7 ms·

Most of us have been the victim of some kind of crime at some point in our lives. The many times it's happened to me, I also considered the notion of empathy:

by bm3719 4y ago

Most of us have been the victim of some kind of crime at some point in our lives. The many times it's happened to me, I also considered the notion of empathy: namely that the criminal lacked it for me, the victim. Not saying the current system is in any way an optimal solution or even close to it, but one thing it does provide is a lot of time for those who have acted without empathy to reflect on their misdeeds.

mozman 4y ago
It also puts a lot of money in the pockets of those who run private prisons. The incentives are perverse. It’s also not about rehabilitation, it’s about penance but that rarely materializes. Once you go to prison you learn how to be a better criminal. You can’t get a job because of your record. Far too easy to turn back to crime and land right back inside. It’s cruel. It has nothing to do with reflection. Inhumane at best.
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  Private prisons should be abolished. I cannot understand how we as a society accept the notion of a system that financially incentivizes incarcerating people. It's abhorrent. Does any other developed country do this?
  - abfan1127 4y ago
    private prisons maintain costs far better than public prisons. The issue you implicitly refer to is prison contracts state "minimum payments when populations drop below [some] threshold". Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books. The real issue is the concept of imprisonment ought be about putting people who truly can not be trusted to be "at large". Prison shouldn't be a punishment. There are other alternatives.
    - mozman 4y ago
      Private prisons shift the burden onto the inmates and often have subpar services such as food and cell hygiene. There’s a lot of hyperbole and incentives for the narrative to sound better than it is. Unfortunately I have experience from a family member. See it for yourself if this is an issue you care about.
    - kingkawn 4y ago
      Private prisons only have lower costs if you exclude the eventual, and inevitable, intervention by the Justice dept to fix their inhumane conditions.
    - muwtyhg 4y ago
      > Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books. Have you heard of the "Kids For Cash" scandal? Private prisons actively try to get more people incarcerated by bribing judges. The judges are complicit too, but the private prisons are absolutely trying to "funnel them into their pocket books"
      - jonfw 4y ago
        Any evidence that this continues to happen? Any system with any amount of scale will have bad actors. It’s one very bad data point, but certainly not enough evidence that the whole system is corrupt
    - jjeaff 4y ago
      I know of at least one case where a judge was being paid by a private prison system to send people to them. I suspect that was not and is not the only case of that happening. Big money has a way of worming itself into other systems and manipulating them for its own benefit.
      - alex_sf 4y ago
        One case is the definition of 'not systemic'.
- alex_sf 4y ago
  The private prison argument is mostly nonsense; between state and federal, only 8% of prisoners are incarcerated in private facilities. [1] [1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...
  - mozman 4y ago
    Harmful viewpoint. If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely. That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons. I encourage everyone to go volunteer and talk to inmates. Look at unicore. Total scam.
    - alex_sf 4y ago
      > If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely. There's no objective measures showing that private prisons are somehow more 'inhumane' than government-run facilities. > That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons It is, so there's no excuse to not have some actual data to go by, compared to anecdotal experiences. > Look at unicore. Total scam. UNICOR is ran by the BOP. It has nothing to do with private vs public prisons.
    - tikhonj 4y ago
      Far more than 8% of inmates live subhumanly because public prisons are awful too. Focusing on private prisons distracts us from how much of the problem is systemic and political—cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency, being "tough on crime" and pure historical momentum. It's not a "follow the money" problem, it's a "politicians and voters" problem.
      - alex_sf 4y ago
        > cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency And you would instead promote.. what? 'Rehabilition'? These arguments always show an absurd amount of empathy for the criminal, and little-to-none for the victims and (statistically extremely likely) future victims. There is a large number of people that simply cannot function in society. If they aren't violent, cool: I have no problem with anyone living how they like. If they are violent, then they need to be removed from potential victims.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  It's also about keeping violent people off the streets. This guy killed someone. He mentions it so briefly it's as though he thinks it's a minor detail. That person he killed was a real human. They were someone's kid, someone's sibling, someone's parent perhaps, someone's friend. He also seems to behave poorly in prison, still, after 30 years. He flippantly notes a "riot" as though it was something that happened to him. He brags about his abs. I'm not a psychologist but this guy reads like a stock standard psychopath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy For many people (including myself), it's not about rehab, it's not about penance, it's not about vengeance, it's about keeping someone like this away from everyone else.
  - kortex 4y ago
    That's reading quite a lot into an article which I don't believe supports those positions. We know nothing about the circumstances of the murder, nor of the riot, nor of his upbringing. There's absolutely nothing in this article to even suggest he's a psychopath. For all we know, he was in the wrong hood at the wrong time, and had to adapt to "prison life" because that is the culture that is foist upon him. I'm not saying he's not a psychopath, but that's not an evidence-based assertion here.
    - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
