I help teach a nonviolent communication program at a nearby prison, and the technological restrictions placed on the prisoners are pretty shocking to me. They are allowed an electric typewriter with 7K of memory (down from 16K.) The only audio media they are allowed are cassette tapes. DVDs are forbidden, apparently because a shard from one could conceivably be used as a weapon. A co-ordinator of a college program for the inmates told me that they have a CS course, but can't find anyone to teach it because the students will not be allowed to use computers. This despite the fact that there are multiple roomfuls of computers in the prison school. They get to choose between having a TV and receiving packages from the outside once a month (no, I don't see the point of this dichotomy, either, except maybe as a way to save money on inspecting the packages.)
Some of the guys I know in there are in for decades at least. I can't imagine them having the education for any kind of gainful employment when they get out.
> A co-ordinator of a college program for the inmates told me that they have a CS course, but can't find anyone to teach it because the students will not be allowed to use computers.
Huh, interesting. It reminds me of this business school assignment where groups were given $5 and were tasked to make as much money form it as possible. The groups who ended up doing the best were the groups who realized that $5 was dangerously close to $0, and just worked on ideas that required no capital to get started instead of figuring out how to best invest the $5.
The point being that here, maybe you could teach some sort of math course? Teaching CS stuff like algorithms, theory of computation, etc. without computers. It could be interesting.
> I can't imagine them having the education for any kind of gainful employment when they get out.
Has this ever been the goal of the justice system in the United States? It seems to me that the primary function is purely punitive and expends very little effort to rehabilitate anyone.
It seems to me that the primary function is purely punitive and expends very little effort to rehabilitate anyone.
Which stems from humans liking "just deserts" and liking people to be punished for their crimes. A rational theory about deterrence, rehabilitation, and harm reduction may be more humane, but also difficult to implement and propagate through the populace. That being said, we humans are getting better at treating minority and animals.(Say, gay marriage is being legalized in more states) So I have some hope that our treatment of society's most unsympathetic and hated group better will improve as we become more rational and "nicer".
And some countries, like the Scandinavian ones, have managed to move the focus closer to harm reduction than to punishment. So I believe there is hope for the US too. But I do not think we will ever get rid of outrage in the press about the government not being though on crime, with the right spin that will always get you readers.
From a Scandinavian viewpoint, the US prison system looks like the 19th century in many ways. I have no problem with that, longer sentences for repeat offenders with many crimes would be better than rebates(!) on prison time, like in Sweden.
Point is, I'm not that judgmental and still I say: Not trying to rehabilitate prisoners so they have good job skills is obviously insane. And totally immoral.
More of the prisoners will fail when released; do drugs, commit crimes and end up back in prison. This costs an insane lot of money (prison costs, people not working, health bills, etc). Even worse, it will also destroy the lives of innocent people -- e.g. crime victims and relatives of the prisoners.
I can only see two reasons for not putting an emphasis on rehabilitation for job skills: Pure incompetence -- or some economic interest in getting repeat offenders back into prison.
tl; dr: No rehabilitation of job skills hurts the economy and innocent people as much as the prisoners. Add extra time to the punishment if more punishment is merited, instead of shooting society in the foot.
> Some economic interest in getting repeat offenders back into prison.
Interestingly enough, this actually exists in the US. As crazy as it sounds, there are private prisons that are paid on a per-inmate basis. These corporations typically put their political donations behind candidates who are "tough on crime" to fill their jails and line their pockets. It would be terribly interesting to see what kind of impact these companies have had on the justice system in the US.
"In 2012, [the Corrections Corporations of America] sent a letter to 'prison officials in 48 states offering to buy prisons from these states in exchange for a 20-year management contract and a guaranteed occupancy rate of 90%.'"
As a fellow Scandinavian I agree. Not rehabilitating prisoners is insane from an economical standpoint and for protecting the innocent. This is true no matter if you believe in harsh or lax punishments.
> A co-ordinator of a college program for the inmates told me that they have a CS course, but can't find anyone to teach it because the students will not be allowed to use computers.
A comment response by the top poster [1] deserves a full read as well, for observations of behavior, motivations, and recidivism by others in the system. On the latter note, there is also this sobering paragraph:
...Here in Colorado we have what is called "mandatory parole" - which is probably not what you think it is. It does not mean that it is mandatory to release you early, it means that even if you are released after serving your entire sentence, you will be considered "on parole" and will have a parole officer assigned and live under the threat of being sent back to prison (even if you already served your entire sentence). Hence, you could do almost 15 years on a 10 year sentence because if you are released after doing the 10, you will still have to do 5 years of "parole" and could be sent back if you violate any of the terms of parole. In fact, nearly 40% of the intake into Colorado prisons is from "technical" parole violations, which are violations of parole conditions that are not felony crimes. This system has created a terrible sense of hopelessness among those caught up in it. My assessment (admittedly based on anecdotal data) is that Colorado parole officers think it is their duty to try and find reasons to violate a parolee and get them sent back to prison. They seem to go out of their way to make success difficult for a parolee, rather than just expect compliance with the law.
Then why not better train, screen, and pay the parole officers? These people seem to be a key part of the system which would be overseeing people who have a high chance to commit a crime. The parole officers should definitely try to fairly assess the parolee's life circumstances and try to best assist them in finding a job and crime-free life in normal society.
I've heard stories of parole officers being hard on parolees but the parolees were also thankful because it forced them to turn their lives around.
40% seems very high but the people who sentence and lock-up parolees who violate their parole are likely much better equipped and trained to judge the parolees.
What gave you the impression that it's a problem of training and pay? Parole officers are doing their jobs as they are trained. The system, run by "tough on crime" politicians, prosecutors and cops, is geared towards having as little sympathy as possible.
Then why not better train, screen, and pay the parole officers?
Think about the candidate pool. Who would be willing to go and take that kind of job? I would expect a certain bias towards what the parent posting has described. Independent observation and openness, in my opinion, would be much more effective.
It depends on how you define better: In the context of the owners of a for-profit prison system, better training would result in more parole violations.
You get access to Corrlinks email you pay a lot for if in fed prison, and since min security is where most criminals end up so they can perform nearly free labour there is barely any violence. If you follow the simple rules of prison nothing is likely to happen to you. Rules are never talk to guards you will look like a snitch, accept nothing from other inmates, don't talk about any other inmate if they arent in front of you and do your own time. A good example is somebody tells you hey that guy over there called you a goof. This person is trying to get you to beat somebody up for them but since you do your own time you laugh it off and reply he can say it to your face, then the weasel guy slinks away to find another sucker to fight for him.
Prison is just being really bored all the time for the most part and working menial labor for pennies a day. Hopefully people you know send you books. If you maintain a prison blog BOP will read it and punish you severely for any criticisms. Like months in solitary. Don't ever release pictures either and put them on social media or online even if you get permission. Solitary again.
The most interesting prison is where foreigners are housed in the US @ D Ray. There is no racism because no Americans so none of that don't eat with people outside yout race crap and hardly any other silly rules American inmates make up. The spanish inmates have a union everybody joins to coordinate disobedience against the guards whenever they crackdown on the library or other rights you're supposed to get from BOP. Other fed prisons it's mainly run by illiterate racists and gangs who for the most part leave you alone unless you break a rule or have money to extort.
I have a far off request. I remember reading a good long read quite some time ago.
It was of a hacker that was sent to prison, I think federal prison.
He goes into a lot of detail about how life is inside there and how you have to behave, I remember him advising to fight for your stuff even though you're going to lose since if not you'll become "their bitches" or something of the sort.
If I remember correctly (might be far off) the website was mainly black and orange.
He also mixes in his experience with drugs, I think psychedelic mushrooms or so.
I was quite a long article but quite catching, by any chance anyone remembers what I'm talking about?
Yes! Yes! Yes! I don't even have to read it! That's the orange and black I was talking about! You can't imagine for how long I actually thought about it without no many ways of actually looking for it.
Incidentally, I was in prison with Agent Steal when he wrote that article. It's pretty accurate from what I remember. We were in FCI Bastrop (I was there from '95 through '99), and we were absolutely not allowed anywhere near a computer. At one point I had a "good" job working in the Unicor factory, which would have paid me $200/month after a while (good money for prison). But they fired me when they discovered I had a web page. Apparently they thought I had set up the web page from within the prison.
Hmmm! I'm not quite sure, I remember reading this a long time ago also, but now re-reading this, I'm not 100% sure this was it, very much of the kind mind you.
Thanks a lot. I will re-read it all again and maybe some part rings a bell.
I am a developer/hacker who spent 6 months in prison about a decade ago.
They had a room of old broken computers that were donated and I offered to fix them up in exchange for increased library privileges. Normally inmates could only visit the library once a week and check out two books, but I read about 4 books a day during my time there.
I fixed up the computers and supported them once they got a teacher, read my books, helped people with grammar in their appeal letters, and stayed out of trouble.
The only stress I felt was from being thrown into an environment with totally alien social structures and ways of interaction. I was a upper-middle-class white kid who had learned to talk logically out of situations, and most of my peers in prison were people who grew up in settings where the only way to solve disagreements was with intimidation or actual violence.
Once I learned that I should give a little to intimidation so the other party feels in control and powerful, but refuse to be totally controlled because the other party wouldn't risk their early release dates to beat up someone for no good reason, then I did well. It also helped to be able to pay off the local gang leader once a week with a pint of ice cream from the commissary. Protection was relatively inexpensive, all things considered.
