8 ms·

"You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners", was actually said by a Russian–he knew what he was talking about. The US could start by no longe

"You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners", was actually said by a Russian–he knew what he was talking about. The US could start by no longer jailing drug consumers or first-time low-level street dealers. It just really really doesn't work anyway. That would reduce the prison population by what? 2/3? Suddenly you have 3x the budget and space, which should allow for quite a few improvements. But what really needs to be done with it the basic idea of prison as some sort of moral retribution. Come up with a formula to quantify and compare the outcomes of the criminal justice system, then start maximising. The US could easily study the effects of prison and other punishments (as well as social programs, medial intervention etc) in every detail imaginary. (Also I don't quite get your analogy. Are you saying Americans tend to be violent because there are too many of them for one country? FWIW the US is No 182 in terms of population density, barely ahead of Norway at No. 202. Far far ahead are Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and most of Europe, all of which have only a fraction of the violent crime of the US)

maxerickson 9y ago
Probably not 2/3. The BJS collects information about the US prison population: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/p15.txt https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/p15.txt Out of 1.5 million in federal and state prisons, about 700,000 were convicted of violent crimes. And of course the remainder are not exclusively low level drug crimes. (the population in jails is usually less than 100,000 so it won't tip the balance) Better drug policy could well impact the levels of violent crime and so impact the future prison population, but forgiving sentences for drug related violent crime is a step further than forgiving sentences for petty drug crimes.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I used to go to a boxing gym near Baltimore where a lot of people came from "bad" neighborhoods. A lot of the young guys had experienced a life where a lot of friends and neighbors had been in jail for drugs. Once you have been in jail its really hard to find a decent job so a lot of them go into drug dealing which often leads to violence. Jailing people for drugs destroys the whole social fabric of a community. I don't think you can separate low-level drug offenses from violent crime. One leads to the other.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I thought my last paragraph there addressed this fairly well. If you are talking about reducing the prison population that exists right now, they sort of have to be separate. A murder that is the end result of a chain of events containing a lot of difficult choices is still a murder.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      My point is that the murder may not have happened if the perpetrator had grown up in a better neighborhood.
      - maxerickson 9y ago
        Yeah I understand, do you think the last paragraph in my first comment misses that point? My point is that we have people already in prison for past violent crimes, many of them, so even a policy change that has a big future impact still isn't going to quickly reduce the prison population by 2/3.
        maxxxxx 9y ago
        I didn't read your comment closely enough. Sorry. I agree that there won't be a quick reduction but at least the influx of new prisoners would be reduced and neighborhoods wouldn't get destroyed anymore.
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    > Once you have been in jail its really hard to find a decent job And that's another aspect that needs addressing, and can be done regardless of legal/political changes. Someone's been in jail/prison? Then they apply for a job with your company when they get out? Categorically denying them employment without regard to their previous offense is silly, although it's definitely policy at some (many?) companies. Helping people get back to a 'normal' life is something we all can take part in in various ways - not closing the door on applicants is another thing we can do.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I agree it's not 2/3rds, but it's a significant amount. "249,900 state prisoners (19%) were sentenced to at least 1 year for property offenses. Sixteen percent of state prisoners were serving sentences for drug-related offenses" Note that a fair amount of "property offenses" are really drug offenses. You steal things to feed your habit. And..."Nearly half of federal prisoners incarcerated on September 30, 2015 had been sentenced for drug offenses, the most recent date for which federal offense data were available"
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
> and other punishments That's the problem. A lot of people in the US like the idea of punishing and giving out moral retributions more than improving society in the long term.
- Thriptic 9y ago
  As an American, it's a tough situation. I recognize that our strategies don't work and that mass incarceration with no socialization programs is an obvious failure, but at the same time I demand people be punished if they hurt me, not just inconvenienced. I don't care about a populations' propensity to reoffend at a societal level, I care that a specific individual hurt me and they need to make it right somehow or suffer consequences. If there is no perception of justice then I think we can expect extra-judicial retaliations.
  - tehwebguy 9y ago
    Inconvenienced? For almost anyone with a career, a life plan, a family, friends or any community or social status etc, being convicted of a crime is already a massive consequence. It will often affect their life forever, even if they clean up their act afterward. Serving time in a real prison is an even bigger deal. Are you only talking about people that have "nothing to lose"?
  - Frondo 9y ago
    As an American, I don't want people punished if they hurt or wrong me. I want them rehabilitated so they don't go and hurt me or someone else in the future. The action is done, hurting the perpetrator in return won't restore me, I just don't want it to happen again.
    - sosborn 9y ago
      Easy to say - but have you or a loved one ever been the victim of a serious crime? Logic tends to go out the window and emotion takes over.
      - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
happyhippo333 9y ago
Imprisonment is not really about moral retribution, or vengeance. It serves mostly to ensure that the criminal can't commit his crime again (at least during the time he spends in prison), which gives his victims and the whole society some peace of mind. Also, it can be argued that prisons really don't have a reason to exist, justice system could function with only two types of punishment: For light offenses, like shoplifting or small scale drug dealing, or white collar crimes like insider trading you could go with community service, fine, asset forfeiture. For serious crimes, especially those that include significant amount of violence (armed robbery, rape, murder) you could go straight to death penalty, with relatively short waiting period between the sentence and actual execution. That's how it worked for most of the human history, and proved to be simple, cheap and effective.
- jackmott 9y ago
  death penalty is fine except if you find out later that you were wrong you can't undo it.
