The #1 issue in the USA beyond simple conviction and incarceration is rehabilitation. At the federal level, where I have personal experience, it seems like it's entirely retribution instead of rehabilitation.
I was in a federal prison camp and it is primarily an exercise in leisure. The entire day was composed of well.. nothing. If you like reading, fresh air, and exercise you're in luck. If you like alcohol, drugs, and facetime you're in luck. There is very little programming activity to do. If you have the funds to support yourself you can get anything you want from the outside. You can have any book sent in or buy an illicit cell phone. There are so few guards to watch you and very little motivation to crack down on rampant offenses.
The First Step Act is supposed to make programming uniform across all institutions and reward programming with sentence reductions. That's a fantastic idea and I hope that it works out well. There are very few levels to pull to incentivize people, but that should provide motivation.
The problem after that is the stigma that follows you around forever. I count myself blessed to have opportunities when I came home. It was unpleasant to work as a laborer in block masonry, but it lead me back to the shipyard. That has lead me to a better opportunity in the shipyard. This was only afforded to me because I went to a university with name recognition in a field with job prospects. That combined with my previous maritime experience is the only reason I'm not still day laboring will praying for a better opportunity. If you have limited work experience and were accustomed to a high(er) level of living before incarceration it will be difficult to adjust to life after prison.
There are so many thorny issues with the judicial system in the USA that reach into so many aspects of life.
> The problem after that is the stigma that follows you around forever.
Tell me about it. Between my prison "stigma" and the discriminatory ageism that is very prevalent in the industry, and even though I have 30 years professional programming experience, I am currently finding it impossible to find any work.
Can someone please tell me...what am I supposed to do at age 55? Find a new "career"...doing what?
I know plenty of you reading this with your secure jobs and paychecks have done illegal things and not been caught...well what if you were?
I mean I hear all day all the "protections" that this group and that group are getting recognized for, and meanwhile all I want is an opportunity to work my ass off in the field that I have loved since I was a 13yo kid riding my bike to the local Radio Shack on weekends so I could literally sit-in the window display and program on the TRS-80 and save my "work" to a cassette drive.
But no...hiring me (or anyone else in my situation) would apparently pose such an existential threat to companies so in need of people with my exact talent stack that I can't even be considered once it's discovered I went to prison some 20 years ago.
I know this subject has been discussed ad nauseum here on HN, so I don't expect any new answers to my questions, but maybe a few of you with open ears and the ability to think outside the box when it comes to hiring could be a bit more understanding if a qualified candidate with past legal issues come thru your interview process.
The call to end prisons, police funding, and prison funding is partially to solve this exact problem.
I don't think ANYONE should be able to request a federal background check. I don't think background checks should be allowed for employment or housing. Same as credit checks.
A person is either safe enough to be in society, or not. There should NEVER be an in between state. And before you say anything:
1. Yes I am fine with previously convicted murderers living in the same building as me. Teaching my children. And being my co-worker. I want to be able to trust the "justice" system to allow people back into society when they're able to.
2. Yes I'm fine with sexual predators living in the same building as me. Teaching my children. And being my co-worker. For the same aforementioned reasons.
3. Yes. I'm fine with any person with any crime history that the courts and various other medical institutions have deemed that they can be a normal citizen to do what they want.
For the group of people that "maybe they're safe but we're not sure but we don't want to keep them in prison". Then you need to give them a very good stipend and let them live in relative peace. Also, don't limit their housing. Housing limits should never be done. Think of this situation as a "disability payment", because it is a state induced disability.
What someone did in the past shouldn't matter to anyone if that person has been rehabilitated.
> What someone did in the past shouldn't matter to anyone if that person has been rehabilitated.
That's just it though. The US prison systems, as a general rule, don't rehabilitate; they punish. There is no reason to trust that a person who spent time in prison is more safe after than they were before. In many cases, it's common for people to become more dangerous because of stay in prison.
We need to work towards the prisons rehabilitating before we can trust the people coming out of them are "safe" (understand that a lot of people that get sent to prison _are_ safe... the term has a vague meaning the way I'm using it).
> There is no reason to trust that a person who spent time in prison is more safe after than they were before. In many cases, it's common for people to become more dangerous because of stay in prison.
We can't effectively rehabilitate when we have so many people in prison.
Our rates of re-offense are also messy because we literally don't give people another option other than returning to crime.
>We can't effectively rehabilitate when we have so many people in prison.
But the reason we have so many people in prison is that we have stupid laws that mark as jail-able offenses the stupidest stuff. Just take financial fraud, why must someone be jailed for that? Are they a menace if outside?
I disagree with you to some extent, in that the world is shades of gray, and indeed, it is naive to think that either "someone is so dangerous we should deprive them of all liberty" or "despite past activities, we are so confident in their rehabilitation that no caution should be taken in their release to society".
You do make an interesting suggestion that, if we do put a scarlet letter on someone for a past crime for which they are deemed "safe" enough to be in the public, that they should be compensated for that in some way. Shit, look at the movie "Heat" for one of many examples. If someone is trying to get their life together but can't find decent work on parole, or is abused and looked at as a criminal despite paying their debt, what motive might someone have to stay out of a past life?
I used to feel that the stigma should follow you but I’ve changed my mind because I do not believe that stigma works, is overly punitive, and forces people back into crime.
Now I believe that if you pay your debt to society, you should be square with the house and your punishment should stop including any ex-judicial punishment like denying people work they are otherwise qualified for. I think reasonable exceptions can be made for sensitive jobs involving money handling or children.
Here in UK I believe criminal records have a time limit, after which your crime is expunged from the record at leadt as far as employers, etc are concerned. The length of the limit will depend on the crime and may not apply at all the very serious crimes. But it means that there's much much less active discrimination against ex-convicts than I hear about in th US.
> A person is either safe enough to be in society, or not. There should NEVER be an in between state.
Doesn't this contradict the whole idea of parole? My understanding is that people who are out on parole are deemed not safe to be fully left to their own in society, they often have not served their full sentence, but are given the chance to ease back into society earlier.
Wouldn't a more hard-line approach of either 100% safe or unsafe result in even more time spent in jail?
> A person is either safe enough to be in society, or not. There should NEVER be an in between state.
