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It blows my mind that there are protestors at San Quentin agitating for prisoners to be released into the public when the prison is one of the biggest cohorts o

It blows my mind that there are protestors at San Quentin agitating for prisoners to be released into the public when the prison is one of the biggest cohorts of COVID in the entire region. They literally let people walk out of prison and get on a public bus, after spendings months in close quarters amidst the worst outbreak in the Bay Area.

gilrain 6y ago
They should be denied justice because that very lack of justice made them vulnerable to infection? What a dystopic catch-22.
- pedalpete 6y ago
  I think your comment would be much stronger if you just stated it directly - "They should not be denied justice because the lack of justice made them vulnerable to infection". - paraphrasing gilrain
codezero 6y ago
It's called compassion. Imagine you catch a dangerous virus, and you are in a place where you have literally zero agency. It's as if you are assuming people who commit crimes, or even people who get sent to jail (they are not a perfect venn diagram) aren't empathetic human beings. Most people in prison don't want to randomly infect and kill people. Most of them do not want to hurt families, or friends. Most of them don't even want to talk or engage with anyone, and here you are, saying they should stay in a cage, accept their fate, get sick because a guard spits on them, and reflect about how they are serving time for selling cannabis, a now legal substance. There are people who are intentionally not wearing masks, and you are assuming people leaving prison will not actively try to protect themselves and others, think about that. Also, that they are put on busses is what the state is doing, not the former prisoners. They could do many other things to mitigate risk, and it's not on the prisoners, who have no money, or agency to have responsibility for that.
- psyfactcheck 6y ago
  > It's as if you are assuming people who commit crimes, or even people who get sent to jail (they are not a perfect venn diagram) aren't empathetic human beings. Empirically speaking, as compared to the general population. Prisoners are less empathetic. Empathic concern is highly correlated with agreeableness and agreeableness is lower in prisoners than the general population. "Results of this study showed that big five personality traits accounted for 19.4%, 18.1%, 30.2% of the variance in three dimensions of empathy, namely, perspective taking, empathic concern and personal distress, respectively. Specifically, agreeableness had a strong positive association with empathic concern..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5302826/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5302826/ "Both tests found that while prisoners were lower in agreeableness and extraversion than non-prisoners they were also substantially higher in conscientiousness than the general population..." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201612/the-paradox-conscientious-prisoners https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-els...
  - codezero 6y ago
    ~I didn't read this paper, but~ I wonder how this compares to the same populate before and after they serve time in prison/jail. I also wonder how such studies of Chinese prisons apply to prison populations in the US and elsewhere. Edit: I did read this paper a while ago.
deleted 6y ago
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munk-a 6y ago
If only they had acted earlier - before keeping those folks in such close quarters during an epidemic.

gilrain 6y ago

They should be denied justice because that very lack of justice made them vulnerable to infection? What a dystopic catch-22.

pedalpete 6y ago
I think your comment would be much stronger if you just stated it directly - "They should not be denied justice because the lack of justice made them vulnerable to infection". - paraphrasing gilrain

codezero 6y ago

It's called compassion. Imagine you catch a dangerous virus, and you are in a place where you have literally zero agency. It's as if you are assuming people who commit crimes, or even people who get sent to jail (they are not a perfect venn diagram) aren't empathetic human beings. Most people in prison don't want to randomly infect and kill people. Most of them do not want to hurt families, or friends. Most of them don't even want to talk or engage with anyone, and here you are, saying they should stay in a cage, accept their fate, get sick because a guard spits on them, and reflect about how they are serving time for selling cannabis, a now legal substance. There are people who are intentionally not wearing masks, and you are assuming people leaving prison will not actively try to protect themselves and others, think about that. Also, that they are put on busses is what the state is doing, not the former prisoners. They could do many other things to mitigate risk, and it's not on the prisoners, who have no money, or agency to have responsibility for that.

psyfactcheck 6y ago
> It's as if you are assuming people who commit crimes, or even people who get sent to jail (they are not a perfect venn diagram) aren't empathetic human beings. Empirically speaking, as compared to the general population. Prisoners are less empathetic. Empathic concern is highly correlated with agreeableness and agreeableness is lower in prisoners than the general population. "Results of this study showed that big five personality traits accounted for 19.4%, 18.1%, 30.2% of the variance in three dimensions of empathy, namely, perspective taking, empathic concern and personal distress, respectively. Specifically, agreeableness had a strong positive association with empathic concern..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5302826/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5302826/ "Both tests found that while prisoners were lower in agreeableness and extraversion than non-prisoners they were also substantially higher in conscientiousness than the general population..." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201612/the-paradox-conscientious-prisoners https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-els...
- codezero 6y ago
  ~I didn't read this paper, but~ I wonder how this compares to the same populate before and after they serve time in prison/jail. I also wonder how such studies of Chinese prisons apply to prison populations in the US and elsewhere. Edit: I did read this paper a while ago.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

munk-a 6y ago

If only they had acted earlier - before keeping those folks in such close quarters during an epidemic.