Recently was playing chess with a friend in Dolores Park, SF. A man who said that he had only recently gotten out of jail/prison a few months ago (he said he dealt drugs in the Tenderloin) asked for a game and beat both of us (albeit close matches).
He said he learned all of his chess in prison and was really excited to happen to find other people playing.
He also had no idea how to use a chess clock, I guess they didn't have those in prison.
Strikes me as an exceptionally good use of taxpayer money. Prisons suck at rehabilitating people and thus just make things worse in the long run when you release the people. Anything you can do to blunt that negative effect is a win.
If you say prisons "suck at" rehabilitating people it suggests it's something they want to do but are not succeeding at. However, there are a lot of governors and prison officials who reject that notion as namby-pamby and see the institution of prisons as purely punitive or retributive with no real duty to rehabilitate offenders.
Sure, that is also a function of a prison. But unless we are speaking of the relatively rare deranged offender that you lock away for life, most people who land in prisons will be back in a few years.
The goal of prisons is to make the rest of society safer and a better environment so it is in our interest that they don't reoffend or don't learn how to be better criminals in prison. Ultimately that is also a food investment, because prisons cost money and people in prison are not contributing to society in good way. Everybody that does not return is money safed and improves the social climate. So investing at least a bit in order to make them better people is a no brainer.
But sadly there are many who still share the delusion that "tougher punishment will show them" and that "they will think twice if the punishment is harder". This is irrational and there is the data to show it.
I'd rather have the rare hardcore criminal treated to lightly than many troubled people that could be rehabilitated becoming more hardened criminals. Not because I am a good samatarian, but purely out of self interest.
>Prisons suck at rehabilitating people and thus just make things worse in the long run when you release the people.
I'm not involved in the system personally, but I do remember someone bringing up this sentiment in another thread, and a person responding with some stats showing that prison rehabilitation programs are way more effective than the average person thinks. There are some great people working in the sector that genuinely prevent criminals from returning to their old ways.
I guess it's just one of topics (like homelessness or immigration) where a lot of people have strong, differing opinions but reality says one thing clearly.
I've got another one. Many people think that privatized prisons and their incentives to profit are a major part of the reason we have such high incarceration rates in the US. However, only 8% of prisons in the US are privatized. Also, some states do not have any privatized prisons at all.
The biggest hurdle any society has to get over is whether people who commit crimes should be helped or punished. In Finland, prison is a summer camp, but recidivism is far lower. Even if the criminals "deserve" worse treatment, all a harsher, non-rehabilitative prison does is make another future victim of crime. Though of course, America's solution to recidivism is life sentences, which is basically just a life thrown away to be a permanent tax burden.
I suspect that in Finland it is not as much of a black mark either.
In America it is very difficult for ex convicts to get work, to support themselves or family. It can easily lead into the exact same pressures that caused the crime in the first place.
I also think most people wouldn't be super against rehabilitation if we had some way to know which offenders are genuinely beyond help. The people who truly will always harm others if they are free to.
I don't know the specific one they're referring to, but I'd imagine it would be similar to many other pets and prisoner programs [0]. The essence being that having an animal to take care of can be therapeutic and help teach valuable rehabilitation skills like responsibility.
Oh that refreshes my memory. Some 25 years ago I did chess training with inmates in a German prison. That was quite an experience. We never did anything tournament-level, but mostly a somewhat alternative offering as part of the resocializing efforts before they completed their sentence of 10+ years.
On other sports like football (soccer) there were prison teams however participating in the normal league system. With the little difference that they only had home matches. It was said, while I never checked, it was the fairest team by amount of yellow/red cards.
If you are playing chess for therapeutic reasons I strongly recommend playing without time controls. Blitz is fun and lets you blow off stream but doesn't provide the same benefits as staring at a chess position for 20 minutes does. Training yourself to keep focused for long periods of time will improve your skill in other activities too. For example, when analyzing complicated software bugs.
Just because you have a clock doesn't mean you have to play blitz. Why not play a classical time control like 90+30? The benefit of a time control is it keeps the game fair (one player can't spend more time than the other) and ensures the game doesn't last longer than you want it to.
Comments about 'Private prisons reaping incredible profits and determined to make people continue to re-offend to keep them occupied' should look at this[0], as the actual count of inmates in private prisons is rather low.
Overall, it's about 8%, but if you look at per-state numbers, it is kind of a bimodal distribution. Looking at some of the more populous states, California has 0%,Florida has 15%, Tennessee has 35%. The trend in states with larger populations in private prisons is that it is also increasing, but there are exceptions (Texas) and you should look at the numbers yourself.
I did a five-year bid in Tennessee. What the article doesn’t point out is that Go players ranked way over the chess players in prison and almost always had a cell per person plus guaranteed trustee privileges. Because they were by far the best strategists the prison would not issue them any kind of writing implements or paper. These things had to be bought on the black market if you played Go.
But the checkers players always ranked way under the chess players, no matter how well they did in competition. There were usually 3 to 4 per cell and they were not allowed to look the Go or chess players in the eye.
Checkers players died on the average 14% more often than chess or Go players.
How bad are TN prisons if you don't mind me asking? As a resident of the state, I have heard that there is one in Middle TN that is absolutely inhumane in many ways... like the state was/is investigating as to why a slightly abnormal number of inmates are dying while incarcerated.
I can't remember the name, but it's one of the CoreCivic ones.
Private prisons are probably a stand-in not because they represent most prisoners in the US but because they represent the apotheosis of perverse incentives.
This makes me think about John Healy's autobiography The Grass Arena[1] which was later turned into a film.
His unfortunate childhood lead him into severe alcoholism despite being a promising boxer. He ended up living a rough life on the streets of London, moving in and out of prison.