I worked with my Dad growing up and going to school, and I’m fortunate enough to have worked along side people that had felony records.
Some of them for some scary sounding crimes.
I’ve learned just how much nuance is lost in our current “scarlet letter” system (as well as how a crime is judged changes significantly over time).
I can see the notion that somebody should have some kind of re-integration or probationary period, but until we can have an objective and perfect means of conveying the nuance behind every crime, sentence, and rehabilitation (which I say facetiously, because I don’t believe that’s possible) then we should err on the side of not having any scarlet letters.
I think this black and white view is how the constitution was written, and in boolean logic would be how it is designed. But reality has many shades of grey.
Would you trust your personal banking to an institution with history of leaking/mishandling/selling everything about you, or losing records of your balance?
Would you trust your health information to a doctor with previous history of kickbacks, malpractice, lax HIPAA compliance?
> Would you trust your personal banking to an institution with history of leaking/mishandling/selling everything about you, or losing records of your balance?
> Would you trust your health information to a doctor with previous history of kickbacks, malpractice, lax HIPAA compliance?
Were the proper precautions taken so that this won't happen again? Then sure!
No. They are most likely punished for their crime via a fine or a temporary license suspension with the only deterrent for future crimes being larger fines or longer suspensions.
> 1. Yes I am fine with previously convicted murderers living in the same building as me. Teaching my children. And being my co-worker. I want to be able to trust the "justice" system to allow people back into society when they're able to.
I was talking to my friend over the weekend and a funny story came up. My friend is a chess player and made friends with an elderly gentleman at a local starbucks over a game of chess. They became chess buddies and played many games and my friend even visited his house to play a games after the man developed a severe joint disease and had difficulty moving.
It turns out he was playing chess with Nicholas “Nicky No Socks” Facciolo a convicted mobster and murder who learned and fell in love with chess while in jail. My friend told me that after learning that he continued to play with Nicky until he could no longer play due to his disease. He never felt threatened or uncomfortable. As far as he was concerned Nicky paid his debts and was no longer the person he was.
This is defense in depth. We are way too lenient on the people who are not safe enough to be in society IMO, so it's good to have another mechanism. Recently, it's even worse than it's used to be... e.g. in Seattle they quickly release people back onto the streets after multiple separate violent assaults.
I think the incarceration for drug crimes and such should be stopped, but I am also a-ok with stigma following repeated and/or violent crime. I personally think people who have repeatedly shown to be too dangerous to live in society should never be released into said society, but if that mechanism is broken due to "compassion", at least I prefer to never interact with them.
imo the risk of convicted child molesters having a hard time finding jobs involving children despite being deemed rehabilitated by some beurocratic organization is preferrable to the risk of giving them ample oppertunity to molest more children, unless it could be scientifically demonstrated with great certainty that the rehabilitation program was completely effective in like at least 99.99% of cases (how would you even falsify this hypothesis given how many victims choose not to speak out?).
Similarly i would not want people such as bankers or politicians convited of corruption/fraud or similar things being in positions where they have significant influence over the economic conditions of millions of people without proper supervision (which clearly is there is not)
The strategies for dealing with criminals should really vary depending on the type of crime thats been commited i think, as others have pointed out i think your views on this are too black and white
For this to work at scale and sustainably, all people would have to be fully rehabilitated. I don't think that's possible with how people are currently. Maybe in some utopia 500 years from now society can overlook a convicted but "rehabilitated" sex offender raping someone's five year old daughter, but not today.
> 2. Yes I'm fine with sexual predators living in the same building as me. Teaching my children. And being my co-worker. For the same aforementioned reasons.
I am parent and I understand what you mean here and It makes complete sense to me. But I am having a little hard time with this, some part of my brain just wont' accept it.
> I am parent and I understand what you mean here and It makes complete sense to me. But I am having a little hard time with this, some part of my brain just wont' accept it.
I completely understand, we need to "unlearn" what we know about policing and criminal justice. It's a hard process that takes generations, but at the end of the day it will lead to less offensive behaviour overall. As a society we're too "reactive" to problems. We don't provide the help for people before they turn to various forms of criminality.
If we still have sexual offender registries, etc., then you might well know that this person was a sexual offender in the past. Also, if we as a society have better resources for counseling and so forth, we may actually be able to help teach these folks better ways to live in society.
But it is a big mindset shift. If someone has paid their debt to society - their debt has been paid, and they shouldn't continue to be punished.
I don't understand what policy you would want in regards to sexual predators. The recidivism rate for pedophiles is e.g. 14% after 5 years, 24% after 15 years.
Does that mean we should just lock them up forever? Or do you really think having someone like that live next to children is a necessary gamble?
I think a free, and accessible counselling system should be funded with the money saved from not having so many prisons, and sexual predators should be required to go to mandatory meetings with their counsellors. But that's the extent of the "consequences" they need once they're in society. And the counselling shouldn't be seen as a punishment, rather a public service for them and the community they reside in.
> You would trust the state to decide if a sexual predators is safe to teach your children?
I trust the state to test the medicine I buy from a pharmacy. The state isn't some __other__ machine. It's made up of people like you and me, trying to make society operate and people to generally get along with eachother.
If I saw that we as a society are moving towards rehabilitation, and better social services for criminals, then yes. I would trust them. Just like I trust them with roads, with hospitals, with medicine, with food.
How does the process of testing medicine compare to that of sex offenders? I don't think the two are at all comparable.
> It's made up of people like you and me
I'm not qualified to test medicine, or run medical trials, so I hope whoever does it on behalf of the government is not like me.
> I trust them with roads, with hospitals, with medicine, with food
All of which have proven physical-science process to verify them. I don't trust criminology/Phycology
as a science capable of making the calls you are implying.
The thing is... who else would decide? Isn't it the function of the state to make decisions based on information that is not available to the general public?
I said you should be put on a registry for sexual abuse, the registry the US has is for "that sort of thing", which apparently includes things I wouldn't consider to be sexual abuse. Just because I promote the idea of a sex offenders registry doesn't mean I automatically agree with any possible implementation.
> the state decides, since they decide what constitutes sexual abuse.
True. But its a decision that can be made pretty formulaically from a persons known actions/behaviour, as opposed to predicting their future actions/behaviour.