      >> I'm not a psychologist but this guy reads like a stock standard psychopath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy This isn't a strong assertion and hence doesn't need a water tight argument or strong evidence. It notes I'm not an expert in the field, and that I'm basing the judgement on the writing only. Not everything is an academic paper or a judgement from a jury. That being said, read the section on "core traits" in that link and read the article again. Lack of remorse... arrogance (the abs section?) and impulsive behavior (he murdered someone and is in and out of the hole for 30 years....).
      - tigen 4y ago
        Agreed. The article displays a "me vs. the world" attitude and the whole thing aims to evoke admiration and sympathy in the reader. There's no evidence of any true human empathy. Who gives a flying f__k about his abdominal muscles?
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Private prisons are a problem, but as other posters mention, a sub-double-digit percent of our prisoners are in them. One of the real problems, it seems to me, is that pesky little clause in the 13th amendment allowing slavery as punishment for crimes. The government leases out prisons full of people as a work force to private industry. There are many industries and companies in the US that are now dependent on what is essentially slave labor - and no, 16 cents an hour doesn't somehow morally absolve us of the problem.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Yeah, they use the GEO facilities mainly for illegals now, because illegals have less ability to hold GEO accountable and navigate the overlycomplicated prison systems required to access your rights (and you must exhaust local administrative remedies through the Warden and then the BOP before you have access to the Courts). And that is considered progress in the eyes of the American system because it's all about appearances, not about actually following the Constitution. https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-93-number-5/jurisdiction-exhaustion-of-administrative-remedies-and-constitutional-claims/#:~:text=The%20doctrine%20of%20exhaustion%20of,system%20and%20autonomous%20administrative%20state https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-93-number-5/juris....
  - derekp7 4y ago
    I always felt that private prisons could work great, if specific incentive laws are passed. First, give the inmate a choice of which prison to attend, so they are competing against each other based on reputation. Second, if someone re-offends and ends back in prison, then the original prison housing them would be on the hook paying for their stay at the new prison. This gives private prisons an incentive to properly rehabilitate by making sure the prisoner comes out in a better situation than they went in (education, therapy, etc).
texaslonghorn5 4y ago
If it's a repeat problem, then the prison time isn't working, perhaps the best solution would be some other rehabilitative way to learn empathy...
kingkawn 4y ago
Or for those without empathy to find out that the society too, beneath it all, has no empathy
PheonixPharts 4y ago
There's a bit of irony in the tone of this comment since it shows no capacity for empathy for those who commit crimes, most significantly in the sense that you clearly believe that prison is for others who are not you. I've been the victim of a range of crimes over my life including assault and robbery. I particularly remember the one case where I was robbed from a studio apartment while I was sleeping. I was, obviously, quite rattled. I remember looking for other stories of this happening to people and was surprised how many people viewed being robbed as an assault on their dignity and expressed incredible desire for revenge. I just couldn't muster these same feelings. While my day was ruined by the evening I could already feel my life coming back together: the lock had been changed, I cancelled all my credit cards, has a replacement license on it's way to me, and all in all was just out about $20 that had been in my wallet. I had a realization then that while my life was already coming back together the life of the person who robbed me was perpetually in the state of chaos that I had felt that morning. I high risk, low reward robbery like that is typically for drug money, and undoubtedly whatever fix that robber had gotten for my $20 was long faded and they were back putting themselves at risk. The key insight that hit me was that that momentary break in my sense of security that morning, that's what the person who robbed me constantly lives in. That person goes to bed with the same sense of insecurity I woke up in. But my security is only disrupted on these rare occasions where our lives our inverted, but my default is comfort and theirs is perpetually in that state baring that brief moment where they have enough money for that next fix. I earnestly felt no need for any vengeance as any desire for vengeance was already dealt out by reality. What more punishment could I wish on someone than for them to wake up every morning feeling the same as I did for just that one.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  >There's a bit of irony in the tone of this comment since it shows no capacity for empathy for those who commit crimes, most significantly in the sense that you clearly believe that prison is for others who are not you. If you believe that there are too many people already the death penalty for j-walking isn't a punishment it's a policy to keep the rest of us alive past 2100.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  This is silly. I was robbed in the Tenderloin in December and had to spend days in the ICU. The cops won’t do anything. I have permanent brain damage and have lost all progress I made working on my C-PTSD from childhood sexual abuse. The guys who attacked me don’t live a life of chaos. It’s a job for them and the market is the most lucrative it has ever been.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sangnoir 4y ago
> Most of us have been the victim of some kind of crime at some point in our lives. The many times it's happened to me, I also considered the notion of empathy: namely that the criminal lacked it for me, the victim. Most of us have broken multiple laws without being aware of it (or casually aware of it) - the idea of separating citizenry between "criminals" and "non-criminal victims" is too binary, as root comment mentioned.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
standardUser 4y ago
The current system is an anti-solution, causing more problems than it solves and failing to succeed at even it's most basic purposes. Unless someone is an imminent violent threat they should not be detained in any form for long periods of time, and those who are detained should be treated in a way intended to improve their situation and remove the need for incarceration.