On one of his stints inside he was taught chess and it turned his life around.
It's pretty raw but a good book and worth a read IMHO.
There's also a documentary about John Healy called Barbaric Genius[2], which I think is on Netflix and other streaming services.
One of my dreams has been to create a sort of tech prison where criminals would have a computer screen and keyboard built into the wall of their cell, and from here they could access resources to teach them computer science and writing code. And these prisons would have their own version of the internet that is like a “prison wide web” that is only accessible to other prisoners, and can connect to other prisons around the country and even the world, so they can create their own websites like it’s 1999.
With time, prisoners who gain a lot of skill could contribute to open source projects or create entirely new libraries and use their contributions as a way to reduce their prison sentences.
I can imagine a custom Linux based OS designed to run on these prison computers, that could have special features that allow prisoners to see how much prison time they have remaining and run processes based on what access levels and security requirements they have attributed to them. And of course all communication on this OS would be surveilled by some centralized security system.
Slightly different example but as far as a constructive approach to incarceration goes schemes like this will always be a net positive. Far cheaper than locking people up.
good link. from the title, before i read it, i immediately thought about spinners. and then, as this post is about chess, i thought of putting all the chess pieces in a bag and draw them out as needed black = 1, white = 0 (or whatever - somehow i predict quarells about this) and use the binary number generated.
Although with binary numbers you'd probably want to modify the rules to avoid rolling so many d20s, since you'd need to re-roll them 12/32=37.5% of the time
You can do it with two bags. Place one piece of each colour, except for pawns, in bag A. Place the pawns and remaining pieces in bag B. There’s ten unique piece in bag A and bag B produces colour with equal probability, so there are twenty distinct outcomes which all have equal odds.
My uncle has been in and out of prison for 30 years after his drunk dad sent him to jail as a 17 year old for writing a check in his dads name.
The stupidest part is that the """"justice"""" system never trained him or let him learn to drive. So every time he gets out he has to go to impoverished city centers where he meets right back up with the groups that eventually get him back in prison.
He could've made a fine career of being a truck driver if America wasn't so stupid.
These types of articles are frustrating because it helps the public feel good about themselves when they have a decades long disaster rolling around with no change.
The whole idea of putting a man in a box with other criminals so he can "think about what he did" seems like a complete failure, besides the fact that he's kept away from the public so he can't commit more crimes.
It's one thing when someone has life in prison without the possibility of parole, but if a man is eventually going to be let out, what good does it really do to prevent him from being able to function on the outside? Basically nothing, as far as I can tell. He is destined to be destitute and possibly go back to a life of criminality.
People don't want money and resources to go towards training "violent murderers who didn't do anything to deserve what they're getting", but then what else do you expect other than that you're deferring the criminality to a later date? The odds are not in your favor that the prisoner be reformed by the time he gets out. Reforming criminals, and I mean actual reformation and not the horseshit we consider reformation today, is a cost society should bear for its own good so that prison actually means something. Why let prisoners out when they are likely destined to go right back to prison?
>what good does it really do to prevent him from being able to function on the outside?
From whose perspective?
Part of the problem is that some powerful groups are incentived to keep people coming back to prison. Private prisons reap profits, politicians get an easy way to drive fear in their constituents, telcos can charge an arm and a leg for phone calls, commissaries clean up by charging exorbitant prices for toothpaste and ramen, etc.
Until we start connecting positive outcomes for those groups to positive outcomes for the prisoners, it'll always be an uphill battle.
As Upton Sinclair used to say, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Now do private companies providing the phone call service. Now do commissary. Now the computers where you pay per minute to write and read emails. Now do UNICOR (like forced labor for McDonalds Corporation who has UNICOR do the CAD work for their franchise store remodels all the way to CAD work being done on the new World Trade Center).
I've done that research, and companies like JPay have incredible monopolies, and make a good amount of money.
But that isn't what people refer to, and not the point I made. The common misconception is that private prisons themselves are the issues. Sure, the ancillaries are terrible, but relatively small by comparison. Sure, the government isn't providing those services, so private companies stepped in and monopolized. Regardless, they are providing a service for money. Not as shocking and horrible as it's made out to be.
Keeping people in prison forever is also a very “law and order” position which plays well with certain groups, and is very easy to sell: you don’t need any sort of nuance, you don’t face empathetic conflicts, etc…
When you walk into some store, why don't you just take whatever you want and walk out? Perhaps you have some virtuous reasons: maybe find stealing ethically wrong, or maybe from a philosophical point of view since if everybody stole at their discretion that society would collapse, or maybe you just don't want to have a reputation as a thief. But what if somebody didn't care about anything at all like that? And try as hard as you might, you simply couldn't convince him of your train of thought. What then?
All that's really left is deterrence. In the past (and in the present in many places) if you steal then the first time something like a finger gets cut off, and the next time the hand comes off, and the third time - well don't steal three times. But of course that's barbaric, so we need to do things that aren't barbaric, but what? And so enters the idea of prison. Rehabilitation is of course ideal, but in reality some people simply can't be rehabilitated. So what do you do then?
Separation of those who can and cannot be rehabilitated would ostensibly be ideal, but it's interesting to consider that in doing this you'd effectively be going full circle and recreating the asylum type systems of times long since past. It's unclear that this would be desirable even in the best of times, and we're certainly not in the best of times.