I would support treating ex-cons as a protected class where you can reject candidates for specific roles for specific reasons but can't just discriminate against anyone with any history. History of theft? Okay, let's not leave you alone with people's valuables. History of assault? Okay, let's not leave you alone with vulnerable people. But beyond that, if we're not willing to say that your sentence is finished when your sentence is finished, we're admitting a major flaw in our criminal justice system. And maybe that flaw is there, but then we should fix it. "Guilty for the rest of your life for ANY conviction" is just as bad as "guilty until proven innocent" in my opinion. I don't know what you were convicted of, but there aren't many things that would block me from trusting you to sit at a computer in an office and contribute to a software project as part of a team.
Side note: are there really NO companies that let you in the door? I've had some larger corporate places ask me about any criminal history and have even run a background check. But I don't think it's come up at small and medium-size companies, where I'd also expect there's a bit more understanding and flexibility anyway. Maybe the ageism is more of an obstacle there? But then maybe I just don't notice because I don't have a conviction to tell them about. I certainly don't mean to minimize your problem, just wondering if it's really a complete deal breaker everywhere.
I’m getting out of tech by 55. Maybe I won’t go insane in a smaller shop, but watching everyone without experience commit the same atrocities over and over is like hell.
After a remodel I learned how lucrative cabinet makers have it. I started building my wood working shop a while ago and at some I’ll transition to that.
I’ve got some growing and I have a lucrative position, but this battery is about depleted.
Thank you for mentioning the insanity of perpetually and badly reinventing the wheel.
I’m in my 40s now, and I realized last year I’m utterly burned out. The passion for programming is just gone. I get home from work now and the last thing I want to do is look at code again. My garage is filled with Arduino projects I can’t bring myself to finish or throw out.
Unlike you, I haven’t found another career path, but I did find solace in making music. At least it is much more permanent than software and something I can share with my kids.
Art, in general, survives time, whereas it has become apparent that software does not.
One thing about woodworking is that parts of it are easier for someone who has had a career in thinking logically and several steps ahead. If you also have had experience laying out user interfaces, that can help too. However there is the flip side, in that a number of techniques in woodworking aren't easily discoverable unless you've been working in the field for a while, and it is all too easy to get hurt (even when not using power equipment). I personally love doing projects, but on every single one I end up getting some sort of injury (typically something small like a splinter under the fingernail, or a tool slipping causing an abrasion on my hand, but annoying none the less).
But you are right, in that there can be a good bit of coin to be had with furniture building, especially if you can draw on some standardized design principles to output good customized pieces. Think things like a closet organizer that is "perfect" for a customer's bedroom. Or things like cranking out desks needed by students doing school from home.
In fact, I probably could have made a killing in selling "pandemic" desks (there were absolutely no desks to be found at the beginning of the school year). I made a couple for family members, made out of real hard wood (no partical board) for about $130 in lumber and connecting hardware -- nice 3-drawer desk units. I basically used rail-and-stile frames to make the back, sides, and drawer box using pocket screws, then 1/4 inch plywood tacked from the inside of the drawer box. Took about 3 hours to cut, drill, and assemble everything but the drawers themselves. If I was out of work I probably would have made a bunch and sold them for $350 a piece.
As soon as I reach this age, I will try to work as Appliance technician, fixing stuff like refrigerator, laundry machine, etc.. It is something that I do for fun, and I see a real shortage in this market. People call you, you fix it. Done. No deployment, no issue tracker or SCRUM.
You can in some circumstances depending on the crime and age of offense. What can you convince a judge to do is all I know.
My home town had a deputy that wanted to be a sheriff or had won the position. However, they had a minor record.
Parents filed statutory rape charges because he was 18 and she was 17. They just didn’t like him and they were eventually married later. Still, he carried they charge for 20 years.
The sealing or removal was made public notice and of course everyone talks.
In the grand scheme of things it was his wife and the age difference issue was amended in law. Because people recognize kids don’t magically not socialize on 18.
Is getting records expunged not a option in your case or in many case? My understanding is that at least most non-violent offences could be expunged or sealed after N years of completing your sentence. I'm certainly not an expert so it would be interesting to know how that process can or can not apply.
To echo a sibling comment - an attorney once explained to me that, while it is illegal for background checking services to provide outdated/inaccurate data, there is no strict legal timeline requiring them to update their records. Meaning that, even post-expungement or post-sealing (and associated time + legal fees) there's still a non-insignificant chance that a potential employer might learn of your charge(s), even after taking legal action to clean up your record.
Incidentally, I've also once been told by a Hiring Manager family member of mine that for minor charges it might be best *not* to seal them, since that would leave a potential employer guessing and likely assuming that it was something serious as opposed to something small or common, e.g. a marijuana-related misdemeanor.
This seems to be highly variable depending on the locality that holds the records. It does not seem to be standardized in my experience.
Even after expungement where possible, there can be problems with records being inappropriately cached by background check services, and a background check after expungement may still show the conviction. Yes, this can be appealed, but still puts an undue burden on the applicant and may ultimately be a deciding factor between similar candidates even though it should not be used
I have zero experience with this issue, but someone I met fundraising a few projects ago launched this, which is aimed at solving your particular issue:
What you describe make my blood boil. I cant imaging what is the purpose of punishing people to the end of their days for old crimes however petty they were. Fucking prison planet.
Forget about "hiring", "secure jobs" and "paychecks": you sound like a contractor, not an employee. Either hire on with a consulting firm or open your own.
> The problem after that is the stigma that follows you around forever. I count myself blessed to have opportunities when I came home.
I'm so happy to hear that you had that.
A while back, a member of my community was not so lucky. He got caught with an ounce of pot, spent some time in prison. When he got out, he had no legitimate job prospects due to his criminal record. He did eventually a job, though, through networking. In this case, the network was some prison acquaintances - apparently the only people who would/could offer him an opportunity. A while later he got caught stealing cars for a chop shop. Rinse and repeat.
I don't think I really understood it until I saw it with my own eyes: the US criminal justice system, by being so retributive, isn't just (wantonly, excessively) harming people who get caught. It's also a significant cause of US crime in the first place.