The library was outdated, but there were enough books on physics for me to refresh my understanding and my friends and family ordered books for delivery for me on a regular basis. I discovered a life-long love of Mark Twain, especially the book he wrote about Joan of Arc.
6 Months seemed to crawl by and was full of home-sickness. Then, all of a sudden, it was over. After that, the world seemed a lot more magical for a few months. Everything was brighter and more colorful than I remembered. There was such joy in being able to listen to a CD or eat chinese food.
All in all, it wasn't a terrible experience. It was very interesting sociologically and a good experience for me to see how a different ecosystem worked. I also got to eat a balanced diet and exercised. I was in marvelous shape back then. I wouldn't recommend it or anything, but if you go with the right mentality, you can make the most of it.
The obvious downside is that prison sticks to you for the rest of your life. It takes several months to stop walking without your hands behind your back or saying "Sir" all the time. Also, the stigma of having a criminal record sticks to you forever. Even now, in my middle 30's, it's nearly impossible for me to get a tech job even though my felonious history was from when I was a teenager. You pretty much have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll work at 50% of the salary as your peers or have to make your own future by starting your own companies and projects.
> Also, the stigma of having a criminal record sticks to you forever. Even now, in my middle 30's, it's nearly impossible for me to get a tech job even though my felonious history was from when I was a teenager. You pretty much have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll work at 50% of the salary as your peers or have to make your own future by starting your own companies and projects.
You do not have to resign yourself to anything. I have built a career in the valley and I am currently far above market salary doing the work that I love at a company I love. That was after starting in this industry with no demonstrable computing experience and a felony conviction after four months pretrial detention, without so much as a college degree. I have discussed my experiences before and have found that the companies that understand and work with me, oddly, end up being the places I want to work.
A record only makes you work even harder for the success that you want. I work three times harder than most coasters around me because I know I have something to prove. Resigning yourself to the impossibility of success is letting your incarceration and the system win. Never resign yourself to anything, and above all never let the system win.
> It's awful that our justice system creates this sort of mentality
Oh, certainly, but it's not exactly the worst part about our system. I'm guessing a bit here, but I don't get the feeling the gentlemen stepping forward are of the violent variety?
Why are we putting non-violent individuals in prisons? Just a thought.
I'm pretty sure we're talking about "violence" in the abstract/legal context here. Or at least, that's how I think about it. I would say that stealing from someone is "violent".
There is no need to put such people in prison. How is that productive for society?
These people are clearly intelligent, so put them to work. Dock their pay until they pay off the damage they caused plus penalties to discourage future behavior.
These people are all motivated financially, so hit them where it hurts, the wallet.
what if they refuse to work? Do they just get to walk away?
Not saying the solution is prison but a lot of people who commit things like large-scale fraud are usually psychopaths to some degree, and might also not make the most "rational" decisions. Expecting "normal" reactions to such propositions might be a bit much.
> what if they refuse to work? Do they just get to walk away?
Nope. Then you can send them to prison. But at least give them a choice.
> people who commit things like large-scale fraud are usually psychopaths to some degree
Large scale fraud is rare. You want to send those people to prison, fine, but it'll be in the hundreds on an annual basis.
Small scale fraud is common. The motivation here is purely financial. They will want to keep out of jail and pay you money. It makes no sense to spend money to keep these people unproductive in prison. In fact, it's just outright crazy.
My email is easily found in my comment history, in an attachment. My actual username is on permavacation; I thought the field was in seconds and it's in minutes. Whoops.
I prefer that my identity remain a little difficult to find because there are people on the Internet that stalk me and are regular readers here.
I live in SEA and dated a woman for four years who was pretty intimately plugged in to a related community that could probably offer some help. I still have a number of contacts I could point your friend to. aaron@brethorsting.com
This is interesting. When does your record disappear in the US?
In Sweden the record is removed 10 years after a prison sentence has been served. However, requesting ones criminal record is not usual besides applications to work at a kinder garten or school.
My opinion is basically that once a person has served the sentence no additional "social" sentence should be given. I feel that that would just be counterproductive and keep people in crime as they are prevented from joining the community.
As far as I know in the US such records never disappear. Also, it seems common that for most tech jobs a criminal background check is done (I don't know how it's in other areas outside of tech).
It's relevant for most jobs. In America it's considered bad to hire a felon. It's really bad. IMO everyone deserves a second chance if they make the effort to better themselves. However, my in laws and parents do not agree with this. Once damned, you are damned forever.
Though I want to know about those who were former felons in the US and leave the country and pick up citizenship else where. I'd really like to hear those stories.
There's a profoundly messed up bit of thinking deep in the psyche of a lot of Americans behind this. I think, more or less, it has to do with the idea of America as a specific (and even ideal) instance of the Just World hypothesis -- that is, America as a place where one is more free than anywhere else (even perfectly free) to make their biggest dreams come true, or fall as deeply as their character flaws will take them.
Thus there are two kinds of people: the "Worthy" (good, honest, hardworking, smart), and "Those People" (lazy, dishonest, moochers, criminals).
In this narrative, Those People deserve a hard lot. Second chances? That's for Worthy people who just hit a spot of bad luck. Or people who can change, and given that Those People have deep character defects, what are the chances of that? The only thing that could possibly get them to change is harsh discipline and a hard life. Plus, why waste a decent job on one of Those People when there are so many Worthy who need a job and deserve it more?
Risk management. A three-time embezzlement convict applying for work at Stripe is an example of something a criminal background check should catch. The downside is (a) how easy it is to pick up a felony and (b) the number of hiring managers that immediately dismiss any felony.
Because a person with a felony background or very bad credit has access to trade secrets and information which they can sell for money at a tech job. Plus, it's hard to sell yourself as a culture fit, as most geeks have never done time in jail, mush less prison.
You pretty much have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll work at 50% of the salary as your peers
Have you considered working for an early-stage startup? It seems like your expected value may be higher, because even though your salary will still be low, you'll be vesting stock.
I have, but I'm the kind of developer who thinks up the big ideas and can build to 95% but I'm not great at grinding away at that last 5% of bugs. We're valuable, but by no means a rare breed.
The rarer breeds are the work-horses that you can throw the results of a QA check to and they work on everything to completion.
In startups, it's the founders that typically have the rights to do the planning and core development that I'm good at and delegate the last bits to subordinates. I don't have founder money and bootstraping "real" startups requires a lot more time than I have available with a family.
Small "4 hour work-week" startups are within reach. Currently my plan is to make 4 or 5 of them and move me and the family somewhere where the cost of living is so low that even a meager income from "side businesses" can be enough to live off of. We're actually flying down with the kids to scout out Antigua, Guatemala for a few weeks in January to see if it's a good fit for us. Also, my first 4-hour work week business (steamloader.com) is making on average 0.4 BTC a day so this seems like a realistic goal.
Ideally we could stay somewhere in the US, but we're being priced out of the Austin, TX area and if we have to move, we would love to move where our money is the most valuable. $50k (what I earn) is not much for a family of 4 to live on in Austin, but in Central America that income could give my kids a quality education and let us live more comfortably.
So you want to do all the fun work, and pass off the grindy boring shit to someone else, most of which probably results from your "core" coding? I think I would hate working with you and you're bringing this on yourself.
You might have an inflated idea of how good you are at this shit. If you are really good, you won't have much grindy boring work to do.
If you're not taking a major part in the final tasks of a project, how can you be so certain you are good at preparing it for the future?
> You might have an inflated idea of how good you are at this shit. If you are really good, you won't have much grindy boring work to do.
Anyone who has worked on any sort of sufficiently large and complex application knows that this isn't true. Programmers come and go, people have different styles, requirements change, deadlines are imposed, etc. There will always be grunt work, no matter how good a programmer is.
But he's talking about startups, not large, high-budget projects. If he was good at very large project management he would not be complaining about his problems finding work.
> If you're not taking a major part in the final tasks of a project, how can you be so certain you are good at preparing it for the future?
I'm not the parent, but I'll answer, from my own experience.
The "final tasks" of a project aren't important, in the grand scheme of things, at least, not the way that I work. If I have an idea, let's say "Github" for example, what's the core of the application? Whatever your answer, I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that it isn't "the login page", or "the frequently asked questions", or "what color the navigation bar is".
The 'core' of the application is the interface between git and github. That's also, generally speaking, the 'hard part'... and the developer that can take you from a blank screen to a demo, by his or herself, and can deliver that product to market, is the ideal developer. If you can hire a guy that can take you 95% of the way there, and then outsource the fiddly bits like login and navigation to oDesk or whomever, then you've got a real talent. That is the type of developer the parent seems to be describing, at least to me.
As to his self-understanding, I dramatically prefer working with developers that know where their limitations are, and know where they're not good. I find myself getting bored with the result of a QA report, and it doesn't excite me. Solving a problem excites me. Tweaking an animation to prevent flickery scrolling on IE7 does not excite me. It took me a lot of years to get from being the 95% guy to the 100% guy, but even my 100%ness is qualified -- it has to be within a given set of parameters. For somebody to acknowledge their weaknesses, in my opinion, demonstrates a higher degree of self-awareness than the average person who doesn't.
The devil is in the details. You just quantified one of the most difficult things there is to quantify. What were your units for that percentage ? Dollars, hours, lines of code, functions, cpu cycles ? Language breaks down as soon as you do that.
