Here's hoping they didn't smuggle a full size ATX motherboard through the facility using the 'old fashioned' prison method. Or even a 3.5" SATA hard drive...
I'd say the Pi Zero is a far superior option. Vastly more computing power with only minimal additional pain.
Bonus points if you hook it up to a battery and SSH into it during transit. Probably not the best idea to have something inside of you that occasionally catches fire, though.
Man that sucks, although in my case it would be a soldering job concern. I can't believe the Pi Zero was the only server I've gotten crontab to work so far. Tried Debian/Ubuntu I don't know why I can't get cron to run. I just want bots but a physical thing on my end I imagine is not as reliable as a hosted server (rent) for developing bots that run constantly gather stuff.
I know you guys are joking, but there is a whole class of cell phone that is designed specifically with the prison market in mind. Not too sure on the specs of the higher end models though.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
"
That is so terribly out-dated. The fact that a prisoner loses their freedom for a specified period of time should be the total of their debt to society.
Some reform on this front would be good but I think it will be many decades before the US is ready to confront these things, if it doesn't fall apart beforehand due to the ever increasing divide, both geographically and ideologically.
...freedom for a specified period of time should be the total of their debt to society.
I always find the retributionist theory unconfortable. I'd rather understand incarceration as a protection for potential new victims and a warning to others. Also it should be a way to "fix" the inmates, but unfortunately that's often wishful thinking.
Rehabilitation is perhaps possible for certain criminals - why not give everyone the benefit of a doubt, but not an unlimited number of times.
I personally think that if a person has been convicted for battery or something worse more than once, the protection of others needs to be prioritized.
But it's also worth considering that the prisons in US (or pretty much anywhere) are probably not the best rehabilitating environments, so there seems to be room for improvement...
Netflix has a documentary called 13th that (amongst other things) lays out exactly how America has driven a coach and horses through that particular loophole.
I think using inmate labor for money should be illegal, but I'm not sure prison would be workable at all without the 13th amendment. What counts as "forced labor?" Does that include forcing inmates to clean up after themselves in their cells or in cafeterias? Note that e.g. the German constitution has a similar carve out for prisoners.
Forced labor is labor that goes outside of the normal housekeeping routine for prisoners. It's really not that hard to make that distinction, you could even do it through the bookkeeping department: any time the prison or its operators are compensated directly or indirectly by outside parties for work done by prisoners that's forced labor too.
Keeping their cell and spaces they use voluntarily clean: not forced labor, just housekeeping. Keeping common spaces clean: forced labor, the operating of the prison itself is at the expense of the state.
If prisoners are allowed to do any of that work they should be compensated at market rates to make sure there is no unfair competition.
> Forced labor is labor that goes outside of the normal housekeeping routine for prisoners.
Obviously you couldn't apply a similar definition of "forced labor" to non-prisoners. So you and I are in agreement that you need some special case handling of prisoners in constitutional prohibitions against slavery, as the US and German constitutions recognize. My point simply is that the Constitution is fine as written and these sorts of distinctions should be made in statutory law where stuff like the meaning of "normal housekeeping routine" can be litigated and refined in ordinary rather than constitutional litigation.
> If prisoners are allowed to do any of that work they should be compensated at market rates to make sure there is no unfair competition.
Their output should be priced at near or market rates. (There should be no incentive to using prison labor as a way to get cheap labor) The individual's earnings should be reflective of the local market. They're not able to purchase the same goods as the outside world, nor are the prices reflective of the outside world. (I'm not an expert on that but I have a hard time beliving cigs are $10 a pop in prision)
I'm not so sure most inmates need to be forced. I have a family member who was incarcerated under the war on drugs and he was not initially allowed to work and grew extremely bored. They finally began to trust him and let him come on highway cleanups that he said was much better than sitting in a cell.
Because ordinary people are just as much a part of society as the criminals that society has decided to lock away.
By forcing criminals to work for free society is paying in another way: that work would have been done by someone on the outside, but you can't compete with slave labor.
So this is bad both for the inmates and for society from an economic point of view, and then we're side-stepping the moral issue.
