4 ms·

I mean, should there be an equal power balance in prisons...?

zapita 8y ago
> I mean, should there be an equal power balance in prisons...? I think a better question is "should inmates be protected from the risk of abuse created by extreme power imbalance? And if so, where do we draw the line as a society?". My answer to the first question is yes, they should be protected. My answer to the second question is: respecting the universal declaration of Human Rights and the US constitution would be a great start.
- will_brown 8y ago
  It’s voluntary...they receive training, see family, get time knocked off, serve the community/others. Dare I say it actually sounds like a rehabilitation program. Of course it’s very easy to criticize on a forum behind a screen. So tell us how you have personally helped a prisoner combat the extreme power imbalance you observe beyond criticizing existing programs.
  - zapita 8y ago
    > Of course it’s very easy to criticize on a forum behind a screen. So tell us how you have personally helped a prisoner combat the extreme power imbalance you observe beyond criticizing existing programs. Yes, it's very easy to criticize behind a screen. In some cases, people who do it too much even develop an extreme sense of entitlement, and start acting like the world owes them a response to even the most ridiculous demands. Although I have noticed that it's mostly white men who develop this issue - excessive entitlement is a common side effect of excessive privilege.
    - traverseda 8y ago
      Regardless of anything else, I don't think that kind of casual racism is going to make anything better.
      - zapita 8y ago
        Ah yes, pointing out the existence of a privilege system built on racism, and a relationship between privilege and entitlement - the hallmarks of casual racism!
        traverseda 8y ago
        Well no, it's mostly how someone started by asking you a question (in a slightly rude way in my opinion), and you immediately found a way to work in how they're a terrible person, and how they're probably a terrible person on account of being white. This isn't a "white fragility, white people can't handle hearing about privilege" deal, it's a you deal, where you specifically are using race-based stereotypes to dismiss and dehumanize your fellow human beings.
        zapita 8y ago
        Sorry, I don’t follow. What race-based stereotype am I using? And how exactly am I dehumanizing anyone? I think you’re confused about what racism is, and how it works.
    - will_brown 8y ago
      Asking someone for more than criticism of a topic isn’t criticism or entitlement, it’s engagement. If I were to have blindly said the program is more than you have ever done for the encarcerated, without knowing your experience, fine, but I didn’t do that. I personally have served as legal counsel to untold numbers of detained immigrants and criminal defendants. I coordinated the legal representation of all the Haitian minors in the 2008 Hallandale Beach Haitian boat crisis. I have made complaints against guards in the Chrome Detention Center for referring to my client as a bitch in front of me specifically referencing my clients physical appearance as a result of a hormone imbalance that gave my male client breasts. I have filed motions for fraud upon the court against the chief broward county prosecutor against the interests of my own career. I know a thing or two about the system and the ugliness of the system, and tried engaging you and your generic response about declaration of human rights and the constitution to support your criticism of this program. And your response is to lash out against white males because their excessive privilege and suggesting my demand is ridiculous, that’s very interesting.
      - zapita 8y ago
        It’s great that you did all these things. But it doesn’t make your demand any less bizarre and entitled. If your experience made you wise and knowledgeable, by all means, share your wisdom and knowledge with us! So far all I’m seeing from you is this bizarre “credentials contest”.
        will_brown 8y ago
        As I stated before my experience and knowledge of the realities of the system suggests this sounds like a rehabilitation program. On the other hand I haven’t mentioned my credentials...I mentioned some small bit of my first hand experience in relation to the topic of encarceration and power imbalance. My wisdom, if any, suggested to better understand your point of view I’d ask about your experience...I never knew trying to understand someone by asking about their experience was a bizarre entitlement and privilege of the white man. It’s funny though my encarcerated clients have always been more than happy to share their experiences with me, their experiences that lead to encarcerated, their experience being encarcerated...and they were always happy to ask about mine.
    - dang 8y ago
      This comment breaks the HN guidelines by introducing extraneous flamebait and taking the thread into tedious flamewar. Please don't do that on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - zapita 8y ago
        That wasn't the intention. I will be more careful.
        zapita 8y ago
        It was too late to delete or edit my comment, so I made a second reply which hopefully does not break the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17747043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17747043
        dang 8y ago
        Much better! Thanks.