Not exactly the same, as I believe there were more than drugs involved, but several years ago, I met someone who had been through the system in his youth. I didn’t really like the guy at first, as he was rather volatile and could suddenly turn aggressive (diagnosed bipolar, don’t know if he was actively treated at the time), but as time went on we were mostly cool. Eventually he would tell me about his life, how he had gone to school for three years, but had to drop out for a variety of reasons. He would talk about his time spent homeless and the things he would do to get by or protect his stuff. It was pretty clear he wasn’t ok mentally. He couldn’t find good work, due to his record, and felt condemned to working a near minimum wage job to support him and his wife in the run down town we lived in. Eventually, he started getting erratic, confronting his managers about issues with his paycheck among other things. One morning, we heard he had crashed his car into a ditch and I didn’t hear anything from or about him for several months until a mutual acquaintance had informed me he had committed suicide at 27.
If you have a criminal record bad enough to cause employment problems in the US it's going to be as hard or harder to (legally) start residing in most first world countries, especially if you don't have a party in-country who's basically importing you to do some specific work.
I love Cobra Kai, and the 3rd season was the first time I have seen a movie reference for this problem, which I think is a change in the good direction.
At the same time even with non-violent crimes I make a huge distinction between stealing and marijuana use. I wouldn't want to trust my code base to anybody who has stolen anything in his life, as the downside for stealing the whole codebase is enormous.
Regarding marijuana, who cares, it doesn't hurt anybody (except the passive smoking issues).
thanks for relating your incarceration story. with the benefit of hindsight, 'tough on crime' was plainly power exerting itself on the populace to enhance its own esteem, not an exercise in creating a more just society.
let's cut every sentence (and sentencing guidelines) by 90% right off the bat and use the savings for better rehabilitation programs (like more support systems, instructional content, and training programs). involve families and communities to integrate folks back into society.
I can sympathize with how this will work out for non-career criminals.
How do you see this working out for repeat offenders? Seattle today has a mini-version of this FWIW: We have offenders who have 44+ counts of 'minor' arrests and a felony conviction on the street [1] getting involved in public shootings.
Overall I like the part where folks who have paid their dues get their life back through a measured re-introduction back into regular society (from jail). Even over here, we will need oversight from professionals who have insight into both the worlds who can help with the transition. I don't think commuting sentences by 90% is the answer.
Perhaps it would be as simple as making punishment scale with the number or recurrences? Maybe not even linearly.
Not necessarily in a "received 4 counts of xyz" situation, but maybe increasing punishment nonlinearly in situations like "received a 4th count of xyz in the past 10 years".
Chronologically/temporally separate incident #4 should carry more weight than #1, since the offender probably should've learned their lesson after #2.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
The very notion of a "career criminal" is driven by the lack of a social safety net and inability to secure a job on release. I can imagine if you're homeless and targeted by the police it would be very easy to rack up 50 arrests in a year.
If it was possible for everyone to make a living wage the vast majority of "career criminals" would choose a less dangerous way to make a living.
somewhat echoing sibling (jsjsbdkj), 44 minor convictions tells me something else is going horribly wrong in that person's life, possibly from lifetime systemic injustices. without really understanding the person and their situation, we shouldn't pass judgment from selected tidbits in a news blurb.
we all make mistakes and break laws (often unknowingly) all the time. (harsh) punishment escalates the resentment cycle, pushing it to fester and metastasize, and is counterproductive to stable and harmonious societies. as such, you'll never completely segregate away injustice-fueled resentment, so the better strategy is to dissipate it away using compassion and care. much less than 1% of humans (and probably less than 0.001%) are truly irredeemable, requiring segregation from the rest of us. most petty crimes are of immediate, and often temporary, circumstance.
the crimes that need harsher punishment are those committed from positions of power that affect many people (like environmental disasters and corruption). by harsher, i mean take away all the money and status garnered from the crime and provide full restitution to victims (not lawyers), not longer prison terms.
I will say that my sentence and incarceration was a good personal experience. I did actually receive every thing I needed to get it sorted out. I was in RDAP and had plenty of time for introspection. You get out what you put in, but for most there are not enough things you can put in.
yes, some folks (at certain points in their lives) need more guidance to find their way. hopefully that's what we can work towards, rather than just lock-em up for as long as we can.
Programming in this context means activities that are available to better yourself. There are very little chances for education, skill training, drug therapy, etc. It varies wildly institution to institution.
"The problem after that is the stigma that follows you around forever."
This is worse than it used to be, as companies of any size can now pull not just convictions, but arrests as well. And not just felonies, but misdemeanors too. Background checks used to be less accessible. They are now cheap, fast, and easily nationwide or worldwide.
>The #1 issue in the USA beyond simple conviction and incarceration is rehabilitation. At the federal level, where I have personal experience, it seems like it's entirely retribution instead of rehabilitation.
Do people generally want rehabilitation?
I find that when I talk to people, they want rehabilitation for minor crimes and retribution for major crimes, but when feel comfortable enough with talking about it, they generally don't want the minor crimes to be illegal to begin with. Once you get them to discuss the group they actually want in prison, it tends to consist of people they retribution against.
Try asking people what is a crime that deserve 2 years of prison, give or take a year. I find few are able to place crimes into that window, even though 2 years is plenty of time to rehabilitation people if one was actively working at it.
There is also a large disparity between drug crimes and financial crimes. The mandatory minimum for 1 pound of heroin or cocaine was 2x-5x my entire sentence for securities fraud that caused substantial financial swings by even the most lenient of accounting.
> The #1 issue in the USA beyond simple conviction and incarceration is rehabilitation.
Don't you think one helps with the other? Honest question.
As in, the less people in the system, the easier it would be to dedicate to each person the resources needed to rehabilitate, rather than just keeping them inside?
Society needs to have something between jaywalking and attempted murder.
Right now if you fish without a permit in the wrong place you're a felon and you will never be able to get a decent job for the rest of your life. The entire reason the American criminal justice system is like this, at its core is to punish minority groups.
I don't ever see this changing, and it's a big part of why I want to make an exit by 40. I imagine if I do decide to have a family it would be in a more civilized country
> Society needs to have something between jaywalking and attempted murder.
there is already a lot of gradation in the spectrum of consequences: fines, probation, house arrest, weekend sentence (free to work during the week, but need check into jail each weekend), different security levels for different offenses. not much "rehabilitation" occurs anywhere along the spectrum, but it's not like you go straight from a small fine to 25 years in supermax.