by bm3719 4y ago

mozman 4y ago

It also puts a lot of money in the pockets of those who run private prisons. The incentives are perverse. It’s also not about rehabilitation, it’s about penance but that rarely materializes. Once you go to prison you learn how to be a better criminal. You can’t get a job because of your record. Far too easy to turn back to crime and land right back inside. It’s cruel. It has nothing to do with reflection. Inhumane at best.

insane_dreamer 4y ago
Private prisons should be abolished. I cannot understand how we as a society accept the notion of a system that financially incentivizes incarcerating people. It's abhorrent. Does any other developed country do this?
- abfan1127 4y ago
  private prisons maintain costs far better than public prisons. The issue you implicitly refer to is prison contracts state "minimum payments when populations drop below [some] threshold". Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books. The real issue is the concept of imprisonment ought be about putting people who truly can not be trusted to be "at large". Prison shouldn't be a punishment. There are other alternatives.
  - mozman 4y ago
    Private prisons shift the burden onto the inmates and often have subpar services such as food and cell hygiene. There’s a lot of hyperbole and incentives for the narrative to sound better than it is. Unfortunately I have experience from a family member. See it for yourself if this is an issue you care about.
  - kingkawn 4y ago
    Private prisons only have lower costs if you exclude the eventual, and inevitable, intervention by the Justice dept to fix their inhumane conditions.
  - muwtyhg 4y ago
    > Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books. Have you heard of the "Kids For Cash" scandal? Private prisons actively try to get more people incarcerated by bribing judges. The judges are complicit too, but the private prisons are absolutely trying to "funnel them into their pocket books"
    - jonfw 4y ago
      Any evidence that this continues to happen? Any system with any amount of scale will have bad actors. It’s one very bad data point, but certainly not enough evidence that the whole system is corrupt
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    I know of at least one case where a judge was being paid by a private prison system to send people to them. I suspect that was not and is not the only case of that happening. Big money has a way of worming itself into other systems and manipulating them for its own benefit.
    - alex_sf 4y ago
      One case is the definition of 'not systemic'.
alex_sf 4y ago
The private prison argument is mostly nonsense; between state and federal, only 8% of prisoners are incarcerated in private facilities. [1] [1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...
- mozman 4y ago
  Harmful viewpoint. If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely. That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons. I encourage everyone to go volunteer and talk to inmates. Look at unicore. Total scam.
  - alex_sf 4y ago
    > If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely. There's no objective measures showing that private prisons are somehow more 'inhumane' than government-run facilities. > That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons It is, so there's no excuse to not have some actual data to go by, compared to anecdotal experiences. > Look at unicore. Total scam. UNICOR is ran by the BOP. It has nothing to do with private vs public prisons.
  - tikhonj 4y ago
    Far more than 8% of inmates live subhumanly because public prisons are awful too. Focusing on private prisons distracts us from how much of the problem is systemic and political—cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency, being "tough on crime" and pure historical momentum. It's not a "follow the money" problem, it's a "politicians and voters" problem.
    - alex_sf 4y ago
      > cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency And you would instead promote.. what? 'Rehabilition'? These arguments always show an absurd amount of empathy for the criminal, and little-to-none for the victims and (statistically extremely likely) future victims. There is a large number of people that simply cannot function in society. If they aren't violent, cool: I have no problem with anyone living how they like. If they are violent, then they need to be removed from potential victims.