  - zapita 8y ago
    (Second take at an answer since my first one took us down the wrong path). I agree that it looks like a rehabilitation program. It just seems like a bad one, because: 1) you shouldn’t have to risk your life to see your family or get time knocked off your sentence. It’s simply not normal that prisoners have to make this choice in a situation where their agency and access to alternatives are so limited; but this program contributes to normalizing it. 2) as others have pointed out, prisoners receive “training” for a trade that they won’t be allowed to practice after they serve their sentence. This tells me that rehabilitation wasn’t the primary motivation, or if it was, it was poorly thought out. Overall this feels like a very slippery slope... even if this particular program is the best possible implementation of the idea, with proper training, and rules in place to avoid treating prisoners as relatively more expendable, putting them in more danger than other firemen, etc. My question is: what if it weren’t a perfect implementation, and abuse did occur? Are there any incentives and checks to prevent such abuse? Or would we all collectively shrug and say “seems like rehabilitation, nothing to see here”. Given the general state of the carceral system in the US, I think the burden should be on the people responsible for this program to acknowledge these risks, and go out of their way to reassure the concerns of citizens like myself. It definitely is not reasonable to dismiss my criticism unless I prove a track record of helping prisoners first-hand as you have done. My opinion on the issue is just as legitimate as yours, and I wish you hadn’t dismissed it in the way you did (I also wish I hadn’t overreacted to it, we could have had a more constructive debate).
- globuous 8y ago
  I guess section 1 of the 13th amendment to the us constitution is: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Which literally allows for slavery if convicted. source: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us%20constitution%2013th%20amendement https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us%20constitution%2013...
  - gt_ 8y ago
    Right. And it’s precisely that systemic capital incentive to convict more citizens of crime that is so contentious. It’s not a simple matter to navigte, and varying in different government organizations, but a few things remain true: 1) Ending prison labor, or giving equal pay to prisoners, would negate the incentive outright. 2) Privatization of corrections facilities further complicates the matter, raising the incentives for unethical behavior. So, there is a clear cut ethical path here. It just has a smaller profit margin. Nothing new.
    - aeternus 8y ago
      Equal pay would likely make labor programs like this infeasible since there are overhead costs, like the feeding, housing, and guarding of prisoners. Those costs are not present for regular employees / volunteers.
- rayiner 8y ago
  What part of the Constitution isn't being respected?

> I mean, should there be an equal power balance in prisons...? I think a better question is "should inmates be protected from the risk of abuse created by extreme power imbalance? And if so, where do we draw the line as a society?". My answer to the first question is yes, they should be protected. My answer to the second question is: respecting the universal declaration of Human Rights and the US constitution would be a great start.

will_brown 8y ago
It’s voluntary...they receive training, see family, get time knocked off, serve the community/others. Dare I say it actually sounds like a rehabilitation program. Of course it’s very easy to criticize on a forum behind a screen. So tell us how you have personally helped a prisoner combat the extreme power imbalance you observe beyond criticizing existing programs.
- zapita 8y ago
  > Of course it’s very easy to criticize on a forum behind a screen. So tell us how you have personally helped a prisoner combat the extreme power imbalance you observe beyond criticizing existing programs. Yes, it's very easy to criticize behind a screen. In some cases, people who do it too much even develop an extreme sense of entitlement, and start acting like the world owes them a response to even the most ridiculous demands. Although I have noticed that it's mostly white men who develop this issue - excessive entitlement is a common side effect of excessive privilege.
  - traverseda 8y ago
    Regardless of anything else, I don't think that kind of casual racism is going to make anything better.
    - zapita 8y ago
      Ah yes, pointing out the existence of a privilege system built on racism, and a relationship between privilege and entitlement - the hallmarks of casual racism!
      - traverseda 8y ago
        Well no, it's mostly how someone started by asking you a question (in a slightly rude way in my opinion), and you immediately found a way to work in how they're a terrible person, and how they're probably a terrible person on account of being white. This isn't a "white fragility, white people can't handle hearing about privilege" deal, it's a you deal, where you specifically are using race-based stereotypes to dismiss and dehumanize your fellow human beings.
        zapita 8y ago
        Sorry, I don’t follow. What race-based stereotype am I using? And how exactly am I dehumanizing anyone? I think you’re confused about what racism is, and how it works.