Not really. The basic rule of economics is that you have to give something in order to get something. Inmates should be given a choice of working and making money so they can pay for their living or do nothing and starve to death - just like any other member of the society outside of prison.
What you're talking about is really a disproportion between amount of work they make (and value they produce) and the total amount of pay they receive for delivering that value.
> Inmates should be given a choice of working and making money so they can pay for their living or do nothing and starve to death - just like any other member of the society outside of prison.
Their freedom to negotiate has been taken away, therefore they do not have any choices.
> What you're talking about is really a disproportion between amount of work they make (and value they produce) and the total amount of pay they receive for delivering that value.
That depends on the situation but is ultimately un-important.
"Basic rules of economics" have no place inside prison walls.
> That depends on the situation but is ultimately un-important
It actually is very important because this is exactly what distinguishes between labour slavery and ordinary paid work.
Economic rules is not something that one can decide whether it applies or not. It's like telling that mathematical axioms don't apply in prison - sure, you can make people believe that 2 + 2 = 5 but this is nothing more than just rejecting the reality.
In ordinary paid work both sides have consideration and freedom. In this case they don't so you can't compare it to 'ordinary work', it isn't.
That leaves 'forced labor' as the only other option if you feel that letting people starve to death is a viable alternative (as you did in your earlier comment).
>if you feel that letting people starve to death is a viable alternative (as you did in your earlier comment)
isn't it how this works in principle for folks that are not imprisoned? (And no, I don't think this a viable alternative, although - nice job what you did here - well played).
Just so you are aware, individual states have the right to prevent forced labor. For example, CO prevented forced labor in its constitution in the last election by a voter initiative.
> It actually is very important because this is exactly what distinguishes between labour slavery and ordinary paid work.
"Ordinary paid work" that pays less than a dollar an hour. And if you don't go you are put in solitary, instead of just being fired. That means you don't see any other people. Ever. If they really don't like you they can put you on the loaf, too. Look that up. And that "opportunity" for "ordinary paid work" only exists in prison: you also aren't handling jail, where the Thirteenth doesn't apply because the inmate has not yet been convicted. So now everybody in jail starves under your final solution, before they can be convicted by their peers, all in the name of economic purity.
I have to say, as a former inmate, watching ostensibly well-off people who've never seen the inside of a drunk tank talk about "reality" like this just bugs me. It's just such a lack of perspective, which is fine, but there's also a lack of awareness that it's there and it's dehumanizing to see people speak about inmates like this. You're arguing basic economics and applying it to the incarcerated human condition as if inmates are a line item of cattle in Excel. (Ask me what comes out of the hole when someone gets repeatedly stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush and what color it is. Hint: not red. That's reality.)
> Inmates should be given a choice of working and making money so they can pay for their living or do nothing and starve to death - just like any other member of the society outside of prison.
Do you believe the work prisoners do pay for their incarceration costs?
Are you jealous that people whose freedom and agency are taken away are fed and housed by the state?
No, I'm not jealous - there is no need for personal remarks here. I'm just pointing out that it's not fair to the rest of the society. State will only be able to feed and house inmates, if it forcibly takes money from members of that society in the form of taxes. In order to give to someone, you have to take from someone else - it's that simple.
Yeah, because feeding and housing drug dealers for the money taken forcibly from an average Joe who works 12h a day to provide to his family is totally fair.
> the society pays money to the government and in return have prisons. Society benefits from said prisons.
This is very naive way of looking at it.
> you should be aiming for the massive imbalance of wealth
Wow, it didn't take much time before someone had to drag this into discussion about penitentiary system.
Why? The concept of prison is literally society funding a project to keep undesirable crime out of said society. That's fundamentally and exactly what it is. Calling that naive is like saying water being able to drown you is a naive position to hold.
I suggest visiting a lawless nation to observe what paying for prison does.
> Yeah, because feeding and housing drug dealers for the money taken forcibly from an average Joe who works 12h a day to provide to his family is totally fair.