I agree with you in spirit that if there's menial tasks that can be easily outsourced, then fine, outsource them. But as you used a model github to illustrate your point, let me use a model - airplane - to illustrate mine:
I have this idea, an airplane. I figured out that the Bernoulli effect can be created by designing a wing that has less area on one side than the other, thereby creating a vacuum and lifting the plane up. There - the "core" of my application (of physics, not of software) is done. I have a functioning prototype and a solid theoretical foundation for proving it works. I'm at 95%.
What's left is to outsource all this menial shit. My QA staff advised me that when two propellers vibrate at the same RPM, harmonics are created that destroy the airframe. They also found out the design fails in icy weather. Oh well, a subcontractor can install a heater. The current airframe design is so weak that it creates a condition such that the plane can take off but cannot immediately land, as the weight of the fuel will damage the wings.
As I stated elsewhere, and as the grandparent illustrates, there's a place and a purpose for the 95% guy. The Wright Brothers clearly moved aviation forward in real and measurable ways. Compared to what came after the Wright Brothers, it would be generous to say that they got 95% of the way there.
If your goal is to prove a market quickly, the 95% guy is definitely good enough. Sure, you'd take a 100% guy if you could get 'em, but they're even harder to come by. Anecdotally, I know quite a few of the 95% guys myself, and they're doing really cool things.
But what they did in their initial stake is establish that flight is possible. They took strips of wood and cloth, and turned it into a machine, that flew, through the air.
Yeah, if your plane crashes because of propellor harmonics, that's a problem -- but that's a problem beyond the initial implementation. If you've invented the first airplane, that's a big problem to have, but if you've already demoed a working aircraft to the world, you've likely already moved past the 95% into a proven market, if not having fully established the market, and you can hire a team of engineers to fix the implementation details.
Either way, you illustrate a very important point, which is that where the boundary is drawn is crucial, and that definitely gets my upvote.
As far as adages go, that's wholly incomplete, and generally mitigable with good product planning.
Either way, if it's taking just as long to write the generic CRUD of your application as it took to write the application itself, either your application is quite trivial, or you're doing something very wrong.
In practice, for most people, the "last 5%" doesn't get added in until after deployment, if at all. Regardless, if you're proving a market, and the highest priority is in determining whether or not there's money to be made on a product at all, the 95% guy is an ace in the hole.
The GP even admits that yes, the 100% guys are better, but they are indeed far rarer to come across, and usually involves other trade-offs.
I respect your opinion, but as some other commentators have pointed out, there is nothing wrong with people knowing their own weaknesses. In fact, my core strength isn't development. I'm good at it, but I'm not great. The 100% guys are great.
My core strength is systems administration and building resilient infrastructure. That's my 100% skill.
The development stuff is just what I'm doing for my side projects.
I dev to 95% minimum-viable-product state and then launch and look at the reaction and shake out the bugs. If the service has no traction, I move on. If it has a customer base, then I slog through the tedious 5% (that takes just as much time) to try to perfect the product... but if I don't need to do it, I won't, because I find it too mind-numbing.
"Once I learned that I should give a little to intimidation so the other party feels in control and powerful, but refuse to be totally controlled because the other party wouldn't risk their early release dates to beat up someone for no good reason, then I did well. It also helped to be able to pay off the local gang leader once a week with a pint of ice cream from the commissary. Protection was relatively inexpensive, all things considered."
There are different ways of seeing things, if it was me getting the ice cream for the gang leader, I would not see that as being in lieu of protection any more than making a cup of tea for the boss in regular world is in lieu of 'protection'. It would be a friendly thing to do for someone that appreciated it.
Did you find that your relatively superior intellect, knowledge and command of the English language was valued more by those inside than those outside? I assume you did not have an 'air of entitlement' from having attended private school. Did this intellect thing not set you apart, outside the hierarchy?
Excellent question. Yes, it did set me apart. Everyone laughed about how I "talked faggy". Other than being made fun of, which my skin was thick enough to not care, most of the other inmates just thought they were taking advantage of my skills. They didn't realize that I would have freely given those things away.
The barter economy was interesting. Artists actually did well because inmates would supply pictures of their wives and girlfriends and the artists would draw them on white bandanas soaked in floor wax to make a canvas.
My skill set was my intelligence but since I didn't need anything in exchange I let people assume they were taking advantage of me for legal help and other similar things. Since I didn't build up any wealth through the barter economy, I had nothing to steal. I was more useful undamaged.
Thanks for the reply. Sounds like your intellect and knowledge was appreciated. You did quite well as a geek inside by the sounds of it.
Something else for you to ponder...
Once upon a time a work colleague showed up at my house with one of his friends that I knew had been inside, or 'visiting' as he called it. I honestly thought about barricading them out, such was my prejudice. I feared that things would get stolen whilst I put the kettle on even though said friend of a friend was not a thief.
Looking back I now feel embarrassed to have had such huge initial misgivings. I very much enjoyed the company of said friend of a friend, and his close group of friends, all of whom lived much more colourful lives than mine. My sister enjoyed their company too. Since then I have not exactly sought out those that are criminally minded, however, I am not closed minded about people with a chequered past.
Clearly I could not let on to aforementioned friend-of-a-friend how close I came to just instantly hitting the 'reject button' on him, hence I am sharing that little anecdote with you. Your past - or the headline shock horror prison word version of it - is reputation that goes before you but that is not always a bad thing. People get put out of their comfort zone but they then find things are not so bad.
Basically, I gave a ride to a couch-surfer that ended up committing a robbery. Instead of turning them in when I found out, I just kicked them out... but the police said that made me an accomplice so I went to prison for 6 months and was on probation for 10 years.
I was charged as an adult, so it can't be sealed. Even if I managed to get the records expunged by donating enough money to $partyInPower, it wouldn't matter much because all the data brokers have already bought that information and are under no obligation to remove the information from their databases.
> it wouldn't matter much because all the data brokers have already bought that information and are under no obligation to remove the information from their databases.
That's actually not right. If you get a criminal record expunged, the FCRA requires those data brokers to not release those records ever again to whoever runs a background check on you. If they do it, they're in violation of the FCRA.
The thing that sucks is that there is NOT some kind of big hammer that comes out of the sky and smashes them if they screw up in this way. The process is basically that you'd contact them after the fact to let them know the record was expunged and they'd remove it... which doesn't help if you just failed to get a job because of the record. But they're supposed to stay on top of things and preemptively remove records like this before it becomes an issue.
I'd guess it's worth getting an expungement if you're done with your probation. In some places it's easier than others.
This is very useful information, thank you. One concern though is that, from what I've read recently, a lot of the data brokers refuse to let citizens view their own records so I would be unable to know what they say about me.
I think the current state of things is that you'll receive a letter if someone does a check on you and in that letter they'll explain how to get a copy of the report. I could be wrong about the specifics on that, but that's how a lot of the states were doing it and I think it might be federal law by now.
It wouldn't hurt to call one of the big companies and just ask what it takes to see your report. (they might try to charge you for it. this is a bummer since different companies might not necessarily create the same report, depending on the quality of their database.) I think in the long run the industry is moving towards something like credit reports, where you can see yours for free periodically, but I don't think they're there yet.
They might also be moving towards getting rid of these big databases altogether (they get sued a lot for inaccurate results) and relying fully on sending runners to individual courts to get searches, but that doesn't scale well enough to cover the entire country every time you do a search on a person. The big databases that pull in records from state, county, muni, DOC, and so on have their problems but it's not hard to see why they came into existence: law enforcement and the courts are not properly centralized. My sense is that the industry is in a state of change but I don't know anything for sure (except that getting an expungement is one of those things you might as well try since taking the shot doesn't cost too much and it might help :) ).
The US federal gov't outsources a large portion of its employment background checks to a company that the FTC has charged with violating FCRA. The contractor settled for $2.6 million and kept its contracts, clearing both NSA leaker Snowden and DC Navy Yard shooter Alexis along the way.
On topic: Even the US trucking industry, which is desperate to hire people desperate enough to put up with ridiculous hours and weeks away from home -- working hours that are nonetheless ridiculously regulated -- is hesitant to hire felons. Accidents, plaintiffs' lawyers, juries, etc.
It's actually a pretty thoroughly regulated system. You could theoretically start a company like that overseas but you'd be doing it with secondhand data, since none of the state agencies would deal with you. It wouldn't work very well, you wouldn't attract any customers, and you'd end up fielding lawsuits from the state governments whose data you were borrowing. There'd be no profit in it.
Wow, that sucks. Did you accept a plea bargain, or were you tried and convicted? If it was a plea bargain, did they start out at some kind of conspiracy charge to work you down to where it stopped?
It was a plea bargain. At the time, after 6 months of dealing with an overpowering sense of being crushed by the legal system, I just took the first plea bargain they offered me. It was the exact same deal they gave the person who actually committed the robbery.
The anxiety of not knowing what the future held made it seem to be a relief to just get things concluded. Also, as an 18-year-old, I wasn't thinking about my future 10 or 20 years in the future
That is really terrifying. I apologize for all of the personal questions, but what were you facing if you went to trial? I am fascinated by this. Honestly, it sounds like you were the victim of one-size-fits-all justice...
I'm not a shy person about personal details. They were threatening to give me 99 years in prison for Aggravated Robbery, which is a Class 1 felony, merely because of my inadvertent involvement in the crime. That's on the same level as murder and all of those frightening things.
The Jurisdiction was Williamson county, a neighboring county of Austin, TX. They are well-known for their no leniency attitudes.