True, but where there’s less of a spectrum is in the stigma that follows you after the punishment. For many companies and landlords, anyone without a squeaky clean record is lumped together. Even for crimes that a significant portion of the population has probably committed at some point and were just never caught.
Almost all of those come with an arrest record which can stop you from getting a decent job.
Just because you can get 3 months for a felony charge, doesn't mean you'll ever be able to work again. We need a system to get rid of most criminal records after a certain amount of time
Are these ecological concerns, ie. protected species or preventing over fishing, or trespassing concerns? I tried searching 'fishing' + 'felon' and I couldn't whip up any laws.
Yes, these situations are usually but not always tied to taking of species that are protected. This can be tied to poaching or recreational take.
Taking fish or invertebrates which are undersized is often a misdemeanor.
Repeat offense can turn into a felony and jail time. First time harassment or take of marine mammals can also be a felony.
Source: I had a run-in where I was charged with a misdemeanor which was dropped after hiring a lawyer and making a substantial donation to a charity of the Judge's choice, which was a condition of the plea. Really informed my view on the subject.
The single quickest way to make me suspicious of an empirical study is to give it a prescriptive title. I agree with this title wholeheartedly, but I want (1) studies that provide objective evidence and (2) position papers that recommend policies based on that evidence. Both are legitimate copes for researchers to publish within if they call it what it is. This is a position paper, not a study.
While I agree with the fundamental, the is-ought divide, I think this paper is basically saying "based on a load of measurements that are obviously goals of our society, criminalisation of drug offences is acting against our own interests".
This is only a utilitarian ethical argument. If people approach from a deontological perspective, the measurements may not matter.
Suggesting a policy prescription in the title of a scientific study puts the legitimacy of the study in complete question. The researchers must approach the question as one which can be falsifiable, else it's not science.
> Suggesting a policy prescription in the title of a scientific study puts the legitimacy of the study in complete question.
Does it?
> The researchers must approach the question as one which can be falsifiable, else it's not science.
Isn't that what this study was—they had a hypothesis which they wished to test: "We should do X." Then they did whatever they reported in their paper, and found that their hypothesis was supported by the evidence.
A policy prescription requires weighing of values, which a scientist should avoid at all costs. It's quite literally the point of science, to understand how the world works without injecting your personal biases about how the world should work.
The point of science is, ideas are tested by experiment. If you don't start your experiment with a hypothesis about the way the world works, then you're just p-hacking.
If the authors were striving for objectivity, they'd skip discussion of values and interests entirely and talk solely about what effect drug policies had on certain quantifiable metrics --- all in a factual and dispassionate way.
A scientific paper is a report on the state of reality and should not contain a case for any sort of action.
It's not that the is-ought gap is unpopular: it's that the gap doesn't even make it into the debate. We're dealing with an epistemic regime in which it's acceptable to engineer desired "ought" outcomes by controlling who gets to make statements about what "is". That is, is no "is" independent from power dynamics, oppressor and oppressed. "Is", in this model, is just another form of narrative that serves the powerful.
In this world, you should expect downvotes for arguing that science informs us about objective reality, because people of a certain mindset see scientific results that contradict their worldview as just another form of oppressive discourse intended to subjugate the powerless. To them, science is just one of many equal and arbitrary forms of rhetoric and power gaming.
Ehhh, most studies in this realm have a 'results' section and 'discussion' section. I disagree that experts in their field can't have an opinion laid out in the discussion section, given that it follows from the analysis and results from the previous sections.
That being said, the page is currently timing out, so I can' even read the article...
'Results' present the new knowledge gained in a short form. 'Discussion' is normally an invitation to scientific discussion, not a political one. But even if it has the latter, it's still not the result of a study, just a piece of opinion that authors saw appropriate to include.
The paper [1] really seems more like a call to action from ethicists published in a scientific journal as a study for whatever reason.
Yes, the authors published their article in the Journal of Bioethics, which is exactly where this type of article/argument is supposed to be published.
You started off with the idea that research papers "can't tell you what should be done", which it seems like you disagree with now?
> 'Discussion' is normally an invitation to scientific discussion, not a political one
To think that those are so distinct is perhaps naive.
Thanks for the link, it does seem to be a call to action as you said, but backed by many studies across many disciplines. Which would make it both a scientific and political.
It was more meant as an imperative, as in, "a president can't despise his own citizens", even though we empirically know it's not true, but...
To me is a huge abuse of the authority of science. The results of science normally lie above any democratic discussion. No mater how you vote and what your values are COVID-19 exists, and global warming exists either. If you publish an opinion piece - even if it's a well-informed opinion - as a scientific paper, you are basically saying "here's what the policy should be, and you're not entitled to discuss it, because we know better".
I'm not against scientists having an informed opinion an political matter, and I'm not even against scientific journals publishing opinions if they consider them important enough, but there should be a distinction in this case between the part where science is published and the opinion column.
Eh, plenty of studies I've seen, from economics to environmental science, has some policy recommendations at the end. It's a problem but if you're going to discard this study you have to discard many others.
Here’s something I don’t know: Sometimes I wonder whether some people in prison for non-violent drug offenses did a plea bargain down from a violent offense.
And if that were the case, should this affect our opinion on any of this?
On the federal level in the USA that is not possible. Firearms and violence add on points to your sentencing and are often linked with mandatory minimums. Firearms in particular really tank your chances of a short sentence. Prior to the First Step Act you couldn't even participate in RDAP with a firearm linked to your crime.
I outlined this in a different comment, but programming like RDAP should be developed and standardized to aide convicted in rehabilitation.
Yeah but (almost?) nobody is in federal prison on drug possession charges, especially after the latest reform bill. There are a lot in prison on trafficking and sales, but not possession ("minor", per the headline).
The vast majority of drug charges are in state prison systems, where plea bargains are absolutely a thing.
I agree. A number of the ones in the federal system are also only in the feds because of career criminal charges. You can be convicted multiple times as a juvenile and then 1+ times as an adult and receive a federal sentence for something minor.
to clarify, since most people without personal experience in the US criminal system don't know: in the US, you can be, and usually are, sentenced based on crimes and/or facts you were not convicted or even charged for.