You seem to not grasp (a) how many "drug dealers" (ooo scary, want to get a beer and find out what a former one is like?) are, themselves, average joes working twelves to provide money for their family, (b) that arguing about fairness is laughable when you're taking the positions that you are (fair for who?), and (c) how many "average joes" comprise the population of, especially minimum security, corrections for crimes you'd roll your eyes at. I was in with a guy who waived his trial timeframe completion rights -- different states call this by different names, and NEVER waive it -- and was in the middle of year three of being held, pretrial, for passing a single $600 bad check. Yes, really. His name was Isaiah and he was a black electrician. Nobody gave a shit, and I'm going to assume you don't either based on how you're arguing this.
(Blah blah, bleeding heart, I know.)
That you've indicted a whole group of real people because they've ended up in corrections is the lack of perspective I was warning you about elsewhere. They are humans. Just like you. People make mistakes. You should avoid speaking about them like they're cattle and are inferior to you or "average joes." Until you truly understand that, you're way on the wrong side of this. I promise.
Legal and pushed for by the "prison industry", which has lobbyists in place to keep punishments high, tolerance low, and their low/no-wage workforce in place - whilst also getting paid by the government for housing inmates (and they send fines to government if the government doesn't meet their inmate quotas)
I was going to write that that amendment is from the Civil War, before the private prison complex could develop, lobby for, and become dependent on prison labor.
But a bit of research showed that prisons were not exactly bastions of human rights in the good old days.
You can draw a straight line from the 13th Amendment to the private prisons of today. After all, the southern states whose economy was ruined by the Civil War had to get cheap labor somehow, so they arrested all those former slaves for random bullshit like loitering, had them convicted by all-white juries, and sent them to work in chain gangs.
Netflix produced a great documentary about all of this - 13th - and it's well worth the watch.
I think if the program is opt-in, that a lot of the inmates could appreciate such a program.
I know if I was in jail I'd like to partake in such a program, I could use more hands-on skills with electronics, and recycling is always a good cause :)
Some jail programs can be really good, like the program for helping inmates adopt and care for a rescue dog. There was also a program at a jail here for repairing and donating broken toys.
I think these kinds of wholesome efforts are very important to look for and support.
Because people here are taking themselves too seriously. A bit of humor and subculture could ease them on. You can be an expert/millionaire/famouswhatever and enjoy something else than endless debates where people are trying to be technically correct and pessimistic to the bones.
replying to me instead of metafunctor cause we reached the limit of nesting for comments
It's ok, there is place for all of us on HN. As long as comments are not mostly filled by either behavior, we can all enjoy the benefit of the intelligent and knowledgeable HN community.
No matter how simple you try and keep a point, there will still always be someone who misses it.
I used to think this was just an extension of the "trying to idiotproof/universe builds a better idiot" law, but at this point it could probably be a law of its own.
Now, you or someone else could had explained why it was relevant or... oh wonder! point to it, so we can learn on our own. Or even enlighten us with the reason why some half assed misterious joke is mixed with what appears to be a denounce on slave labour.
But don't worry, I absolutely love these flippant conversations if I'm allowed to bring my own non-sequiturs to the table. I just can't think of any right now :)
I doubt they learned anything in prison; this is stuff they knew when they came in. Don't assume that everyone in prison is some kind of illiterate moron.
Well, given the fact that former inmates are just ordinary people again you'd think the likelihood of them attaining either job would be related to their skill level and aptitude. If you'd teach them javascript in prison their chances of landing a javascript front-end engineer would go up dramatically, if you only teach them how to rip up old computers then maybe they'll find a job in recycling at lower pay with a higher chance of recidivism.
As a programmer with a felony (Possession of a controlled substance) I can tell you that by far the greatest hurdle is getting past a background check. I am in the process of finding a new job and I am currently awaiting a decision for the THIRD time on whether my felony will keep me from being hired. In the past month and a half I have been extended offers on two positions only to have them rescinded after they do the background check. I should note I was very honest and upfront about what they would find beforehand. It is starting to become pretty frustrating. I have been clean for 3 years now and have even provided letters of recommendation from rehabilitation program supervisors as well as a letter from my sentencing judge. I have no violent crimes in my background just some possession/drug related charges the most recent of which was in 2013. I paid my debt to society, or so I thought. It appears the worst part of my sentence is having the felony on my record that I cannot have expunged until January of 2024 at the earliest. </rant>
Thing is, you better start teaching them how to read and write!
