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> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount

> "Caging me for a decade is not rehabilitating. I may be making excuses for myself, though there is a lesson that could have been learned with the same amount of value for justice if the sentence was 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, even 6 years." From the article at: https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severity-of-my-crime-wasnt-based-on-what-i-did-but-what-i-could-have-done/ https://forklog.media/ex-convicted-hacker-ghostexodus-severi... I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessive for most non-violent crimes. I'm American but I live in Asia so maybe I'm now an outsider. I'm not aware of any other country that punishes this harshly. Serious questions: Does any other country routinely punish so severely? To what end? At what financial and psychic cost to society? If we're unique (exceptional?) why do we do this to ourselves?

malodyets 6y ago
North Korea is harsher
- Fauntleroy 6y ago
  Did you know the recidivism rate in the US is around 43%? Maybe it would be better for us a nation to work on making the justice system more about rehabilitation than punishment. Setting the bar at "North Korea" is simply childish and unhelpful.
- jackpirate 6y ago
  The US has more prisoners per capita than North Korea.
  - karaterobot 6y ago
    Honestly and without sarcasm: from what I understand, it seems like pretty much everybody in North Korea is a prisoner of North Korea. Not having control of your own life, being constantly monitored, and not being allowed to leave are all hallmarks of prison life. Add to that starvation and retributive acts against your family by the state itself.
    - the_af 6y ago
      Let's not get caught up in hyperbole here. North Korea is a harsh dictatorship, but even then, you get to live, breathe the outside air, have a family, raise kids, and you don't risk being raped at every turn (as in physically raped, let's not mince words here and go on a tangent about "mental rape by the state" or whatnot). It's probably choosing between two kinds of hell, but if given the chance, I'll 100% no-questions-asked go to live in North Korea rather than be incarcerated 10 years in a US prison. (It goes without saying that I'd rather live free in the US, I hope this doesn't need saying. Also it goes without saying that I'd rather live in another country rather than North Korea; this is a thought experiment where these are the only two options). Of course, prison in North Korea must be hell too, but that's not what we're talking about. Finally, comparing the US to North Korea -- is that really the bar we want to use?
- devalgo 6y ago
  Is this how low we've gotten? The only thing you can say is that the US is at least better than the most oppressive and isolated Regime in the world? I don't know what that says about your world view or the US.
risyachka 6y ago
> I was arrested in 2009 for installing botnets and commercial remote access programs on a handful of sensitive clinic systems, which included a critical SCADA system Hacking an online store and a sensitive clinical system should be punished with very different levels of punishment.
- TallGuyShort 6y ago
  That does jive with our sense of justice, yes, but I think the point is what are we achieving. Is it actually disincentivizing the crime? Is it preventing recurrence of the same individual committing future crime? I would argue that US prison statistics point at a massive failure in one, both, or is simply incarcerating people unnecessarily in the first place. This article is touching on the second one specifically.
  - risyachka 6y ago
    We don't know what will happen in the future. Prison time at least ensures this won't happen for multiple years, and gives you a chance to think it over. If medical systems he hacked could have hurt people then this is basically conscious intention to hurt others, and it doesn't matter that he didn't. So in this particular case its really hard to stand on his side. If we were talking about some credit card scam - than I would gladly support you that we better try and change a person, and prison is super overkill for this type of crime. But if we are talking about hurting others - this can't be justified.
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      Just because something can hurt someone doesn't mean it's conscious intent to harm someone. That's a gigantic leap. That's the difference between negligence and pre meditation.
    - TallGuyShort 6y ago
      I think you're missing the point of the conversation. I'm not excusing or justifying what he did at all. The point of this is, other than our sense of justice and desire to punish someone for doing something bad, what is prison supposed to achieve? I'd like prison to achieve the kind of justice that yes, does provide some sense of justice to victims, but aims to reform criminals and reduce crime. Now, independent of this case, America is clearly failing, because our recidivism rate is (depending on the study you look at) between 40% and 70% over a matter of months and years, which is pretty terrible [1]. Many other first-world countries are achieving far better rates. And for per-capita imprisonment, America is literally the worst in the world according to Wikipedia [2]. Last I checked, a couple of years ago, it was second. But back to this specific article. Yes, this person was convicted of a serious crime and went to jail. But while there they were isolated in a way I consider a violation of the 8th amendment without due process. Not only do I consider this a failing of "justice" in its own right, but it's left this person less able to go and rejoin society in a productive way. Poverty is one of the strongest predictors of criminality: how is this helpful to anyone? Just because you want to punish it and doing so seems fair, doesn't mean the way the US justice system will implement that punishment is doing something good in the end. You can reform that system without just excusing serious crimes. [1] https://atlascorps.org/recidivism-united-states-overview/ https://atlascorps.org/recidivism-united-states-overview/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... edit: I feel like this is the same kind of misunderstanding everyone's having with the #BlackLivesMatter vs #BackTheBlue stuff right now. People complain about the way some police are doing their jobs, and point out ways some other police departments or police in other countries do it much better, and the alternative we consider is no police. What the actual fuck? Can't we just have police tone down the tactics and approach the problem a different way? Since when is saying that police are killing people too easily and too often saying that they just shouldn't have even arrested the person?