I don’t think people think through the “deterrence” angle very well though. In order to make deterrence effective you need to have people who really stand to lose something, but like I was just listening to C.R.E.A.M last night (funny enough while playing chess) and Method Man raises an interesting point: “life in the world no different from a cell”. For someone facing seriously abject poverty, the potential rewards of crime may outweigh the costs. You can make prison progressively more horrible, but you can also make life outside of prison progressively better with IMO a similar effect. In the US we rarely discuss the anti-crime effects of social welfare policies, but they’re quite real. In a world without the kind of serious poverty we accept all over the US even 5 year prison sentence is a massive loss, because life outside is so much better. In a world where people are living in $10 a day then maybe 5 years in prison isn’t such a huge price if the upside risk appears big enoug
>For someone facing seriously abject poverty, the potential rewards of crime may outweigh the costs
This isn't the case because outside of prison you have upwards mobility. It is easy to escape poverty if you put in the effort. In prison you are stuck there for however long your sentence is.
The problem runs deep. Prison "slavery" is codified in the US Constitution's 13th Amendment:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Is it any wonder that "enterprising" organizations take advantage...?
While I think there is a definite issue with prisons being used as a source of labor, I also don't see how you can have prison without it being slavery. At the very core, putting someone in a limited area they do not want to be in, forcing them to stay there under threat of violence, and forcing them to behave seems to be a form of slavery.
Even if we were to consider a nice prison focused around rehabilitation and not exploitation, there are still things the prisoner is forced to do. They are forced not to leave. They are forced to follow certain rules. They are forced to move between locations at certain times of the day.
They may be forced to attend classes or do specific types of labor like cleaning their rooms or common areas. Unlike a job where you might be 'forced' to clean, but you can always quit, quitting is rarely a choice for the prisoner and will result in worse punishment. Even if the prison does not directly profit off the labor of the prisoner, this level of control seems to be a form of slavery. Rarely do I see slavery defined as requiring profit to be made off the slave, though slavery rarely happens where it isn't found to be profitable by the person doing the enslaving (based on the enslaver's own view of what counts as profit).
If we were to fully ban slavery even for prisons, then for even nice prisons to continue to exist we would have to define some other non-slavery action which would include having control of where a person lives, how they live, when they sleep, and all the other powers of a prison. In such a case, it would then be possible for a state to allow this non-slavery even for people not convicted of a crime, because it isn't slavery and thus isn't a violation of the 13th amendment. Generally things like kidnapping laws as they currently exist would prevent any private entity from doing this, but exceptions might be carved out. On realistic example would be teen rehabilitation camps which already can border on the legal limits of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and slavery. Some stories from these places already sound like they might be crossing the line, though that might only be allowed as long as they are dealing with minors with parental approval. I could reasonably see a state extending such treatment until the teen is 21 or such.
Oh defining a framework that defines incarceration is hard so we should just have slavery. Got it.
Random anecdote. Slavery means NO days off. If you are sick, you have to get up at 5:30am and go wait in line outside in the freezing snow for sick call (you also have to do this for 'pill line' if you have any meds, though you aren't charged the $5 a pop for that). Sick call costs $5 a visit. You make $5 a month. Then the doctor says 'drink water and take an aspirin' and clears you to go to work. Aspirin is only available from the commissary in large overprices bottles about to expire. You are REQUIRED to throw the bottle away when it is expired or you will get a shot for 'contraband'. You can not share aspirin with others. Hopefully you planned ahead and saved your $5 for 2 months to afford a bottle of aspirin in case you got sick, and it hasn't expired before you get sick. When you get to work, sick, no exception is made for your physical condition. If you work HVAC you're still climbing ladders in the snow to the roof.
Slavery means I was forced to shovel the compound with a shovel with a broken handle so exposed fiberglass that cut me up. I was issued a 'navy uniform' which is what we wear in the feds. So short sleeve shirt, thin khaki slacks, thin socks. And you get a light non-waterproof jacket. You want long underwear? Commissary purchase (4X monthly pay, $20 pants OR $20 shirt). Gloves? Commissary purchase (2 months pay $10). Hat? commissary purchase (1 months pay $5). So I shoveled snow for hours, soaked to the bone, in whiteout conditions, no hat, no gloves, with my hands bleeding. That is slavery. And I had it good. I was able to get the shovel fixed through connections, boy was the cop that made me do that pissed when next time I pulled the shovel out of the locked tool closet and somehow it was fixed even though he kept 'forgetting' to put in a work order.
>Oh defining a framework that defines incarceration is hard so we should just have slavery. Got it.
That is not my argument.
My argument is that incarceration is a subset of slavery. Accepting one specific subset of slavery doesn't mean bringing back chattel slavery or legalizing sexual slavery. You ideally want to prevent any loopholes and keep a very specific limit on what is allowed for prisoners to avoid horrible things we see in modern day prisons and in prisons for the past.
>Slavery means NO days off. If you are sick, you have to get up at 5:30am and go wait in line outside in the freezing snow for sick call (you also have to do this for 'pill line' if you have any meds, though you aren't charged the $5 a pop for that). Sick call costs $5 a visit. You make $5 a month. Then the doctor says 'drink water and take an aspirin' and clears you to go to work. Aspirin is only available from the commissary in large overprices bottles about to expire. You are REQUIRED to throw the bottle away when it is expired or you will get a shot for 'contraband'. You can not share aspirin with others. Hopefully you planned ahead and saved your $5 for 2 months to afford a bottle of aspirin in case you got sick, and it hasn't expired before you get sick. When you get to work, sick, no exception is made for your physical condition. If you work HVAC you're still climbing ladders in the snow to the roof.
Even if you banned any labor, you could still have prisons who have extremely unreasonable charges for goods and services due to the, quite literal, captive audience. Imagine your same situation, except there is no work to get paid. You either have to have an external source of money from before being put in prison, have someone sending you money, or this gets added to a bill that eventually the government will have you repay once you are out of prison. No labor for profit, but still all the problems you point out.