It is truly amazing how fucked up our system is. If they actually believed you "deserved" 99 years, then bargaining down to 6 months suggests that all they really care about is artificially inflating and maintaining their "conviction" rate and not actually, you know, justice or something. Thank you for sharing your experiences, I rarely get the opportunity to discuss things like this. Best of luck to you going forward!
That's the maximum possible sentence that can be applied in any circumstance, but it would not have been possible for him to get it. There is a table for each class of crime that cross references the severity of the crime, the number of crimes committed by the person before, and a very small plus or minus factor for how much the judge likes or dislikes you. As a first-time offender, he would have only been eligible for the minimum category, and unless he was a complete dickhead in the courtroom, the judge almost certainly wouldn't have given the minimum of the category. A few months, at the most. This "99 years" bullshit is just gungho DAs trying to scare the shit out of the populace and assert their badassery.
Here is the minimum for Aggravated Robbery (a first degree felony):
"Sec. 12.32. FIRST DEGREE FELONY PUNISHMENT. (a) An individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the first degree shall be punished by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life or for any term of not more than 99 years or less than 5 years.
(b) In addition to imprisonment, an individual adjudged guilty of a felony of the first degree may be punished by a fine not to exceed $10,000.
Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Renumbered from Penal Code Sec. 12.31 by Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 1124, ch. 426, art. 2, Sec. 2, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1979, 66th Leg., p. 1058, ch. 488, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1979; Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994.
Amended by:
Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 87, Sec. 25.146, eff. September 1, 2009."
I don't know about you, but 5 years seems like a pretty ridiculous risk if 6 months was on the table. That is their game. Prosecutors do not like to go to trial because juries are unpredictable. However, they have the overwhelmingly stronger bargaining position of being able to lock you up and throw away the key.
Yup. There was an interesting story on HN a few months back about the parallels between plea bargaining and the Inquisition: faced with either, it's very much in your interest to confess and plead guilty, even if you're innocent.
In the same situation I'd probably acted the same. Yes, it's likely that the actual sentence would have been much lower. But there's still a very significant chance of spending the rest of your life in jail.
Those are federal sentencing guidelines. I am not entirely he was charged with a state offense whose mandatory minimum sentence for the count was 5 years. According to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Sentencin... wiki, state judges are not bound at all to these guidelines.
You are absolutely right, he would probably not have spent the rest of his life in jail. However, staring down the barrel of a minimum 5 year imprisonment with the possibility of more, depending on whether or not the judge had a bad day seems way too risky.
In my opinion, there should be no mandatory minimum sentences. Each action is literally taken on a case-by-case basis, so what purpose do they serve other than to force defendants into plea bargains?
You're confusing robbery and burglary. The common law definition of robbery is assault + larceny (theft) - that is, it's taking something that's not yours combined with making someone fear imminent harm.
How do you assault someone who isn't present at the scene of the crime?
According to the model penal code, "burglary" is the charge of attempting a felony by surreptitiously breaking into a building. The unique elements of burglary are all about gaining access to buildings. Like you said, robbery is about theft by force.
For what it's worth, I asked because Texas has three "aggravated" robbery statutes: robbery with concomitant physical harm to people, robbery using threat of deadly force, and robbery targeting the elderly.
I'm not sure what you're asking. The victim of robbery is present for it, of course. I'm pointing out that unless you're seeing something that I'm not, there's no element of a robbery that implies there's a "target house."
A common mugging is a robbery. When I think of crimes that target houses, I think of burglary.
Oh, that came from his other comments; he said he drove someone somewhere where that person committed a robbery. I had just assumed it was to somewhere someone lived. The "house" part wasn't important to my question. Sorry to be confusing.
My family hired a lawyer for me. Unfortunately, it was a "good ol boy" lawyer who was more concerned with her relationship with the prosecutors office. They told her to accept the plea bargain, and she told me to take it since it's the best that I'll ever get. I was young and impressionable and didn't even think of getting another lawyer.
To this day, I do everything within my power to avoid that County. Anecdotal evidence among my friends indicates that I'm not the only one that avoids Williamson County, the county just to the North of Austin, because of a fear of the unchecked legal system there
> You pretty much have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll work at 50% of the salary as your peers or have to make your own future by starting your own companies and projects.
Fuck that. If you're going to resign yourself to something, resign yourself to the fact that you will have to work 150% as hard as your peers to make as much money. I know this is saying almost the same thing, but it's saying it in a more positive way.
I do like your comment "or have to make your own future by starting your own companies and projects". They say success is the best revenge. If this motivates you (like it did me), milk it.
I appreciate your insight, but I have a family now and it wouldn't be fair of them for me to put 150% effort into my work life just to try to earn just as much as someone else who works 100%.
I would rather work for less money as long as I spend time with the people I love.
One of the most depressing moments was when I got a high-paid and very desirable job at Dell. I was even upfront about my history with my interviewer (I've never hidden or lied about it before) who assured me that it wasn't an issue.
I was working for 3 days and was nice and comfortable in my office and made lots of friends when security arrived and escorted me to my car and told me I wasn't allowed back on Dell property because I failed my background check.
I went through enough depression at the time that I gave up on the tech sector for a few years and worked food industry.
treenyc can post his public-key in this thread, edw519 uses it to encrypt his email address and post the result in the thread. treenyc then uses his private-key to decrypt edw519's email.
The kind of facility I was in was more of a place to warehouse prisoners. They housed 50 people in bunk beds in each warehouse room with no air conditioning. When we moved from the dorm to (for instance) the cafeteria, there were some required rules for the safety of the employees.
All the inmates had to be 3 feet from each other, hands clasped behind their backs, looking down.
A lot of it was purely for psychological purposes. We were never addressed by our names, just "Inmate". I asked them why they didn't just call us prisoners, and they told me that it was because we were Inmates not prisoners since we choose to be there. The not making eye-contact thing was pretty rough too.
It wasn't as out of control as the Milgram experiment or anything, but I did get the distinct impression that the person who put together the operations manuals was very well versed in some of the darker parts of psychology.
> The obvious downside is that prison sticks to you for the rest of your life
What don't you move to Europe? There your US criminal records don't interest anybody - only in security relevant jobs. So just don't apply for jobs with banks, etc.
Assuming that OP has no EU citizenship I imagine it would be very, very difficult to obtain a (work) visa with a a US criminal record. Showing that you have no criminal record in any of the countries you have lived in the last X years is a standard part of visa applications anywhere.
I have come to the same conclusion with my own research. My best hope for being in the EU is if my wife gets a work visa and I just travel there as a spouse on a residents visa and don't have official employment there.
This might be an option if all of my work is done online, but it does skirt the intentions of the law and I don't like doing that for moral reasons.
Yeah, that still sounds like exactly the same difficulties (the online work would likely involve a background check too, right?) plus a huge pile of new difficulties.
If you'd still be earning in dollars, especially, cost of living in much of Europe would be really rough. You might get work permission yourself after half a decade or so of residency (that's how it worked for me), but I still don't see that it would necessarily help. Wouldn't application forms still ask about your criminal history?
I guess you'd be freer to lie on those forms without being found out, but that's an incredibly weak reason to move to another country.
When I applied for permission to work in Luxembourg from the government ministry there, they were very interested in a copy of my criminal background from the US. This information was required for me, my wife, and my daughter.
I am not sure what they did with that information or on what grounds they would deny residence / permission-to-work to a US citizen, but this was something they requested of anyone (and their family) seeking to live and work there regardless of the industry. In my case, I was working for a private company in the IT-sector (not related to security or banking).
I'm a hacker who served 4.5 months of a 9 month sentence 5 years ago. I was in two jails in that time, spending the majority of the time in the second, lower security place. The experience totally changed me, but in a positive way.
First of all, I actually had a lot of fun in jail. My education made certain aspects of the prison system very easy for me to navigate, such as legal documentation and debating with guards. My ability to mend broken electronics very quickly became known. These things made me feel very safe, since people were actively protecting me. It also made me feel quite important in the community.
It started when someone came to me and asked what I knew about mending mobile phones. In UK jails, many people have mobiles, usually obtained by over-the-fence smuggling. Pay-as-you-go credit vouchers are a major form of currency. This guy was very important on the wing - he had a crew of other guys who walked around with him and people often came to pay him. I said I knew enough about phones, and what did he want? He explained that someone had owed him money but couldn't pay. He'd taken the guy's phone as payment, but the phone was pin-locked and he couldn't get in. The phone was an old samsung, one which I knew (having previously owned one) didn't impose any limit on the number of pin attempts. So I told the guy: yeah, I know a few tricks. But I need to get my tools out so I'll do it overnight. (Note: I didn't have any tools). The guy left me with the phone overnight, and I sat up through the night to try all 10,000 possible 4-digit combinations. Thankfully, the correct code turned up in the mid 2000s. So the next day this guy turned up and was amazed that I had figured out the code. He went round telling everyone that I was some tech wizard and that people should always come to me with their problems. In return for the job he arranged for me to have a Playstation 2 in my cell for two weeks, and to get access to a phone whenever I wanted. For the rest of my time, people would bring me trivially broken electronics and I would retire for the evening to make it out like I was doing something difficult, then return the fixed item the next day. It massively increased my quality of life in there.
