
Games Criminals Play – How You Can Profit By Knowing Them - zackattack
http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/05/games-criminals-play-how-you-can-profit-by-knowing-them-2/
======
barrybe
Here are some of the ways that a blogger will try to manipulate you into
purchasing a book.

First, the post presents itself as a harmless and useful source of
information. There's nothing to lose, and you might be informed or at least
entertained if you keep reading.

The story spans several different aspects of human behavior. At some point, it
might touch on something that you've personally experienced, which makes you
more interested in the post.

As the post goes on, it begins to accumulate reasons why the topic is
important, and how it can potentially affect you and your life. Before you
know it, you begin to feel like you can't afford to ignore the provided
advice.

Then finally, the trap is set! An affiliate link is posted, and all you have
to do to feel better about the situation is whip out your credit card.

Here's how you can avoid buying a book that you don't really want:

1) Recognize the signs

2) Use a web site that allows comments to publicly mock the blog post. Not
only does this give you the enjoyment of being a jackass, you can transform
your reticence into a noble cause.

I hope this advice has been helpful!

~~~
zackattack
I'm humbled that my post was powerful enough to elicit this kind of personal
expression.

Or are you usually this good?

~~~
Alex3917
I guess no one ever told you that the worst thing you can possibly do to an
American is to trick them into reading a book.

~~~
eru
What makes you think barrybe is an American?

~~~
huherto
The fact that he didn't like to be tricked into reading a book? :-P

------
malbs
The article was interesting to me because I have a friend who is a Prison
Guard. He regularly tells stories about working in the system, about the
prisoners, and about his work mates.

With the prison system here in Australia, he says there is a genuine drive to
get rid of hard-ass prison officers, and replace them with what he calls "yes
men", who will back down from any potential engagement with prisoners, because
it is essentially bad publicity for the prison system, and the media loves to
jump on prison violence (especially caused by the guards). In this the guards
are already coming from a weak position because the inmates can actually use
the media attention to their advantage

Anyways I'm getting off track, but my mate refers to himself as part of the
old school system, where if you care to break the rules at all, it will be met
with swift and violent retribution at the guards hands in the form of some
sort of midnight visit. This is all being phased out though, as I already
mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Also, the inmates definitely know the system, and know how to get around the
justice system - There was a recent riot in the local prison here, where the
prisoners attacked two of the guards, but even though the prisoners knew there
was CC TV on them, they simply covered their faces with towels as to avoid
identification. Now the guards could identify them based on mannerisms on
camera (the way they walked/moved, used weapons), however it didn't go to
trial because the the video was the only evidence, and a prosecution would
never get a jury to convict because mannerisms would never be enough to
identify the perpetrators. Kind of a long winded way of saying the prisoners
know what they can get away with, very well. I asked him what would have
happened if the prisoners had actually killed one of the guards, and he said
well they would have got away with murder.

Scary place, he certainly earns his 90k per year. Sorry for the long winded
response!

~~~
louislouis
Very insightful comment. No need to apologize.

------
yason
Two things come to my mind:

\- I would be a terrible correctional officer; and

\- it is certainly a whole another world where people learn to apply their
obviously available intelligence and emotions first in a false way and
secondly, then being able to pull the plug and turn against the "duck" with
these extortions.

Anecdotally, if I was imprisoned and I started to befriend an officer, my
loyalty to him would grow as well as his loyalty to me. I wouldn't be able to
pull such a stunt that would potentially get him fired and mess up his life if
he didn't bring me pot.

~~~
eru
Perhaps that's why you didn't land in prison in the first place? Or it works
the other way round, and your views change when you are in prison?

------
petewarden
If you're interested in the strange working relationship between guards and
prisoners, I highly recommend Newjack:

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newjack:_Guarding_Sing_Sing?w...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newjack:_Guarding_Sing_Sing?wasRedirected=true)

The author is a journalist who was refused access to Sing Sing, so he joined
the prison service as a guard there for a year.

~~~
jrockway
I just finished reading that book, and it doesn't sound like the relationship
that this blog post implies at all. He said he sympathized with the inmates a
bit (and let them break minor rules), but he didn't bring any contraband in.

(And interestingly, the book makes prison sound a lot nicer than I would have
imagined. Less rules than the residential high school I went to, anyway...)

