We emailed, back when the post about your circumstances was shared here in Nov. 2023. I knew you'd see success.
Huge shoutout to Jessica and UL for all the work they do, and here's to a bright future ahead for you =)
In contrast I'm glad to see this guy has been open and honest, owning up to his mistakes and starting to turn his life around and make amends for the harm he's caused others. Well done.
Edit: Please disregard that last paragraph. Just saw the document @bjorkandkd linked.
Unfortunately, due to the circumstances of our world today, he was understandably too anxious to move from his current job. He worried he'd never be able to find employment as an ex-felon if the runway ran out.
I felt really bad for the guy.
I wish things worked differently.
But otherwise, in terms of why he’d default to being paid less… yes, what the other commenter said: supply and demand, aka leverage. Turso could choose to be a good citizen and pay him the same as any other employee, but that’s subject to all the questions I posed above, regarding the structural requirements placed on them as the employer.
TIL from 15-20yrs old I was a prisoner
But seriously, programs like these need to be made available to more people, incarcerated or not. There's millions of people in this country who have basically no access to employment. Remote work could not only be a lifeline to those communities, it's advantageous to employers and good for the economy.
Edit: I don’t mean to imply the author isn’t paid fairly by Turso. A few posts down, the CEO of Turso asserts that they do pay fairly. The OP in this thread might reasonably wonder about this because several states do in fact use prisoners as unpaid slave labor.
> A brief summary is that I'm currently serving prison time for poor decisions and lifestyle choices I made in my twenties, all related to drugs.
Is that their poor decisions were related to drugs.
> The defendant, Preston Thorpe, appeals his conviction for possession of a controlled drug with intent to sell
He may have done other things, but his conviction was for possession with intent, and that seems to be why he's locked up. It doesn't make anything else he's done acceptable, but in America he's innocent until proven guilty, and it doesn't seem he was found guilty of assault.
>My name is Preston Thorpe, I'm 31 years old and I've spent just under 10 years of my life in Prison (all for non-violent drug crimes.)
Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US? Many companies believe so - there's a significant difference in the cost of living between those two employees, and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both.
Equally, a person incarcerated in New York City doesn't have the same living costs as a person who has to live in New York City, so you could reasonably argue that any "Cost of living premium" that a company offers to NYC based employees doesn't need to apply to a person who doesn't experience those higher costs.
Why should the taxpayers be burdened by the results of his bad decisions?
/me takes off hat
https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...
We are happy to have him with us.
That's bullshit. E.g. electronics cost the same in all countries.
However, the point of a program of hiring or educating people who are in prison isn't to judge them. They are already in prison. 10years is a long time, so it's likely they did something bad and have been judged for it.
This is to give people who are capable and willing a chance to grow and integrate. From the little knowledge I have about this, it seems like this is very effective.
In any case, HN is very selective about this high evidential standard. People will make a lot of effort to give probable domestic abusers the benefit of the doubt, but pick one of HN's official enemies and suddenly any little scrap of evidence is considered quite sufficient!
We also don't pay him healthcare, because he wouldn't be able to use it.
He should, but the median salary of engineers in Taiwan is like, 40,000 USD, vs SF which is 160,000 USD. Or London, if one wants to argue something about English language ability or whatever, is 80,000 USD. Literally half that of SF.
Salaries aren't determined by labor value, they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC. All correlations are used as excuses, when the core, real, reason always comes down to, employers will pay as little as they can get away with.
This annoyed me enough that I started a co-op about it, and we're doing pretty well. I'm still annoyed though. Apparently glommer, the CEO, pays him "full salary" (market rate?), which makes them a good person, but a bad capitalist. They could easily pay basically a slave wage and leverage this dude's ingrained passion for programming to get huge output for almost nothing - that's what the rest of the industry merrily does.
That's not a good thing.
Edit: I cannot really believe that this, of all comments, is controversial. Living life treating everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent is... just shitty, let alone exhausting. Do people forget about how many times reddit and other ruined innocent people's lives?
Sometimes HN amazes me with new technology, interesting conversations, etc. Sometimes it amazes me when people are arguing that we should go through life treating people as guilty first, until they are proven innocent. I think I'll go back to not participating for awhile.
> 15 to 30 years in prison for possessing a synthetic drug with the intent to distribute it
> like many synthetic opioids, the exact effects of U-47700 are little understood and a small amount could be fatal
> charged with possessing carfentanil, a powerful synthetic drug much more powerful then fentanyl
People proven guilty are not necessarily guilty. People proven not guilty are not necessarily innocent. The legal standard exists because a system needs standards.
That being said I wouldn't have much patience for a "merely" accused murderer or child predator in my personal life, just as I also don't have much patience for a doctor who refuses to prescribe me antibiotics because the chance they could help me is "only" 1%. I don't really care that it's socially irresponsible when it comes to my personal assessment of risk.
It's not the place of random hacker news commenters to try to and hold assault against him because you think, after reading 2 minutes about the case, that he should have been convicted.
Is your assertion that random internet commenters get it right more than the courts...?
>"innocent until proven guilty" should apply outside of the legal system is lazy
How is guilty until proven innocent less "lazy"?
The person you love comes to you and tells you that they've been attacked by your shady friend. Do you defend your friend from the accusation because "they're innocent until proven guilty" or do you use your judgement and decide that the person you love is telling the truth because you have a lifetime of trust in them?
