
US Senate Passes Sweeping Criminal Justice Reform Bill - beefman
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46613564
======
nimbius
disclosure: I spent four and a half years in a state correctional facility as
an inmate.

Reducing 3 strikes from minimum life to 25 is fine, but it does nothing to
address the fact that expanding judicial discretion just gets you screwed in
an election year. Theres nothing to keep people from getting multiple
_consecutive_ terms until its just the same as life.

The bill also doesnt address perpetual parole. When I was released after
having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a
year and a half. This cuts into your ability to go to work in some cases
(construction hours start early.) my job as an automotive mechanic started at
4 AM and school ended at 10. parole says i need to check in and be home by 6
pm, so i have to apply for extensions and variances every week. miss one and I
go back to a jail term I technically already served.

$300 million dollars is nice for training, but training generally sucks in
private prison and you have no recourse. For example, in a state run
correctional facility you can learn shop math (trigonometry) and a trade. At
the private prison I spent a year at (before it went bankrupt and transferred
us all to state anyhow) my "education" consisted of painting the floor and
laundry detail. you learn nothing, and surprise, are paid nothing because its
education not work (work details like this in prison are supposed to be paid.)

as for the tampons and sanitary napkins, fine, its not like those were
actually much of an issue from what i gather. Did you know inmates have to
purchase things like soap and shit tickets? (toilet paper) There are freebies
from commissary like those stab-proof pens for visitation, but use too many or
upset a guard and youll get a strike for 'commissary abuse' and be restricted
from buying things for a month or two. Ever wiped with a piece of receipt
paper? not fun.

~~~
EpicEng
>The bill also doesnt address perpetual parole. When I was released after
having served time, I was sentenced immediately to additional "parole" for a
year and a half... parole says i miss one and I go back to a jail term I
technically already served

I'm nitpicking one detail of your overall point here, but you didn't serve the
time; that's why you're on parole. If you had served the full sentence there
would be no parole.

So you pay an inconvenience tax in exchange for being released. If you violate
those terms you go back to serve the remainder of your sentence.

No one is saying it's easy, or that there aren't aspects that couldn't be
improved, but I don't see the overarching problem here.

~~~
excalibur
The overarching problem is that it is usually excessively inconvenient, to the
point that parolees are being set up to fail. Rather than being designed to
keep people on the straight and narrow, many systems appear designed to funnel
people back into prison. When they get there they then face the remainder of
their original sentence, meaning that it was effectively EXTENDED by the
length of time they were on parole rather than shortened.

~~~
EpicEng
Sure, and we can debate that, but it's not what I was responding to. The idea
that he had technically served his sentence, but is on parole, makes no sense.

~~~
pureliquidhw
The opening line says he served 4.5 years. The parole started after he was
released, after having served his time.

edit: after more research it seems my understanding of parole's place in the
criminal justice system may have been incomplete. Also there is a distinction
between parole and probation that I had never noticed.

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GodofGrunts
"It bans shackling pregnant prisoners and mandates that tampons and sanitary
napkins be available to women."

Holy shit. How is this not a thing already?

~~~
neilsimp1
My guess is because the rules were written by men without any input from
women.

~~~
chooseaname
You're absolutely correct. HN hates hearing this, but it's true.

~~~
bilbo0s
It's actually not true, and that's what makes the lack of these protections so
terrible.

It's women, who wrote guidelines about how to treat women, and came up with
guidelines worse than guidelines that a bunch of old stodgy men in congress
came up with yesterday.

That's a real problem. And it's a problem that we need to try to solve in
"Second Step".

I mean, why even have female administrators and wardens putting this stuff
together, if they are just going to get their cushy jobs and sit there and try
to out "man" the men? The entire reason you're there is to supposedly bring a
different sensibility.

What's unstated in placing those requirements in this bill, is how much of a
dismal failure our hiring programs have been in bringing in people, (men _OR_
women), with different sensibilities. Whether they are male or female, black,
white, asian, or hispanic, these positions seem to attract the same sort of
people. People who look at the way things are done, and don't see any problem
with it.

We need to start looking past identity politics and start seeing that issue.

------
throwaway5752
It should be noted that this passed because of lobbying by Jared Kushner, and
there's speculation that his experience of his father's federal prison time
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kushner#Criminal_convi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kushner#Criminal_conviction))
motivated some of it.

Another good bill that benefits an even more marginalized population (with no
executive branch patrons) is being actively killed because of a single
representative: [https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/ND-Indian-Affairs-
commis...](https://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/ND-Indian-Affairs-commissioner-
on-Savannas-Act-Pass-the-legislation-502974391.html)

~~~
alistairSH
Any idea what Goodlatte's problem is with the bill?

~~~
throwaway5752
No idea at all. A sibling comment notes there some mushy statements about
working with the DOJ. It's very, very hard to believe that Rep. Goodlatte is
unique in his cares or communications with the DOJ about the impact of the
bill. Occams razor points to something pettier.