~~~
petewarden
No, but he does discover that the guard/prisoner relationship is a lot more
complex than he expected, relying for the most part on subtle persuasion and
negotiation by the guard not raw coercion. He also show how much time
prisoners devote to getting inside their guards' heads, since they often were
manipulative and amoral personalities on the outside and now they have nothing
else to vent those skills on.

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nandemo
_This brings up the notion of sex in the presence of the female, while making
the inmate himself appear non-threatening. The way to nip this in the bud is
for the female guard to say that any sexual talk in her presence is neither
appreciated nor appropriate._

This sounds hilarious to me, in a "you can't fight in here! This is the War
Room" sense. Are female guards common in prisons for males in the US?

~~~
pyre
Well he did say that the book is from 1981...

------
javanix
I'm not convinced that most of the inmates have quite that level of
sophistication, but anyone who's dealt with a particularly effective bully
will recognize the kinds of psychopathic behavior depicted.

~~~
puredemo
Yeah, this sounds more like AIG or Goldman Sachs.

~~~
zackattack
How so?

~~~
puredemo
Well, they gradually gained the public trust in the financial sector. Then
they proceeded to threaten the country with financial and economic ruin if
massive amounts of publics funds weren't transferred to them.

~~~
anamax
> Then they proceeded to threaten the country with financial and economic ruin
> if massive amounts of publics funds weren't transferred to them.

Did they?

From the outside, it looked more like "those institutions are too vital, so
we're going to pump money in and tell them how to do things" from govt
officials.

Which reminds me - the US financial institution bailout is close to break even
with the exception of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which the Dems insist on
pouring more money into - they voted down liquidation early this week). GM and
Chrysler aren't even close.

~~~
puredemo
Except that it was Paulson who did almost all of the political leg work.

~~~
anamax
Paulson was a govt official at the time. (Yes, there is a revolving door
between GS and govt.)

~~~
puredemo
Before which, he was working at Goldman Sachs since 1974.

It was essentially his decision to do the bailouts (despite the obvious
conflicts of interest.)

------
mhb
Handmade prison escape tools and weapons:

[http://trinixy.com/28-handmade-prison-escape-tools-and-
weapo...](http://trinixy.com/28-handmade-prison-escape-tools-and-
weapons-24-photos.html)

------
etherael
The thing that confuses me about these scenarios is that it seems to assume
too much on the part of the inmates, that they have the ability to make all
these extremely minor character judgements and manipulate a person who holds
absolute power over them to the extent that they have them enthralled.

If they truly have such powers, why are they not somewhere else other than
prison?

~~~
zackattack
1) Prison guards don't have absolute power over the cons

2) The cons don't have them entirely enthralled, but as I mention in the
article, severely weakened over time, and vulnerable enough to succumb to
minor rules violations that the cons use as leverage against the guards - to
extract major favors

3) A lot of criminals are very intelligent and if they were born in an
affluent suburb in Connecticut, they would probably end up just as powerful as
many businessmen/politicians. Some criminals end up working their way out of
prison and end up very powerful. Look at YM/CMB as a great example of this.
(Except Lil Wayne is in jail now on a gun charge because it's all tied up with
his "hood" image.)

~~~
roel_v
Who is YM/CMB? Google shows a bunch of rappers, but is there actually one that
calls himself "YM/CMB"? I guess that guy drank too much of the Web 2.0 naming
coolaid ("Street 2.0"?)

~~~
CWuestefeld
_that guy drank too much of the Web 2.0 naming coolaid_

 _That_ would be "Horsedick.MPEG" from the movie _Miss March_.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_March>

------
mcantor
I feel like posts such as this one say some pretty scary things about intimacy
in general, even honest intimacy.

------
sethg
_The next step is testing: violating minor rules, asking for things that are
not supposed to be given. They test for the resilience of the guards and are
also playing to what in psychology is called the “foot in the door
phenomenon”: people who do a small favor for you are more likely in the future
to do larger favors for you._

I am reminded of the teachers’ maxim “don’t smile before Christmas”, i.e.,
establish yourself as a firm disciplinarian at the beginning of the school
year, and you can be more flexible once the students recognize that you aren’t
a pushover.

------
teaspoon
Holding up the D.E.N.N.I.S. system as an example of successful manipulation
kind of torpedoes the credibility of your interpretation. Did you finish the
episode?

~~~
zackattack
It's never ceteris paribus. Are you familiar with polynomials? Ax^i + By^j +
Cz^k? It's the same concept. :)

------
leif
> the con will first touch the duck accidentally

...

wow

