prudent to do so. In other words, if I know someone innocent is going to be hurt, and I can prevent it without taking away the rights or dehumanizing another person, and I refuse to do so, that isn't justice.
So for example, if a person drives drunk and crashes, I'm not saying that person isn't to blame or that they shouldn't be punished. But I do still want to put up some guard rails and possibly save their life and maybe even a few other drivers as well. If they hit into another driver or pedestrian while drunk and kill them -- that is itself an unjust outcome.
So if someone came to me and said, "why are you paying for taxis for drunk drivers, why are you putting up guard rails, why can't they accept responsibility", I wouldn't argue that drunk drivers aren't responsible for their actions. But I would argue that as a society we also have a responsibility to protect innocent people on the roads who didn't choose to drive drunk (again, to the extent that we can do so without unfairly targeting or taking away someone's rights). I'm not arguing the extreme, I'm not arguing that if someone gets pulled over driving drunk that they shouldn't be charged. I'm not arguing that we should just let everybody out of jail, or cut off their hands if they steal, or bribe criminals to stop committing crimes. I'm arguing what I think is a fairly standard, uncontroversial opinion in the context of a thread that said that we needed to keep murders from playing board games because of justice.
From your above comment, I kind of suspect that you don't actually disagree with me on that except in the extreme where it interferes with personal responsibility. In fact, it sounds like the two of us actually agree on a nontrivial number of actual policies (getting rid of felony boxes in job applications, giving prisoners mental stimulation, allowing them to talk to their families, even building out housing/public infrastructure in low-income areas). Aside from a concern that I'm going to lose control, completely abandon the idea of personal responsibility, justice, or human rights and go all Minority Report on the world (something that, again, I want to be clear I am not advocating for), what do we actually disagree on?
Can I extend an olive branch where we just agree that the original context of this thread (prisoners aren't being treated harshly enough by the current system) was a really bad take for both moral and pragmatic reasons?
Even were the victim alive, we are not a society that encourages the victim to dictate the punishment, nor allow the victim to carry out the punishment, so what would the victim's thoughts matter?
As much as it's presented otherwise, punishment western democracies is first and foremost a method of deterrence for the good of all, not for the satisfaction of those harmed.
It's not about him. It's about us, as a society. When we imprison someone, we take ownership and responsibility for their well-being.
To be clear, we can decide, as the responsibility holders over their well-being, that we believe they should be treated like garbage. Right or wrong, we have that ability and there is no higher authority than society itself to determine if that's right or wrong.
Although I have a strong opinion about what is or isn't an appropriate punishment, we absolutely should not be basing our decisions on the feelings of the victim. Putting aside that the victim is dead and can't express how they feel about it, this is no way to run a law-based society.
If I commit a crime, and someone else commits an identical crime, surely we can agree that the punishment -- whatever it may be -- should be the same (or at least equivalent). It shouldn't vary based on who the victim is or how the victim may feel about it.
If you are not sentencing someone to life in jail or the death penalty, then you can't treat a prisoner bad enough to cause lasting damage because they will rejoin society at some point.
This is irrespective of the victim's thoughts; if I get violently robbed and society + a judge has decided that's worth 10 years in jail, then that's what it is.
If you think prisoners deserve absolutely nothing to the point of causing psychological or physical harm then you are saying the crime they committed is worth life in prison or the death penalty.
It's possible, but I don't think it's pragmatic. I don't think the higher tier needs of violent offenders is something as a society we need to spend resources on.
Unless your alternative is the death penalty or life without parole, we had better start thinking about it. One day, they will be released and after 10-30 years of desocialization we will have to suffer the consequences of that treatment. Either by supporting them indefinitely through social welfare programs or by the consequence of them committing additional crimes due to an inability to obtain or maintain a job and reasonable social standing.
People here imagine this hard-working professional with good intentions to better himself in prison that just was caught with marijuana or cocaine a few years ago. They don't realize that these are people that would rape their mothers, instead they advocate for them to have pleasant conditions.
>People here imagine this hard-working professional with good intentions to better himself in prison
I'm under no illusion that a lot of people in prison have committed heinous crimes, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated like a human being. Their punishment is their loss of freedom. They still have a need for recreation like everyone else, and chess if anything can be a helpful tool in hopefully improving their mental state.
I think the American prison system does very little to improve the chances that these people can become better citizens and psychologically depriving them of stimulation I can only imagine stands in the way of achieving that.