FerretFred 6y ago
In the UK, crime against property regularly attracts harsh sentencing; crime against the person not so much. Why? I think it perpetuates our historical values. The Government believes we're expendable, although useful enough to pay tax.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Not for hacking though rob a bank of 70k you get much longer sentences than a hacker stealing the same amount by hacking email and redirecting a payment. Arguably the UK is soft on hacking as there are several News international Hacks that should be doing 5-10
- bluedays 6y ago
  It’s because our system of justice is designed to protect Capital, not people.
desstap 6y ago
You are in Asia right? Let’s see China - disappeared for comparing xi jing ping the dictator to Winnie the Pooh, or mention Hong Kong or Taiwan in a postiive light on wechat Singapore - 2 years in jail for selling gum, death penalty for Having drugs Vietnam - 34 years for drug trafficking
- non-entity 6y ago
  > 2 years in jail for selling gum What do they have against gum?
  - detaro 6y ago
    People sticking their used gum in random places, locks etc and breaking stuff with it instead of properly disposing of it.
  - fencepost 6y ago
    Ever wondered what those black spots on city sidewalks are? That's gum. All of it is gum that's been spat out then walked on until it acquires a top embedded coating of city grime.
    - coding123 6y ago
      At least for sidewalks it probably had a helpful benefit of keeping it waterproof.
    - IHLayman 6y ago
      Are you seriously justifying a two year prison sentence for selling gum?
      - fencepost 6y ago
        Not at all, but nor do I choose to live in Singapore.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
mcv 6y ago
There are problably plenty of dictatorships that punish harsher than the US, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find democratic, freedom-loving countries that punish harsher than the US does. Except maybe when it comes to crimes by rich/important people with good connections.
- devalgo 6y ago
  Us has the highest verified incarceration per capita in the world and the largest number of total prisoners. So at least by verified numbers it's not really even close, the US is by far the worst. Are the numbers accurate for China or other oppressive regimes? Who knows and North Korea doesn't release numbers but they're thought to be close to or slightly higher than the US' per capita numbers. https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-popul...
  - esperent 6y ago
    So probably the only country that has very slight worse numbers in the entire world is North Korea, including all the other dictatorships and otherwise failed states. That's crazy.
    - banads 6y ago
      Looking at US incarceration data over time, the causes are plainly obvious. Mass incarceration began shortly after the civil rights movement was ended, when Nixon launched the War on Drugs in 1971, and then skyrocketed in the 80s as even harsher bipartisan anti drug laws were passed while at the same time the CIA was found to be facilitating the importation of billions of dollars of cocaine into inner cities at the inception point of the crack epidemic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_...
    - devalgo 6y ago
      Land of the Free indeed.
    - 6y ago
libertine 6y ago
Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime? Because you seem to be focusing on the outcome/consequences of someone that committed a crime and got caught. It's not like the punishment is the result of "bad luck" or "unexpected circumstances", it was a deliberate conscious action, right? Also some of these actions aren't a burst of irrationality and poor thought process - they are planned and recurrent, done through stretches of time in a consistent manner. So on one hand, it seems severe punishment, on the other hand, people severely push boundaries while knowing it's wrong and with severe punishment - what would they do if it was less severe? Edit: just to make it clear, I'M NOT SUPPORTING HEAVY SENTENCES.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  > Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime? Harsh punishment fosters resentment. Isolation is a form of torture. Cutting off prisoners from society makes reintegration and rehabilitation difficult. A person who is incapable of participating in society is going to be pushed to the fringes and will more than likely become a drain on society rather than a contributor. Severity is a huge factor. We don't really have a gradient of consequences, and much of what we do have is limited to privileged individuals. When was the last time you heard of a nonviolent drug offender being given the option to serve his sentence over weekends or in a minimum security facility? Unless you're a wealthy elite with a very expensive team of lawyers, you're going to "Pound me in the ass Prison". We even make jokes about how extreme the conditions are in our prisons and use those poor conditions as deterrent. On top of that, we've privatized our prisons so the operators are constantly looking for opportunities to profit. In the post the author talks about per minute charges for email. Some prisons no longer allow face-to-face visitation and instead require the use of video conferencing technology that costs money. Beyond nickle and diming inmates, they're reducing staffing and quality of everything to save as much money as possible. That in itself is punishing torture.
- jmcqk6 6y ago
  When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions. Harsh punishments do not seem to actually function as a determent in real life. From my perspective, harsh punishments is more about revenge than anything else. They're a simple way to feel like you're doing the right thing, as long as you don't examine it too closely. And most people don't want to examine it too closely.
masukomi 6y ago
> I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessive for most non-violent crimes. you miss the point. prisons are a massive industry with serious lobbying clout. Putting lots of people in prison for a long time isn't a punishment to the prisoner, it's a gift to the prison system. The "punishment" is just a side effect, and the longer it lasts, the richer the people in power get. the harm inflicted by a crime has been detached from the relative prison sentence for a long time. Classic example is getting more time in jail (and loosing your house) for having a marajuana joint than if you raped someone. Fortunately this is changing in the case of marajuana but there are many other drugs for which a single personal dose will still get you more time than rape.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  10 years of prison time for a single non-violent crime is extremely rare in America. What can happen in certain states, is that repeat offenders are hit with escalating prison terms each time they are convicted (the classic example are the three-strikes-your-out laws), whereby someone can be sentenced to a life term. In those cases, sentences don't translate to actual prison terms since non-violent offenders are routinely paroled. There's still a lot of heavy handedness, and I question the justice of escalating sentencing, but the comments above create a false impression of the US justice system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law