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
It's also about keeping violent people off the streets. This guy killed someone. He mentions it so briefly it's as though he thinks it's a minor detail. That person he killed was a real human. They were someone's kid, someone's sibling, someone's parent perhaps, someone's friend. He also seems to behave poorly in prison, still, after 30 years. He flippantly notes a "riot" as though it was something that happened to him. He brags about his abs. I'm not a psychologist but this guy reads like a stock standard psychopath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy For many people (including myself), it's not about rehab, it's not about penance, it's not about vengeance, it's about keeping someone like this away from everyone else.
- kortex 4y ago
  That's reading quite a lot into an article which I don't believe supports those positions. We know nothing about the circumstances of the murder, nor of the riot, nor of his upbringing. There's absolutely nothing in this article to even suggest he's a psychopath. For all we know, he was in the wrong hood at the wrong time, and had to adapt to "prison life" because that is the culture that is foist upon him. I'm not saying he's not a psychopath, but that's not an evidence-based assertion here.
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    >> I'm not a psychologist but this guy reads like a stock standard psychopath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy This isn't a strong assertion and hence doesn't need a water tight argument or strong evidence. It notes I'm not an expert in the field, and that I'm basing the judgement on the writing only. Not everything is an academic paper or a judgement from a jury. That being said, read the section on "core traits" in that link and read the article again. Lack of remorse... arrogance (the abs section?) and impulsive behavior (he murdered someone and is in and out of the hole for 30 years....).
    - tigen 4y ago
      Agreed. The article displays a "me vs. the world" attitude and the whole thing aims to evoke admiration and sympathy in the reader. There's no evidence of any true human empathy. Who gives a flying f__k about his abdominal muscles?
rjbwork 4y ago
Private prisons are a problem, but as other posters mention, a sub-double-digit percent of our prisoners are in them. One of the real problems, it seems to me, is that pesky little clause in the 13th amendment allowing slavery as punishment for crimes. The government leases out prisons full of people as a work force to private industry. There are many industries and companies in the US that are now dependent on what is essentially slave labor - and no, 16 cents an hour doesn't somehow morally absolve us of the problem.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Yeah, they use the GEO facilities mainly for illegals now, because illegals have less ability to hold GEO accountable and navigate the overlycomplicated prison systems required to access your rights (and you must exhaust local administrative remedies through the Warden and then the BOP before you have access to the Courts). And that is considered progress in the eyes of the American system because it's all about appearances, not about actually following the Constitution. https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-93-number-5/jurisdiction-exhaustion-of-administrative-remedies-and-constitutional-claims/#:~:text=The%20doctrine%20of%20exhaustion%20of,system%20and%20autonomous%20administrative%20state https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-93-number-5/juris....
- derekp7 4y ago
  I always felt that private prisons could work great, if specific incentive laws are passed. First, give the inmate a choice of which prison to attend, so they are competing against each other based on reputation. Second, if someone re-offends and ends back in prison, then the original prison housing them would be on the hook paying for their stay at the new prison. This gives private prisons an incentive to properly rehabilitate by making sure the prisoner comes out in a better situation than they went in (education, therapy, etc).