Like it or not, this is not reality. Reality is that they aren't treated like human beings, are deprived recreation, are unsafe, are mistreated by staff, etc.
Saying that loss of freedom is their punishment is viewing it in the most idealistic way, disconnected from the reality of it. Being in the prison system is far worse than lack of freedom.
> Being in the prison system is far worse than lack of freedom. That's why prison reform is so important.
Or maybe that is kinda the point of prison? I’m all for nonviolent offenders to go into rehabilitation etc etc... but for the violent... prison is supposed to be shit, or am I missing something?
Public safety - Keep someone deemed a threat to society away from the public until they have served their time, or are otherwise deemed safe.
Deterrence to others - Show to other citizens that committing a particular crime has punishment, so they will not do the same.
Punishment of the offender - Actions have consequences.
Reform - As much as possible, set prisoners up for success if they are eventually to be let out. There is a lot more to this, but I'll leave it there.
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Note how "revenge" and "sadism" are not in that list. How does it benefit society, or the prisoners, to remove certain social, educational or entertainment activities? Do you think someone planning to murder or rape someone will be deterred by knowing they won't have chess? Do you think it helps or hurts a prisoner's mental health by taking away such simple things?
I don't have many answers, but more people need to see prison for what it should do for society and the incarcerated, rather than wishing for prisoners to get sexually assaulted (for example).
People here advocate for them to have pleasant conditions because it ultimately produces a society that has less people who would rape their own mothers.
It's people like you who are so blinded by your hunger for revenge to actually consider solutions that would decrease our recidivism rates.
>Revenge for the wronged is a part of the justice isn’t it?
No it is not. Revenge is not justice. Human society has come a long way from Hammurabi; we got rid of "eye for an eye" centuries ago. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" is what is wrong here.
Fundamentally though it is not still about some level of revenge? Just because we got more sophisticated to take into account things like intent doesn’t really change the math. You’ve made a nice quote but drawn a distinction without drawing a difference
If I steal $2k the punishment is usually still give $2k back and then all fees then even some punitive damages...
>If I steal $2k the punishment is usually still give $2k back and then all fees then even some punitive damages...
If I kill your brother, is it proper justice for you to kill my brother?
Many crimes are irreversible; and revenge only serves to make the victimized feel better but ultimately does not restore balance. Justifying revenge quickly leads you down to inhumane punishments - after all who's to say the victim was given their fill of revenge? This is why there has always been a philosophical line between justice and revenge.
The whole point of a criminal justice system is to reduce crime. That definitionally means focusing on making sure prison doors ain't revolving. Whether that crime reduction meets some individual's arbitrary standards of retribution is entirely secondary to that fundamental primary objective; revenge for the sake of revenge is not justice, but rather the precise opposite.
> The whole point of a criminal justice system is to reduce crime.
I think the justice system is just what the people think it should be... not some unarguable objective goal.
Having said that... people value revenge. If we automatically released all killers because we had a drug or 10 day program that would 100% prevent reoffence, I don’t think people would call that justice. Right or wrong, I think in most people’s eyes justice demands some level of revenge if not to a specific person, then to society at large.
Restoration of the wronged is more valuable than revenge for the wronged. A rehabilitated prisoner can pay restitution, an executed or habitually imprisoned criminal can’t pay restitution.
It is beneath me to beat a dog out of spite when it bites me because it is sick or was badly trained. Such an act of cruelty would say more about me than anything else. I feel the same way about such low-life humans, pretty much.
I think a lot of people here disagree with you, but you aren't wrong. This is a fact a lot of people forget when they jump to the defense of criminals.
It's also possible to believe that revenge against a criminal isn't positive for anyone on its own. There should be consequences to crime, especially egregious ones like murder, but that doesn't mean that the victims are better off and it doesn't mean we should sadistically torture people who almost always have wiring issues that made them prone to committing terrible acts. It's essentially saying that we believe that criminals are hopeless for reform, which can be true, but often times it's not true.
And you know this how? Further, you know that this classification applies to the author how?
God forbid we put some effort into rehabilitation to prevent recidivism instead of just retribution for the sake of retribution. The guy's serving a 33 year long sentence. That's 33 years isolated from society, and 33 years of lag behind said society, resulting in a lifelong disadvantage even without considering employers being wholly unwilling to hire people with criminal backgrounds. That's punishment enough; if you believe otherwise, then the American prison system is clearly failing to do its job.
It's hard to say here in the US, since rehabilitation over retribution is poorly studied, particularly for violent offenders.
