6 ms·

Small Indiana county sends more people to prison than San Francisco

61 points by GabrielF00 10y ago

mrits 10y ago
I find it worse that San Francisco would possibly give 0 years to someone dealing heroin.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  Do you believe prison should be used punitively or for rehabilitation? Prisons currently fail very badly at rehabilitation, and actually tend to make worse criminals. We should be spending less money on punitive unfair sentences and more on trying to make people productive members of society through good rehab and education programs. This would actually make society better. Fixing the root of the problem rather than ignoring it by just locking people away. We should reserve prison for only those people from which we need to protect the general population, e.g. violent crimes. Though I do have a special place in my heart for locking away fraudsters and con artists.
  - kiba 10y ago
    Are prisons here to punish people or to solve problems in society? Sometime people's sense of fairness is pitted against the idea of rehabilitation. Fixing the root of problems mean dealing with the dredge of society, the people who deserved it the least. Imaging rehabilitating a tinpot dictator who killed million so that he can feel remorse for what he did and find a productive living.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      A sentence of something like 20 years + evaluation of suitability for release does a fine job of dealing with the extreme cases you mention without discarding the idea of rehabilitation in less obvious cases. And yes, I think you go ahead and let the terrible dictator read books or whatever. That's much easier to accept than society occasionally getting together and executing an innocent.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    Rehabilitation? The parent post was about dealing - not using. Someone who makes money off of the victims of drug dependence is horrible scum, and if you're willing to lock up con artists you should be able to work up the give-a-crap to lock up a heroin dealer.
    - lukeschlather 10y ago
      The vast majority of people arrested for dealing are the equivalent of grocery store clerks. (Really, their job has less prestige than grocery store clerks.) People are making a lot of money off of this, but not, for the most part, anyone who is at risk of getting arrested and charged with decades in prison. Furthermore, arresting them has about as much effect on the drug trade as locking up all the clerks in a grocery store. The demand is still there, the distribution networks are still there, all they're missing is people willing to work for minimum wage or less. (And obviously there's no shortage there either.)
    - CarpetBench 10y ago
      You're thinking of rehabilitation in the "recovery from addiction" sense. The poster you're replying to is using rehabilitation in the "correct this person's future behavior" sense. > lock up a heroin dealer The problem is that nearly 3/4 of all prisoners end up back in prison within 5 years [0]. Locking people up isn't changing their behavior. Locking up a heroin dealer isn't keeping them from dealing heroin once they get out. So, either we need to lock people up indefinitely (which costs $$$ even if you're not swayed by the humanitarian arguments), or we need to figure out something more effective than trying to hammer our square peg (prison) through this round hole (reducing criminal behavior). 0: http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...
      - bluejekyll 10y ago
        Precisely. And since the other post mentioned my comment on fraudsters and con artists, dealers are not lying to people, they're just providing the consumer with what they want. The ones who should be locked up are the fraudsters, because they mix things like Fentanyl, which may directly lead to someone's death (not to say people don't OD without that, but it is less often). Honestly, I dislike anyone who takes advantage of other people's ignorance or incompetence. They are the bottom of the barrel of society in my opinion.
  - TheLarch 10y ago