  - dylkil 6y ago
    >10 years of prison time for a single non-violent crime is extremely rare in America. Ross Ulbricht got double life imprisonment + 40 years for a non violent crime.
    - selykg 6y ago
      I mean, paying to have someone murdered is, kinda sorta violent.
      - 6y ago
scarface74 6y ago
He hacked central control systems used by utility companies. This could have caused all sorts of disruptions including to traffic lights and hospitals. This was definitely not a "victimless crime".
- Frondo 6y ago
  Did it? did he cause any of the mayhem you're saying did happen?
- Grimm1 6y ago
  "could have" but it didn't so it was victimless.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    So it’s okay if someone shot someone and missed a vital organ where he could have killed someone but didn’t?
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      That analogy doesn't fit here at all. In your case they intend to cause harm to someone at the start by literally shooting someone. You are presupposing intent and harm of a person and certainly there were neither in the hacker's case. A better analogy, that maybe is more fitting, is you blow through a stoplight and kill someone. That's definitely negligence but there was no intent to hurt someone, the intent was to speed to a destination. The intent here was to use computing resources to launch an attack on another hacker group, nothing that would have intently harmed a person at the clinic. They could have accidentally hurt someone though. And if they did it would be recklessness, certainly negligent , but their intent was not to kill someone. And this is why we in the US have different laws for different situations that take into account negligence, intent, premeditation etc. None of them are alright but the state of mind the person committing the crime was in makes it varying degrees of bad. Someone who accidentally kills someone and someone who plots a cold blooded murder have both taken a life but, the one who killed on accident isn't as heinous or maybe as morally reprehensible. Life is mostly varying shades of grey and not strictly good or bad and that's why society has complex laws to dole out different punishments depending on situation. And finally, the hacker never harmed anyone in this case arguing on what they might have done is an abuse of the system imo. I might get up right now and burn my neighborhood to the ground, but you cant condemn me of it before I actually do it. (I won't)
ajmurmann 6y ago
The recent episode of the Ezra Klein podcast interviews Paul Butler who argues that prison does more harm than good and that we does replace it with a system that actually improves people. He compares our current lease enforcement system to a chokehold: "Butler describes a chokehold as “a process of coercing submission that is self-reinforcing. A chokehold justifies additional pressure on the body because a body does not come into compliance, but a body cannot come into compliance because of the vice grip that is on it.” That, he says, is the black experience in the United States. " https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1081584611?i=1000477131355 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...
nipponese 6y ago
Think about a time you really messed up. Did it take 10 years to come to the conclusion you were wrong?
- risyachka 6y ago
  If you knew you could hurt others when you intentionally messed up - then probably it is a good idea to lock you up for a few years, because clearly you are very bad at thinking, no matter to what conclusion you will come in 10 minutes. He didn't just slip and hacked medical systems by accident.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    It's important to rehabilitate you in whatever way works best. The way people get looked up in the US is known to be one of the worst approaches to rehabilitation, it's bad to a degree that it's making it more likely for you to commit crimes when you come out instead of less because you have become totally out of touch with socity and normal life.
  - n_e 6y ago
    > If you knew you could hurt others when you intentionally messed up Not many people are locked up for a few years for a traffic violation
dathinab 6y ago
The US is the country with the highest ratio of their population being imprisoned. The idea behind their long sentences is that if you know you get super long sentences you won't commit crime. Rehabilitation isn't in the agenda. That this is known to not work well is ignored by large part of the government. The lawmaker in the US panicked when making hacking laws as they didn't understood it and people told them that is viable that expert hackers can literally singlehandedly start amagedon by having nuclear missels. Through unreasonable penalties for hacking are not unreasonable. Or at least that's how it looks to me.
ddrt 6y ago
The better question is has it abated the act of these crimes to a significant level? If a 10 year sentence crime is commonplace then that’s a dark mark on the police and judges. If it’s a crime not often committed how can we correlate the punishment to the practice? The incarceration is a punishment for the one who commits the crime, but is also there to set an example. If the example isn’t made then the loop continues. Crime without (known) repercussions is a crime that will continue. If that is okay in the eyes of lawmakers then this is now about money. This is just top of mind thinking, not stating as fact.
- nybble41 6y ago
  > also there to set an example Imposing a disproportionate punishment "to set an example" makes you more dangerous to society than the person you're punishing. I'm not saying that actions which harm others should not result in repercussions, but the punishment must fit the crime for the law to be legitimate. Even if that occasionally means that some people weigh the risk of getting caught and decide that the odds against being punished are low enough to make the risk worthwhile.
uoylj 6y ago
I mean most of Asia does routinely punish way more severely for non-violent drug offences.

