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Having someone else do your prison time was fairly common. Now with more cooperation between organizations and improved biometrics it has dropped. Different pe

Having someone else do your prison time was fairly common. Now with more cooperation between organizations and improved biometrics it has dropped. Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.

drpgq 6y ago
Jeez I’m wondering what the going price would be for that today.
- warent 6y ago
  Probably more of a price in terms of favors and relationships than money. e.g. If a mob could somehow bust you out then you belong to them for some percent of the prison time. Just a guess though.
  - eru 6y ago
    Do you mean busting out as in a violent prison break, or having the right connections and bribes and intimidation behind the scenes?
- kbenson 6y ago
  I've seen reports that it's somewhat common for the rich in China[1], so there might be some info on what it costs there, and maybe some extrapolation could be made. Either the "serve prison in lieu of me" or "say you were the one that committed the crime" version. There are weird perverse incentives at play in some of the laws of criminal justice system in China.[2] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 (warning, the linked article describes very disturbing behavior and specific instances)
  - taneq 6y ago
    This reminds me of the classic phrase, “the butler did it”. It took me ages to realise that butlers aren’t naturally villainous, but rather were expected to take the fall for any malfeasance committed by the family.
    - effingwewt 6y ago
      edit- after reading up on this, I'm not sure where you got your information from but everything I could find shows it to just be the common detective/mystery trope.
      - fouc 6y ago
        It just follows logically that historically some powerful families would have paid off a fall guy if necessary, and they could have used a butler in some cases. This could've been the origin of the term, before it even showed up in murder mysteries. Perhaps from the 1700s
        coldtea 6y ago
        >This could've been the origin of the term, before it even showed up in murder mysteries. Perhaps from the 1700s The thing is, it doesn't show up in murder mysteries themselves (except only as a fourth-wall breaking meta-reference to the trope). It originates with murder mystery readers -- as the name of a trope.
        rhizome 6y ago
        I bet a good butler is much harder to find than a patsy.
        eru 6y ago
        Yes. Though you need a patsy who would have conceivably eg have access to the fancy cars.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
- haramboy 6y ago
  Per a friend still happening in India and affordable to a surprising percentage of the population
WalterBright 6y ago
Positively identifying people was very difficult before fingerprinting came along. The police used all kinds of schemes of erratic accuracy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- alexpotato 6y ago
  Several years ago I read the book Fingerprints by Colin Beavan [0] and it was really eye opening how different life was before we had modern forms of identification. Example 1: In countries that had little formal legal structures and rudimentary identification (e.g. India in the early 1800s), it was incredibly easy to be a criminal and just move from town to town while acquiring new identities. In other words, there was a huge upside to becoming a career criminal since it was both difficult to catch you (no forensic evidence) and even if you were caught, you could just reboot your life. Example 2: He mentions a case where a gentleman was charged TWICE for crimes that were later found to have been committed by someone else who had only a passing resemblance. I read this book before Twitter/Facebook became ubiquitous and every like, share, comment was public knowledge but even at the time, it was mind boggling how different "identity" was back then. 0 - https://amzn.to/3kDqEgj https://amzn.to/3kDqEgj
  - eatingCake 6y ago
    The flipside of this would be that anyone from out-of-town would be shunned under the assumption that they had left their previous town for negative reasons.
  - eru 6y ago
    That's probably part of the reason the branding of the hand worked reasonably well in practice in Britain. If you plead the 'benefit of the clergy', you were branded, so you didn't do it again.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Isn't photo ID much more relevant for the above than fingerprints? Usually fingerprints are used to investigate crime scenes, not to ascertain identity of an already known person (you don't normally ascertain that this person here is Alex A by their fingerprints - you use them to see if Alex A was in the room where the jewelry got stolen).
texasbigdata 6y ago
This seems similar to the Catholic concept of buying indulgences as a carbon offset type concept against sins. Pay to play
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  That is a common misunderstanding of canonical Catholic teaching about "indulgentia a culpa et a poena". Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.
  - friendlybus 6y ago
    Until Teztel started selling carbon offsets for dead polluters. An offered coin springs a dead soul from purgatory.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      Sounds like a new ICO opportunity :) Would be interesting if there were a climate change coin... oh wait, https://earth-token.com/ https://earth-token.com/
      - schoen 6y ago
        The obvious response is that every PoW coin is a climate change coin. :-(
  - el_nahual 6y ago
    An even bigger misconception is that indulgences were actually bought on behalf of _someone else_. They were meant to address a very real problem with catholic heaven/hell theology: What if I belong in heaven, but somene I love, who I can't possibly imagine spending eternity without, belongs in hell? Indulgences were originally meant to address this: the party that belonged in heaven could, through their sacrifice, guarantee a spot in heaven for their loved one. It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
PrinceKropotkin 6y ago
How do you, personally, perceive of things that have changed?

