8 ms·

My uncle has been in and out of prison for 30 years after his drunk dad sent him to jail as a 17 year old for writing a check in his dads name. The stupidest p

• tokai 3y ago
  Doesn't it only take a couple of weeks to get a drivers license in the US?
  • zikduruqe 3y ago
    No. You walk in and take a written test. If you pass, then you have to take a driving test. Assuming that you have a car. Or a friend with a car. Or money to rent a car. Assuming that you can find a car to drive, you will take a lap around the block to demonstrate that you can steer, stop and maybe parallel park. The barrier to entry is pretty low.
    • r2_pilot 3y ago
      Good luck renting a car without a driver's license.
      • mbg721 3y ago
        Driving schools will give in-car lessons to adults, and let you use their car for the test, for a fee; that's the form of "renting a car" that's useful for this case. In my state the requirements are looser for adults than for teenagers, under the assumption that adults are generally more responsible or have driven before.
    • mahathu 3y ago
      In Germany, you take individual driving lessons and group classes on traffic rules including a mandatory first aid class.
      • 11235813213455 3y ago
        in Holland, you get a bicycle and never regret it
        • mahathu 3y ago
          That's even more based and walkabilitypilled.
        • pdntspa 3y ago
          Holland is also pretty damn flat
        • hindsightbias 3y ago
          Of the 50 states, we actually have one smaller than Holland.
          • BariumBlue 3y ago
            Are you implying that the US is cursed, forever pathologically unable to have bikeable places, because it's too large? If only the US was smaller...
      • rootusrootus 3y ago
        This is very common in the US, even though it is not typically mandated. Technically you can just go take the test if you're up to it, and some people do exactly that with no more training than they got from mom & dad. But a lot of kids take the classroom route. Not every parent wants to teach.
    • ROTMetro 3y ago
      You are required to take and pass paid courses to get a license in most states these days. It was a huge barrier to a lot of the guys in the halfway house. Just coordinating getting to these classes via the bus was a pain. Also, if you return 15 minutes late to the halfway house the US Marshals come pick you up and back to jail you go, so missing a bus has pretty steep consequences that make people avoid any additional bus trips such as getting to drivers training class (you are required to work so you have to risk the bus at least twice a day no matter what).
  • antisthenes 3y ago
    No. And definitely not for a CDL.
    • tokai 3y ago
      Just looked it up. The CDL is on average acquired over seven weeks. Not quite a couple of weeks, but not a long time either.
      • antisthenes 3y ago
        It costs several thousand dollars in fees and 7 weeks. That's a lot for an ex-convict.
  • Someone1234 3y ago
    With no driving experience? No… And they were talking about a commercial license anyway.
  • sporedro 3y ago
    You need to pass a road test which they are pretty picky with along with a written test. The written test had a lot of random crap you would never use imo. Honestly not too difficult but I imagine it might be for someone in and out of prison life. I don’t know much about prison/jail but I do agree it should focus on re-habilitation they should have systems to help you study and get a drivers license while in there for example.
• hospitalJail 3y ago
  I always wondered why they wouldn't let inmates create value with their skills. Seemingly manual labor that could be automated by a bunch of Undergrad Engineers that wouldn't even qualify as a capstone project. I understand if you have offline computers. I understand if the computer needs to be behind a plexiglass wall and the mouse and keyboard need to be chained down. But quickly these will pay for themselves. Data Entry pays significantly more, I imagine there are plenty of white collar criminals with tech skills that could make $30-$100/hr. Even if you only let the inmate keep 20%, the inmate is getting skills, money, the system is getting extra money, the company getting the data entry is getting cheap labor. I can't see too many downsides other than the initial set up cost. Pretty sure the right side of the aisle will see the $$$ and approve. The left side should also see the $, but also know how humane and potentially rehabilitating.
  • jackmott42 3y ago
    If the prison system keeps ANY of the money you immediately get incentives for abuse and the unimprisoned may not like having their jobs taken by lowball prison laborl
  • hzay 3y ago
    > Even if you only let the inmate keep 20%, the inmate is getting skills, money, the system is getting extra money, the company getting the data entry is getting cheap labor. The inmate is also getting dignity and practice at regular life, which might convert a % of them to non-criminal life (I forgot the word for it).
    • giraffe_lady 3y ago
      There is not much dignity in being forced to work while you are only allowed to keep 20% of what you earn.
      • bluGill 3y ago
        After rent and food the average person gets a lot less than 20%.
• brvsft 3y ago
  The fact that your uncle never bothered trying to pass a driving test isn't the justice system's fault. He's not a victim or puppet without any agency in his life.
  • e-clinton 3y ago
    I’d argue that it is. The system is suppose to be helping rehabilitate inmates so that they fit better in society…. The focus needs to be helping inmates see how they can otherwise create value.
    • quacked 3y ago
      Why do you think the system is supposed to rehabilitate? I would argue that the system is supposed to separate people who cannot be trusted in society from the rest of us. I think the major failure of the justice system (apart from corruption and dishonesty) is the failure to keep prisoners safe from one another. Rehabilitation should happen on your own recognizance, the system should exist to keep you exiled from people who didn't commit your crime. (I do believe that rehabilitation, or more accurately in the case of people who never were instilled with a moral compass, "habilitation", is often possible and always desirable, but I don't think the system itself can or should be entrusted with that responsibility. It should just make the conditions for habilitation possible, and then outside society can intervene as it will.)