malodyets 6y ago

North Korea is harsher

Fauntleroy 6y ago
Did you know the recidivism rate in the US is around 43%? Maybe it would be better for us a nation to work on making the justice system more about rehabilitation than punishment. Setting the bar at "North Korea" is simply childish and unhelpful.
jackpirate 6y ago
The US has more prisoners per capita than North Korea.
- karaterobot 6y ago
  Honestly and without sarcasm: from what I understand, it seems like pretty much everybody in North Korea is a prisoner of North Korea. Not having control of your own life, being constantly monitored, and not being allowed to leave are all hallmarks of prison life. Add to that starvation and retributive acts against your family by the state itself.
  - the_af 6y ago
    Let's not get caught up in hyperbole here. North Korea is a harsh dictatorship, but even then, you get to live, breathe the outside air, have a family, raise kids, and you don't risk being raped at every turn (as in physically raped, let's not mince words here and go on a tangent about "mental rape by the state" or whatnot). It's probably choosing between two kinds of hell, but if given the chance, I'll 100% no-questions-asked go to live in North Korea rather than be incarcerated 10 years in a US prison. (It goes without saying that I'd rather live free in the US, I hope this doesn't need saying. Also it goes without saying that I'd rather live in another country rather than North Korea; this is a thought experiment where these are the only two options). Of course, prison in North Korea must be hell too, but that's not what we're talking about. Finally, comparing the US to North Korea -- is that really the bar we want to use?
devalgo 6y ago
Is this how low we've gotten? The only thing you can say is that the US is at least better than the most oppressive and isolated Regime in the world? I don't know what that says about your world view or the US.

risyachka 6y ago

> I was arrested in 2009 for installing botnets and commercial remote access programs on a handful of sensitive clinic systems, which included a critical SCADA system Hacking an online store and a sensitive clinical system should be punished with very different levels of punishment.