>Slavery means I was forced to shovel the compound with a shovel with a broken handle so exposed fiberglass that cut me up.
Conditions of tools provided in prison are also independent of any notion of labor from profit. You can have a prison where people are given horrible tools for their daily rehabilitation tasks even though there is no profitable labor occurring. If you have people running the prison seeking to torture prisoners, they can do so even in a situation where there is no labor for profit. These are obvious bad things as well, but I don't see how these things being bad relate to my question.
UNICOR at my spot did CAD work for McDonald's remodels (along with a textile sweetshop). With COVID they made UNICOR only dorms (something they are not allowed to do) with of course special privileges (which they are not allowed to do, they can't 'treat you better if you take this job that makes us money'). Also, the UNICOR cops got bonuses based on the local UNICORs performance. But yeah, that whole things doesn't get abused, people don't get forced into it. Why would a cop do that, just because his bonus depends on you 'volunteering' to work overtime... or in dangerous situations. His compassion DEFINATELY overrides greed for that sweet sweet bonus money. And if you quit you are still in his dorm until transferred, and of course he doesn't punish you at all for putting his bonus at risk.
I am involved with a non-profit that provides ISA (income share agreements) to convicts to get licensed truckers [0]. The founder started it due to similar experiences as you described and changed the lives of many people already. Wish this was institutionalized rather than being done as singular organization, but it's a start.
The fact that your uncle never bothered trying to pass a driving test isn't the justice system's fault. He's not a victim or puppet without any agency in his life.
I’d argue that it is. The system is suppose to be helping rehabilitate inmates so that they fit better in society…. The focus needs to be helping inmates see how they can otherwise create value.
Why do you think the system is supposed to rehabilitate? I would argue that the system is supposed to separate people who cannot be trusted in society from the rest of us. I think the major failure of the justice system (apart from corruption and dishonesty) is the failure to keep prisoners safe from one another. Rehabilitation should happen on your own recognizance, the system should exist to keep you exiled from people who didn't commit your crime.
(I do believe that rehabilitation, or more accurately in the case of people who never were instilled with a moral compass, "habilitation", is often possible and always desirable, but I don't think the system itself can or should be entrusted with that responsibility. It should just make the conditions for habilitation possible, and then outside society can intervene as it will.)
No man is an island. If you separate someone from their community, their relationships, and the very things that cause us to change (people) -- you create monsters. Disenfranchised (more than already), rootless, without a reason or purpose to change. The only recognizance most prisoners will get is further down the "no one can be trusted or relied upon; I am the only person that must be taken care of" rabbit hole. You end up with either the fully antisocial, the terribly maladapted who can no longer build relations and integrate with others, or simply the dissociated.
Atleast in more sane countries, the corrections officers and prisons act as a form of community. A safe reprieve from the brutality of life, for one to be able to emulate a "normal" life, and "normal" interactions, and "normal" behavior. The brutality and isolation of an American prison only emulates a lawless society. The moral compass imparted within is simply might makes right. It takes Olympian acts of mental gymnastics to believe one is wholly responsible for one's own moral compass -- or that anyone but the most deluded can reject the reality they find themselves in, cast off all practical notions of operating oneself, and commit to abstract ideals. The only people who can do that are people who are so detached from any feedback loop on their survival, that it doesn't matter what they believe -- they have enough money and support that any insanity will never jeopardize them.
Crimes and morals are relative to the environments people find themselves in. Stuffing the spiritually ill into a crude box of suffering is on par with lobotomizing the "fussy and ill-tempered" housewives of the last century.
> If you separate someone from their community, their relationships, and the very things that cause us to change (people) -- you create monsters.
You and I agree that the current method of imprisoning criminals teaches them to be worse, and must change. However, I think you are either ignoring or not believing the fact that many people "in their community" are already monsters. (A "monster" in this case is someone who knowingly and purposefully spreads suffering, either for their own benefit or for fun.)
The behavioral patterns and beliefs that cause crimes that we jail for--duelling, honor killing, robbery, sexual aggression, petty theft, intimidation, etc.--are first learned from the families, friends, and neighbors that one grows up around. Removing the children of mafiosos from their environment isn't going to contribute to their learning of the culture of the Mafia any more than removing the children of rich WASPs would contribute to their learning of the stereotypically entitled behaviors and views on the lower classes. (It is a popular belief among progressives that it's the System in the first place that teaches them these behaviors, but this is a view that robs people of their agency. It implies that violence would be least in a more anarchist-adjacent society, when in fact the historical view shows that inter-group violence is staggeringly high in places with less strong governments.)
Apart from this, I don't think we disagree on the problem with modern prisons. My primary view of prison reform is that prison ought to be safe. We should, as a civilized society, guarantee people we imprison that when they are forcibly remanded under the care of the Department of Justice, they are no longer in danger from their fellow citizens, and answer only to their captors.
I think we can reduce our differences as to those of values. My definition of "monster" is not someone who "knowingly and purposefully spreads suffering, either for their own benefit for for fun." That is just a selfish person with no care for how their malicious acts affect others.
"Monsters," in my view, are those that are not and cannot ever be part of any cohesive human unit -- rather than those who cannot conform to a "global" moral or value system. The WASPs, mafiosos, inbred and insane aristocrats, mob-men, etc. are not what I consider monsters. They live and operate within a community. They almost always spread suffering, pain, violence, and other acts of villainy -- but that is an inescapable part of humanity. Locking them up away from the rest will not solve any long-term problems, aside from the career outlooks of politicians, district attorneys, and their ilk.