      • prottog 3y ago
        > Rehabilitation should happen on your own recognizance I agree. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. There is still legitimate debate on how much role society has to play in making sure it's as nice as possible for the horse to get to water. Obviously in GP's uncle's case an injustice was done to him (by his father, it sounds like), but it is still up to him as an adult to become a productive member of society. I like the way some put it, when talking about people from troubled backgrounds (whether from abusive parents, mental issues, what have you): it wasn't your fault, but it's still your responsibility to deal with it, once you are an adult.
• ravenstine 3y ago
  The whole idea of putting a man in a box with other criminals so he can "think about what he did" seems like a complete failure, besides the fact that he's kept away from the public so he can't commit more crimes. It's one thing when someone has life in prison without the possibility of parole, but if a man is eventually going to be let out, what good does it really do to prevent him from being able to function on the outside? Basically nothing, as far as I can tell. He is destined to be destitute and possibly go back to a life of criminality. People don't want money and resources to go towards training "violent murderers who didn't do anything to deserve what they're getting", but then what else do you expect other than that you're deferring the criminality to a later date? The odds are not in your favor that the prisoner be reformed by the time he gets out. Reforming criminals, and I mean actual reformation and not the horseshit we consider reformation today, is a cost society should bear for its own good so that prison actually means something. Why let prisoners out when they are likely destined to go right back to prison?
  • tiedieconderoga 3y ago
    >what good does it really do to prevent him from being able to function on the outside? From whose perspective? Part of the problem is that some powerful groups are incentived to keep people coming back to prison. Private prisons reap profits, politicians get an easy way to drive fear in their constituents, telcos can charge an arm and a leg for phone calls, commissaries clean up by charging exorbitant prices for toothpaste and ramen, etc. Until we start connecting positive outcomes for those groups to positive outcomes for the prisoners, it'll always be an uphill battle. As Upton Sinclair used to say, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
    • masklinn 3y ago
      Keeping people in prison forever is also a very “law and order” position which plays well with certain groups, and is very easy to sell: you don’t need any sort of nuance, you don’t face empathetic conflicts, etc…
    • iamthirsty 3y ago
• conradev 3y ago
  My uncle is also in prison and I also don't like these types of articles. I much prefer writing from prisoners themselves: https://prisonjournalismproject.org/category/perspective/ https://prisonjournalismproject.org/category/perspective/
• 11235813213455 3y ago
  Your uncle should definitely not be in prison, but he should get his car confiscated and get a bike, legs-powered
  • some_random 3y ago
    He doesn't have a car, that's part of the problem
• doh 3y ago
  I am involved with a non-profit that provides ISA (income share agreements) to convicts to get licensed truckers [0]. The founder started it due to similar experiences as you described and changed the lives of many people already. Wish this was institutionalized rather than being done as singular organization, but it's a start. [0] https://freeworld.org https://freeworld.org
• Jiro 3y ago
  >after his drunk dad sent him to jail as a 17 year old for writing a check in his dads name. This lacks the details for me to know whether I should be sympathetic or not. Are you saying that he forged the check for some reason related to his dad being drunk, like his dad not buying any food, or that his dad agreed to let him write the check and then complained to the police anyway because he was drunk?
  • mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Does whether you're sympathetic to their situation at 17 affect how well they should be rehabilitated, in your view, or are you just curious? Genuine question.
  • OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    It is difficult to imagine someone not being sympathetic to a 17 year old whose life ended up totally broken, even if he did it out of sheer malice. Stephen Fry famously stole a credit card at nearly same age and was jailed for it, would you hold that against him today?
• prakhar897 3y ago
  That's why it's called the "Justice" System and not "Rehabilitation" System. Your uncle committed fraud, the public does not care about the surrounding circumstances. The trust that VICTIM will get justice keeps the society intact. Nobody cares what happens to the bad guy. If someone took out all your money through fraud and gambled it away, what would you choose: A) Justice: Put them in Jail for long time. B) Rehabilitation: Put them in medical care for an year till their gambling addiction is cured. Then they are free to integrate back into society. In both cases, you get no money back. What would you prefer?
  • beecafe 3y ago
    Obviously B?
  • Mordisquitos 3y ago
    I would argue that you are placing misnamed choices. Both are different flavours of Justice: A) Retributive Justice: Put them in Jail for long time. B) Rehabilitative Justice: Put them in medical care for an year till their gambling addiction is cured. Then they are free to integrate back into society. All else being equal, I would absolutely prefer B over A. However, there is also a third option C, which can be combined with either A or B: C) Restorative Justice: Require them to do a certain type and amount of work for you or for the state to make up for an agreed amount of your lost money and moral damages. Give me a mix of B and C any day, and throw A down the drain (in the sense of prison purely as punishment, I have nothing against using prison to protect society from certain criminals).
  • mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    I know you think this is some hard dilemma that will force people to admit "yes of course I want them punished". But it really isn't. At the end of the day, putting the guy in jail without rehabilitation doesn't help me at all, except quench the thirst for revenge, which is always there of course, but I know giving in to it is like chasing a fix; it'll make me feel better in the short term and like a vindictive asshole in the long term. What would make me feel better in the long term is knowing that at least something good came out of my losing all my money. In case B as opposed to nothing at all in case A.
• steve76 3y ago
  [dead]
• searealist 3y ago
  A minor doesn't go to prison for writing a single check in his father's name.