Secondly, it opened my eyes to how people less fortunate than me live their lives, and how terrible the prison system is for most people. Many, many people in jail were severely mentally ill. There was no support for them. Some were killed in jail, either by inmates or staff, because they flipped out and people got scared. Another large group of people were hopelessly addicted to very harmful drugs. People who exploited this group were the most powerful - they would have drugs smuggled in, then build an army of addicts who would do their bidding to get the next fix. It was a really explosive situation. Almost every act of violence was drug debt related. Immigrants were completely screwed in jail, because there was no way for them to navigate the bureaucracy. I helped several people avoid deportation, including one cell-mate who had a hit contract out on him in Jamaica because he defended his business when yardies tried to extort him. He couldn't read or write, so he couldn't fill out the asylum application. His patois was so strong that his lawyer couldn't really understand what he said, and the border agency was going to send him back to Jamaica to be killed. I wrote letters to the border agency, the prison governor and the home secretary and he was granted asylum and an interpreter was arranged so that his legal visits would be more productive. Hundreds of others in similar situations go without that help every year.
Thirdly, I saw some horrible things. For example: 'syruping' - when someone mixes sugar into a bucket of boiling water and dumps it on someone's face. The dissolved sugar makes the boiling water cling to the skin longer, and the skin peels off leaving the raw flesh exposed. I also saw someone held down by four guys, who performed anal surgery on him with a sharpened spoon to extract drugs he was hiding. He later maimed all four of his assailants, stabbing them in the neck with a pen (saw that too). Another was a guy who was clearly paranoid schizophrenic. His cell was opposite mine. He started screaming one night and barricaded himself in. He then stripped off and covered himself with baby oil, and started setting fire to his cell. The guards came in riot gear to tackle him, but he was so slippery it was like trying to catch an eel. He gave them the run around for quite a while before they eventually fired sedative darts into him and he collapsed screaming. He died in hospital.
Fourthly, I felt so ashamed of myself that I changed my life forever. I was a middle class white kid with a great education who got obsessed with hacking and document security as a teenager and went down for figuring out how to perfectly replicate the driving license, thus throwing away many of the advantages that luck, society and my parents had given me. Everyone else in there had no such advantages. Most of them were born to a life where poverty, drugs, violence and lack of education all being concentrated in their environment led to them being systematically channeled into prison. I was there essentially through misplaced intellectual curiosity, while others were there because their lives were so bad out of jail that crime was actually a rational survival choice. Society failed them, while it tried to hold me up with both hands. I was, and am, disgusted with myself. Upon leaving jail I learned programming, worked freelance to pay for my tuition while I got a degree, got a PhD, and am now working towards spending my life using my skills as efficiently as I can to improve the lives of as many people as possible. If I ever have a lazy moment, I just have to cast my mind back to prison, and the disgust with myself rises up again, and I launch myself back into work with an energy I never knew I had before prison.
Finally, I would say that my criminal record has not held me back. I no longer have to legally disclose it, but when I did I always did so with a letter explaining some of the circumstances and how deeply it had affected my life. I had several positive comments about my disclosure, and I have never been turned down for a job I've applied for. It doesn't have to hold you back - your attitude has to convince a potential employer that your background makes you a great candidate, not a worse one.
Best read I've head online in a while. You are very lucky that this whole thing turned for you. Your skills were highly appreciated in that environment and you learned the lesson. Everybody does mistakes, what matters is to learn from them. You learned the hard way, but the result as you describe it here, is fantastic.
Many, many people in jail were severely mentally ill. There was no support for them.
So UK is getting as bad as the US? Or has it never been good over there? Given how mental health conditions and incarcerations (for whatever reason) go hand in hand, I'd expect any sane society to tackle the former even more ferociously than the latter.
Ever since the mental health institutions were mostly shut down in the 1970s and 80s, and the focus for treatment of criminals with mental health problems became "care in the community", the UK prison system has become a dumping ground for mentally unwell people. See http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/menalhe....
Plus the Probation Service's mandate to be a rehabilitation system has been almost entirely dismantled; compartmentalisation of tasks meant that offenders don't have the same level of single point of contact as they used to and a lot of the older (largely male in that generation) probation officers took early retirement, to be replaced by young women who've been taught that the job is paperwork-with-a-bit-of-face-time. The final death knell of the old school was the merging of the Probation and Prison services into a Prison Service run organisation called the National Offender Management Service, which I suspect has made the changes irreversable (even if they weren't at all).
Note that my father was among the people who took early retirement in disgust at the way things are going, so my views are almost certainly coloured by that.
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this is not a "luxury" that we enjoy in the U.S. Once you have a conviction, it is there forever. So much for doing your time and paying your debt to society. I really hope I am wrong about this, but I fear that I am not.
It's worth noting that in the UK, convictions become 'spent' (so that you don't have to disclose them when asked) after a certain period of time that varies with the severity of the original sentence. But for some crimes (>48 months in prison) they never become spent. And for some jobs, the 'spent' status does not apply. Those include working with children, joining the police or security services, and a variety of other things.
I hired someone in the UK who was obligated by law to divulge a crime that she has committed more than a decade before, because she would be interacting with my children.
It was grueling for her to discuss it -- she was trembling and wringing her hands, and it was suddenly obvious why she had been strangely nervous during the entire first part of the interview -- and difficult for us to sit and hear it; not because her crime was awful (her punishment did not involve jail time) but because she was clearly being put through the wringer.
Honestly, it was a factor in us choosing to hire her; otherwise she was fairly even with the other candidates we interviewed, but we were impressed that she was going into a line of work that would require her to make this same confession to strangers many, many more times in the future.
It felt really wrong, regardless. Especially after that experience, I think there should be an expiry date for mistakes like hers.
When something is expunged or sealed, is it required that that non-government entities purge the records also?
For instance, it's common for local news companies to report arrests & mugshots on their websites. I'm assuming there are similar aggregators for arrests and convictions that span larger areas than a single news company, and these are the same people that service background checks.
What obligation(if any) do they have to respect the fact that a conviction has been expunged or sealed by the courts?
Doing a little research, it appears that you may be right, but, as you say, the requirements vary by jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions will allow you to expunge misdemeanor convictions but not felony convictions.
If you settle and close your matter civilly (even if it is a criminal matter), you do not have to disclose. Vince Neil of Motley Crue does not have an obligation to disclose his vehicular manslaughter conviction for this reason. There are other examples, but Vince's is the easiest to google.
Maybe, but there are perfectly legitimate reasons for such functionality. It is essentially the same as the NYT paywall. It looks bad when someone clicks a link in a tweet only to be told that they aren't allowed to access the content until they take additional steps (either buying a subscription or making an account).
So they provide links to bypass the restrictions when they are shared over social media.
Can this be used for SEO abuse? Probably, though I couldn't tell you how.
it makes the page less sluggish. it's impossible to disable double tap zoom without disabling pinch zoom, and while double tap is enabled, browsers have to insert a tap delay. this is because every single tsp could be the beginning of a double tap, so the browser waits until 300ms after a single tap to respond to it. this delay isn't perceptible as a delay, but it does make the entire page feel less responsive. disabling zooming disables the delay and makes the page feel quick again.
also disabling zooming makes it feel more like a native app, which some people like.
It's easy enough to avoid the 300ms delay without breaking zoom. There are dozens of tiny libraries that fix this problem by intercepting touchdown events and immediately firing a click if there isn't a touchmove within a very short interval. So, double tap doesn't work, but pinch does and you get "tap" events with very little delay.
"I learned that you should go straight to the person you're upset with rather than go to authorities."
This is bullshit and dumb advice. If someone steals my bike and I find out who it is, I'm not going to go to his apartment and beat him to death in the middle of the day (smart money on confronting a scumbag not leading to a productive conversation).
Fuck that. The reason we have "authorities" is because we have people that can't figure out how to live in a society. Why should someone not use the framework that we've invented to resolve issues?
edit: Whoops, I forgot that the internet is the place in which "snitches get stitches" and no one reports serious crimes to the police because there's a batman in each of us.
Yeah, but there are second order effects. You've heard the terms "tattletale" and "snitch". They developed in reaction to a police force that is seen as outsiders, and as violent and arbitrary. If you invoke the "authorities," you're punished by your peer group, because the authorities tend to make the whole group's life more difficult.
Instead of invoking "the authorities" you're left with direct confrontation, or often a makeshift internal justice system mediated by insider "elders" of some stripe.
Anyway, your position is understandable, but it also betrays a middle class privilege that most inmates don't experience.
Sure, this advice might be helpful in the context of "you're in prison, the person that slighted you is also in prison," but outside of that, it's advice that only serves to aid the aggressor.
Also, why are you suggesting that my position is "middle class privilege" when you're suggesting that you understand ad-hoc prison justice systems?
> Sure, this advice might be helpful in the context of "you're in prison, the person that slighted you is also in prison," but outside of that, it's advice that only serves to aid the aggressor.
I've actually found "deal directly with the person with whom you have the issue" is a good default rule in most areas of life (work, social, etc.) even where the issue is the kind of thing for which there is an available authority.
Recourse to authority when that fails, or when there is a specific reason in the immediate case to believe that dealing directly will be ineffective or involve intolerable risks is still part of the equation, but not the default action.
A thousand times this. When did it become wrong to bring up issues with the persons involved? This is one of the things I have noticed as a growing personality traits largely in the younger generation, where all conflict is avoided through passing all responsibility up to whichever higher authority is around. So we have given the authorities the power to create systems like this and still haven't realized that sometimes, when that person who you have an issue with, is prone to violence, lies, and numerous other skullduggeries, you have to walk into that confrontation either armed yourself or with some visible external backing. I would venture to say our police state national security apparatus is quickly falling under this category.
It's a false dichotomy. There's no solid rule. Sometimes going to the authorities is the best course of action, sometimes a direct approach, and sometimes going to a third party. It depends on the situation.