  - mnx 9y ago
    I mean, you cannot undo 10 years in jail either.
    - Eerie 9y ago
      You can undo a part of a 10 year sentence by releasing an innocent person earlier. And you can offer monetary compensation. None of this is possible with a death sentence.
joshjje 9y ago
I agree with you for the most part, except in certain situations. The problem is how to distinguish these situations as I dont believe in a black and white its always x time for y crime, that sort of thing. For example, a rampant child abuser (sexual) who would say get life in prison. I think they should suffer the entire time, somehow, bring on that moral retribution. I would have to think long and hard to try to come up with something feasible though and not trample too much on morality, ethics, human rights, etc. For instance I chose a lifetime sentence for that example as there would be no need to rehabilitate.
- matt4077 9y ago
  well, that's a minefield, but maybe those make good examples. The instinct to throw these people into a dark hole and lose the key is strong. However, if you despise them so much because you think their crimes are so horrendous, that's even more reason to find something that works. Otherwise, you're placing your wish for revenge above the protection of their victims–exactly the sort of failure to control an instinct you're judging so harshly. Because this narrative of child abuse as the-worst-of-the-worst crimes does nothing to stop people (harsher punishment really doesn't work very well beyond a certain level). But it does scare people away from seeking help. I wouldn't have a problem with talking to a psychiatrist, or even friend or family member, about some anger problem that I feared might make me harm someone. They'd understand. But being attracted to children? That sounds like a really quick method to lose everything you have, just by asking for help. And asking for help would be exactly what we want people with the potential to do: because it's pretty much accepted that sexual orientations are innate, and that sex drive is among the most powerful, hard-to-repress emotions. Of course people who harm others because of a lack of self-control have failed, morally. But, wow, did they not win the birth lottery.
  - joshjje 9y ago
    Yeah, which is why I agree for the most part for most crimes. On the one hand, footing the bill to rehabilitate very gross crimes like that doesnt seem like just punishment, and I suppose thats the problem is I think they should be punished. Not sure you can have it both ways, but perhaps. I do think harsher punishments would be additional incentive for people to keep themselves in check, but that obviously wont work with some, and may incur other undesirable consequences. Anyways, difficult problem for sure.
rayiner 9y ago
> The US could start by no longer jailing drug consumers or first-time low-level street dealers. It just really really doesn't work anyway. That would reduce the prison population by what? 2/3? Suddenly you have 3x the budget and space, which should allow for quite a few improvements. Nothing like that: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/rel.... Releasing every prisoner with a drug crime as their most serious offense would reduce the prison population by 14%. (Almost all that is low level dealers--few people are in prison for mere possession.) It would be a good step, but people overestimate how big an impact it would have.
- fjdlwlv 9y ago
  14% is huge, especially considering how many people commit crime because their life was destroyed by a drug conviction (their own or their parent's) leading to further crime.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    How many people?
  - tptacek 9y ago
    John Pfaff studies this at Fordham and also rebuts this variant of the argument: if you look, there's no strong correlation between people ever convicted of any drug crime and later sentencing. (His book, _Locked In_, is pretty great). Reminder: nobody, including Pfaff, is saying it's good we lock up drug offenders like this. It's bad, and we should stop. It's just not a solution to mass incarceration. To address that, we need an across-the-board fix for aggressive prosecution, which is what appears to be the most important factor ratcheting up prison populations.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Thanks! I'm really off by quite a bit...
- glangdale 9y ago
Theodores 9y ago
The problem with drugs in the USA is how big a problem that it is. The prescription drugs have a lot to do with it and there needs to be some proper acknowledgement as to what has happened. Before then it was Oliver North and co that were behind the 'crack epidemic'. I think treatment should be more what the Norwegians would do in their drug clinics, so we do the best we can to get those with the 'addiction disease' able to stay on the rails. We just can't have these people doing crimes that are of such a cost to society, causing narcissistic harm to children they have for these kids to find themselves in drugs leading to the same cycle of crime. Therefore there does have to be time for drug crime - big stick punishment - but in the current situation there needs to be some treatment of people who have been wrongly led up the path of addiction. This needs to be done Norwegian style too, with compassion. We also need to think about when it is okay and when it is not okay to experiment with drugs. There is a difference between trying everything going at raves/parties/whatever as a student when it really does not matter if you drop out, the university still gets your money and they grumble but that is it, you are a statistic. Nobody is ever going to read that thesis anyway, what is the harm in advancing socially even if that involves being far from sober? But if you are not a student then someone is being responsible for you or you are responsible for someone else and it is not fair to be a single parent paying for drugs by selling drugs, just to friends in a scene. That constitutes child abuse, there is harm in having a single parent battling horrible drug inflicted injuries and deep dysphoria being the 'role model'. Do you put that person in prison with their child in care? Who decides that? Are they just a low level street dealer, to be let off? So their customers can cheat/lie/steal whatever it takes to pay their bills? Or the sales director who comes a cropper due to addiction getting the better of him or her. Perhaps major sales opportunities were lost and perhaps the wife didn't see much of him, maybe a lot went on but not the stealing or violence that goes with the life of a street junkie. People change jobs all the time, it is no biggie, nobody is indispensable. So why the lengthy prison sentence if there has been no harm outside of company (and bedtime) under-performance? Maybe the drug could be anything from sugar to crack with that not mattering, it being the aspect of societal harm that matters when it comes to time in the cells. Now if we could make those cells nice places to be so people could start their lives over, out of the environment that has all the triggers that enforce their addiction. This isn't working in the 'rehab' we have today as there is no power to get people to stay the course.
wtvanhest 9y ago
Country level population density is a nonsensical stat since most countries have varying levels of density. Sf/nyc/boston/chicao contain a big chunk of the us pop. Just because there is land in idaho does not mean you can count it.

