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This is American "justice" culture. We can do anything we want to "bad people" because they are intrinsically "bad". You can tell they're bad because they're in

• akerro 8y ago
  >the point isn't to save money or reduce crime, it's to punish the bad people Actually, one of the reasons is to spend money on private prisons. Private prisons, bigpharma, lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things, things that were delegalized by sponsored bills. We've known for years that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than marijuana, yet, there are lobbies that benefit a lot from jailing people for having 5g of weed.
  • slavak 8y ago
    Private prisons account for 8% of the total state and federal prison population in the United States+. Are they really a major driver of criminal policy? [+] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...
    • mieseratte 8y ago
      Has the Netherlands, a country which has been closing prisons and even importing convicts from Belgium, faced any significant lobbying from the prison industrial complex and or any law enforcement organizations in favor of harsher sentencing? Or is this a uniquely American problem?
      • crote 8y ago
        There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. I wouldn't call it an American problem, but there is definitely a very large difference between the American and European approaches to imprisonment. If you're interested in learning more, check out Breaking the Cycle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLQ4gqB5XE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLQ4gqB5XE): it compares a Norwegian high-security prison to an American one. Main takeaway: if you imprison people in order to make them better persons, threat them as actual human beings; punishment is not the primary incentive of imprisonment.
        • chimeracoder 8y ago
          > There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. This is really off the mark. Having prisons and jails owned by the government does not mean that there's no incentive to increase the inmate population - in fact, the US is proof positive of that, because, for all the press that private prisons get, the number of them is quite small, and most of the worst abuses occur in state-run prisons. This isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but I should point out that, in general, people tend to underestimate the extent of the prison-industrial complex in Western/Central Europe, and particularly its effect on ethnic and religious minorities. It doesn't help that a lot of the countries that have problems with this also make it either difficult or illegal to access that data officially, so it's not discussed nearly enough.
        • mieseratte 8y ago
          > There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. How are food, clothes, supplies, etc. sourced? Who builds the prison? Is this all done by the government down to the farmer? Or is there a supply chain that makes profit by selling to prisons? If so, there is a prison industrial complex. How about the staff? Are they paid? Do they have a union? If there is a profit motive, there is a potential for political lobbying / corruption.
    • KirinDave 8y ago
      But it varies wildly by state, with some states having nearly half their prison population in pivate prisons. I imagine in those states, the lobby is pretty powerful at the state level. Lots of state-specific interests have a great deal of federal lobbying power.
    • joncrane 8y ago
      8% is still billions of dollars, I reckon. The other 92% doesn't lobby for laws that result in more prisoners, but a billion dollar industry does. So the 8% statistic is a red herring.
    • s73v3r_ 8y ago
      For-profit prison industry is more than just running the prison itself. The other 92% of public (I guess?) prisons still need services.
      • Fjolsvith 8y ago
        Yeah, and all those inmates and families gotta stay in touch somehow - so charge for video calls.
        • s73v3r_ 8y ago
          Not just charge; charge out the ass. Just like everything else in the prison.
    • xr4ti 8y ago
      Not just private prisons. The prison guards union has been one of the most potent political forces in California over the last 20-30 years. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/political-gains-by-prison-guards.html https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/political-gains-by-pri...
    • jaredklewis 8y ago
      I'm also skeptical of the influence of private prisons on criminal policy (mostly just because voters unfortunately seem to love putting people in prison regardless, no special lobbying required), but I think there are some interesting correlations at the state level. For example, the 6 states with the lowest incarceration rates (New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maine) have no private prisons. And 9 out of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates do have private prisons. - Percent of privately incarcerations: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso... - Incarceration rates by state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarce...
  • ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    Reminder private prisons make up 8.4% of total inmates. Source (as the official government source is giving a HTTPS issue) https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-house-leaders-introduce-bill-to-ban-private-prisons https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sande... The private prison issue is one of reddit's favorite topics to blow out of proportion. Can we not bring it here as well?
    • parthdesai 8y ago
      it still is 8.4% more than it should be.
    • akerro 8y ago
      >The private prison issue is one of reddit's favorite topics to blow out of proportion I've never seen such thread on reddit.
      • dopamean 8y ago
        There was a period maybe around the election in 2016 when it was a very frequent topic of conversation. That may have been spurred by the Obama administration's announcement that they'd stop using private prisons for detention of illegal immigrants at the border. Hillary I believe said she'd do the same if she became president. As a result there was a lot of talk about it.
    • organsnyder 8y ago
      Private prisons may be under 10% of inmates, but they still constitute 100% of some companies' income streams. The influence those companies wield is a function of their investment in lobbying and other persuasion tools, which is not necessarily correlated to marketshare.