    Clarence Darrow, in his autobiography, discusses his defense for Loeb and Leopold. L&L were wealthy Chicago teenagers who read Nietzsche and decided they were Ubermensch. They murdered a random boy to prove they could get away with it. Darrow argued that L&L would not consider murder again, and that their crime was something that would happen only once in 1,000 years. I found this repugnant. Who more deserves prison than those two? But with reflection my views have softened. At least one of the two seems to have wanted to be good. He lived out his life in prison quietly, spending his time writing an ornithology book. I can no longer honestly say I believe that society as a whole was better served by jailing them. Perhaps they should have been given the chance to redeem themselves by becoming productive citizens, and the chance to earn back a measure of dignity. (Certainly repeat offenders should be deemed a menace and incarcerated for the public good.) I feel the same confusion about Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who raped a woman behind a dumpster. There was a lot of outrage at his early release, but again I'm not sure the greater good is served by keeping him behind bars. I hope he will live in infamy for the rest of his days, as is just. But should he have stayed behind bars for longer, at the public expense? I can't give a really cogent reason why he should (I am not comparing his sentence to that of other rapists, or to that of other convicts by the way).
- pavlov 10y ago
  Locking more and more people up hasn't done much to solve America's drug issues. But if you feel it's a moral necessity, it's hard to discuss alternatives.
  - yason 10y ago
    But mrits was talking about heroin dealers. I think the war on drugs is fundamentally flawed, and I don't think drug users should be convicted or sent to prison but I do think that dealing illegal drugs should definitely count orders of magnitude more heavily since the very activity of dealing enables the destruction of a large number of other people.
    - pinaceae 10y ago
      and dealers should primarily punished for tax avoidance, operating a unlicensed pharmacy, breaking DEA license terms. which would put them in prison for way longer. and for the right crime.
- lhecker 10y ago
  ...which surely depends on the circumenstances. It could just as well be 3 years or more (for instance if you're part of a gang) and I think this is reasonably since you want that person to change (i.e. stop dealing) and not destroy his/her entire life, right?
bluejekyll 10y ago
It sounds like the article is suggesting defenses under the equal protections clause in the Constitution. Does anyone know of cases where it's been applied in this way? It seems like this would be a new way of showing bias, and possibly reducing harsh prison sentences.
kiba 10y ago
Perhaps all prosecutors and public defender would be chosen randomly from a pool, instead of making prosecutors a political office?
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  that's not really the problem, though, is it? It would probably be better that have prosecutors spend time in different jurisdictions to learn different ways of applying the law.
- tn13 10y ago
  It is like saying fill water in gas tank if you are worried about gas pollution. If prosecutors are chosen randomly they will little incentive to go after anyone. I think we must drastically reduce the tools these people have at their disposal.
- programLyrique 10y ago
  I think prosecutors are elected in the US only as far as I know (even in other common law countries, they are not elected). In most countries, they are appointed.
whack 10y ago
It's interesting how the exact same facts can be described in so many different ways, in order to imply vastly different conclusions. ----- "This small Indiana county sends more people to prison than San Francisco" Implication - the county's law & order apparatus is dysfunctional and is oppressing the local population ----- "This small Indiana county has more convicted drug dealers than San Francisco" Implication - the county has a severe drug problem, and harsh efforts are needed to combat this problem ----- "This small Indiana county catches more hard-drug-dealers than San Francisco" Implication - either other counties are incompetent/indifferent in combating the selling of hardcore drugs, or this county is exceptionally good at achieving this goal. ----- "This small Indiana county leads in the nation in narrowing the racial-incarceration-gap" Implication - the county's law & order system is tough but fair, and should be a role model for others in pursuing White criminals just as vigorously as Minority criminals. ----- The phrasing involved in "sending more people to prison" in particular, sweeps under the rug the fact that the people being sent to prison are dealing hard drugs, and spawning/enabling a generation of drug addicts whose lives are going to fall apart as a result. Instead of making the drug dealers the lead actors who initiated the subsequent chain of events, the headline is structured such that the county's justice system is portrayed as the lead actor instead. Neither wording is wrong, but they clearly bias the audience in different directions. I trust the NYTimes more than any other American media source, but it's hard to deny that they too have their own spin that focuses more on one side of the story, more so than others.