60% More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate. Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level.
They are many years away from grasping Closures and Curry.
That's a good place to start then, but even better would be to have - you know, like most other places on earth in the developed world - a school system that would ensure basic literacy by the ripe old age of 9 or so.
%age of the population that has left the education system and that classifies as functionally illiterate would be one way to do it. You're not going to get the answer with a written survey though.
Newly arrived immigrants from parts of the world where basic education is 'optional' is a problem as well but the fact that so many people native to a region do not have basic reading and writing skills is a real source of worry in a world that relies on reading and writing for almost all interaction.
Other things that require reading ability are and that are important to a functioning society are voting and the ability to use medication.
It's been a really long time since reading/writing were optional and with the increased reliance on technology to function in society that is only getting more important.
By "measure", I meant a specific methodology that compares, say, the US and western Europe. Or just one country in western Europe. For example, if France had a study that broke results out similarly to https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp
Your implication is that France would simply lack an equivalent to the "Below Basic" group. I doubt this.
Most countries in Western Europe do not have 'home schooling', which is one big differentiating factor here, and those that do in general do not have numbers worth measuring.
I'm sure France has an equivalent group, but I'm also sure that that group would be substantially smaller based on plenty of exposure to French citizens and American citizens.
France has one of the best education systems in Europe and if you've gone to school there it is almost un-thinkable that you would not have achieved at least basic reading and writing skills.
There are people that fall through the cracks of the education system, but even children of illegal immigrants are required to go to school (and it's free).
Marine Le Pen wants to change this by the way, that's double stupid because (1) the chances they will end up staying are fairly large and (2) if they can't read/write they will end up in crime in larger proportions than otherwise.
Homeschooling is a purple trout. The one thing the rather small fraction of homeschoolers are certainly succeeding on is basic literacy. It's things like higher math and science literacy that would be an issue.
(People aren't taking their kids out of schools because they want them to stay uneducated...they are doing it because they disagree with what the school considers education. But they don't disagree about things like knowing the alphabet or how to read or whatever)
Anyway, my guess was that you were probably making forceful claims about anecdata and here we are.
> Anyway, my guess was that you were probably making forceful claims about anecdata and here we are.
Well, that anecdata is based on having spent a lot of time on both sides of the Atlantic and I really can't remember anybody ever in Europe that wasn't literate past the age of 10 and I've met enough people in the USA that were extremely nice but could barely write their own name that I don't feel the need to turn every comment about this subject into a paper complete with citations.
The US does not bother to report their literacy figures to the various global bodies so that makes comparing them a little bit harder than it normally would be but I'm fine to let me personal experience guide me in this, let's be happy this was about literacy and not about world history or geography.
You seem to get a lot of pleasure from these sniping sessions so consider me happy to oblige you as a target.
I'd hope for that too, but unfortunately, having an "ex-con" tag in your papers means at least that an employer has a strong argument against you at the negotiating table.
People in computing don't care that much about your background if you are skilled. You can even work remotely for/from companies in another country.
And the good news is, good devs are rare, but the demand for them keep increasing. So if you become productive and reliable with a pinch of people skills, you are pretty much guarantied to have a job in the next 20 years. And probably a good one.
This is all the data I've got on the state of industry; genuinely interested to hear tidbits from anybody that things aren't this ugly nowadays.
I'm not in the demographic of people dealing with problematic pasts (and very thankfully so; I don't envy those who are, at all) but I think that reasonable analysis of situations like what is described in those links is not at all too much to ask (?!), and I wouldn't want to touch an employer who deals with such situations in the way that is described in those links.
(Also, if you go through the user profiles of the usernames who wrote those two comments - based on the fact that the first comment links to the second I presume they're the same person - I must note that I observe a general pattern of cynicism which I think has an obvious cause and is sad because of its trivial avoidability.)
Exactly. Especially in Ohio. I remember years ago listening to the District Attorney of Cincinnati say he didn't believe in rehabilitation! WTF?
1% of Americans have been through the incarceration system. That's insane.
These guys are probably just going to be reprimanded and be given more time in prison, when really they should encourage their education and effort to push them to legit computer work when they leave.