I agree. It needs a little more nuance, especially the plea bargaining. And on top of that, prosecutors are known to pile on tons of only vaguely-applicable, probably-not-convictable charges just to get someone to plea bargain down, so that complicates even the plea bargain exception.
I'll throw in another part where more fine-grained control would be nice: the amount of said substances is measured by gross weight, baggie included, even if whatever the substance is has been "stepped on."
Now, wave a gun in someone's face to take their money for drugs? Keep that charge. But otherwise we should not only free, but expunge the record, retroactively. Some kid with a dime bag ends up having to suffer for that decision for the rest of their life.
And what about trafficking 100kg of heroin? Everyone likes to pick the seemingly trivial examples to justify liberal values on jailing (“what if the 3rd strike is stealing a loaf of bread!”) but the reality is there are a broad range of crimes by a broad range of people. That’s why we have judges and give them latitude.
This is going to be unpopular, but I say legalize it.
Watch "My 600 Pound Life." People can destroy their lives with food, they can destroy their lives with alcohol. One is merely legal, one is a necessity. People make terrible life choices constantly and selecting heroin -- once prescribed for asthma -- as a no-go is just hating the newcomer versus giving traditional old alcohol, a civilizational favorite, a pass.
We should spend the money from the war on drugs on instead trying to prevent the root causes of these kinds of disastrous decisions. We don't even have a great grasp on why people make some of these choices yet. I'm not saying we just set up a Needle Park or anything, but frankly we've lost the war on drugs. It's time to re-evaluate our priorities.
I think in there case of something like Acid the weight can be an incorrect measure of substance.
I heard it was popular to use the old books of stamps. So five doses on a stamp book is a silly about of weight. Then over a certain weight it is considered distribution and boom the sentence is jumped. Thanks to the war on drugs I’m not sure how much can even be reasoned by a judge.
Now, keep in mind, I’m not necessarily on the side of no more crimes. I do see the cracks in how the offenses wer e codified.
Things like marijuana outside distribution should probably be ignored. I was horrified watching someone on a cop show get arrested for a roach they found nearby on the ground. This was also a person who was strolling through a walkway in the forest between residences.
that's a good question, but I don't think there's a good way to distinguish between people who pled down from charges they likely would have been convicted on at trial and charges that were heaped on for leverage but had little chance of sticking. from a criminal justice perspective, I think we need to consider only the actual convictions. we might take into consideration whether there are any meaningful priors though.
It's easy to see how pistol whipping someone over a bad drug deal could be plead down to a non-violent possession/dealing offense because proving assault and battery is hard when the prosecution only has testimony and circumstantial evidence the prosecution's star witness is an addict with a mile long record. Possession is very easy to prove. A&B, DV, etc, etc are much harder to prosecute (and by "much" I mean "some work" vs "practically no work") so possession is a good offense to anchor a plea bargain for those other things to.
Personally I say release them all and just wait for the bad ones to filter back into the system but I can see why some people are hesitant.
True, now what happens when prosecution systemically throws the book for the purpose of securing better plea bargains? Maybe you didn't pistol whip that guy, maybe you just smacked him upside the head but you were packing when you did it so the prosecutor throws all the possible charges on the list.
Both sides of the problem relate to each other. People plead from "real crimes" down to "petty crimes" but prosecutors know this so they charge people with "real crimes" that won't stick just to get better plea deals on petty crimes and pad their stats.
Compared to someone's record of convictions, that information is pretty inaccessible. You'd have to go all the way back to court records at the time of their conviction.
as implied in a cousin comment, I don't think this applies if they're currently incarcerated. at least at the federal level, the BOP should have records of who was sentenced with firearms or other violent sentencing modifiers in order to properly segregate them from non-violent offenders. that wouldn't work for the idea of purging their records, but for the OP argument, it ought to work reasonably well. for the rare cases where it doesn't, some burden could be put on the inmate to collect and submit their documents for approval, the same as if they were filing an appeal.
At this point, I really don't care if some people who plead down to non-violent charges get released along with the immense number of actual non-violent offenders.
Releasing people convicted of non-violent drug offenses is not enough; it’s important that we provide a smooth ramp to re-join society.
We should wipe their records clean, train them in useful, employable skills, and help them find decent jobs. (Edit: this is the bare minimum; I don’t want to get into direct monetary compensation, even though I think it’s worth considering.)
I would imagine a lot of people formerly-incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses are (rightfully) resentful of society, and we should give them an alternative to committing crimes in order to survive.
There needs to be massive revision across society if this were to happen, jobs, housing, life...it is all burdened for the felon greater than the time in prison was. Many have trouble just adjusting to things like the choices in the supermarket...let alone navigating the troubles of finding housing.
In the town I live in, (Inland NW, US), the majority of "affordable" rentals are all rented by a small number of property management companies which do not seem to be local and have 1-800 numbers. This covers a very sizable portion of the apartment buildings...guess what...they DO NOT rent to people with drug felonies...burglar...sure. But if you sold marlijuana 20 years ago you cannot rent from them...period.
So...combine that with an area which the average rent has tripled in the last 20 years...with a massive shortage of for sale properties and what are these people to do?
Work and other things are tricky as well...it isn't that a felon cannot get a job...but they are very likely to be manipulated by their employer. They will typically be paid less and be treated differently than their coworkers.
Couple all that with the ineligibility for SBA loans if you have felony convictions...now what?
You are likely to be able to get a passport and such...but most will never truly see these things go off their record permanently...unless you get a withheld judgement you are still required to say "yes" to the have you ever been convicted question. Employers being required to ask "in the last x years have you been convicted?" solves that issue...allows for the punishment to be served and forgiven. "have you ever been convicted?" assumes there is no retribution possible ever.
Locked In by John Pfaff does a great job of discussing prison reform, and the fallbacks of common mantras (such as this one). He observes that "setting every drug offender free would cut our prison population by only about 16 percent...still more than 200,000 people -- and that's a huge number by any measure."
Because many offenses/crimes were dropped as part of plea bargaining, it's also hard to indicate how many would actually be characterized as "non-violent criminals jailed on minor drug offence". Pfaff tries to estimate this using Bureau of Justice Statistics surveying that asks inmates questions that go beyond their official convictions. According to this "about 1 percent of all prisoners...met that description".