TallGuyShort 6y ago
That does jive with our sense of justice, yes, but I think the point is what are we achieving. Is it actually disincentivizing the crime? Is it preventing recurrence of the same individual committing future crime? I would argue that US prison statistics point at a massive failure in one, both, or is simply incarcerating people unnecessarily in the first place. This article is touching on the second one specifically.
- risyachka 6y ago
  We don't know what will happen in the future. Prison time at least ensures this won't happen for multiple years, and gives you a chance to think it over. If medical systems he hacked could have hurt people then this is basically conscious intention to hurt others, and it doesn't matter that he didn't. So in this particular case its really hard to stand on his side. If we were talking about some credit card scam - than I would gladly support you that we better try and change a person, and prison is super overkill for this type of crime. But if we are talking about hurting others - this can't be justified.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    Just because something can hurt someone doesn't mean it's conscious intent to harm someone. That's a gigantic leap. That's the difference between negligence and pre meditation.
  - TallGuyShort 6y ago
    I think you're missing the point of the conversation. I'm not excusing or justifying what he did at all. The point of this is, other than our sense of justice and desire to punish someone for doing something bad, what is prison supposed to achieve? I'd like prison to achieve the kind of justice that yes, does provide some sense of justice to victims, but aims to reform criminals and reduce crime. Now, independent of this case, America is clearly failing, because our recidivism rate is (depending on the study you look at) between 40% and 70% over a matter of months and years, which is pretty terrible [1]. Many other first-world countries are achieving far better rates. And for per-capita imprisonment, America is literally the worst in the world according to Wikipedia [2]. Last I checked, a couple of years ago, it was second. But back to this specific article. Yes, this person was convicted of a serious crime and went to jail. But while there they were isolated in a way I consider a violation of the 8th amendment without due process. Not only do I consider this a failing of "justice" in its own right, but it's left this person less able to go and rejoin society in a productive way. Poverty is one of the strongest predictors of criminality: how is this helpful to anyone? Just because you want to punish it and doing so seems fair, doesn't mean the way the US justice system will implement that punishment is doing something good in the end. You can reform that system without just excusing serious crimes. [1] https://atlascorps.org/recidivism-united-states-overview/ https://atlascorps.org/recidivism-united-states-overview/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... edit: I feel like this is the same kind of misunderstanding everyone's having with the #BlackLivesMatter vs #BackTheBlue stuff right now. People complain about the way some police are doing their jobs, and point out ways some other police departments or police in other countries do it much better, and the alternative we consider is no police. What the actual fuck? Can't we just have police tone down the tactics and approach the problem a different way? Since when is saying that police are killing people too easily and too often saying that they just shouldn't have even arrested the person?

FerretFred 6y ago

In the UK, crime against property regularly attracts harsh sentencing; crime against the person not so much. Why? I think it perpetuates our historical values. The Government believes we're expendable, although useful enough to pay tax.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
Not for hacking though rob a bank of 70k you get much longer sentences than a hacker stealing the same amount by hacking email and redirecting a payment. Arguably the UK is soft on hacking as there are several News international Hacks that should be doing 5-10
bluedays 6y ago
It’s because our system of justice is designed to protect Capital, not people.

desstap 6y ago

You are in Asia right? Let’s see China - disappeared for comparing xi jing ping the dictator to Winnie the Pooh, or mention Hong Kong or Taiwan in a postiive light on wechat Singapore - 2 years in jail for selling gum, death penalty for Having drugs Vietnam - 34 years for drug trafficking

non-entity 6y ago
> 2 years in jail for selling gum What do they have against gum?
- detaro 6y ago
  People sticking their used gum in random places, locks etc and breaking stuff with it instead of properly disposing of it.
- fencepost 6y ago
  Ever wondered what those black spots on city sidewalks are? That's gum. All of it is gum that's been spat out then walked on until it acquires a top embedded coating of city grime.
  - coding123 6y ago
    At least for sidewalks it probably had a helpful benefit of keeping it waterproof.
  - IHLayman 6y ago
    Are you seriously justifying a two year prison sentence for selling gum?
    - fencepost 6y ago
      Not at all, but nor do I choose to live in Singapore.
- koheripbal 6y ago

mcv 6y ago

There are problably plenty of dictatorships that punish harsher than the US, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find democratic, freedom-loving countries that punish harsher than the US does. Except maybe when it comes to crimes by rich/important people with good connections.