Because when anyone else reports a crime, bad things tend to happen [at a statistically higher rate]. Everyone suffers, including you. Or maybe nothing happens at all because first responders don't get there fast enough, or they choose not to do anything once they arrive. Or maybe they do the right thing, and you (or your family) suffer when the guy you called the cops on comes back and kicks your ass, or breaks your sister's leg.
Last on the list of possible outcomes is that the cops stop the "bad guy" and everyone is hunky dory.
Contrast that to the white/middle class historical experience of police being generally helpful and protective. Middle class white people call the police (predominately other middle class white people), and good things happen. Then they wonder why everyone doesn't just call the police when they need some help. That's privilege.
There are portions of society that believe, sometimes with good cause, that bringing police into an interaction will result in a negative outcome for all involved, not just for the perpetrators.
That said, please stop perpetuating a strawman argument. You've taken the most extreme interpretation of the original statement, propped it up and vilified it. Considering all the possible ways you could have interpreted the statement, I think you are doing the writer a disservice.
I'm not perpetuating a strawman. The reason why there's a secondary justice system (normally in which the aggressors are the victors) is because people allow it to exist.
I learned that you should go straight to the person you're upset with rather than go to authorities.
Your response:
This is bullshit and dumb advice. If someone steals my bike and I find out who it is, I'm not going to go to his apartment and beat him to death in the middle of the day (smart money on confronting a scumbag not leading to a productive conversation).
So it appears you are interpreting "go straight to" as "confront with violence"?
There are any number of circumstances where going to the person you believe responsible may be beneficial over including the authorities. For example:
1) You are wrong in who you think perpetrated the crime. Involving the authorities may cause great harm to that individual, event if they are found innocent. Talking to them first may clear up misunderstandings.
2) It was a misunderstanding. Maybe there wasn't even a crime, what you thought you saw/experienced wasn't the case. Getting a fuller picture may result in your reassessment of the situation.
3) You don't think the punishment meted out will fit the crime committed, and you want to give them a chance to make amends. Maybe they are young, and you can speak to a parental figure to try to resolve the issue.
4) You have some relation to them or people close to them that you would rather not sour.
That isn't to say don't go to the authorities. Of course there are cases where you go directly to the authorities. I doubt the author would dispute that.
The real world is a place of nuance. I feel confident asserting that you know this to some degree. Acting like it isn't doesn't do anything useful, least of all lead to a conversation that has much benefit.
Are you suggesting that the victims of police indifference and misconduct are actually to blame for those? That doesn't really contradict the "privilege" diagnosis.
Because the outcome can be different on the person filing a claim. I am sure that in the majority of the world a daughter of rich businessmen/politician/high ranking police officer will get a lot different treatment and have her taken seriously by the the police while reporting sexual assault than some poor girl from the ghettos or working poor background. (I really really hope that I am wrong in that assumption)
Sure that's the right choice when confronting a possibly desperate criminal, but realize this: you are hiding behind a system. If you are a white male then this is often the default choice because most systems in this country were designed by us for us. If you grew up as a black male in America then you will probably think twice about involving the authorities because past experience shows a lower base probability of it working out in your favor.
More generally, working out issues directly with other human beings is a core skill that will serve you through your whole life. Institutions and systems might be there to keep the peace, but they are big, slow and calcified to do things a certain way. As an empathetic individual you are much more empowered to work things out with other individuals by gauging their perspective and where your mutual interests lie. As the article describes, prison is a microcosm of this where you may literally live or die by your ability to navigate these waters, but make no mistake, you can use these skills every single day of your life, and geeks are often some of the worst in this area.
Amen. Reality isn't as meritocratic or simplistic as the parent commenter believes. Authorities don't always care and sometimes enjoy tormenting people.
Also, dependence upon authorities is tantamount to learned helplessness. Handle most of your own shit, because creating work for other people won't win you any friends... It also would look weak. And if there's one constant of human nature , it's that weakness invites aggression. Further, I'd hazard a guess that behind bars, friends are the most important currency, whether they are guards or inmates... You want enough so you don't get fucked with.
Uh, you could also respond to me. I don't think that reality is a meritocracy or simplistic. Authorities often don't care, I get this (I live in New York).
It's not about dependence on authorities, it's knowing that if you're in a situation in which your options are "go to the police" or "take care of this myself," you're not really dealing with even minded people.
If you're in jail, sure, by all means, go try to resolve a personal issue yourself. But that's not the sort of things you could even go to authorities for.
I think you're being pedantic. To the surprise of absolutely no-one, this axiom (like all axioms) can't be applied universally.
This advice was doled out in the context of earning "respect". As such, it's more applicable when working within a persistent social construct (schoolyard, office environment, family, etc) - and not random strangers who you will likely never meet again (bike thieves, DMV clerks, magazine subscription salespeople, et al).
I'm just making a barely-educated guess, but I think the reasoning goes, the 'authorities' are the enemy. If in prison the currency is respect, yes you are disrespected if something of yours is stolen, but the "disproportionate response" of going to the authorities (read: the people who took your freedom) is orders of magnitude worse.
Prison isn't the most reasonable place. If the school bully steals your lunch money, your best bet is generally to stand up for yourself. After all, nobody likes a snitch.
The edit quip was necessary. I thought that hackernews would be safe from the "internet tough guy" syndrome, but I guess not.
I mean, I-get-it. The poor tend to go to jail at a higher rate than their more well-off counterparts for various reasons, but the "don't snitch" bullshit just keeps criminals safe to keep hurting their communities.
That "don't snitch" thing holds true in most prison cultures, the same as it does in many military, and business settings.
You're new to a surrounding situation about which you know very little, and your peers, be they inmates, soldiers, or executives, could be engaged in illegal matters which are connected to larger, more organized criminal ventures.
You "rat" on someone you see doing wrong, but the people you just "ratted" to are involved in the larger criminal endeavor, so the people you "ratted" on are the first to know that you did so...
Meh; I agree with that advice for many situations, and playing "tough guy" has nothing to do with it.
You're missing the prereq of building some skills at dealing with people -- not "confronting" them, not attacking them (verbally or physically), but by simply showing them simultaneously that you have a spine but no chip on your shoulder. Then you give them a clean way out of the "misunderstanding" (or sometimes an actual misunderstanding). It's all psychology, and practice.
I'm not an expert at this, but I see people around me all the time doing it so disastrously wrongly that I feel like an expert just by comparison. I have two neighbors (two middle-aged couples) who have been miserable for a couple of years now because they had a minor disagreement (one's improperly-connected waste water system was leaking into the others' property) which they "addressed" by only going to the authorities -- via lawsuits, petitions to regulatory boards, etc. -- instead of resolving it between themselves.
In the end one of them "lost" and one of them "won", but they're both stuck living next door to someone with a virulent hatred for them.
If either side had any real skills at managing conflict this would never have happened.
Most conflicts that happen do not need to involve the authorities -- especially the ones that start small and escalate until the authorities get involved (intentionally or not).
The bar to what kind of conflict merits appealing to authorities first (instead of direct dealing first) is higher if you're in prison, I imagine, but still -- most everyday conflicts start below that bar.
Interpersonal conflicts with co-workers, non-scary problems with neighbors (more "they make a lot of noise at 2am" than "they set my dog on fire"), vandalism, etc..
Another example -- while my wife was in school we lived in a slightly rough neighborhood, and once someone threw a large rock at the front of our house... something about as heavy as a few bricks. It would have easily shattered the window, if it had hit it; instead it broke a bit of siding dropped onto the porch.
I could have hidden and called the police; I could have run outside screaming and threatening the kids that were around. But I thought about it first. I was a faceless white guy to them -- at work much of the time -- and someone was showing off how bad they were and attacking my house.
So instead I went out and spent 20 minutes making myself not a faceless white guy. I talked to everyone I could find -- mostly kids, a few adults -- and just explained what had happened, explained that I wasn't trying to find who had thrown the rock, just wanted to be sure everyone knew what had happened and that it was a dumb idea. I was a dumb kid, once; my dumb mistakes had included setting an empty house on fire, accidentally; so I knew how this kind of stuff happened, but it needed to be stopped before anyone got hurt.
I met a bunch of people (and talked about lots of things other than rocks thrown); afterwards it never happened again, and I felt a hell of a lot safer than if I had just stayed in the house and called the police (who wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing anyway, of course, except their presence would have turned me into a faceless, scared white guy).
All of this has little to do with snitching, with rich/poor (though that is relevant to how useful the authorities are to you, of course...), and more to do with the respect you get for honest dealing, if you can do it intelligently.
That's a bit of an extreme example. Think about this in the context of an office environment. Often times it is better to work out issues with someone directly. It commands a lot more respect and often times helps to cut through red tape.
A lot of the time if you go to your boss over a problem with someone that you work with, they view you as a "tattle-tale" or somebody that is too weak to stand up for yourself.
I hardly think that office disagreements are the sort of thing the advice is meant to deal with.
Also, be careful with taking your own advice on this one. If you keep working with someone personally instead of formally, you're giving him/her the chance to manipulate a situation against you.
>> "This is bullshit and dumb advice. If someone steals my bike and I find out who it is, I'm not going to go to his apartment and beat him to death in the middle of the day"
It seemed to me he meant if you have an issue with someone go to them and work it out before taking further action. e.g. you hear word someone has a problem with you. Go to them directly and try to resolve the situation. It could be a simple misunderstanding. If you go the authorities straight away you will make an enemy for yourself for sure.