American Indians and other "primitive" tribes of people are another example (related to groups of people without strong government). All the war, bloodshed, acts of heinous despicably they commit against one another, is not something that can be whisked away by more subjugation. Brutality and suffering is a part of us. To think ourselves as civilized because we repress those urges into complete subjugation is foolhardy. Without active sublimation of these parts into socially-affirming activities, they will spill-over into other parts. We will not become "monsters," but we will do monstrous deeds unknowingly, within the comfort of our delusion of domestication.
Perhaps I lack the ability to "narrow in" on a certain issue. I miss the "trees for the forest," which makes it impossible for me to see a way to untangle this "ball of yarn" without methodically understanding the tangle of all the collective "strings". And for that, I do think your views are much more practical and applicable in the present.
That is a very insightful comment, thank you for making it. I think I understand your original point a little better than I did.
> To think ourselves as civilized because we repress those urges into complete subjugation is foolhardy.
Given your belief about the existence of inherent brutality in humanity (which I agree with) is a "civilized person" actually an achievable goal? I have gone this far believing that the definition of a "civilized" person is some with normal, inherent uncivilized urges that effectively controls ("subjugates") those urges enough to create civilization. (Peace and prosperity via collaboration and material surplus.)
Also, if exile to prison is not actually solving any long-term problems, what do you think is a possibile course of action that does address long-term problems?
If you let outsiders of the system to go at will intervene you create a perverse incentive for those outsiders to game ways to keep these people in prison, if they are too good at rehabilitation they'll lose potential cheap labour. An actor outside of the system will have access to labour that is cheap and in precarious conditions, usually a pretty good start for exploitation, without having any responsibility whatsoever for their rehabilitation.
If you decide that a condition for access from outsiders is to rehabilitate people (with whatever metrics you can come up) then you have just privatised the job of rehabilitation... For what gain? Society as a whole would benefit if prisoners are rehabilitated and find that criminality is not worth it, isn't the job of the State the betterment of society? Why should we create convoluted ways to privatise that?
> Isn't the job of the State the betterment of society?
We may have fundamentally opposing ideological views here, but I see what you're asking. I would actually say that the job of Society is the betterment of the state. Ultimately it is people in society that create and man their bureaucracies; the government is infused with the skills and morals of the people that form it, and will not exceed their abilities.
I don't think that you could ever form a wing of a government that was capable of rehabilitating people without that wing being fully made up of very intelligent people with good intentions; and if you were able to assemble that group of people, they'd do a better job as a private endeavor (maybe not for profit, perhaps as a non-profit that only pays their salaries, etc.) I do think you could make a form of a government that was capable of keeping prisons far safer than they are now, as that's a much more discrete and amoral task that ensuring that convicted citizens (often low-IQ, often sociopathic, often abused, often with PTSD) are rehabilitated.
> Rehabilitation should happen on your own recognizance
I agree. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. There is still legitimate debate on how much role society has to play in making sure it's as nice as possible for the horse to get to water.
Obviously in GP's uncle's case an injustice was done to him (by his father, it sounds like), but it is still up to him as an adult to become a productive member of society. I like the way some put it, when talking about people from troubled backgrounds (whether from abusive parents, mental issues, what have you): it wasn't your fault, but it's still your responsibility to deal with it, once you are an adult.
But what does telling them it is their responsibility get us? A warm, fuzzy feeling that we are better than those irresponsible people is the best I can come up with. Aside from that we shouldn't try to assign responsibility or blame, but instead look at what results our system has. If there are people who could be productive members of society, but who have fallen so far behind they can't take care of "their responsibilities", how does it help us if we don't help them?
Every policy choice has an opportunity cost and sets up an incentive. If we don't do something, that resource gets used elsewhere; if we make the imprisoned experience very nice and comfortable, it takes away a disincentive for committing crime. So you can never look at anything in a vacuum.
I'm sure you've had an experience where you had a friend or relative in hard circumstances who you kept on trying to help, but they seemingly fell on their same bad habits over and over again, leading you to be exhausted and unable to manage your own life.
> Every policy choice has an opportunity cost and sets up an incentive. If we don't do something, that resource gets used elsewhere; if we make the imprisoned experience very nice and comfortable, it takes away a disincentive for committing crime.
And yet the scandinavian justice system is much nicer to their prisoners compared to the american one, yet they have much lower rates of re-offenders. Why does this seemingly work for them? Why don't they have to treat their prisoners as bad as the US does to get a better outcome?
> So you can never look at anything in a vacuum.
But that's what you're doing. You're looking at something like "the prison experience is bad", and you decide that if it's improved, you take away disincentives for committing crime. But you don't consider the positive effect on rehabilitation and everything else. That's why I said: why don't we look at the effect of policies? You are randomly choosing aspects to focus on, because they support your thesis. I'm saying: let's throw away our theses and just accept what the data tells us.
> I'm sure you've had an experience where you had a friend or relative in hard circumstances who you kept on trying to help, but they seemingly fell on their same bad habits over and over again, leading you to be exhausted and unable to manage your own life.
Maybe the right thing to do isn't to ignore them, but to get them help that actually helps them? In your described situation I am not the right person to try and help them, but I can help them get there with much lower personal efforts.
Scandinavian countries are for the most part ethnically homogeneous with a monarchy and a state religion, all things that improve social cohesion. (The one Scandinavian country that became markedly less ethnically homogeneous recently is struggling with an unprecedented rise in violent crime.) America is just about the polar opposite of that, and recently so much more so -- now it's considered racist to ask an immigrant to assimilate themselves to the mainstream culture, for example.
And there are legal systems that go the other way to achieve the same result of low rates of crime and reoffense; countries like Saudi Arabia or the UAE treat criminals extremely harshly and have some of the lowest crime rates in the world. Singapore puts drug traffickers to death and have opiate abuse rates of 30 per 100k vs. 600 in the US.