  • jaredklewis 8y ago
    > lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. The median pay for public prosecutors with with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $81,500. For public defenders (who handle roughly 80% of all felony cases [1]), the median pay for someone with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $62,550. Oh, these fat, fat cats in criminal justice! And if anyone here thinks the work life balance in SV companies leaves something to be desired, I encourage you to read about the bat-shit hours that the average criminal attorney puts in. 20 hours of overtime a week would not raise any eyebrows. And basically those salaries are not affected by caseload. Whether 100 or 50 people go to prison makes no financial difference to lawyers on either side. Some prosecutors have bonuses contingent on conviction rate or volume, but such agreements are rare and when they do exist, the bonuses are never contingent on sentencing, so there would be no incentive to send people to prison. There is no equivalent for defense attorneys. And all of the above just speaks to your claim's stunning lack of circumstantial evidence, to say nothing of the lack of actual evidence that lawyers are intentionally putting more people in prison to make money. The US justice system is rife with problems. But the idea that a root cause of those problems is lawyers trying to make more money just doesn't make sense. 1. http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html
    • simonsarris 8y ago
      > The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. That's strange of you to say. Haven't lawyers conspired to do just that before? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal > To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. Is it not well understood that people who are less highly remunerated are more prone to seeking out illegal sources of additional funds? This is the justification for extremely high ministerial salaries in Singapore - to avoid such corruption.
      • 8y ago
• yabatopia 8y ago
  You can see a similar simplification between good and bad in popular movies, like all the superhero movies. It's always the good versus the bad, and the bad can't be helped, they must be punished or -better yet - destroyed.
  • CompelTechnic 8y ago
    I feel like more recent kid-targeted movies have had a lot more moral nuance than the classics and fairy tales do. There are often sympathetic antagonists, flawed heroes, etc.
    • awat 8y ago
      I’d have to agree with this. The first charector that comes to mind for me is Magneto I think he reacts how a lot of people would even though that makes him an antagonist. I had a history teacher use him vs Professor X in Jr. High as a way to better convey the nuance of opposition styles.
  • aurbano 8y ago
    I would love a popular movie (maybe even one for kids) where at some point through the movie we get to see things from the "bad guy"'s point of view and discover that it actually makes sense, leaving the viewer undecided on whether they support the good or the bad guy. It would be interesting to see children struggle with the moral dilemma, is there any movie like this already that I'm not realising?
    • nyxtom 8y ago
      Some of the greatest villains are built on this concept of deep sympathy with the character. At least I think so.
    • derivagral 8y ago
      Despicable Me & Megamind remind me of that.
    • Sacho 8y ago
• ataturk 8y ago
  I'm glad others see this crap for what it is--just another industry. I once happened to be near the local courthouse on "DWI night" and the line to get in the building was out the door. Money, money, money! We need to get back to some kind of system of laws where only crimes with actual victims can be actionable. Transgressions against the state are not that. Before anyone says "China has fewer inmates that the US" I say to you: Yes, because China executes people wholesale.
• graphitezepp 8y ago
  Something happened over the years that caused, at least in my experience living in America, people to incredibly deeply associate legality with morality. I suspect this is universal to some degree in societies around the world and in history. But how prevalent it is in my lived experience feels deeply Orwellian. As long as Big Brother approves your in the right, right?
  • CompelTechnic 8y ago
    If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? Or to put it another way, assuming that I share a common moral sense with my fellow citizens, I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not. If your objection is that the law feels to retributive, then that is a separate issue.
    • zajd 8y ago
      > If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? To maintain existing power structures
      • V-2 8y ago
        The more the law diverges from the morality (as commonly understood in a given society), the more oppressive power structures you need in order to maintain it.
    • notheguyouthink 8y ago
      > If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? Perhaps it's meaningful the other way around, too. So many people I see don't want more rigid tax laws, because morals are enough. I argue that morals guiding tax laws only cause to harm those good enough to have morals following the tax laws. It would seem morals should perhaps guide the desired end result of the law, like no killing your neighbor, but the laws to get to that end state might be counter intuitive. Something Americans suffer greatly from grasping.
    • 8y ago
• Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  The culture is one part, but the other major part that shouldn't be ignored is that the current, largely privatized prison business is a huge modern day slave labor market, slash a huge money grab by private prison companies (and their suppliers), given how they can charge the government an x amount of money per inmate per day. That money is then used for lobbyists and propaganda so that the lawmakers make sure people serve long time for minor crimes, and the propaganda is to make sure the population at large (the 97.5% that aren't in jail) doesn't see the inmates as having rights, e.g. that they deserve it like you said. Which of course is reminiscent of how other exploited people were dehumanised - people of color (slavery), jews (pre-WW2), Japanese (WW2, off to concentration camps after Pearl Harbor), "enemy combatants" (off to the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and numerous unmentioned 'black sites', clear violations of any international convention but everyone turns a blind eye), etc. The US as a whole is a dick.