As I linked in response to your other comment asking a similar question, though, other countries have demonstrated quite a bit of success with the approach, Norway as one example having a low recidivism rate even among violent offenders. The Norwegian socioeconomic safety nets certainly help, too; crime in general is a function of both mental health and economic standing, so public policies aimed at addressing both of those things will naturally lead to both fewer incarcerations and fewer reincarcerations.
IQ is kind of a worthless measurement, given the numerous problems with its reliability and its rather arbitrary standards. Turns out measuring intellect is more complicated than some one-size-fits-all single numeric score (the meaning of which constantly fluctuates by design anyway).
> it's one of the most studied quantifiable concepts in pyschology.
A McDonald's hamburger is one of the most studied forms of food in gastronomy. That doesn't necessarily make it worthwhile to eat :)
See also: Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which describes at length why things like IQ and craniometry are fundamentally flawed due to their fallacious and unscientific insistence on reification and ranking - neither of which have been adequately proven to be applicable to something as complicated as human intelligence.
See also the very existence of the Flynn effect, and the fact that IQ is defined such that 100 is always the average IQ - making the comparison of IQs across time periods meaningless, since 100 IQ in 1900's America means something different from 100 IQ in 2000's America which means something different from 100 IQ in 2000's Norway which means something different from 100 IQ in 2000's Nigeria.
I don't think anyone condones or wants to promote murder, but treating humans (even criminals, even terrible, violent criminals) as subhuman is the kind of thing that puts us in a bad space as a society with regard to criminal justice. See: America.
Maybe we think this guy is the most reprehensible person on earth. Maybe we think he's irredeemable. But is he so bad that we are unwilling to listen to his thoughts on prison conditions? Or do we not care because he's a "monster?"
For what other crimes do we now get to completely ignore and dismiss the person who committed them?
So a person who, motivated by naked greed, murders another in cold blood, you would be more sorry to see him go than a loyal and faithful family pet? Why?
I don't think I am. We summarily execute beloved pets all the time, simply as a matter of convenience for their owners. In my mind, a person can in fact take actions that make their lives worth less than the lives of these animals, therefore they are dehumanized.
You're absolutely changing the question. The original post was about not listening to anything someone has to say because they're a "monster."
Worth of life is an arbitrary discriminator, but even if we use it your example doesn't really carry much weight.
Let me make it as simple as possible: even the worst criminals are human. The best dogs are not.
I also think the concept of putting down animals merely out of convenience is a broad, largely inaccurate brush. It's usually done in an attempt to reduce suffering. In some places we do this with humans well - not out of malice, but out of empathy.
Animals can be and are routinely put down just because their owners happen to feel like it. They have no legal protection from the whims of their owners, as long as their lives and deaths are not considered unusually cruel. The worst criminals are human in the biological sense, undeniably. Is that all it takes for them to deserving of irrevocable human moral and legal status?
If it's true that you'd feel worse about the arbitrary execution of a beloved pet than that of a criminal, doesn't that contradict any intrinsic value the criminal has?
> Animals can be and are routinely put down just because their owners happen to feel like it.
I really have no idea why you're leaning into this non sequitur so hard. Yes. Many cruel things happen to humans and non humans. What that has to do with treating criminals as inherently sub-human I cannot surmise.
> If it's true that you'd feel worse about the arbitrary execution of a beloved pet than that of a criminal,
I don't understand the straw man argument here. If you're going to put words in my mouth at least make them close to what I'm saying.
Given the amount of upvotes and comments, clearly some people do.
Amy why not, just because someone did something terrible even if you find that irredeemable, do you really believe that nothing can be learned from from or their thoughts?
No policy is ever enacted in such a way that an abundance of malice is the express basis.
This restriction has no basis in science or sense. A respiratory pathogen may provide another in a long line of childish excuses, but make no mistake: slavery itself is an abundance of malice.
A common advice is to avoid playing anything in prison. You will always be forced to pay something if you loose (and you probably will loose because people don't play fair there) even if you didn't intend to bet.
A more common advice is to avoid prison in the first place. And if you are there ... I believe prison culture has differences, just like on the outside world.
Another less impressive anecdatum is my own experience of about a year with a phone that couldn't remember phone numbers. In the beginning I memorized numbers out of necessity. By the end of the year I had a mental address book of about 30 numbers and new numbers could be added effortlessly. The bewildered looks of people giving me their number without me pulling out a phone to write it down were priceless.
[1]: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo%C5%BEena_Kuklov%C3%A1-J%C3%...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjoX5y_JZ40