So yes, I think a lot of people would agree with the headline here, but it's not a panacea for the incarceration rate of the US.
Can't think of a better idea, that both sides of the aisle should be supportive of. Saves tax payer money for the GOP, liberalize drug laws for democrats.
I'm conflicted when it come to this idea, on one hand it does seem pointless to punish addicts but on the other, very few of the addicts that are incarcerated were not aware of the laws before they got caught. In many cases they traffic in "Minor" amounts to support their own addictions which just creates more addicts and spreads the sickness to other victims.
In a perfect world, all drugs would be legal and more importantly free for anyone who wanted them. This could be possible while still requiring addicts to visit medical providers for their fix. This would quickly remove the profits from the illegal drug trade and keep the addicted from being exploited in order to feed their addictions.
I have seen first hand the destruction caused by so called non violent drug offenders and can attest it is just as bad if not worse on the lives of those around them. In my case it started with small things disappearing from our household, like heirlooms and collectables but ended with a selfish addict telling lies and extorting money from myself and others. My particular situation finally ended with the addict overdosing and all the misery that came from that, being thrust upon those who still loved and depended on them.
I bounce back and forth between being angry at myself, then the addict and sometimes the people working in law enforcement and the justice system(Who have managed to build nice little lives for themselves through policing and punishing the addicted under the guise of making the world a better place.)
So IDK if freeing a bunch of drug users who were aware what they were doing at the time was criminal, is going to solve the root problems caused by drugs any better than the current system of keeping them locked away from the rest of us until they figure out how to toe the line.
Possibly You are right, it is very hard for me to comprehend what goes on inside the mind of an addict. I would say for arguments sake that the addict is also aware of the damage that they are doing to others but unfortunately the desire for the drug overpowers any sense of morality. Short of locking them up which then puts the burden and guilt on the rest of us, or making all drugs legal and free, I am not sure what would work. Like I said my thoughts are quite conflicted with this matter.
My personal solution although fairly selfish is to avoid getting into and breaking away from any relationship if and when it becomes apperant that someone is using.
Many of my colleagues and I voted for legalization of Marijuana, because law had vilified it to the point where actions against users did not justify the means at all. That, plus good outcome of drug decriminalization in Portugal.
Decriminalization works when you have many organizations provide high quality rehabilitation programs, and are non-profit. See [1].
However, IMO the U.S. healthcare infrastructure and general profiteering culture will not allow any reasonable programs at high enough scale to operate.
Ideally, instead of jailing drug offenders, we reintegrate them into society. This is expensive. Somebody needs to pay for it, and nobody wants to. Especially when you have the for-profit prison industry lobbying against it.
Decriminalization without a comprehensive plan to deal with drug addiction will most likely not achieve the expected results. We'll probably get something like the opioid epidemic on a larger scale.
The U.S. just does not do a good job of dealing with mental health.
No victimless crime should ever be a felony. A felony conviction has so many knock on effects for the rest of your life.
I could be talked into saying no non-violent crimes should ever be felonies.
Looking at the categories of felonies on Wikipedia it is pretty obvious that some are not like the others. Murder is much different from copyright infringement.
That still hugely misses the point, because sentences are not equal. Violent offenders serve on average 4.7 years while drug offenders serve under 2 years.
~40% of people who are sent to state prison are sent with drugs as the most serious charge.
And I'm assuming they mean incarcerated (jail+prison) and not just 'jail'. Most of the people in jail are awaiting trial, people in prison have been convicted.
The article linked in the comment you're replying to seems to include both jail and prison. The comment itself didn't mention either and just said "incarcerated".
Well it was not recorded as that, it was just a "parking fine". What's why I'm saying I'm lucky it wasn't logged as substance possession. Also by arrested I mean handcuffed/put into a car, but I wasn't taken to a jail. I was just written a possession fine/piece of paper.
I think the answer to your question is I was not affected. As I've taken jobs that had to do security checks to get in and I got through. I guess it depends what they're looking for.
This is why porch piracy will increase. I suspect the intersection of people who are non-violent druggies and who are porch pirates is huge. I hate porch pirates.
There are countries without for-profit prisons where people are locked up for non-violent drug offences.
To me, it seems important for the severity of punishment to reflect the severity of the crime (where severity is some function of outcome & intent). Clearly locking people up for smoking pot or snorting coke is pointless. Locking people up for victimless crimes in general seems strange.
I think the idea is for these punishments to serve as course-correcting examples for the rest of society. But I'm having a hard time imaging a society that defines its mores based on how much jail time a given behaviour might incur. At least I can't imagine it being a good thing. If we want to reduce harm from drugs, we should work on reducing harm from drugs, instead of blindly banning all drugs and locking people up. But it seems that we, as a society, don't want to tackle the harder problem.
Not disagreeing on incentive but for clarification...
My understanding would be that freeing non-violent criminals would be a matter of legislation and the court system. The choice would not be up to the prison. But do you think the prisons influence the legislation (or, horrifically, the judicial system)?
To say that it's a the root cause is to say that for-profit prisons drive legislation on drugs, but I do not believe that is the root cause of that legislation.
> In the Public Interest (ITPI), a Washington, D.C.-based research and policy group on public services, reported in September 2013 that it found so-called bed guarantees in around 65% of the more than 60 private prison contracts it analyzed, including contracts from Texas, Ohio, Colorado and Florida. The bed guarantees, or “lockup quotas,” ranged from 70% minimum occupancy in at least one California facility to 100% occupancy at three Arizona prisons. The most common bed guarantee was 90%.
> Public officials who agree to lockup quotas, according to corrections experts, become obligated – against their communities’ best interests – to keep prisons filled to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted.
> “It’s really shortsighted public policy to do anything that ties the hands of the state,” said Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas School of Public Affairs and an expert on private prisons. “If there are these incentives to keep the private prisons full, then it is reducing the likelihood that states will adopt strategies to reduce prison costs by keeping more people out.”
Looking at the history of slavery and prison labour in the US, I'm not sure I share your optimism. Many new (and victimless) crimes were introduced after slavery was abolished, and slavery was never abolished in prisons. Locking someone up for "vagrancy" and then forcing them to work for you does sound an awful lot like slavery.