- tn13 10y ago
  I think it is an appropriate headline. As far as drug crimes are concerned I think it is reasonable to accept the fact that the laws, reality and convictions are all in complete disarray. "This small Indiana county leads in the nation in narrowing the racial-incarceration-gap" I will be surprised if the gap narrows it probably means the state is putting random people in jail. Black people are far more prone to drug crimes than whites.
  - whack 10y ago
    I will be surprised if the gap narrows it probably means the state is putting random people in jail. Black people are far more prone to drug crimes than whites. That's a very strong claim. The following article says the opposite: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/30/white-people-are-more-likely-to-deal-drugs-but-black-people-are-more-likely-to-get-arrested-for-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/30/white... Do you have any evidence to back up your claim, or are you speaking from (biased) assumptions?
tn13 10y ago
The whole f*ing USA sends more people to jail than any other normal country in the world.
- jbicha 10y ago
  …than any other country, by both absolute numbers and per capita (with the exception of the Seychelles)
  - tn13 10y ago
    I was not sure about North Korea and China.
diyorgasms 10y ago
So the new face of mass incarceration is white rural conservatives, the same demographic that is largely responsible for the "tough on crime" push that led to disproportionate incarceration of poor people of color. Now that their fortunes are shifting, I wonder if the rural white conservatives will still be so gung-ho for harsh criminal penalties.
- danso 10y ago
  FWIW, it was Democrats who pushed for severe mandatory sentences to create a hot button electoral issue: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/t... > Eric Sterling: The Speaker convened the Democratic leadership, the Steering and Policy Committee, the chairs of the committees, and says we're going to put together an anti-drug bill. It is going to be a Democratic initiative and I want everybody involved. We're going to have a comprehensive anti-drug provision. And I want it out of committees before we go on our August recess, August 14 or 15. And this set off about a four week stampede. They were told, look, you've got one month to put together your anti-drug agenda and then you're going to go home in the middle of August and you're going to campaign the hell out of that agenda. And we're going to come back in September, we're going to take it to the floor, and we're going to vote on it. And this is what we're going to ride to electoral victory in November. That's the plan.
  - diyorgasms 10y ago
    "Tough on crime" has always been incredibly popular. But Nixon was the "law and order" candidate. Reagan was the "tough on crime" guy. Center-right Bill Clinton continued and expanded Reagan's policies. So yeah, there's a lot of blame to go around. But I think you're being disingenuous if you think liberals support mass incarceration policies to the same extent that conservatives do. I don't think urban liberals are the ones clamoring for harsher law enforcement.
    - wtbob 10y ago
      > I don't think urban liberals are the ones clamoring for harsher law enforcement. In the 90s it was urban blacks clamouring for harsher law enforcement, since it was their neighbourhoods which were suffering the effects of drug-related violence and other crimes. Blacks aren't really liberal or leftist on the whole, but they consistently support the left-wing party.
mckoss 10y ago
Make the counties pay for the cost of sending their offenders to (state) prison and you'd see this "overconsumption" of an expensive resource self correct.
brooklyndude 10y ago
People should also know that people go to jail for years for 1 failed drug test in rural communities. Happens everyday, just not on our radar.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  You mean the ones on probation? In which case they don't go to jail for the failed drug test, but for the crime they had committed, then were given a chance to be released early, and failed at that chance.
  - qbrass 10y ago
    Did they fail that chance, or false positive that chance?