  • knightofmars 8y ago
    Your first paragraph was on topic. Your last two, not so much.
• mamon 8y ago
  I hope I can live long enough to see the rehabilitation method that prevents recidivism in statistically significant number of cases, especially for violent crimes like murder or rape. I think that rehabilitation is something we can try on those guilty of minor offenses, but for murderers, rapist, mobsters, the only effective way to prevent recidivism is death penalty.
  • mabbo 8y ago
    > for murderers, rapist, mobsters, the only effective way to prevent recidivism is death penalty. For all of them? What about the wrongly convicted? We know that a certain percentage of those found guilty of murder are later found to have been innocent. Victims of rape sometimes, years later, admit that they lied. When your loved one, your child, is wrongly found guilty of such a crime, should we give them the death penalty immediately, or let them rot in a hellish prison for a few years first? Nothing is a simple as you'd like it to be.
    • magduf 8y ago
      >Victims of rape sometimes, years later, admit that they lied. Sometimes they lied, sometimes they identified the wrong person, sometimes they were coached into it by someone else. Ex-wives frequently accuse their ex-husbands of rape, and also evil parents sometimes coach children to allege the other parent of molestation.
  • EliRivers 8y ago
    Not every murder even requires rehabilitation. Given that I can't murder the same person twice, if the reason for murdering them isn't something I could apply to another, I'll never do it again. No jail time, rehab or death sentence necessary.
• dominotw 8y ago
  > the point isn't to save money or reduce crime, it's to punish the bad people. A huge part of justice system is exactly that, justice for the victims. They want the offender to be punished and pay for harm they caused. It would be unfair to the victims if govt was easy on the offenders. Edit: Depends on which end of spectrum you think humans are responsible for their own actions. Between, 1. People are merely the product of a zeitgeist. 2. People are 100% responsible for their own actions. Most people think human nature is somewhere in between and our justice system reflects that thinking. Any rant saying only 1 is the right way to think about justice system has never been personally victimized or brutalized and would be singing a different tune if their loved one was a victim of some senseless/sadistic behaviour by another human being. People who live in crime free neighborhoods love to theorize about how we can be so kind of criminals and that will bring the best out of human beings.
  • gerbilly 8y ago
    Except there is a lot of evidence that punishing the person who harmed them might not make the victims feel any better long term.
    • dominotw 8y ago
      Curious to read more about this if you have anything. Also wondering if ' there is a lot of evidence' proving that rehab works long term in reducing crime.
  • mabbo 8y ago
    To what end? Should we waterboard them every day? Should we implant them with pain devices that make their life hell? What good does that do anyone? How does that make a net-improvement to the world? How does that "payment" work, exactly? The victims' right to sadism should not trump society's right to reduced crime in the future. What we do to prisoners today increases recividism, increases crime.
    • v_lisivka 8y ago
      RTFM[1]. Justice is not a vendetta. [1]: http://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/ http://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/
• notheguyouthink 8y ago
  On the note of rehabilitation, do you (or anyone here) know of any good studies comparing various methods of rehabilitation? My buddy firmly believes that the system is broken, just like myself. Yet, he believes it's broken by being too lax on criminals. He thinks we should be more like his home country, where "They leave their doors unlocked at night because if you steal, you lose a hand". While I disagree with him, I'm not actually aware of facts on this. I know some countries have great success with rehabilitation methods, but what about more "harsh" countries? Is it compared often?
  • sykh 8y ago
    Your buddy has a rather simplistic view of crime. Much crime is done without thinking through the consequences. They are acts of impulse. Fear of punishment does not help in deterring such crimes. No matter what the punishment is crimes of impulse will be done. Other factors need to be addressed at a societal level to combat impulse crimes.
    • v_lisivka 8y ago
      But lack of hand(s) helps to deter crime, isn't? Jail is just modern version of that practice: hands are not cut, but whole body is jailed (temporary).
      • sykh 8y ago
        By definition no form of punishment deters crimes of impulse. When a person is enraged or otherwise blinded to rational thought the consequences of said action don’t come into play.
        • michaelt 8y ago
          There are different degrees of impulse. A spouse who kills after finds their partner in bed with someone else is what is traditionally called a 'crime of passion'. Maybe they would have committed that crime even if a policeman was looking over their shoulder. A person who pockets a cell phone left unattended in a bar may be an equally spur-of-the-moment decision - but we wouldn't consider it a crime of passion. If a policeman was looking over their shoulder, they'd have resisted the impulse. If people aren't being deterred from the second type of crime, we've got to ask whether the chance of being caught is too low, whether the punishment is too small, or whether the person isn't being rational about the expectation of punishment. Which probably varies from one crime to another.
• JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  The rich hate the poor and this is yet another example of it. The Prison system in the U.S. is bursting with people who have been either forced out of the economy or never allowed into it.
  • magduf 8y ago
    The poor hate the poor too. The poor people are the ones who comprise most of the voter base for the politicians who push these laws and policies.
• NoGravitas 8y ago
  "On Social Sadism" by China Mièville is a really good guide to the social processes that produce this. http://salvage.zone/in-print/on-social-sadism/ http://salvage.zone/in-print/on-social-sadism/
• cordite 8y ago
  Some places are trying to save money and the result is further punishment, imagine not being able to read or receive books [1]. These people aren’t being thought as humans, just a source of exploitation. They aren’t being rehabilitated and preparation for returning to society is absent. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/federal-prisons-abruptly-cancel-policy-that-made-it-harder-costlier-for-inmates-to-get-books/2018/05/03/1b3efcde-4ed8-11e8-b725-92c89fe3ca4c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/federal-p...
  • Ygg2 8y ago
    Recidivism increases profits. Why lower it?
• alistproducer2 8y ago
  This is a [better worded] version of what I came to post. America will need to completely overhaul its system of fovernment before this begins to change.
• southphillyman 8y ago
  - the point isn't to save money or reduce crime, it's to punish the bad people. I mean, if we stop thinking of them as bad people, how am I supposed to know that I'm a good person You would think the recent examples of Meek Mill and Khalif Browder would open eyes to the fact there are a ton of people in jail because they either can't afford bail or for minor infractions.
  • mabbo 8y ago
    There's a disturbing deeper reasoning, one that I like to acknowledge: double predestination Calvinism. In certain forms of Christianity, you are born as either "good" or "bad". You are just intrinsically this way. You can tell which you are based on whether God grants you a good or bad life. Get arrested unjustly, wrongly convicted, or too poor to bail yourself out? Well maybe that's just because you were one of the bad people. Rich and successful? Clearly proof that you belong in heaven. Now, even most Christians see this as horse shit. But the deep seeds of this reasoning are everywhere in Western culture, hints here and there. Harry Potter is my favorite example- that sorting hat, man, it's never put a bad person into Griffindor, has it? (I haven't read the books in years, so go ahead and remind me about that one time it did...). This is the kind of thing that leads to hidden biases, sort of like unconscious racial or gender biases. And like those other two examples, there are people who 100% believe that it's true, right, etc. Edit: removing a clause that didn't make sense.
    • logfromblammo 8y ago
      Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor. The "prosperity gospel" people make me ill. It's almost the exact opposite of Christianity, in my opinion. The combination of black-white morality and a belief that some divine agency guides the fortunes of mortal humans results in a twisted view, wherein bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. If a bad thing happens to a good person, well they must have done something sinful to deserve it. It's just sick. People like that always blame the victim.
      • danShumway 8y ago
• scrumper 8y ago
  I think this is a simplistic comment designed to elicit a thoughtless emotional reaction from people who already agree with you. It doesn't really address any of the issues the article bought up, nor does it suggest any ways forward. I also don't think you're right about your blanket statement: five seconds on Wikipedia revealed a very broad, bipartisan prison reform initiative organized by the Koch and MacArthur Foundations and many other groups including the ACLU. So there is a lot of support for making the penal system better. And there is ample recent evidence of politicians advocating for reform: California and Massachusetts vacating low-level drug convictions; Governor Deal's reforms in Georgia; The First Step Act (just passed committee last week); even Trump hosted discussions in Jan. Sure, none of those are perfect but it's a mile away from your alleged harsh 'American "justice" culture.' A moment's reflection opens up a the possibility of a slightly deeper analysis, which is that actually it might be a function of money and business inserting itself into the public sector: cash-strapped state budgets, privatized prisons, a pattern of contracting-out basic services, and a literally captive customer base create a perfect environment for this kind of predatory nastiness.
• nodesocket 8y ago
  Let's be realistic here, these people committed crimes and were convicted (yes a very small percentage may be innocent). With that said, I am completely against video calls. Having interaction with their friends and loved-ons is a important for moral and hopefully aids in rehabilitation.
• galfarragem 8y ago
  > Reducing sentence length, improving prison conditions, trying to actually help those on prison, that's all just weakness, that's not being tough on crime. Until somebody hurts your family and you start to think differently.
  • ldh 8y ago
    Or possibly reflect even more deeply upon how our medieval system of punishments has done approximately nothing to prevent that from happening in the first place.
    • galfarragem 8y ago
      That's true but it has done wonders preventing retalliations.
• robk 8y ago
  Maybe in some places. In San Francisco criminals can steal and Rob with pretty much impunity. So I don't really buy the American tough on crime narrative.