texaslonghorn5 4y ago

If it's a repeat problem, then the prison time isn't working, perhaps the best solution would be some other rehabilitative way to learn empathy...

kingkawn 4y ago

Or for those without empathy to find out that the society too, beneath it all, has no empathy

PheonixPharts 4y ago

There's a bit of irony in the tone of this comment since it shows no capacity for empathy for those who commit crimes, most significantly in the sense that you clearly believe that prison is for others who are not you. I've been the victim of a range of crimes over my life including assault and robbery. I particularly remember the one case where I was robbed from a studio apartment while I was sleeping. I was, obviously, quite rattled. I remember looking for other stories of this happening to people and was surprised how many people viewed being robbed as an assault on their dignity and expressed incredible desire for revenge. I just couldn't muster these same feelings. While my day was ruined by the evening I could already feel my life coming back together: the lock had been changed, I cancelled all my credit cards, has a replacement license on it's way to me, and all in all was just out about $20 that had been in my wallet. I had a realization then that while my life was already coming back together the life of the person who robbed me was perpetually in the state of chaos that I had felt that morning. I high risk, low reward robbery like that is typically for drug money, and undoubtedly whatever fix that robber had gotten for my $20 was long faded and they were back putting themselves at risk. The key insight that hit me was that that momentary break in my sense of security that morning, that's what the person who robbed me constantly lives in. That person goes to bed with the same sense of insecurity I woke up in. But my security is only disrupted on these rare occasions where our lives our inverted, but my default is comfort and theirs is perpetually in that state baring that brief moment where they have enough money for that next fix. I earnestly felt no need for any vengeance as any desire for vengeance was already dealt out by reality. What more punishment could I wish on someone than for them to wake up every morning feeling the same as I did for just that one.

thrown_22 4y ago
>There's a bit of irony in the tone of this comment since it shows no capacity for empathy for those who commit crimes, most significantly in the sense that you clearly believe that prison is for others who are not you. If you believe that there are too many people already the death penalty for j-walking isn't a punishment it's a policy to keep the rest of us alive past 2100.
atdrummond 4y ago
This is silly. I was robbed in the Tenderloin in December and had to spend days in the ICU. The cops won’t do anything. I have permanent brain damage and have lost all progress I made working on my C-PTSD from childhood sexual abuse. The guys who attacked me don’t live a life of chaos. It’s a job for them and the market is the most lucrative it has ever been.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sangnoir 4y ago

> Most of us have been the victim of some kind of crime at some point in our lives. The many times it's happened to me, I also considered the notion of empathy: namely that the criminal lacked it for me, the victim. Most of us have broken multiple laws without being aware of it (or casually aware of it) - the idea of separating citizenry between "criminals" and "non-criminal victims" is too binary, as root comment mentioned.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

standardUser 4y ago

The current system is an anti-solution, causing more problems than it solves and failing to succeed at even it's most basic purposes. Unless someone is an imminent violent threat they should not be detained in any form for long periods of time, and those who are detained should be treated in a way intended to improve their situation and remove the need for incarceration.