~~~
cr1895
In any case, he's on his way out.

------
nsx147
This is a good step forward IMO. Life sentence was pretty harsh for 3 strikes
on drug charges - 25 years is still a lot, but this sets the bar for the next
iteration to keep getting lower

~~~
turc1656
I've always found it fascinating how people are still willing to risk life
imprisonment for a third strike after getting caught twice already. It really
boggles my mind. I'll never quite understand this mentality. Whether the
punishment is life, 25 years, or something else - I just don't understand how
the risk/reward ratio plays out in their mind.

I get that one argument is that many have "nothing to lose". And yeah, maybe
they are very poor, unemployed, without a proper education or skills so their
situation doesn't look great. But to then say "well, doesn't matter if I end
up in prison for the _rest of my life_ is truly mind-boggling.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I just don't understand how the risk/reward ratio plays out in their mind.

For the most part, the same as in most people’s minds for most decisions—if it
plays out at all, it does so only as a _post hoc_ rationalization for
decisions not made based on risk/reward calculus in the first place, which
conveniently juggles facts to support the action already undertaken.

Rational choice theory is a nice model that has some use in modelling behavior
in some domains in broad aggregates, but has little to do with how individual
decisions are actually made.

------
pkaye
> The bill, which is expected to be debated in the House of Representatives on
> Wednesday, would only affect federal prisoners accounting for about 10% of
> the total US prison population.

However I think a lot of the problems with the prison system in the US seems
to be in the state/country level.

------
dpflan
Here are some detailed resources for more information:

> [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
> bill/5682...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
> bill/5682/text)

> [https://www.firststepact.org/](https://www.firststepact.org/)

------
mrbonner
One step closer to being the land of the free’er!

------
zachguo
Wow, look at those jaw dropping incarceration stats. Isn't it systematic human
rights violation?

------
danso
Great to see this happen. Criminal justice reform seems like one of the rare
bipartisan efforts in quite awhile, especially when it comes to an issue in
which the most direct beneficiaries are a non-voting constituency. There was a
great "This American Life" episode pre-2016 [0] about a billionaire
conservative family -- the Deasons, not the Kochs, but in that same strata --
who, like the Kochs, were passionate about pushing through criminal reform.
And then Trump -- whom the Kochs hated -- became the nominee and split the
conservative base and attention. The TAL episode was about how the Deasons
were so impressed by Trump that they parted ways with the Kochs and backed
Trump despite not knowing whether he's support criminal reform. Back then, it
truly did seem that regardless of Trump's beliefs, criminal reform would fall
by the wayside with respect to the other political issues that Trump
prioritized.

That the Kochs and the Deasons were so committed to criminal reform, aligning
themselves with the likes of ACLU and left-leaning groups, I remember reading
op-eds/screeds from activists accusing the Kochs of having an ulterior agenda.
But not much evidence has surfaced of this. FWIW, the TAL episode refers to a
2015 NYT op-ed that Doug Deason wrote about how close his life came to being
ruined by a felony burglary charge, which is a great read [1].

[0]
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/591/transcript](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/591/transcript)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/opinion/ruining-lives-
wit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/opinion/ruining-lives-with-
criminal-justice.html)

~~~
qqqwerty
I don't think the Kochs have an ulterior agenda, but I also don't think they
are being entirely altruistic in their motives. They have built a vast
political influence machine to push their agenda of de-regulation and tax
cuts, so using some of that influence to push for modest criminal justice
reforms is a convenient way of demonstrating 'bipartisanship', while not
really sacrificing much in the way of core values[1]. The fact that this bill
is getting pushed through in the lame duck session in the waning days of total
Republican control is also a signal as to how much of a priority it was. Also,
the Kochs have faced criminal investigations in the past, so they probably
hold some personal animosity towards our justice system.

[1] My very limited understanding of this bill, is that it will reduce
spending overall (i.e. smaller government), and the only increase in spending
is going to private institutions.

~~~
philwelch
Also, they're libertarians, so criminal justice reform is entirely within
their lane.