..but once you have that criminal record, and are labelled as such, good luck getting anyone to hire you. The prison system in the US creates a lower class. Facilities where prisoners can earn below minimum wage is literally slave labour.
> 1% of Americans have been through the incarceration system. That's insane.
That's not quite correct. 1% of American adults are currently incarcerated. There's nearly 2.5M current prisoners, and the US total population is about 310M, so once you remove kids from that 'total pop' count...
Wouldn't that make the number higher then, if you're counting people that have been through the system? Some rough numbers from the US justice website say more than 650000 people are released from prison each year, and two thirds are back within another three years, which seems to me that a lot more than 1% touch the system.
Unfortunately, it's 4 in the morning, and I'd spend a good hour or so looking up better stats and figuring out the math, but I think my point stands.
The United States has federal and state prisons. There are also private companies that run prisons. In the US, there are a mix of prisons that are run by the government and ones that are run by private companies. I know the CIA hacking thing sounds funny, but these guys were doing basic social engineering and identity theft.
There are private prison corporations that are incentivized by their shareholders and government contracts to keep as many prisoners inside as long as possible.
That's what happens when you don't have layered security. MAC address whitelisting, crytographic hardware tokens, 2fa, etc all would have stopped it dead in its tracks, but someone decided a login screen would be "enough".
If it's a state government running the LAN at the prison they've failed to implement really basic standard LAN security measures like keeping ports down until they're actually in use by a known desktop PC or WAP, 802.1x, etc.
The point is that if you have multiple layers of countermeasures, then as long as one of them works you are OK. Too often are people willing to just rely on their one defensive layer.
I wonder were they using WISPr [0] ... this is notorious for its security issues and is in widespread use. It's the "Captive Portal" [1] thing you see when you're logging in to public hotspots. All authentication activities happen in the clear - very easy to sniff with a NIC in promiscuous mode.
I'd go for a life of crime if it meant building a computer could get me out that easily.
I mean come on, it's not rocket science to build a computer out of parts, and nobody should be pardoned for that kinda skill without considering why they were put in jail in the first place.
People can have redeeming qualities and still deserve to spend a lot of time in jail. Demonstrating that you could have done more with your life, after you've been convicted for killing someone, shouldn't excuse your crime.
So they were able to connect to the prison network, look through the state prison database using these computers and issue security passes to gain access to restricted areas.
I think the prison needs to get someone to look at the security of their network and applications.
If Shawshank redemption has taught us anything, the network administrator is probably a soft-spoken aspiring prisoner hired by the corrupt yet outwardly morally upright prison warden to illegally pocket more money.
I bet the only security measure was that it was a local machine accessing the database, or a machine within a specific IP block allocated to the prison network.
Actually prisons can do more of this, ofcource in an ethical and secured environment with thorough check up of Prisioners. They could become low cost assembly houses, instead of shipping in from China.
Kind of shitty that they immediately used the computers to fuck people over...
The Ohio Inspector General says investigators found
an inmate used the computers to steal the identity
of another inmate, and then submit credit card
applications, and commit tax fraud.
One inmate, Adam Johnston, reportedly admitted to
applying for the credit cards, saying he just looked
through the ODRC system for a young inmate with a long
sentence, then used his information to get the cards.
You'd hope that, provided access to something rare, the use would be benign and reasonable.
Blekko had a contract with a VPN provider for search, and they were very popular in Egypt during the Arab Spring. We were hoping that we were powering curiosity about freedom, but the query stream was... 100% porn queries.
To be fair, porn is pretty benign, and the freedom to consume the porn of your choice is something we probably take for granted too much in the United States.
Or this is just the spin the prison puts on it to make it sound worse, and to justify their own incompetence. Imagine if this didn't happen at all, and the inmates used this just to get online. This is what I assume.
Yes, they do. Sometimes it's cause cops make up a crime. Sometimes it's because they had a little bit of weed on them at a traffic stop. Sometimes it's because they commit a real crime that actually harms someone.
Many times it's because one of the things above happened, they got out, wanted to go straight, and no one would hire them for anything because they had a criminal record. They tried to live straight, get some job training, but were low on money, could barely feed themselves with foodstamps and ended up stealing and back in prison. Or maybe it as something stupid like being caught begging with an open container not in a little brown bag.