maxerickson 9y ago

Probably not 2/3. The BJS collects information about the US prison population: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/p15.txt https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/p15.txt Out of 1.5 million in federal and state prisons, about 700,000 were convicted of violent crimes. And of course the remainder are not exclusively low level drug crimes. (the population in jails is usually less than 100,000 so it won't tip the balance) Better drug policy could well impact the levels of violent crime and so impact the future prison population, but forgiving sentences for drug related violent crime is a step further than forgiving sentences for petty drug crimes.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I used to go to a boxing gym near Baltimore where a lot of people came from "bad" neighborhoods. A lot of the young guys had experienced a life where a lot of friends and neighbors had been in jail for drugs. Once you have been in jail its really hard to find a decent job so a lot of them go into drug dealing which often leads to violence. Jailing people for drugs destroys the whole social fabric of a community. I don't think you can separate low-level drug offenses from violent crime. One leads to the other.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I thought my last paragraph there addressed this fairly well. If you are talking about reducing the prison population that exists right now, they sort of have to be separate. A murder that is the end result of a chain of events containing a lot of difficult choices is still a murder.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    My point is that the murder may not have happened if the perpetrator had grown up in a better neighborhood.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Yeah I understand, do you think the last paragraph in my first comment misses that point? My point is that we have people already in prison for past violent crimes, many of them, so even a policy change that has a big future impact still isn't going to quickly reduce the prison population by 2/3.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        I didn't read your comment closely enough. Sorry. I agree that there won't be a quick reduction but at least the influx of new prisoners would be reduced and neighborhoods wouldn't get destroyed anymore.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  > Once you have been in jail its really hard to find a decent job And that's another aspect that needs addressing, and can be done regardless of legal/political changes. Someone's been in jail/prison? Then they apply for a job with your company when they get out? Categorically denying them employment without regard to their previous offense is silly, although it's definitely policy at some (many?) companies. Helping people get back to a 'normal' life is something we all can take part in in various ways - not closing the door on applicants is another thing we can do.
tyingq 9y ago
I agree it's not 2/3rds, but it's a significant amount. "249,900 state prisoners (19%) were sentenced to at least 1 year for property offenses. Sixteen percent of state prisoners were serving sentences for drug-related offenses" Note that a fair amount of "property offenses" are really drug offenses. You steal things to feed your habit. And..."Nearly half of federal prisoners incarcerated on September 30, 2015 had been sentenced for drug offenses, the most recent date for which federal offense data were available"