  - will_brown 8y ago
    Asking someone for more than criticism of a topic isn’t criticism or entitlement, it’s engagement. If I were to have blindly said the program is more than you have ever done for the encarcerated, without knowing your experience, fine, but I didn’t do that. I personally have served as legal counsel to untold numbers of detained immigrants and criminal defendants. I coordinated the legal representation of all the Haitian minors in the 2008 Hallandale Beach Haitian boat crisis. I have made complaints against guards in the Chrome Detention Center for referring to my client as a bitch in front of me specifically referencing my clients physical appearance as a result of a hormone imbalance that gave my male client breasts. I have filed motions for fraud upon the court against the chief broward county prosecutor against the interests of my own career. I know a thing or two about the system and the ugliness of the system, and tried engaging you and your generic response about declaration of human rights and the constitution to support your criticism of this program. And your response is to lash out against white males because their excessive privilege and suggesting my demand is ridiculous, that’s very interesting.
    - zapita 8y ago
      It’s great that you did all these things. But it doesn’t make your demand any less bizarre and entitled. If your experience made you wise and knowledgeable, by all means, share your wisdom and knowledge with us! So far all I’m seeing from you is this bizarre “credentials contest”.
      - will_brown 8y ago
        As I stated before my experience and knowledge of the realities of the system suggests this sounds like a rehabilitation program. On the other hand I haven’t mentioned my credentials...I mentioned some small bit of my first hand experience in relation to the topic of encarceration and power imbalance. My wisdom, if any, suggested to better understand your point of view I’d ask about your experience...I never knew trying to understand someone by asking about their experience was a bizarre entitlement and privilege of the white man. It’s funny though my encarcerated clients have always been more than happy to share their experiences with me, their experiences that lead to encarcerated, their experience being encarcerated...and they were always happy to ask about mine.
  - dang 8y ago
    This comment breaks the HN guidelines by introducing extraneous flamebait and taking the thread into tedious flamewar. Please don't do that on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - zapita 8y ago
      That wasn't the intention. I will be more careful.
      - zapita 8y ago
        It was too late to delete or edit my comment, so I made a second reply which hopefully does not break the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17747043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17747043
        dang 8y ago
        Much better! Thanks.
- zapita 8y ago
  (Second take at an answer since my first one took us down the wrong path). I agree that it looks like a rehabilitation program. It just seems like a bad one, because: 1) you shouldn’t have to risk your life to see your family or get time knocked off your sentence. It’s simply not normal that prisoners have to make this choice in a situation where their agency and access to alternatives are so limited; but this program contributes to normalizing it. 2) as others have pointed out, prisoners receive “training” for a trade that they won’t be allowed to practice after they serve their sentence. This tells me that rehabilitation wasn’t the primary motivation, or if it was, it was poorly thought out. Overall this feels like a very slippery slope... even if this particular program is the best possible implementation of the idea, with proper training, and rules in place to avoid treating prisoners as relatively more expendable, putting them in more danger than other firemen, etc. My question is: what if it weren’t a perfect implementation, and abuse did occur? Are there any incentives and checks to prevent such abuse? Or would we all collectively shrug and say “seems like rehabilitation, nothing to see here”. Given the general state of the carceral system in the US, I think the burden should be on the people responsible for this program to acknowledge these risks, and go out of their way to reassure the concerns of citizens like myself. It definitely is not reasonable to dismiss my criticism unless I prove a track record of helping prisoners first-hand as you have done. My opinion on the issue is just as legitimate as yours, and I wish you hadn’t dismissed it in the way you did (I also wish I hadn’t overreacted to it, we could have had a more constructive debate).
globuous 8y ago
I guess section 1 of the 13th amendment to the us constitution is: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Which literally allows for slavery if convicted. source: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us%20constitution%2013th%20amendement https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us%20constitution%2013...
- gt_ 8y ago
  Right. And it’s precisely that systemic capital incentive to convict more citizens of crime that is so contentious. It’s not a simple matter to navigte, and varying in different government organizations, but a few things remain true: 1) Ending prison labor, or giving equal pay to prisoners, would negate the incentive outright. 2) Privatization of corrections facilities further complicates the matter, raising the incentives for unethical behavior. So, there is a clear cut ethical path here. It just has a smaller profit margin. Nothing new.
  - aeternus 8y ago
    Equal pay would likely make labor programs like this infeasible since there are overhead costs, like the feeding, housing, and guarding of prisoners. Those costs are not present for regular employees / volunteers.
rayiner 8y ago
What part of the Constitution isn't being respected?