America, for better or for worse, is a vast land with a diverse population and constitutionally guaranteed personal liberties; that is to say, it's set up in such a way that deterrence is a big part of the justice system. In less diverse countries with more social cohesion, a big chunk of that deterrence comes from social pressure of people around you, who look like you and with whom you share a common cultural heritage. In America, where the people around you have little say in your behavior (and increasingly less so), it's a part of the justice system's job to be menacing.
> let's throw away our theses and just accept what the data tells us
What the data tells about Scandinavia is not likely to work in America for the reasons above. And let me ask you a question: a third of all shoplifting arrests in NYC, a city of 8.5 million people, were from just 327 people, who were collectively arrested over 6000 times[0]. How will you rehabilitate those 327 people, given that you don't have unlimited resources and you have a duty to keep them from harming other innocent, law-abiding people? Saudi Arabia would probably cut their hands off and be done with it. Norway might commit them to a lengthy term at a psychiatric facility on the taxpayer's dime. Neither is an option in the US.
Do you have any proof that the "ethnic homogeneity" is the cause of the difference? It's paraded around for any issue where America is worse off than other countries, but it's always just put out as a statement of fact. Do you have any shred of evidence? Any studies?
If you don't, please take a second to reflect why you're pointing at this specific difference.
If you're looking for "proof" that any one thing is the "cause" of a complex social issue, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. There isn't a great deal of academic literature on the topic, but perhaps two key illustrations:
1. The 1954 "Toward an Understanding of Juvenile Delinquency" by Lander, which showed that the rate of "delinquency" rose for both whites and blacks as the ratio between the two reached 50%, and proportionally fell in areas where either whites or blacks held the majority.
2. The 1982 "Population Heterogeneity and the Sociogenesis of Homicide" by Hansmann and Quigley, which recognizes that though the issue is complex, their findings support the the idea that population heterogeneity is a "significant causal factor in homicide".
And of course, unacademically off the top of your head, it's likely that the lowest-crime places you can think of are generally ethnically homogeneous.
> If you don't, please take a second to reflect why you're pointing at this specific difference.
Hey, I'm not the one who held up Scandinavia (>90% white) as a model. I myself am neither white nor black and immigrated to the US, where I would much rather prefer to live, warts and all, than in Scandinavia.
I'm sure you're aware that research methods in general, but especially in sociology, have improved over the last decades. Do you have any source that is not literally 40 years old? Anything more current?
> Hey, I'm not the one who held up Scandinavia (>90% white) as a model.
There is a solid argument that everyone should read and write. Common literacy is a cornerstone of modern society and is widely enforced. And there is argument if driving is a basic skill, or a privilege...
It's been shown in multiple studies that improving reading and writing skills reduces recidivism. Unfortunately these arguments fall flat to the ears of folk who don't see recidivism as a problem to be solved. Just put them back in prison for longer! They have a punishment based mindset and data on how to reduce overall crime rates is just not something they engage with. To them crime is an individual failing society and not society failing the individual. After all they managed not to become criminals therefore everyone in society can.
I always wondered why they wouldn't let inmates create value with their skills. Seemingly manual labor that could be automated by a bunch of Undergrad Engineers that wouldn't even qualify as a capstone project.
I understand if you have offline computers. I understand if the computer needs to be behind a plexiglass wall and the mouse and keyboard need to be chained down. But quickly these will pay for themselves. Data Entry pays significantly more, I imagine there are plenty of white collar criminals with tech skills that could make $30-$100/hr.
Even if you only let the inmate keep 20%, the inmate is getting skills, money, the system is getting extra money, the company getting the data entry is getting cheap labor.
I can't see too many downsides other than the initial set up cost. Pretty sure the right side of the aisle will see the $$$ and approve. The left side should also see the $, but also know how humane and potentially rehabilitating.
EDIT: Allowing prisons to profit from the labor of prisoners creates a perverse incentive for the companies running prisons to keep prisons full. Maybe it works in places where prisons aren't run for profit.
Interestingly, in the US, slavery is explicitly permitted by the Constitution as a punishment for crimes. (Though whether prison labor should count as "slavery" or as a different form of "involuntary servitude" is an interesting semantic question.)
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
To be clear, that's exactly what I mean. Every perverse incentive that nudges for-profit prisons towards manufacturing prisoners is magnified by turning individual prisoners into revenue streams.
Locking people in a box is incarceration. Locking people in a box and compelling them to perform labor from which the incarcerator profits is slavery.
The fact that imprisoning people costs a lot of money is one of the few things keeping the U.S. prison population in check. That's not a problem that needs solving.
That is a nice first step, but this is nothing quite like I vision. People finding their niche and growing skills while making money.
Although, I find the idea interesting that we could solve a supply issue in a field by training our prison population. Too bad the American Medical Association would never allow competition :P
If the prison system keeps ANY of the money you immediately get incentives for abuse and the unimprisoned may not like having their jobs taken by lowball prison laborl
> I always wondered why they wouldn't let inmates create value with their skills.
In Germany prisons are to large parts "self sustaining" thus inmates do the cooking, washing, carpenter work, metalworks, car mechanics works, ... including proper apprenticeships in different fields compliant with Germany's apprenticeship system.
Some prisoners also work on service for external customers, one can even buy products directly from jail: https://jva-shop.de/
However pay is very low, way below minimum wage and different cost the state charges prisoners is directly deduced and while in jail the only place they can spend the money on is the shop inside, for cigarettes, sweets, TV sets (requires special permission), ... while that shop owner charges prices based on his monoply ...
But the general idea of German jail system is that after jail inmates should have a chance to find a job with some education etc.