61 points by GabrielF00 10y ago

mrits 10y ago

I find it worse that San Francisco would possibly give 0 years to someone dealing heroin.

bluejekyll 10y ago
Do you believe prison should be used punitively or for rehabilitation? Prisons currently fail very badly at rehabilitation, and actually tend to make worse criminals. We should be spending less money on punitive unfair sentences and more on trying to make people productive members of society through good rehab and education programs. This would actually make society better. Fixing the root of the problem rather than ignoring it by just locking people away. We should reserve prison for only those people from which we need to protect the general population, e.g. violent crimes. Though I do have a special place in my heart for locking away fraudsters and con artists.
- kiba 10y ago
  Are prisons here to punish people or to solve problems in society? Sometime people's sense of fairness is pitted against the idea of rehabilitation. Fixing the root of problems mean dealing with the dredge of society, the people who deserved it the least. Imaging rehabilitating a tinpot dictator who killed million so that he can feel remorse for what he did and find a productive living.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    A sentence of something like 20 years + evaluation of suitability for release does a fine job of dealing with the extreme cases you mention without discarding the idea of rehabilitation in less obvious cases. And yes, I think you go ahead and let the terrible dictator read books or whatever. That's much easier to accept than society occasionally getting together and executing an innocent.
- djrogers 10y ago
  Rehabilitation? The parent post was about dealing - not using. Someone who makes money off of the victims of drug dependence is horrible scum, and if you're willing to lock up con artists you should be able to work up the give-a-crap to lock up a heroin dealer.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    The vast majority of people arrested for dealing are the equivalent of grocery store clerks. (Really, their job has less prestige than grocery store clerks.) People are making a lot of money off of this, but not, for the most part, anyone who is at risk of getting arrested and charged with decades in prison. Furthermore, arresting them has about as much effect on the drug trade as locking up all the clerks in a grocery store. The demand is still there, the distribution networks are still there, all they're missing is people willing to work for minimum wage or less. (And obviously there's no shortage there either.)
  - CarpetBench 10y ago
    You're thinking of rehabilitation in the "recovery from addiction" sense. The poster you're replying to is using rehabilitation in the "correct this person's future behavior" sense. > lock up a heroin dealer The problem is that nearly 3/4 of all prisoners end up back in prison within 5 years [0]. Locking people up isn't changing their behavior. Locking up a heroin dealer isn't keeping them from dealing heroin once they get out. So, either we need to lock people up indefinitely (which costs $$$ even if you're not swayed by the humanitarian arguments), or we need to figure out something more effective than trying to hammer our square peg (prison) through this round hole (reducing criminal behavior). 0: http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      Precisely. And since the other post mentioned my comment on fraudsters and con artists, dealers are not lying to people, they're just providing the consumer with what they want. The ones who should be locked up are the fraudsters, because they mix things like Fentanyl, which may directly lead to someone's death (not to say people don't OD without that, but it is less often). Honestly, I dislike anyone who takes advantage of other people's ignorance or incompetence. They are the bottom of the barrel of society in my opinion.
- TheLarch 10y ago
  Clarence Darrow, in his autobiography, discusses his defense for Loeb and Leopold. L&L were wealthy Chicago teenagers who read Nietzsche and decided they were Ubermensch. They murdered a random boy to prove they could get away with it. Darrow argued that L&L would not consider murder again, and that their crime was something that would happen only once in 1,000 years. I found this repugnant. Who more deserves prison than those two? But with reflection my views have softened. At least one of the two seems to have wanted to be good. He lived out his life in prison quietly, spending his time writing an ornithology book. I can no longer honestly say I believe that society as a whole was better served by jailing them. Perhaps they should have been given the chance to redeem themselves by becoming productive citizens, and the chance to earn back a measure of dignity. (Certainly repeat offenders should be deemed a menace and incarcerated for the public good.) I feel the same confusion about Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who raped a woman behind a dumpster. There was a lot of outrage at his early release, but again I'm not sure the greater good is served by keeping him behind bars. I hope he will live in infamy for the rest of his days, as is just. But should he have stayed behind bars for longer, at the public expense? I can't give a really cogent reason why he should (I am not comparing his sentence to that of other rapists, or to that of other convicts by the way).
pavlov 10y ago
Locking more and more people up hasn't done much to solve America's drug issues. But if you feel it's a moral necessity, it's hard to discuss alternatives.
- yason 10y ago
  But mrits was talking about heroin dealers. I think the war on drugs is fundamentally flawed, and I don't think drug users should be convicted or sent to prison but I do think that dealing illegal drugs should definitely count orders of magnitude more heavily since the very activity of dealing enables the destruction of a large number of other people.
  - pinaceae 10y ago
    and dealers should primarily punished for tax avoidance, operating a unlicensed pharmacy, breaking DEA license terms. which would put them in prison for way longer. and for the right crime.
lhecker 10y ago
...which surely depends on the circumenstances. It could just as well be 3 years or more (for instance if you're part of a gang) and I think this is reasonably since you want that person to change (i.e. stop dealing) and not destroy his/her entire life, right?

bluejekyll 10y ago

It sounds like the article is suggesting defenses under the equal protections clause in the Constitution. Does anyone know of cases where it's been applied in this way? It seems like this would be a new way of showing bias, and possibly reducing harsh prison sentences.

kiba 10y ago

Perhaps all prosecutors and public defender would be chosen randomly from a pool, instead of making prosecutors a political office?

bluejekyll 10y ago
that's not really the problem, though, is it? It would probably be better that have prosecutors spend time in different jurisdictions to learn different ways of applying the law.
tn13 10y ago
It is like saying fill water in gas tank if you are worried about gas pollution. If prosecutors are chosen randomly they will little incentive to go after anyone. I think we must drastically reduce the tools these people have at their disposal.
programLyrique 10y ago
I think prosecutors are elected in the US only as far as I know (even in other common law countries, they are not elected). In most countries, they are appointed.