I doubt people are stealing each others bicycles in prison.
You should try to broaden your arsenal of social interactions. Sure, tattling and beating people to death have their place, but there are one or two other methods for resolving conflicts as well.
if arnor.knows(a_hole, stole_wallet) and (a_hole not instanceof psychopath or a_hole.physical_strength < arnor.physical_strength)
arnor.confront(a_hole)
if not arnor.has_wallet
arnor.punch_in_face(a_hole)
// When violence enters the picture, things get ugly.
goto tattle
else
[lbl] tattle
arnor.tattle_on(a_hole)
Cute, but when you're confronting someone, the situation can always turn violent. Let's say that you confront someone and end up punching him/her in the mouth and get a cut on your hand. You could get a serious infection or a disease, even though you "won."
Really? You don't confront a colleague about not doing what he promised, but you go to your boss, because it could turn violent? You don't confront your neighbour about the noisy party, but you call the landlord, because it could turn violent? You don't confront your teammate about not giving enough passes, but you complain to your coach, because it could turn violent?
You are showing quite a lack of imagination in applying the maxim you complain about in your top-level post.
Kidding aside, I would be extremely unlikely to resort to a violent act in the case of a stolen wallet. If a_hole won't give it back, it's really not that big of a deal. Reprint photos of wife and kids, Visit ATM, Cancel some credit cards, register a hold with a credit bureau, and move on with your life.
That doesn't make you a caveman, it just means that we have a very different perspective on what winning and losing is. People who resort to petty theft have their own set of problems. They are rarely winners in any way that I would envy them. There is a point to be made in the fact that letting someone get away with theft sets a precedent that it is tolerated. That is certainly wrong and a clear hole in my outlook which I have yet to resolve.
You misunderstand the intended purpose of the article. You're not supposed to see these anecdotes of prison experiences and morals and interpret them as lessons that you should have learned and didn't. The point is to spread understanding, to offer a glimpse into the minds of those who have experienced prison, especially those whose previous lives were so different from life behind bars.
You're right, directly confronting the perpetrator rather than seeking help from the authorities is often inappropriate in "normal life", but the point is that prison changes people. Before prison, the convict would choose to respond to a conflict as would you and I you and I, and believed that was "correct". But prison changed him in that respect so completely that he recognizes that he changed and fully believes that it's for the better.
I agree 100% with you. The best response is always to call the authorities. I really don't see the benefit of going toe to toe with a criminal.
Also, I'm shocked by the responses you are getting telling you that you are wrong. Do people really want to confront a criminal. I grew up in a ghetto in Brooklyn, NY, I'm Hispanic, and my family always calls the police.
Getting into an argument directly with someone has too many times ended with somebody in the hospital or the cementery.
Yeah, I don't understand most of the responses. I hope that the responses are either from people that:
a) Don't think that he's saying "here's advice for life" (and if they do, don't realize that this is advice for how to respond to crimes against you)
b) Are scoping his advice to "while in prison, and because you're stuck there with violent morons anyway, don't make yourself a target"
c) Are out of their depth and/or don't realize that criminals are willing to resort to violence over even being told to not yell on a crowded subway. Further, don't realize that even short fistfights can result in serious consequences to both parties.
d) Just have no idea how the world really works and see things from this weird rose-tint of (based on responses to me) "minorities will get often get arrested for reporting crimes, so they shouldn't report them" and don't really understand that "don't snitch" just results in higher crime rates in affected areas due to inadequate police spending.
I'm in Brooklyn too and I've witnessed some pretty aggressive fights over petty (non-criminal) bullshit. Why give a shit if a criminal respects you? I get that within jail, it's more important, but how is the system supposed to improve?
"...don't realize that this is advice for how to respond to crimes against you"
I missed that in the answer by Anonymous on Quora. Can you point it out? Anyways, seems like you've attached a meaning to this that most people haven't and now you're making all sorts of assumptions about those that didn't attach that same meaning.
I completely agree with you. In jail, if you're not a mafia boss, your prime target is to get out safely asap. That may be advice to live by while you're in prison with "violent morons" because they made that rule. That's the rule of "violent morons". Not a very good source of rules, I think.
Because you're reading it different than most people, just like the parent comment.
"I learned that you should go straight to the person you're upset with rather than go to authorities."
Person you're upset with doesn't = potentially violent criminal. It could be a co-worker and the choice is to express yourself to them like an adult or immediately go to HR.
Living in a society is about being able to reason with others.
Instead of trying to skirt issues and involve authorities in hopes to solve problems, it usually is better to confront the person themselves.
Your example went straight to an extreme. It doesn't have to be theft, or murder, or an assault that makes you "upset" at them. Maybe you feel wronged because they said something in public that you wanted private.
Authorities have their place, but many problems can be solved by not involving them. I'd also say that many more problems are caused because people didn't want to confront one another.
>Maybe you feel wronged because they said something in public that you wanted private.
You cannot go to authorities with "he called me a butt."
The issues here are a subclass of "crimes and wrongs that authorities would address." My example is not going to an extreme. Have you ever confronted a criminal? How did it go? Do you see where it could have gone worse?
I once confronted the guy that broke into my car and stole my stereo. He gave everything he still had back (he didn't have the CDs anymore).
For what it's worth, I only went to him directly after the police shrugged it off and wouldn't pursue it. I gave them his address, description, other crimes he had been involved in (drug dealer), etc. They didn't care, and when the crime happened couldn't even be bothered to lift a couple of prints.
I was so angry when he said "sorry man, I figured your insurance would cover it, no hard feelings". But, looking back, he was just dumb as hell and stealing from a friend of a friend you met once made sense to him...In this sort of situation, handling the issue directly worked out for me better than going to the police.
Public order offence here; UK. But I don't see how it makes sense to do that over a little tiff, or even how it could be practically enforceable unless the policeman was right there. I mean what are you going to do; film all your life incase someone says a mean word to you?
Well, in my country's case, you could have a witness willing to testify as to what he heard. Happens quite a few times, especially from litigation-trigger-happy people.
Let's take one situation as an example. You're a woman experiencing domestic abuse in a mandatory arrest jurisdiction (means if the cops get called for a DV case, somebody is getting arrested). Your abuser also happens to be charismatic. You call the cops, your abuser cuts his own hand with the knife and convinces the cop that you were the aggressor, you're going to jail. Also, maybe you have trivial amounts of drugs in the house. Etc.
Google: "net widening effect"
--
Hell, I'm white and middle class, but I used to look like a hooligan and the one time I called the cops (when someone I invited over to the house stole all of our laptops and a bunch of cash) I ended up spending the day locked in an interrogation room under suspicion for being an accomplice to the person that robbed me. (Somehow the cops became convinced that I arranged the robbery of myself to pay off a drug debt that I owed this person, because he was a known drug dealer and I invited him into my house)
try and go to the guardian when you're in prison because a guy insulted you and you'll probably be seen as a snitch for the length of your sentence. Trust me, I've seen the whole Oz series (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/)
Nice. At least one person can see the irony in people trying to disagree when all they have for research is "I read something about this on the popular user-content website Quora."
We have authorities to stop psychos who think the only way to solve that issue themselves is to beat the thief to death.
That aside I think your advice is cowardly and people should learn to solve their own problems. Sometimes that includes learning to communicate with others.
How do you think confronting people normally goes? Have you ever been in a fight? Even if you "win" a fight, you don't have anything to gain. Throwing punches can lead to infections and serious injuries (including death).
It's not cowardly to not respond to disrespect with formal means.
Man, I don't think you understand how these cultures work. But if you don't understand it by now, then you probably aren't going to learn it from a HN post. So... good luck with that.
The 'authorities' does not just mean 'the police/government'. In most situations in life there are 'authorities' and the point is that you shouldn't immediately involve them.
You confront a colleague about not doing what he promised and don't immediately go to your boss. You confront your neighbour about the noisy party and don't immediately complain to the landlord. You confront your teammate about not giving enough passes and don't immediately complain to your coach. In general, you solve the problem on your own, directly with the person you have a problem with, before asking someone else, usually someone with more authority, to do it for you. That is the point of the maxim.
I think the quote means: "I learned that you should go straight to the person you're upset with rather than go to authorities [in prision]." Are you saying this quote is bullshit when it applies to the world outside prison, or inside prison?
I'm also very surprised at peoples responses to this. If I have a serious crime committed to me I'm not going to confront a potentially dangerous individual. It simply isn't worth the risk. Why put yourself and your family at risk just for the chance of securing some kind of respect from a criminal?
I think part of this disconnect has to do with the kinds of crimes that people actually end up in prison for.
One of the largest single sources of arrests and convictions are the drug war -- I will not call the police if I see someone buying, selling, or using drugs. A lot of people on the other hand, will call the police because they see something "suspicious" and that suspicious behavior might not even be illegal.
In addition, lots of crimes occur with context, and sometimes the context muddles what true justice would be. If you don't know the context behind what you're seeing, it's easy to think the police will help when the reality may be anything but. If people are stealing because they or their loved ones are hungry, are the police really the best option? People seem to be more content to call the police than they are to take difficult steps to try to ensure that people are fed and cared for, and that's a problem. I want to live in a world where people are able to have good relationships with their neighbors, to know how they're life is going, and be able to offer support for them if they need it -- and all of those should be easier and come more natural than calling police on their neighbors to externalize the problem.