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

> and other punishments That's the problem. A lot of people in the US like the idea of punishing and giving out moral retributions more than improving society in the long term.

Thriptic 9y ago
As an American, it's a tough situation. I recognize that our strategies don't work and that mass incarceration with no socialization programs is an obvious failure, but at the same time I demand people be punished if they hurt me, not just inconvenienced. I don't care about a populations' propensity to reoffend at a societal level, I care that a specific individual hurt me and they need to make it right somehow or suffer consequences. If there is no perception of justice then I think we can expect extra-judicial retaliations.
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  Inconvenienced? For almost anyone with a career, a life plan, a family, friends or any community or social status etc, being convicted of a crime is already a massive consequence. It will often affect their life forever, even if they clean up their act afterward. Serving time in a real prison is an even bigger deal. Are you only talking about people that have "nothing to lose"?
- Frondo 9y ago
  As an American, I don't want people punished if they hurt or wrong me. I want them rehabilitated so they don't go and hurt me or someone else in the future. The action is done, hurting the perpetrator in return won't restore me, I just don't want it to happen again.
  - sosborn 9y ago
    Easy to say - but have you or a loved one ever been the victim of a serious crime? Logic tends to go out the window and emotion takes over.
    - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

happyhippo333 9y ago

Imprisonment is not really about moral retribution, or vengeance. It serves mostly to ensure that the criminal can't commit his crime again (at least during the time he spends in prison), which gives his victims and the whole society some peace of mind. Also, it can be argued that prisons really don't have a reason to exist, justice system could function with only two types of punishment: For light offenses, like shoplifting or small scale drug dealing, or white collar crimes like insider trading you could go with community service, fine, asset forfeiture. For serious crimes, especially those that include significant amount of violence (armed robbery, rape, murder) you could go straight to death penalty, with relatively short waiting period between the sentence and actual execution. That's how it worked for most of the human history, and proved to be simple, cheap and effective.

jackmott 9y ago
death penalty is fine except if you find out later that you were wrong you can't undo it.
- mnx 9y ago
  I mean, you cannot undo 10 years in jail either.
  - Eerie 9y ago
    You can undo a part of a 10 year sentence by releasing an innocent person earlier. And you can offer monetary compensation. None of this is possible with a death sentence.

joshjje 9y ago

I agree with you for the most part, except in certain situations. The problem is how to distinguish these situations as I dont believe in a black and white its always x time for y crime, that sort of thing. For example, a rampant child abuser (sexual) who would say get life in prison. I think they should suffer the entire time, somehow, bring on that moral retribution. I would have to think long and hard to try to come up with something feasible though and not trample too much on morality, ethics, human rights, etc. For instance I chose a lifetime sentence for that example as there would be no need to rehabilitate.

matt4077 9y ago
well, that's a minefield, but maybe those make good examples. The instinct to throw these people into a dark hole and lose the key is strong. However, if you despise them so much because you think their crimes are so horrendous, that's even more reason to find something that works. Otherwise, you're placing your wish for revenge above the protection of their victims–exactly the sort of failure to control an instinct you're judging so harshly. Because this narrative of child abuse as the-worst-of-the-worst crimes does nothing to stop people (harsher punishment really doesn't work very well beyond a certain level). But it does scare people away from seeking help. I wouldn't have a problem with talking to a psychiatrist, or even friend or family member, about some anger problem that I feared might make me harm someone. They'd understand. But being attracted to children? That sounds like a really quick method to lose everything you have, just by asking for help. And asking for help would be exactly what we want people with the potential to do: because it's pretty much accepted that sexual orientations are innate, and that sex drive is among the most powerful, hard-to-repress emotions. Of course people who harm others because of a lack of self-control have failed, morally. But, wow, did they not win the birth lottery.
- joshjje 9y ago
  Yeah, which is why I agree for the most part for most crimes. On the one hand, footing the bill to rehabilitate very gross crimes like that doesnt seem like just punishment, and I suppose thats the problem is I think they should be punished. Not sure you can have it both ways, but perhaps. I do think harsher punishments would be additional incentive for people to keep themselves in check, but that obviously wont work with some, and may incur other undesirable consequences. Anyways, difficult problem for sure.

