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> Let's not pretend that being in prison is anything other than a moral judgement rather than an indication of someone's character. There's.. a lot of bad peop

by gedy 10y ago

> Let's not pretend that being in prison is anything other than a moral judgement rather than an indication of someone's character. There's.. a lot of bad people in prison, and for good reason -they've done empirically terrible things, and many without remorse - no matter the "POV"

cooper12 10y ago
> empirically terrible things Sorry but there's no such thing. Justice is relative. In many countries you can be considered justified in murder while simply kissing a person of the same sex or protesting can make you be locked up. In fact, If you want to argue that killing someone is empirically terrible, people avoid jail for it all the time if they're on the winning side of a war, in self-defense (in many countries even for defending their honor), or if they're of a high enough status (rich people and cops/politicians). Assuming that only bad people go to jail is naive and assuming jails are only full of bad people is generalizing.
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
only most of those "bad things" are things like non-violent drug offences and other such things. I'm not saying they are all good folks, but most of them are just folks that messed up a little bit, and have to pay for it for years. Once we get people in the system, it is likely they will be in and out of it their entire lives. And what is even worse, it doesn't have to be this way (We refuse to take more compassionate measures like countries with a lower recidivism rate, for example). We choose this. Maybe it is partially our own fault that some folks wind up "bad".
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  See this comment, which has sources refuting your claim that "most" are non-violent drug offences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095968
  - 8note 10y ago
    does it? it makes two big assumptions that leaves it open: 1. only state prisons are considered 2. only people in prison for a year or more are considered there's nothing in the comment showing that shorter term inmates are a smaller population, nor that they aren't mostly non violent offenders, nor that federal prisons aren't mostly non violent offenders. In total, the comment just shows that there are violent and nonviolent felons in prison
    - a_puppy 10y ago
      I'm the author of the linked comment. I originally focused on state prisons because the article was about events in a state prison, so P(person did something bad|person is currently in state prison) was the relevant statistic. But let's repeat the analysis counting federal prisons and local jails as well. In general, people with sentences longer than a year go to prison, and sentences shorter than a year go to jail. Roughly 57% of incarcerated people in the US are in state prisons, 9% in federal prisons, and 33% in jails [0]. In my earlier comment I noted that 52% of state prisoners are in for violent crimes, 18% for property crimes, and 18% for drug crimes. For jails, based on this source [1] I estimate 18% of the jail population is in for violent or weapons offenses; 3% for weapons; 30% for property crimes; and 31% for drug crimes. This source [2] suggests around 18% of federal prisoners are in for violent crimes; 17% for weapons/explosives/arson offenses; 11% for property crimes; 46% for drug crimes; and 8% for immigration reasons. In my original comment, for state prisons, I counted violent crimes, property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes to estimate that 76% of the prison population did something genuinely bad. For jails the number will be lower, both because there are fewer violent offenders and because the non-violent offenses tend to be less severe; if we count violent crimes, 1/2 of property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes, we get 44%. For federal prisons, if we count violent crimes, property crimes, and weapons/explosives/arson offenses we get 46%. We can weight those three numbers by the sizes of the different groups to arrive at an overall figure of 61% for all incarcerated people in the US. (Of course, these numbers depend heavily on what you consider a "bad" crime.) So of the entire incarcerated population of the US, about 1/2 to 2/3 are incarcerated for something genuinely bad. While you're correct to point out that this is lower than the 3/4 figure for state prisons, Broken_Hippo is still wrong to claim that "most" prisoners are in for things like non-violent drug offenses. [0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

by gedy 10y ago

cooper12 10y ago

> empirically terrible things Sorry but there's no such thing. Justice is relative. In many countries you can be considered justified in murder while simply kissing a person of the same sex or protesting can make you be locked up. In fact, If you want to argue that killing someone is empirically terrible, people avoid jail for it all the time if they're on the winning side of a war, in self-defense (in many countries even for defending their honor), or if they're of a high enough status (rich people and cops/politicians). Assuming that only bad people go to jail is naive and assuming jails are only full of bad people is generalizing.

Broken_Hippo 10y ago

only most of those "bad things" are things like non-violent drug offences and other such things. I'm not saying they are all good folks, but most of them are just folks that messed up a little bit, and have to pay for it for years. Once we get people in the system, it is likely they will be in and out of it their entire lives. And what is even worse, it doesn't have to be this way (We refuse to take more compassionate measures like countries with a lower recidivism rate, for example). We choose this. Maybe it is partially our own fault that some folks wind up "bad".

Cthulhu_ 10y ago
See this comment, which has sources refuting your claim that "most" are non-violent drug offences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095968
- 8note 10y ago
  does it? it makes two big assumptions that leaves it open: 1. only state prisons are considered 2. only people in prison for a year or more are considered there's nothing in the comment showing that shorter term inmates are a smaller population, nor that they aren't mostly non violent offenders, nor that federal prisons aren't mostly non violent offenders. In total, the comment just shows that there are violent and nonviolent felons in prison
  - a_puppy 10y ago
    I'm the author of the linked comment. I originally focused on state prisons because the article was about events in a state prison, so P(person did something bad|person is currently in state prison) was the relevant statistic. But let's repeat the analysis counting federal prisons and local jails as well. In general, people with sentences longer than a year go to prison, and sentences shorter than a year go to jail. Roughly 57% of incarcerated people in the US are in state prisons, 9% in federal prisons, and 33% in jails [0]. In my earlier comment I noted that 52% of state prisoners are in for violent crimes, 18% for property crimes, and 18% for drug crimes. For jails, based on this source [1] I estimate 18% of the jail population is in for violent or weapons offenses; 3% for weapons; 30% for property crimes; and 31% for drug crimes. This source [2] suggests around 18% of federal prisoners are in for violent crimes; 17% for weapons/explosives/arson offenses; 11% for property crimes; 46% for drug crimes; and 8% for immigration reasons. In my original comment, for state prisons, I counted violent crimes, property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes to estimate that 76% of the prison population did something genuinely bad. For jails the number will be lower, both because there are fewer violent offenders and because the non-violent offenses tend to be less severe; if we count violent crimes, 1/2 of property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes, we get 44%. For federal prisons, if we count violent crimes, property crimes, and weapons/explosives/arson offenses we get 46%. We can weight those three numbers by the sizes of the different groups to arrive at an overall figure of 61% for all incarcerated people in the US. (Of course, these numbers depend heavily on what you consider a "bad" crime.) So of the entire incarcerated population of the US, about 1/2 to 2/3 are incarcerated for something genuinely bad. While you're correct to point out that this is lower than the 3/4 figure for state prisons, Broken_Hippo is still wrong to claim that "most" prisoners are in for things like non-violent drug offenses. [0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...