I could see someone hassling someone else, but for all I know they're stepping up to someone who has consistently attacked or harmed them or their loved ones. At some point - seeing someone who is being sexually assaulted, seeing people who are surviving domestic abuse, etc. - I do believe there's a moral imperative to help the person who is being victimized and if calling the police is the best way to do that then by all means. But in my view these crimes are the small minority of crimes that fill the jails and prisons, or that the police get called about.
Anyhow. Obviously there are times when I think everyone is best served by calling the police. If I had to choose between "see something, say something [to armed police who will then involve themselves with violence]" and "stop snitching" my preference would be stop snitching. Things are often more nuanced than either allows, however.
If it's a stolen wallet or bicycle I'm not going to call the police (unless necessary to get a report for insurance purposes) and it's not my job to play detective and find the perpetrators. I do believe that the police usually make bad situations worse, but that doesn't mean I don't believe there are bad situations where they can help.
"I learned many things from inmates that I never learned in my prior life. I learned that you should go straight to the person you're upset with rather than go to authorities. I learned that giving and keeping your word is the ultimate measurement of character. I learned that loyalty is easy to promise, but few really deliver. Don't be that guy. Prison is really a learning crucible since the reactions are so quick and amplified. If you have annoying habits, you'll find out fast. If you are not respectful to others, you'll hear about it and you may get a "tune up" to teach you respect."
Sounds like a better and less expensive education than Harvard and Wharton.
Well considering that California spent almost $50k per inmate in 2008 alone [1], it's certainly cheaper for the "student", but not exactly less expensive all told.
still less expensive then the Ivy League MBA Education. Provided yes, you will get more connections. However, MBA graduate of Ive League has terrible reputation on horning their words.
This Harvard Professor even wrote many paper on the benefit of horning one's word:
I was sentenced to 10 months in 1998. I was released in 1999, went to college, got a Master's, and finally, a Doctorate.
When I was originally sentenced, I was sentenced to a "boot-camp" style facility, with the goal of doing 90 days of boot-camp style labor, and walking out of prison a free man with a parole term. Due to some paperwork issues, I was transported to the main prison camp (where the camp's goal was to treat sex offenders), and ended up doing 99% of my time at that camp instead, waiting for a bed to open up. By the time a bed opened up at the boot camp, I had less than three months left to go on my sentence, and chose to stay on the hill instead of the boot camp, and expired out with no probation or parole at the end.
Prison itself is a great sociological experience. There are three tiers of people -- the grunts (who have their own stack ranking system), the intellectuals, and the guards. Communication between any of the three groups is a challenge. Learning to talk to the 'grunts' always came with some intimidation. I ended up getting a job in the law library, helping other inmates type out legal motions and briefs. Fellow inmates would ask for my assistance with their appeals, and guards would ask for my assistance with their union cases. It was an interesting dichotomy, to say the least. You keep your head down, and only form alliances in which trust is the underlying factor. Around my 9th month there, there was a massive race riot in the prison, and I had both an African American guy as well as a Hispanic guy deflect conflict that was coming my way because of those relationships and the assistance that I had rendered in the library.
Upon my release, I went head-first into getting an education. I applied, and was accepted to MIT and RIT when I took the ACT and scored high on it, only to have my acceptances removed once they performed my background check. Two smaller religious colleges did accept me, regardless of my background, and I ended up focusing on engineering.
I graduated in 2003. I couldn't find a job until 2006, surviving on working small jobs for retailers (merchandising), and eventually going back to school for an MBA, graduating with my Doctorate in 2007.
Two things to realize:
1.) After each days passes and you stay out of prison, your chances of going back fall. 90% of recidivism occurs after the first year.
2.) After seven years, they can no longer report any criminal activities if you are doing a FDCPA based background check. That information will be there, but they're not allowed to use that information (in the state of California, at least). Banks and others use a SEC of FBI based background check, and those will always show.
I ended up getting a pardon in 2009. It cost me about $100,000 and was shady as all hell, and then took me another 18 months to clean up from the various background check providers, but, now my background is clean, and I have worked for big companies and startups alike.
Prison isn't the problem, it is the lack of opportunities that exist after prison that's the problem. Housing options are closed for you once you're released because of your record -- nonviolent or violent. Employment opportunities dry up. Educational opportunities no longer exist, or the funding isn't there due to your conviction. If you don't hustle every day, a felony record is the equivalent to a civil death sentence -- you have doors that close up and things that cannot be fixed until you either die, get it expunged, or have it no longer work for you.
Being mildly familiar with the US political system, but none of the specifics here, my best guess is that it was a combination of political donations and hiring some sort of lobbying company.
As a mild form of corruption, it's fairly common for lobbying firms to hire ex officeholders, as well as close friends and relatives of officials. Then the lobbyists have a core of trusted people that can at the very least get the official to listen to their client's argument.
There (usually) isn't any direct payoffs involved, but if someone plays by the rules they can generally be assured that there will be a cushy job waiting if they want it once their career in public office is over.
So in this case, my best guess is that a firm was hired to have one of the governor's colleagues raise the issue of the pardon every so often until he finally said yes. It also probably didn't hurt that he was the sort of person who can afford to hire their services, and there's always some upcoming election that needs to be financed through campaign donations.
But again, this is mostly just speculation, and I know absolutely nothing about his particular case.
I saw a big machine opposite my cell. I asked the guards (standing opposite my cell) what that machine did. They light up with excitement that someone showed interested in and could have a coherent conversation. They spent all night explaining to me and showing to me all the cool technology in the system. That big machine -- apparently for electronic fingerprints to take them and transmit them to some national database but it never worked, they kept on mocking the NYC police dept for adding layers and layers of technology and bureaucratic forms and none of it worked, including that machine. We ended up having an all-night conversation, we got along great. I asked the guards all these things I always wanted to ask policemen but never had the chance to: have you ever bee in a chase (yes, once, on the BQE!). What is the pay like? (Horrible, so they all have second jobs; he also worked at Radio Shack! But they all want to get jobs on Long Island, where the police pay is awesome!). It was a very fascinating and enlightening conversation.
12 hours later, when I was released, the policemen I spent the night talking to, offered to drive me back to my apt. He did and when he dropped me off, he got out of the car and shook my hand. Bizarre experience.
Conclusion: I think the police treated me well because I treated them with respect, and I showed in them.
(And because I'm white and dress well. When I went to the court for the court date a few weeks later... I was the only white person in the entire courthouse, excluding the lawyers and judges. No exaggeration. The judge ended up throwing out my case before the trial even started.)
Of course my self-involved reaction to this discussion is "what does a geek do to land themselves in prison?" I'm guessing probably mostly drug offenses, and maybe occasionally hacking related activities. Anything else? I'm sure violent crime is pretty unusual. Maybe tax evasion?
I like this line: being in prison was a chance to learn about so many things.. Sometimes, bad things happen for a purpose. They are blessings in disguise..
Hmm. He makes no mention of what crime he was convicted of, and expresses no remorse, either. Although he does seem to be feeling regret (which I think is an appropriate function of prison), he sees himself as being a victim -- no other victim is referred to. It seems he's proud of his murdering, home-invading comrades.
This is certainly a testament to the failure of prisons (at least in his case). The education he needs is not in Agile, but in how to be a decent human being. He has learned nothing in that category.
You literally don't know shit about him or his situation. I honestly feel bad for you; there's no point in being hostile about somebody's character based on a short synopsis of somebody else's jail time.
No one has ever gone to prison for BS reasons, or been falsely accused.
How can you ever trust anyone who ever did anything wrong in their life? If you've done something wrong you're obviously a bad person forever.
<sarcasm>
Edit: As an aside, it is very likely you have committed a crime punishable by jail time and not been caught/prosecuted, at least once in your life (with or without you knowing it).
Exactly. I know someone who received a ticket for a broken tail light. He forgot to pay it and ended up going to jail for 8 months! 8 months! For a broken tail light!
I would have expected an additional penalty or at most a week in jail, which even then I would consider that extreme.
No, it wans't. He (I suppose wrongly) assumed that he didn't need one since it was such a minor thing. No body expected that to happen.
As far as I can tell, has family name was kind of known in the area for being trouble makers. He, himself, had never been in trouble with the law, but he had the unfortunate last name of being associated with some family members that did.
I suspect it was a "teach you a lesson" sort of thing.
Not surprisingly, he did eventually become a trouble maker and is in jail again. When he was in jail for the taillight, he was quite upset about it. He's okay with the fact that he's in jail now because he knows he screwed up and he feels like he deserves it.
> Hmm. He makes no mention of what crime he was convicted of, and expresses no remorse, either.
Which doesn't give you enough information to judge his character either way. Maybe he went to jail for something trivial, like drugs. Maybe he just feels ashamed enough not to talk about it. Maybe he just considers it off topic.
There are a great many potential explanations for the observation that he doesn't talk about his crime and his feelings about the crime - other than his just being a horrible guy.
>>The education he needs is not in Agile, but in how to be a decent human being. He has learned nothing in that category.
Did you read the whole post?
"I learned many things from inmates that I never learned in my prior life. I learned that you should go straight to the person you're upset with rather than go to authorities. I learned that giving and keeping your word is the ultimate measurement of character. I learned that loyalty is easy to promise, but few really deliver. Don't be that guy. Prison is really a learning crucible since the reactions are so quick and amplified. If you have annoying habits, you'll find out fast. If you are not respectful to others, you'll hear about it and you may get a "tune up" to teach you respect."
He also discusses his background + the negatives of prison life in the comments.
Some of the guys I know in there are in for decades at least. I can't imagine them having the education for any kind of gainful employment when they get out.