I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with. Prisons and prison labor existing because of racism is what you're arguing, and I didn't say anything to disagree with it. But root cause here is the same, assuming that laws against drug use are intended to catch more non-whites than whites.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore [1,2], Angela Davis [3.4] and many, many others have been making the case for decades that the entirety of the prison system needs to be abolished.
Among the more profound cases that Gilmore makes is that the it is not just for-profit prisons and policing. Racialized exclusion of Black people from the economy has essentially created a captive class -- a pool of bodies for exploitation. Essentially the industry of incarceration at the state (that is both State and Federal level) create sources of income -- for the States, the companies that supply resources to prisons, as well as the private prisons.
Further, Gilmore [2] makes the argument that we need to do away with the presumption that there are people who are "deserving" of prison. Is the very notion of prison consistent with a civilized society?
Just a further note that the incarceration rate of Black men in the U.S. [5] is comparable to that of Uyghur population in Xianjiang [6] -- that rate was estimated to be 5% for Black men across the U.S. in 2009, 5% for Uyghurs in non-Muslim majority districts, roughly 10% in majority-Muslim districts. It would be interesting to understand how the adoption of capitalist economic practices in China correlates with the rise of the carceral.
Just legalise all drugs and let the free market decide. We could create innovative new substances which are safer and less socially damaging, compared to the plants and fermented liquids we happen to have stumbled upon millenia ago.
Well, cigarettes used to be all "free market" right from marketing to technology for quite some time, and we all know how that particular industry ended up.
There are certain things that just seem to be a net-loss to society, no matter how much it may clash on an individual's right to destroy themselves. Cigarettes, hard drugs (and possibly even alcohol) seem to be among them.
You will not stop people from taking drugs. They will bring them over whatever distance, border, or other obstacle you put in place and the harder you try, the more money they'll make and the more havoc that will be wrought on your society and neighboring countries. How's it working out currently?
Criminalizing drug use and distribution creates a condition far worse than a legal and appropriately regulated market for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, mushrooms, opium, and more where users can buy standardized, well-labelled, individually packaged doses from a normal store (not a criminal empire).
Amongst all this crying about some idiots raiding the capitol and wanting to ban everyone for bad opinions, all these replies are hard to take seriously.
What do you think should be the government's role in protecting the gullible and easily seduced?
Most of these drug laws are about this in essence: We are fast approaching a world where low level labor becomes more and more superflous. This is going to mean that there will be a growing portion of humanity on welfare in essence. How do you see that working out for humanity in a world with fully legal free access drugs?
> What do you think should be the government's role in protecting the gullible and easily seduced?
it could start by being a trustworthy source of information.
> Most of these drug laws are about this in essence: We are fast approaching a world where low level labor becomes more and more superflous. This is going to mean that there will be a growing portion of humanity on welfare in essence. How do you see that working out for humanity in a world with fully legal free access drugs?
this strikes me as a particularly odd argument. if they weren't doing anything productive to begin with, why care if they get high?
I think the least bad option is to let allow people to make mistakes and learn from them. How would you feel about sending people to prison for eating junk food, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, wasting time on social media/watching netflix? And afaik countries that have decriminalized drugs and focused on harm reduction actually end up with less drug addicts. Its also worth noting that most cases of overdoses are caused by the drug either being cut with something stronger or the user just taking too much due to high inconsitinsies in purity with each purchase
Larry Niven's Ringworld series has a protagonist named Louis Wu who is addicted to a "tasp" that is pretty much a direct connection to the brain that provides stimulus. I fear that we'll end up with that as VR/AR get better and better. Combine that with Musk's neural stuff...
Right now people spend hours every day joylessly scrolling their phones because the free market has found a way to profit from that. I want fewer addictive industries, not more.
Edit: The poster I'm replying to should be deplatformed immediately for inciting violence, specifically for perpetuating black markets that have devastated entire countries, for supporting raids of homes at gunpoint over possession of substances that are bought and sold without coercion, for the inconsistent doses and impurities and stigmatization that will continue to kill addicts, and for widespread incarceration which is targeted toward already disadvantaged minorities.
So you say the Opoid Epidemic in the US was a good thing? Because that is what you will get if you let the free markets decide, but with more marketing and even more addictive stuff.
Kind of a funny moment in time we live in where some are clamoring to put people in jail for tweets/hate speech/mean words while simultaneously advocating for lower jail populations.
Were you on twitter at all during any of the protests of last summer? Vague “incitement of riot” charges are going to be used against a whole lot of anti-establishment groups that were active during that time (and now).
Show me a "Vague 'incitement of riot'" charge being brought against anyone.
And I wouldn't include the BLM protests of the summer as anti-establishment in the same vein as the Qanon/1776er crowd that wanted to overthrow the government.
Defund the police wasn't a universal mantra for the entire BLM movement and protests. That was seized upon by some who wanted to paint the entire summer of protests as monolithic. Many protestors simply wanted the police to stop killing and abusing minorities.
In my opinion, anti-establishment types are anarchists or revolutionaries who want to overthrow the existing government, not change it.
I was in a federal prison camp and it is primarily an exercise in leisure. The entire day was composed of well.. nothing. If you like reading, fresh air, and exercise you're in luck. If you like alcohol, drugs, and facetime you're in luck. There is very little programming activity to do. If you have the funds to support yourself you can get anything you want from the outside. You can have any book sent in or buy an illicit cell phone. There are so few guards to watch you and very little motivation to crack down on rampant offenses.
The First Step Act is supposed to make programming uniform across all institutions and reward programming with sentence reductions. That's a fantastic idea and I hope that it works out well. There are very few levels to pull to incentivize people, but that should provide motivation.
The problem after that is the stigma that follows you around forever. I count myself blessed to have opportunities when I came home. It was unpleasant to work as a laborer in block masonry, but it lead me back to the shipyard. That has lead me to a better opportunity in the shipyard. This was only afforded to me because I went to a university with name recognition in a field with job prospects. That combined with my previous maritime experience is the only reason I'm not still day laboring will praying for a better opportunity. If you have limited work experience and were accustomed to a high(er) level of living before incarceration it will be difficult to adjust to life after prison.
There are so many thorny issues with the judicial system in the USA that reach into so many aspects of life.