> Even if you only let the inmate keep 20%, the inmate is getting skills, money, the system is getting extra money, the company getting the data entry is getting cheap labor.
The inmate is also getting dignity and practice at regular life, which might convert a % of them to non-criminal life (I forgot the word for it).
UNCIOR does CAD work for McDonalds remodels and such. You are paid more working UNICOR (sometimes over $100 a month). I did CAD in college but I sure as hell am not using my education to make the Warden/Cops a fat bonus. Lots of guys did it though, especially those with no savings or people. It becomes...interesting when your boss is also your prison guard, and your boss' bonus is tied to performance metrics.
No. You walk in and take a written test. If you pass, then you have to take a driving test. Assuming that you have a car. Or a friend with a car. Or money to rent a car.
Assuming that you can find a car to drive, you will take a lap around the block to demonstrate that you can steer, stop and maybe parallel park.
You are required to take and pass paid courses to get a license in most states these days. It was a huge barrier to a lot of the guys in the halfway house. Just coordinating getting to these classes via the bus was a pain. Also, if you return 15 minutes late to the halfway house the US Marshals come pick you up and back to jail you go, so missing a bus has pretty steep consequences that make people avoid any additional bus trips such as getting to drivers training class (you are required to work so you have to risk the bus at least twice a day no matter what).
This is very common in the US, even though it is not typically mandated. Technically you can just go take the test if you're up to it, and some people do exactly that with no more training than they got from mom & dad. But a lot of kids take the classroom route. Not every parent wants to teach.
Driving schools will give in-car lessons to adults, and let you use their car for the test, for a fee; that's the form of "renting a car" that's useful for this case. In my state the requirements are looser for adults than for teenagers, under the assumption that adults are generally more responsible or have driven before.
You need to pass a road test which they are pretty picky with along with a written test. The written test had a lot of random crap you would never use imo. Honestly not too difficult but I imagine it might be for someone in and out of prison life.
I don’t know much about prison/jail but I do agree it should focus on re-habilitation they should have systems to help you study and get a drivers license while in there for example.
>after his drunk dad sent him to jail as a 17 year old for writing a check in his dads name.
This lacks the details for me to know whether I should be sympathetic or not. Are you saying that he forged the check for some reason related to his dad being drunk, like his dad not buying any food, or that his dad agreed to let him write the check and then complained to the police anyway because he was drunk?
It is difficult to imagine someone not being sympathetic to a 17 year old whose life ended up totally broken, even if he did it out of sheer malice. Stephen Fry famously stole a credit card at nearly same age and was jailed for it, would you hold that against him today?
Does whether you're sympathetic to their situation at 17 affect how well they should be rehabilitated, in your view, or are you just curious? Genuine question.
That's why it's called the "Justice" System and not "Rehabilitation" System. Your uncle committed fraud, the public does not care about the surrounding circumstances.
The trust that VICTIM will get justice keeps the society intact. Nobody cares what happens to the bad guy.
If someone took out all your money through fraud and gambled it away, what would you choose:
A) Justice: Put them in Jail for long time.
B) Rehabilitation: Put them in medical care for an year till their gambling addiction is cured. Then they are free to integrate back into society.
In both cases, you get no money back. What would you prefer?
I would argue that you are placing misnamed choices. Both are different flavours of Justice:
A) Retributive Justice: Put them in Jail for long time.
B) Rehabilitative Justice: Put them in medical care for an year till their gambling addiction is cured. Then they are free to integrate back into society.
All else being equal, I would absolutely prefer B over A. However, there is also a third option C, which can be combined with either A or B:
C) Restorative Justice: Require them to do a certain type and amount of work for you or for the state to make up for an agreed amount of your lost money and moral damages.
Give me a mix of B and C any day, and throw A down the drain (in the sense of prison purely as punishment, I have nothing against using prison to protect society from certain criminals).
I know you think this is some hard dilemma that will force people to admit "yes of course I want them punished". But it really isn't. At the end of the day, putting the guy in jail without rehabilitation doesn't help me at all, except quench the thirst for revenge, which is always there of course, but I know giving in to it is like chasing a fix; it'll make me feel better in the short term and like a vindictive asshole in the long term.
What would make me feel better in the long term is knowing that at least something good came out of my losing all my money. In case B as opposed to nothing at all in case A.
I'm always skeptical of so many stories like 'chess help x' because it's very easy to believe it's true but I also could believe it never helps objectively. I'm curious of the studies.
“It teaches them to think before they act”. Give me a break. This is nothing more than self lauding propaganda. I have been hearing this throughout grammar school that such and such subject/task/homework helps students do a, b, and c. I don’t think so. It only justified their system of education. Likewise, this is trying to justify prison programs. A sham.
Why do we push games on society instead of work? Why is chess and MMOs fun, but not sewing a shirt or building a new app?
I would disagree, I find sewing shirts and making apps fun, MMOs can be grindy and chess is basically just studying.
I'm sure there are some relatively minor things like reward rate, physical exertion, etc... but I have to imagine much of it is cultural. Lets not take this to logical extremes, but rather, why don't we value group volunteer work more than playing chess? You have your social aspect, you have rewards, its often different and unique each time.
As I've gotten older, its a bit apparent to me that 'beating Zelda' is more akin to work, than it is to getting fulfillment. (However, then there are games like Divinity Original Sin(2) that feel extremely fulfilling, can't deny that.) You wonder how many people are playing Call of Duty because a leader of a friend group saw the advertisement, bought the game, and pushed their friends to do the same. Instead of playing football, they play COD.