America has 1% of its population in the system (either incarcerate or on parole at some point in their lives). That's insane.
Yea they end up there for a reason, but it's not the reason you think.
The people who should be in jail (most congressmen and women, most senators, all the CEOs that ran banks during the 2008 financial collapse) aren't because they have power and money, which buys them a different level of justice than you or I.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [0], 52% of convicted felons in state prisons are there for a violent crime; 18% for property crimes; 18% for drug crimes; and 9% for public order crimes [1]. Violent crimes obviously harm someone. I would guess that property crimes and some of the public order crimes do as well---remember that we're talking about felony convictions, which means crimes that resulted in a sentence of one year or more. For the sake of discussion we'll suppose that drug crimes never harmed anyone. So a reasonable estimate would be that around 3/4 of prisoners in state prisons are there because they committed a real crime that actually harms someone.
Now obviously it's bad that 1/4 of prisoners are there for trivial reasons. In particular, we need to end the drug war. But you seem to think that the prisons are full of people who were caught with a speck of weed or who stole a loaf of bread to feed themselves, and that really isn't true. Minor crimes usually result in a fine, community service, or at most a few months in jail (which is not the same thing as prison). For the most part, people in prison are there because they did something genuinely bad. The original article mentioned one specific prisoner by name, an Adam Johnston; I found what I think is his record [3], and he's serving twenty years for murder.
[1] "Public order crimes" means "weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses".
Violent offenders tend to serve longer sentences than others (expected to be ~3 times longer on average than most other categories, according to the BJS article you reference), which is part of the reason they make up such a large part of the prison population at any given time.
In terms of number of people sent to prison, they're less prominent: again from the BJS article, admissions to state prisons in 2009 with sentences >= 1 year broke down like this: 27% violent; 30% property; 29% drug; 14% public order; 1% other.
In this context we're talking about P(person did something bad|person is currently in state prison), so the relevant statistics are the ones I cited. Your statistics would be relevant if we were talking about P(person did something bad|person has ever been to state prison).
People have gone to the prison in the past solely because of the color of their skin or because of their religion. People today go to prison just for possessing a plant or criticizing their head of state. Let's not pretend that being in prison is anything other than a moral judgement rather than an indication of someone's character. It just makes it easier to dehumanize prisoners ("they deserve it") and harder for them to reintegrate ("they must have been a bad person to get into prison"). It's the same attitude where when someone does something drastic, people who knew them will say to the news "I never expected them to do such a thing" or "they were such a sweet person". It denies that we all have the potential to be criminals depending on societies POV and our own situation.
These, along with victim blaming, are examples of behaviour consistent with the Just World Hypothesis [0]. It's really frustrating how many people seem to fall into this cognitive trap but it's understandable. I can see how people who are more aware of the fact that the world is a cruel, unjust, and arbitrary place could fall into a deep depression. I have been there myself.
only most of those "bad things" are things like non-violent drug offences and other such things. I'm not saying they are all good folks, but most of them are just folks that messed up a little bit, and have to pay for it for years.
Once we get people in the system, it is likely they will be in and out of it their entire lives. And what is even worse, it doesn't have to be this way (We refuse to take more compassionate measures like countries with a lower recidivism rate, for example). We choose this. Maybe it is partially our own fault that some folks wind up "bad".
1. only state prisons are considered
2. only people in prison for a year or more are considered
there's nothing in the comment showing that shorter term inmates are a smaller population, nor that they aren't mostly non violent offenders, nor that federal prisons aren't mostly non violent offenders.
In total, the comment just shows that there are violent and nonviolent felons in prison
I'm the author of the linked comment. I originally focused on state prisons because the article was about events in a state prison, so P(person did something bad|person is currently in state prison) was the relevant statistic. But let's repeat the analysis counting federal prisons and local jails as well.