devalgo 6y ago
Us has the highest verified incarceration per capita in the world and the largest number of total prisoners. So at least by verified numbers it's not really even close, the US is by far the worst. Are the numbers accurate for China or other oppressive regimes? Who knows and North Korea doesn't release numbers but they're thought to be close to or slightly higher than the US' per capita numbers. https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-popul...
- esperent 6y ago
  So probably the only country that has very slight worse numbers in the entire world is North Korea, including all the other dictatorships and otherwise failed states. That's crazy.
  - banads 6y ago
    Looking at US incarceration data over time, the causes are plainly obvious. Mass incarceration began shortly after the civil rights movement was ended, when Nixon launched the War on Drugs in 1971, and then skyrocketed in the 80s as even harsher bipartisan anti drug laws were passed while at the same time the CIA was found to be facilitating the importation of billions of dollars of cocaine into inner cities at the inception point of the crack epidemic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_...
  - devalgo 6y ago
    Land of the Free indeed.
  - 6y ago

libertine 6y ago

Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime? Because you seem to be focusing on the outcome/consequences of someone that committed a crime and got caught. It's not like the punishment is the result of "bad luck" or "unexpected circumstances", it was a deliberate conscious action, right? Also some of these actions aren't a burst of irrationality and poor thought process - they are planned and recurrent, done through stretches of time in a consistent manner. So on one hand, it seems severe punishment, on the other hand, people severely push boundaries while knowing it's wrong and with severe punishment - what would they do if it was less severe? Edit: just to make it clear, I'M NOT SUPPORTING HEAVY SENTENCES.

cptskippy 6y ago
> Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime? Harsh punishment fosters resentment. Isolation is a form of torture. Cutting off prisoners from society makes reintegration and rehabilitation difficult. A person who is incapable of participating in society is going to be pushed to the fringes and will more than likely become a drain on society rather than a contributor. Severity is a huge factor. We don't really have a gradient of consequences, and much of what we do have is limited to privileged individuals. When was the last time you heard of a nonviolent drug offender being given the option to serve his sentence over weekends or in a minimum security facility? Unless you're a wealthy elite with a very expensive team of lawyers, you're going to "Pound me in the ass Prison". We even make jokes about how extreme the conditions are in our prisons and use those poor conditions as deterrent. On top of that, we've privatized our prisons so the operators are constantly looking for opportunities to profit. In the post the author talks about per minute charges for email. Some prisons no longer allow face-to-face visitation and instead require the use of video conferencing technology that costs money. Beyond nickle and diming inmates, they're reducing staffing and quality of everything to save as much money as possible. That in itself is punishing torture.
jmcqk6 6y ago
When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions. Harsh punishments do not seem to actually function as a determent in real life. From my perspective, harsh punishments is more about revenge than anything else. They're a simple way to feel like you're doing the right thing, as long as you don't examine it too closely. And most people don't want to examine it too closely.

masukomi 6y ago

> I don't consider myself a bleeding heart lib but I think that a decade in prison is excessive for most non-violent crimes. you miss the point. prisons are a massive industry with serious lobbying clout. Putting lots of people in prison for a long time isn't a punishment to the prisoner, it's a gift to the prison system. The "punishment" is just a side effect, and the longer it lasts, the richer the people in power get. the harm inflicted by a crime has been detached from the relative prison sentence for a long time. Classic example is getting more time in jail (and loosing your house) for having a marajuana joint than if you raped someone. Fortunately this is changing in the case of marajuana but there are many other drugs for which a single personal dose will still get you more time than rape.

koheripbal 6y ago
10 years of prison time for a single non-violent crime is extremely rare in America. What can happen in certain states, is that repeat offenders are hit with escalating prison terms each time they are convicted (the classic example are the three-strikes-your-out laws), whereby someone can be sentenced to a life term. In those cases, sentences don't translate to actual prison terms since non-violent offenders are routinely paroled. There's still a lot of heavy handedness, and I question the justice of escalating sentencing, but the comments above create a false impression of the US justice system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law
- dylkil 6y ago
  >10 years of prison time for a single non-violent crime is extremely rare in America. Ross Ulbricht got double life imprisonment + 40 years for a non violent crime.
  - selykg 6y ago
    I mean, paying to have someone murdered is, kinda sorta violent.
    - 6y ago

scarface74 6y ago

He hacked central control systems used by utility companies. This could have caused all sorts of disruptions including to traffic lights and hospitals. This was definitely not a "victimless crime".