I'm not sure whether you're making a comment about prison society or society in general. Penal labour sounds like a pretty bad idea to me. But I can see a few reasons that chess might be good for rehabilitation (some referred to in article):
* Simple, indisputable demonstration of intelligence. People from deprived background often have low self-esteem and very little evidence to show for their smarts, even if they are in fact intelligent.
* It's traditionally a slow, thoughtful game, in stark contrast to the stress and demands of the outside world.
* It provides escapism by totally focusing your mental faculties onto the world of the board.
* There are few external expectations. No one will be upset if you make a silly move, like they would if you make some bad stitches.
Prison forced labour might not be a good idea. Prison labour as an optional thing is definitely a good idea, and most prisons give prisoners the option to contribute, at least to the running of the prison, in exchange for certain privileges. The jobs include working in the laundry room or serving food. These are not intensely engaging occupations, but they are an improvement over the monotony of prison life, and give people the opportunity to excercise certain skills useful in the real world like teamwork, diligence, etc.
I disagree with those who claim that only people from a certain social setting can comment on certain issues, but I have to admit that it provokes my ire a bit seeing HN commentators who likely have pretty much no experience with inner-city cycles of schooling/imprisonment/poverty suggesting more penal labor as some sort of solution and drawing on their experience of how 'beating Zelda' is akin to work.
I play quite a bit of chess. I also develop software, so theoretically I practice complex multi-step thinking and hopefully I grok multi-component systems.
Unfortunately I think chess does not help me at all in my job. I wish it did!
Chess is highly specific. Most players tend to learn and improve on those specifics. I know that bishops are more valuable than knights in an open position. I know several openings to a depth of ~30 ply. I know many theoretical endgames. These things do not help me at all in any arena besides chess.
The whole point of the game is multi-step thinking.
If I make a move, I need to prepare for the inevitable response, which might or might not be obvious to my opponent. The game is inherently more and more complex after each move.
While things might not carry over directly in a provable way, there's a reason chess has survived as a game for hundreds of years - because there's definitely ways the game improves your thinking processes, pattern recognition, and abstract decision making skills.
>While things might not carry over directly in a provable way, there's a reason chess has survived as a game for hundreds of years - because there's definitely ways the game improves your thinking processes, pattern recognition, and abstract decision making skills.
No, you need science. This is Appeal to Tradition fallacy.
Chess was the 'in' game for the upper class/nobility through history. That is the reason it survived.
Wouldn't great chess players be fantastic outside of the chess world? Wouldn't kingdoms who had chess beat regional powers that didn't have the technology? Wouldn't chess players defeat their political rivals?
Science is not a good tool to win an argument with. Are you trying to argue that abstract logic games like chess have no impact on how people otherwise live? This is a crazy stance, I hope you agree.
>. Are you trying to argue that abstract logic games like chess have no impact on how people otherwise live?
Yes, they don't have an impact from everything I've read.
Again, it should be easy to prove. Why not see how the best chess players in the world do outside of chess?
You'd think with all those abstract logic skills we'd have them running companies, universities, and being secretary of state. Instead all seem to be stuck as chess players.
>Science is not a good tool to win an argument with.
Feelings are better? No bud. It sounds like you just really want Chess to be useful.
>You'd think with all those abstract logic skills we'd have them running companies, universities, and being secretary of state. Instead all seem to be stuck as chess players.
Sounds like you're not familiar with what Kasparov (undisputed #1 player in the 80s-early 2000s) does outside of Chess.
Guy has told off Putin to his face, and has been a champion of human rights and democracy - getting arrested in his native Russia several times while protesting the one-party state Putin has built to enrich himself. He's also written books on geopolitics.
Magnus Carlson has done alright for himself too. He's won a few poker tournaments, and last season was the best fantasy soccer player on the planet.
>Guy has told off Putin to his face, and has been a champion of human rights and democracy - getting arrested in his native Russia several times while protesting the one-party state Putin has built to enrich himself.
Seems like all of his hard work paid off /s. Weird that he can beat Putin in chess but not IRL
>Magnus Carlson
"At two years, he could solve 500-piece jigsaw puzzles; at four, he enjoyed assembling Lego sets with instructions intended for children aged 10–14.[10]"
Doesnt seem like a chess thing though. I'd hate if someone attributed my success to playing runescape. But at least runescape teaches you economics.
>* Weird that he can beat Putin in chess but not IRL*
Hope this was /s as well. Intelligence doesn't matter when you're up against the Don of the Russian Mafia, a former KGB boss who happens to be worth some $200-300 billion and has outright and undisputed control of the Russian state, which includes a powerful propaganda network and a nuclear-armed military.
>* But at least runescape teaches you economics.*
Need this to be confirmed with science. A computer game based around PvP combat probably teaches you less about economics than a game like chess teaches you about abstract logical thinking and planning.
At least with chess (and plenty of other games) it’s a structured way of participating in cooperative competition/competitive cooperation. Your peers are your adversaries when you’re actually playing, but they’re also the people helping you get better. Work doesn’t teach that, or at least not explicitly, but the ability to navigate social spaces where you’re both cooperating and competing is critical to getting anything done.
“Fun” is subjective. I love programming for example but most people would find it to be somewhere between dry and mind numbingly boring, which isn’t good or bad, it just is. Same for MMOs or sewing or chess or what have you.
Games are better because you can choose who you play with rather than having to pretend to like some asshole. In a similar vein you don't have to submit to some bullshit boss and his bullshit rules.
Yeah I have to agree. Having worked in a US prison kitchen before, some of the food that gets served is worse than hot dog food and made me feel sick to even cook and serve to hungry people.
He said he learned all of his chess in prison and was really excited to happen to find other people playing.
He also had no idea how to use a chess clock, I guess they didn't have those in prison.