drpgq 6y ago

Jeez I’m wondering what the going price would be for that today.

warent 6y ago
Probably more of a price in terms of favors and relationships than money. e.g. If a mob could somehow bust you out then you belong to them for some percent of the prison time. Just a guess though.
- eru 6y ago
  Do you mean busting out as in a violent prison break, or having the right connections and bribes and intimidation behind the scenes?
kbenson 6y ago
I've seen reports that it's somewhat common for the rich in China[1], so there might be some info on what it costs there, and maybe some extrapolation could be made. Either the "serve prison in lieu of me" or "say you were the one that committed the crime" version. There are weird perverse incentives at play in some of the laws of criminal justice system in China.[2] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 (warning, the linked article describes very disturbing behavior and specific instances)
- taneq 6y ago
  This reminds me of the classic phrase, “the butler did it”. It took me ages to realise that butlers aren’t naturally villainous, but rather were expected to take the fall for any malfeasance committed by the family.
  - effingwewt 6y ago
    edit- after reading up on this, I'm not sure where you got your information from but everything I could find shows it to just be the common detective/mystery trope.
    - fouc 6y ago
      It just follows logically that historically some powerful families would have paid off a fall guy if necessary, and they could have used a butler in some cases. This could've been the origin of the term, before it even showed up in murder mysteries. Perhaps from the 1700s
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >This could've been the origin of the term, before it even showed up in murder mysteries. Perhaps from the 1700s The thing is, it doesn't show up in murder mysteries themselves (except only as a fourth-wall breaking meta-reference to the trope). It originates with murder mystery readers -- as the name of a trope.
      - rhizome 6y ago
        I bet a good butler is much harder to find than a patsy.
        eru 6y ago
        Yes. Though you need a patsy who would have conceivably eg have access to the fancy cars.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
haramboy 6y ago
Per a friend still happening in India and affordable to a surprising percentage of the population

WalterBright 6y ago

Positively identifying people was very difficult before fingerprinting came along. The police used all kinds of schemes of erratic accuracy.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
alexpotato 6y ago
Several years ago I read the book Fingerprints by Colin Beavan [0] and it was really eye opening how different life was before we had modern forms of identification. Example 1: In countries that had little formal legal structures and rudimentary identification (e.g. India in the early 1800s), it was incredibly easy to be a criminal and just move from town to town while acquiring new identities. In other words, there was a huge upside to becoming a career criminal since it was both difficult to catch you (no forensic evidence) and even if you were caught, you could just reboot your life. Example 2: He mentions a case where a gentleman was charged TWICE for crimes that were later found to have been committed by someone else who had only a passing resemblance. I read this book before Twitter/Facebook became ubiquitous and every like, share, comment was public knowledge but even at the time, it was mind boggling how different "identity" was back then. 0 - https://amzn.to/3kDqEgj https://amzn.to/3kDqEgj
- eatingCake 6y ago
  The flipside of this would be that anyone from out-of-town would be shunned under the assumption that they had left their previous town for negative reasons.
- eru 6y ago
  That's probably part of the reason the branding of the hand worked reasonably well in practice in Britain. If you plead the 'benefit of the clergy', you were branded, so you didn't do it again.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Isn't photo ID much more relevant for the above than fingerprints? Usually fingerprints are used to investigate crime scenes, not to ascertain identity of an already known person (you don't normally ascertain that this person here is Alex A by their fingerprints - you use them to see if Alex A was in the room where the jewelry got stolen).

texasbigdata 6y ago

This seems similar to the Catholic concept of buying indulgences as a carbon offset type concept against sins. Pay to play

mensetmanusman 6y ago
That is a common misunderstanding of canonical Catholic teaching about "indulgentia a culpa et a poena". Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.
- friendlybus 6y ago
  Until Teztel started selling carbon offsets for dead polluters. An offered coin springs a dead soul from purgatory.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Sounds like a new ICO opportunity :) Would be interesting if there were a climate change coin... oh wait, https://earth-token.com/ https://earth-token.com/
    - schoen 6y ago
      The obvious response is that every PoW coin is a climate change coin. :-(
- el_nahual 6y ago
  An even bigger misconception is that indulgences were actually bought on behalf of _someone else_. They were meant to address a very real problem with catholic heaven/hell theology: What if I belong in heaven, but somene I love, who I can't possibly imagine spending eternity without, belongs in hell? Indulgences were originally meant to address this: the party that belonged in heaven could, through their sacrifice, guarantee a spot in heaven for their loved one. It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.

PrinceKropotkin 6y ago

How do you, personally, perceive of things that have changed?