rayiner 9y ago

> The US could start by no longer jailing drug consumers or first-time low-level street dealers. It just really really doesn't work anyway. That would reduce the prison population by what? 2/3? Suddenly you have 3x the budget and space, which should allow for quite a few improvements. Nothing like that: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/rel.... Releasing every prisoner with a drug crime as their most serious offense would reduce the prison population by 14%. (Almost all that is low level dealers--few people are in prison for mere possession.) It would be a good step, but people overestimate how big an impact it would have.

fjdlwlv 9y ago
14% is huge, especially considering how many people commit crime because their life was destroyed by a drug conviction (their own or their parent's) leading to further crime.
- rayiner 9y ago
  How many people?
- tptacek 9y ago
  John Pfaff studies this at Fordham and also rebuts this variant of the argument: if you look, there's no strong correlation between people ever convicted of any drug crime and later sentencing. (His book, _Locked In_, is pretty great). Reminder: nobody, including Pfaff, is saying it's good we lock up drug offenders like this. It's bad, and we should stop. It's just not a solution to mass incarceration. To address that, we need an across-the-board fix for aggressive prosecution, which is what appears to be the most important factor ratcheting up prison populations.
matt4077 9y ago
Thanks! I'm really off by quite a bit...
glangdale 9y ago

Theodores 9y ago

The problem with drugs in the USA is how big a problem that it is. The prescription drugs have a lot to do with it and there needs to be some proper acknowledgement as to what has happened. Before then it was Oliver North and co that were behind the 'crack epidemic'. I think treatment should be more what the Norwegians would do in their drug clinics, so we do the best we can to get those with the 'addiction disease' able to stay on the rails. We just can't have these people doing crimes that are of such a cost to society, causing narcissistic harm to children they have for these kids to find themselves in drugs leading to the same cycle of crime. Therefore there does have to be time for drug crime - big stick punishment - but in the current situation there needs to be some treatment of people who have been wrongly led up the path of addiction. This needs to be done Norwegian style too, with compassion. We also need to think about when it is okay and when it is not okay to experiment with drugs. There is a difference between trying everything going at raves/parties/whatever as a student when it really does not matter if you drop out, the university still gets your money and they grumble but that is it, you are a statistic. Nobody is ever going to read that thesis anyway, what is the harm in advancing socially even if that involves being far from sober? But if you are not a student then someone is being responsible for you or you are responsible for someone else and it is not fair to be a single parent paying for drugs by selling drugs, just to friends in a scene. That constitutes child abuse, there is harm in having a single parent battling horrible drug inflicted injuries and deep dysphoria being the 'role model'. Do you put that person in prison with their child in care? Who decides that? Are they just a low level street dealer, to be let off? So their customers can cheat/lie/steal whatever it takes to pay their bills? Or the sales director who comes a cropper due to addiction getting the better of him or her. Perhaps major sales opportunities were lost and perhaps the wife didn't see much of him, maybe a lot went on but not the stealing or violence that goes with the life of a street junkie. People change jobs all the time, it is no biggie, nobody is indispensable. So why the lengthy prison sentence if there has been no harm outside of company (and bedtime) under-performance? Maybe the drug could be anything from sugar to crack with that not mattering, it being the aspect of societal harm that matters when it comes to time in the cells. Now if we could make those cells nice places to be so people could start their lives over, out of the environment that has all the triggers that enforce their addiction. This isn't working in the 'rehab' we have today as there is no power to get people to stay the course.

wtvanhest 9y ago

Country level population density is a nonsensical stat since most countries have varying levels of density. Sf/nyc/boston/chicao contain a big chunk of the us pop. Just because there is land in idaho does not mean you can count it.