Frondo 6y ago
Did it? did he cause any of the mayhem you're saying did happen?
Grimm1 6y ago
"could have" but it didn't so it was victimless.
- scarface74 6y ago
  So it’s okay if someone shot someone and missed a vital organ where he could have killed someone but didn’t?
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    That analogy doesn't fit here at all. In your case they intend to cause harm to someone at the start by literally shooting someone. You are presupposing intent and harm of a person and certainly there were neither in the hacker's case. A better analogy, that maybe is more fitting, is you blow through a stoplight and kill someone. That's definitely negligence but there was no intent to hurt someone, the intent was to speed to a destination. The intent here was to use computing resources to launch an attack on another hacker group, nothing that would have intently harmed a person at the clinic. They could have accidentally hurt someone though. And if they did it would be recklessness, certainly negligent , but their intent was not to kill someone. And this is why we in the US have different laws for different situations that take into account negligence, intent, premeditation etc. None of them are alright but the state of mind the person committing the crime was in makes it varying degrees of bad. Someone who accidentally kills someone and someone who plots a cold blooded murder have both taken a life but, the one who killed on accident isn't as heinous or maybe as morally reprehensible. Life is mostly varying shades of grey and not strictly good or bad and that's why society has complex laws to dole out different punishments depending on situation. And finally, the hacker never harmed anyone in this case arguing on what they might have done is an abuse of the system imo. I might get up right now and burn my neighborhood to the ground, but you cant condemn me of it before I actually do it. (I won't)

ajmurmann 6y ago

The recent episode of the Ezra Klein podcast interviews Paul Butler who argues that prison does more harm than good and that we does replace it with a system that actually improves people. He compares our current lease enforcement system to a chokehold: "Butler describes a chokehold as “a process of coercing submission that is self-reinforcing. A chokehold justifies additional pressure on the body because a body does not come into compliance, but a body cannot come into compliance because of the vice grip that is on it.” That, he says, is the black experience in the United States. " https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1081584611?i=1000477131355 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...

nipponese 6y ago

Think about a time you really messed up. Did it take 10 years to come to the conclusion you were wrong?

risyachka 6y ago
If you knew you could hurt others when you intentionally messed up - then probably it is a good idea to lock you up for a few years, because clearly you are very bad at thinking, no matter to what conclusion you will come in 10 minutes. He didn't just slip and hacked medical systems by accident.
- dathinab 6y ago
  It's important to rehabilitate you in whatever way works best. The way people get looked up in the US is known to be one of the worst approaches to rehabilitation, it's bad to a degree that it's making it more likely for you to commit crimes when you come out instead of less because you have become totally out of touch with socity and normal life.
- n_e 6y ago
  > If you knew you could hurt others when you intentionally messed up Not many people are locked up for a few years for a traffic violation

dathinab 6y ago

The US is the country with the highest ratio of their population being imprisoned. The idea behind their long sentences is that if you know you get super long sentences you won't commit crime. Rehabilitation isn't in the agenda. That this is known to not work well is ignored by large part of the government. The lawmaker in the US panicked when making hacking laws as they didn't understood it and people told them that is viable that expert hackers can literally singlehandedly start amagedon by having nuclear missels. Through unreasonable penalties for hacking are not unreasonable. Or at least that's how it looks to me.

ddrt 6y ago

The better question is has it abated the act of these crimes to a significant level? If a 10 year sentence crime is commonplace then that’s a dark mark on the police and judges. If it’s a crime not often committed how can we correlate the punishment to the practice? The incarceration is a punishment for the one who commits the crime, but is also there to set an example. If the example isn’t made then the loop continues. Crime without (known) repercussions is a crime that will continue. If that is okay in the eyes of lawmakers then this is now about money. This is just top of mind thinking, not stating as fact.

nybble41 6y ago
> also there to set an example Imposing a disproportionate punishment "to set an example" makes you more dangerous to society than the person you're punishing. I'm not saying that actions which harm others should not result in repercussions, but the punishment must fit the crime for the law to be legitimate. Even if that occasionally means that some people weigh the risk of getting caught and decide that the odds against being punished are low enough to make the risk worthwhile.

uoylj 6y ago

I mean most of Asia does routinely punish way more severely for non-violent drug offences.