In general, people with sentences longer than a year go to prison, and sentences shorter than a year go to jail. Roughly 57% of incarcerated people in the US are in state prisons, 9% in federal prisons, and 33% in jails [0]. In my earlier comment I noted that 52% of state prisoners are in for violent crimes, 18% for property crimes, and 18% for drug crimes. For jails, based on this source [1] I estimate 18% of the jail population is in for violent or weapons offenses; 3% for weapons; 30% for property crimes; and 31% for drug crimes. This source [2] suggests around 18% of federal prisoners are in for violent crimes; 17% for weapons/explosives/arson offenses; 11% for property crimes; 46% for drug crimes; and 8% for immigration reasons.
In my original comment, for state prisons, I counted violent crimes, property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes to estimate that 76% of the prison population did something genuinely bad. For jails the number will be lower, both because there are fewer violent offenders and because the non-violent offenses tend to be less severe; if we count violent crimes, 1/2 of property crimes, and 1/2 of other non-drug crimes, we get 44%. For federal prisons, if we count violent crimes, property crimes, and weapons/explosives/arson offenses we get 46%. We can weight those three numbers by the sizes of the different groups to arrive at an overall figure of 61% for all incarcerated people in the US. (Of course, these numbers depend heavily on what you consider a "bad" crime.)
So of the entire incarcerated population of the US, about 1/2 to 2/3 are incarcerated for something genuinely bad. While you're correct to point out that this is lower than the 3/4 figure for state prisons, Broken_Hippo is still wrong to claim that "most" prisoners are in for things like non-violent drug offenses.
Sorry but there's no such thing. Justice is relative. In many countries you can be considered justified in murder while simply kissing a person of the same sex or protesting can make you be locked up. In fact, If you want to argue that killing someone is empirically terrible, people avoid jail for it all the time if they're on the winning side of a war, in self-defense (in many countries even for defending their honor), or if they're of a high enough status (rich people and cops/politicians). Assuming that only bad people go to jail is naive and assuming jails are only full of bad people is generalizing.
We need a program allowing prisoners to serve their sentence as home arrest at foster homes of volunteers to isolate them from their pathological upbringing and socialize them with law-abiding citizenry. To eliminate possibility of unjust moral judgments and discrimination, obviously the inmates would get to choose their hosts and not the other way around.
I'm sure you would be happy to participate. Problem solved.
Ah the good ol' tired "why don't you take refugees into your own home" argument. Why would I need to host them when I don't need to host a jail? The same thing with orphans and refugees. The government provides space for them paid for with my taxes. I don't invite every homeless person I see into my home permanently, doesn't mean I don't care about them or believe the government should combat the issue or open more shelters. Trying to put the onus on me saying "why don't you do it if you care so much" is just lazy deflection from the actual issue and a sad attempt of absolving anyone else of responsibility.
Anyway, you invented a whole solution which had nothing at all to do with what I said; I never advocated against jails or anything to the effect, please improve your reading comprehension and construct better strawmen to sidetrack me with.
I don't think I have ever been more obviously sarcastic than here. Of course I knew very well that, despite painting prisoners as victims of moral judgments and suggesting that moral judgments are something wrong altogether, you wouldn't want this crowd anywhere near your house.
With my comment, I only wanted to point out this exact hypocrisy. So thank you for confirming that my cynicism is justified. I feel better about myself now :)
Sorry for overreacting, your comment was so outlandish I was really taken aback. (detecting tone on the internet can be quite difficult, especially if you don't know anything about the commentator) The thing about moral judgments I was saying is that the people in jail are there because they did something their society considers morally wrong. For some people these things are not considered bad. My solution would be to not jail them for these things at all. Inviting them into my house is neither here nor there, but I would gladly try to befriend them and as in any relationship eventually they'd be invited into my home as well. My issue isn't with moral judgements, I feel littering is morally wrong and I would gladly see people be fined for it, it's that people don't see that jailing people is a result of these moral judgements rather than some inherent evil.
I wasn't, and your quote of me should make that clear. And like I said, it still happens all over the world. Discrimination is also well and alive in America.
>people who knew them will say to the news "I never expected them to do such a thing" or "they were such a sweet person"
The shittiest of people have friends/family who will vouch to journalists "he loved his family"(awesome achievement), "he was always up for a laugh" (or such euphemisms)... they've grown up talking self-serving bullshit and opposing the system in any situation.
