Yes, that breaks the guidelines. All: please don't editorialize when submitting titles. Use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait, and when changing a title, make it accurate and neutral. Use representative language from the article itself wherever possible.
The original speech title (from the URL) was "Law enforcement and the communities we serve: bending the lines toward safety and justice." I don't know if this is either misleading or linkbait, but I know it's not good, and you're not using it.
"Defense of mass incarceration" seems like a neutral summary of the content of the speech. The author's main point, from the content: 'to speak of “mass incarceration” I believe is confusing, and it distorts an important reality.' But the literal words "mass incarceration" seem simply factual, although "mass" might be more neutral as "large-scale."
Replacing this summary of the content with the author and location, as above, replaces it with an irrelevant, content-free title, which couldn't be better designed to go unread. How many HN posts are labeled "Article by Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal?"
It seems better to simply describe the link as inappropriate. But many pieces on this subject appear on HN...
"Defense of mass incarceration" is only a neutral summary in an environment where mass incarceration is not a volatile topic, which would not be Hacker News.
The article is probably going to go mostly unread anyway, since most people never bother to RTFA to begin with, but at least the title doesn't have to be snark bait.
If you used "defense of mass incarceration" in the spirit of the HN guidelines, i.e. because you thought it would make for an accurate and neutral title, then we definitely misread your intention and I'm sorry.
But I still think that title was a mistake. "Mass incarceration" has become a pejorative that signals a certain position (or cluster of positions) on this controversial issue, so saying "defends mass incarceration" comes across as a provocative critique, a la "defends wife-beating". For a really neutral title, maybe "FBI director's speech defending current prison policy" or some such would have worked—assuming that's what the speech actually is.
Certainly the title we hastily gave it wasn't great, except as a cooler-offer. It's actually rare for an article to be quite so unhelpful at indicating what a good title for itself might be.
There's a standing invitation, btw, for any HN user to suggest a better title if they don't like the one that's up there. When people do, we often use them.
I spoke to officers privately in one big city precinct who described being surrounded by young people with mobile phone cameras held high, taunting them the moment they get out of their cars. They told me, “We feel like we’re under siege and we don’t feel much like getting out of our cars.”
Even if this were true, it wouldn't mean the blame lies with those holding the video cameras. If you, a police officer, are scared of being watched by those you police, of having your actions with those citizens recorded, maybe the way you approach your community needs to change.
"Each drug dealer, each mugger, each killer, and each felon with a gun had his own lawyer, his own case, his own time before judge and jury, his own sentencing, and, in many cases, an appeal or other post-sentencing review."
This statement is demonstratively incorrect, given how the accused tend to be pushed hard from all directions to accept a plea deal and skip judge, jury and sentencing.
[0] includes a segment about Richmond, CA's program to reduce violent crime. I wasn't particularly interested in the ethics of "paying criminals not to commit crime", but rather how such a small group of people were responsible for so much of it. If I remember the segment correctly, the first group of participants (few enough to fit around a table in a conference room) were believed to be responsible for over half the crime in the city.
[1] is similar. A single handgun is believed to have been used in ten shootings in Seattle (and I think there have been more added to that number since then), so SPD were investing quite a lot of effort in trying to find the possessors of that one firearm.
Each drug dealer, each mugger, each killer, and each felon with a gun had his own lawyer, his own case, his own time before judge and jury, his own sentencing, and, in many cases, an appeal or other post-sentencing review.
Then again, it's pretty common knowledge that public defenders are woefully understaffed, overworked, and underfunded.
The young men dying on street corners all across this country are not committing suicide or being shot by the cops. They are being killed, police chiefs tell me, by other young men with guns.
Except when, you know, we've got a lot of documentation where they very much are being shot by the cops. Pesky fact, that.
Lives are saved when those potential killers are confronted by a strong police presence and actual, honest-to-goodness, up-close “What are you guys doing on this corner at one o’clock in the morning?” policing
How much of this sort of policing happens nowadays? How much is cops intervening without throwing the book or calling in reinforcements?
We are in deep trouble if this is the kind of simpleton that makes policy at the FBI.
Although we have come far as a nation, we still have weed-choked neighborhoods.
Lives are saved when those potential killers are confronted by a strong police presence and actual, honest-to-goodness, up-close “What are you guys doing on this corner at one o’clock in the morning?” policing.
NYCs stop and frisk was found to have zero correlation to crime outcomes.
Once again, HN surprises me with its open-mindedness.
If you read this and feel strong emotional disagreement, one way to manage that emotion productively is to imagine yourself in the room with the speaker, and try to express your perspective in the way you'd find most likely to convince.
Another way to say that: the way to productively disagree is to talk to your opponent, not at your opponent.
Given that the US incarcerates more than any other nation (however you measure that), and assuming you're correct[1] would you then say that more prison is needed? Or would you say that prison clearly isn't working, and maybe we should try something that is cheaper, provides better justice to the victims of crime, reduces recidivism, and doesn't destroy the lives of criminals or their relatives?
[1] that you see many criminals, and that the US has a shockingly massive crime problem
I certainly think that corporal punishment is an idea worth revisiting for minor crimes, and that perhaps we could expand the use of the death penalty for repeat offenders, but these ideas have fallen out of fashion too.
Where do you live? What kind of criminals committing what kind of crimes are you seeing on the streets? Or are you speaking of what you see in the media?