whack 10y ago

It's interesting how the exact same facts can be described in so many different ways, in order to imply vastly different conclusions. ----- "This small Indiana county sends more people to prison than San Francisco" Implication - the county's law & order apparatus is dysfunctional and is oppressing the local population ----- "This small Indiana county has more convicted drug dealers than San Francisco" Implication - the county has a severe drug problem, and harsh efforts are needed to combat this problem ----- "This small Indiana county catches more hard-drug-dealers than San Francisco" Implication - either other counties are incompetent/indifferent in combating the selling of hardcore drugs, or this county is exceptionally good at achieving this goal. ----- "This small Indiana county leads in the nation in narrowing the racial-incarceration-gap" Implication - the county's law & order system is tough but fair, and should be a role model for others in pursuing White criminals just as vigorously as Minority criminals. ----- The phrasing involved in "sending more people to prison" in particular, sweeps under the rug the fact that the people being sent to prison are dealing hard drugs, and spawning/enabling a generation of drug addicts whose lives are going to fall apart as a result. Instead of making the drug dealers the lead actors who initiated the subsequent chain of events, the headline is structured such that the county's justice system is portrayed as the lead actor instead. Neither wording is wrong, but they clearly bias the audience in different directions. I trust the NYTimes more than any other American media source, but it's hard to deny that they too have their own spin that focuses more on one side of the story, more so than others.

tn13 10y ago
I think it is an appropriate headline. As far as drug crimes are concerned I think it is reasonable to accept the fact that the laws, reality and convictions are all in complete disarray. "This small Indiana county leads in the nation in narrowing the racial-incarceration-gap" I will be surprised if the gap narrows it probably means the state is putting random people in jail. Black people are far more prone to drug crimes than whites.
- whack 10y ago
  I will be surprised if the gap narrows it probably means the state is putting random people in jail. Black people are far more prone to drug crimes than whites. That's a very strong claim. The following article says the opposite: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/30/white-people-are-more-likely-to-deal-drugs-but-black-people-are-more-likely-to-get-arrested-for-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/30/white... Do you have any evidence to back up your claim, or are you speaking from (biased) assumptions?

tn13 10y ago

The whole f*ing USA sends more people to jail than any other normal country in the world.

jbicha 10y ago
…than any other country, by both absolute numbers and per capita (with the exception of the Seychelles)
- tn13 10y ago
  I was not sure about North Korea and China.

diyorgasms 10y ago

So the new face of mass incarceration is white rural conservatives, the same demographic that is largely responsible for the "tough on crime" push that led to disproportionate incarceration of poor people of color. Now that their fortunes are shifting, I wonder if the rural white conservatives will still be so gung-ho for harsh criminal penalties.

danso 10y ago
FWIW, it was Democrats who pushed for severe mandatory sentences to create a hot button electoral issue: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/transcript http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/t... > Eric Sterling: The Speaker convened the Democratic leadership, the Steering and Policy Committee, the chairs of the committees, and says we're going to put together an anti-drug bill. It is going to be a Democratic initiative and I want everybody involved. We're going to have a comprehensive anti-drug provision. And I want it out of committees before we go on our August recess, August 14 or 15. And this set off about a four week stampede. They were told, look, you've got one month to put together your anti-drug agenda and then you're going to go home in the middle of August and you're going to campaign the hell out of that agenda. And we're going to come back in September, we're going to take it to the floor, and we're going to vote on it. And this is what we're going to ride to electoral victory in November. That's the plan.
- diyorgasms 10y ago
  "Tough on crime" has always been incredibly popular. But Nixon was the "law and order" candidate. Reagan was the "tough on crime" guy. Center-right Bill Clinton continued and expanded Reagan's policies. So yeah, there's a lot of blame to go around. But I think you're being disingenuous if you think liberals support mass incarceration policies to the same extent that conservatives do. I don't think urban liberals are the ones clamoring for harsher law enforcement.
  - wtbob 10y ago
    > I don't think urban liberals are the ones clamoring for harsher law enforcement. In the 90s it was urban blacks clamouring for harsher law enforcement, since it was their neighbourhoods which were suffering the effects of drug-related violence and other crimes. Blacks aren't really liberal or leftist on the whole, but they consistently support the left-wing party.

mckoss 10y ago

Make the counties pay for the cost of sending their offenders to (state) prison and you'd see this "overconsumption" of an expensive resource self correct.

brooklyndude 10y ago

People should also know that people go to jail for years for 1 failed drug test in rural communities. Happens everyday, just not on our radar.

imaginenore 10y ago
You mean the ones on probation? In which case they don't go to jail for the failed drug test, but for the crime they had committed, then were given a chance to be released early, and failed at that chance.
- qbrass 10y ago
  Did they fail that chance, or false positive that chance?