There's a reason people don't like drug addicts, and there's a pretty significant portion of the population that wants them all dead (except for my little Muffy, who was corrupted by her boyfriend, of course).
The Second Chance stuff is important. Surprisingly enough, Jaime Dimon is a big supporter of it[0].
I wish this chap well. The proof will come, when he leaves the structure of prison.
[0] https://www.jpmorganchase.com/impact/careers-and-skills/seco...
so you saying that court is useless because its not perfet???? its easy to complaint about something but give NOTHING to improve it
You would not do better than people in charge because EASY to say something is wrong but you dont have ANSWER that improve this current standards
https://www.wmur.com/article/man-facing-carfentanil-charge-r...
Why should internet comments follow criminal law, and not eg civil law, or some other standard?
I knew the person, and whatever was done in the past. Is the past. He's done his time. It is not mine to add penalties over what the state imposed.
Just because someone is guilty or not doesn't separate other facts of the case.
In an extreme example: I'm ok with the court letting someone off who murdered someone, because the police didn't follow proper procedure wrt evidence/confessions/witness testimony. Our legal system should be held to the highest standard when convicting someone of a crime. That doesn't stop me from believing that the defendant actually did the crime or not.
Then how do you explain laws against slander and libel?
You can't label someone guilty of a crime just because you feel it to be true.
There is no actual confirmation in that document that her arm was broken, just that that was what was reported to the officer and that it was injured/swolen.
You're free to say "allegedly", just like the standards the media has to go by.
Drug charges are difficult. In my opinion, if you are using drugs personally, I don't really see a problem. If you commit some crime while under the influence which could harm another person, eg driving while drugged, obviously that's a different story, and coercing other people into it isn't great either, but if you're just smoking in your own home, its your body that you're altering. If you're selling to other people, that feels a bit more iffy to me because you're affecting other people with that... though I do realise that preventing the sale is effectively the same as preventing the usage...
There is a real risk of exploitation, but if it's properly managed, remote work for prisoners is one of the most hopeful things I've heard about the prison system. It gives people purpose while there and an avenue to success once they're out.
Going through life treating everyone as guilty until proven innocent sounds like an exhausting and negative way to treat everyone, and harms more people overall.
"So instead of coming back home broke and apologetic, I ended up pretty deep into this and soon was making tens of thousands of dollars a week, very much unapologetically."
Then, after his first sentence:
"I was left with the difficult choice of either living there and walking to a temp agency with hopes of making $10.50/hour doing manual labor (without an ID or social security card at this point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some associates, and coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my pocket and living in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an apartment... I chose the latter: and obviously, was back in prison after a short 14 months of addiction and misery."
There's no actual confirmation in that report that her arm was actually broken or that she was actually beaten. There's no medical examination that happened here that is cited.
That would still be required in a civil trial with preponderance of evidence. What if she was on drugs and did it to herself? (Not saying that's what happened). We don't know what happened from this document and that has nothing to do with this charge or his appeal.
Lists other companies which are part of the coalition.
There's a difference between "we want to lock this person up and take away their liberty, so we should be basically certain" versus "look man he's been done for drugs and she ended up with a broken arm, I don't trust this person".
Everyone is of course free to make up their own mind, but when making public accusations I would at least expect an honest effort to keep those accusations factually correct.
Yes, and that reason is that people in most of the developed world are free to say yes or no to job offers based on their individual preferences. And, it just so happens, in Thailand and India there are many people who will happily say yes to offers that people in the US would say no to. The cost of living explanation that companies give is illusory; the reality is that they have to pay enough to get people to say yes.
Now, you might ask why people in different countries say yes to offers at different compensation levels. But I think the answer is self evident: people will say yes to offers when they believe that there are lots of other people who will say yes to it. Under those circumstances, saying no won't earn a higher offer but cause the company to give the job to someone else.
Ultimately, then, regional prices are set by what the locals are generally willing to say yes to.
The original link does not say that the girlfriend reported the broken arm to the police. The police were called by her mother, who made the allegation against Thorpe. The article above says:
> According to [Thorpe's lawyer]’s appeal, Abogast told police she had fallen three days before Thorpe’s arrest and doctors at Elliot Hospital said her arm was broken in three places.
The original link says that she had scars and scabbing on her face, but this link says that Thorpe also had scars and scabbing, which the police noted in their report as consistent with drug abuse.
I'm not one to disbelieve women when they report abuse. In this case, the alleged victim didn't report any abuse, a third party who was not witness to any alleged crimes did. It's also very unusual to have your arm broken in three places, call your mom to say what happened, and then not seek any kind of treatment. I feel sad for everyone involved, because it's clear to me at least that the drug issues were the crux of the matter (which is corroborated by the actions and findings of the state). Without a statement from the girlfriend or a finding by the state, any suggestion of domestic abuse is unwarranted speculation.
If you're allowed/able to watch YouTube in American prisons, I would definitely check him out!
It's obvious from the comments in the thread that the internet hate mob still wants its pound of flesh and for Preston to be judged for life regardless of current circumstances.
They don't realize how damaging their posts are to people who have done wrong in the past and want to change their lives. Once again I am ashamed to be part of the Hacker News community, but thank you for your fairness and goodheartedness.
Why would the salaries all bump up to big American city salaries instead of resting somewhere in the lowest range worldwide? If we purely judge work completed.
If you're a remote worker your competition is the world not people in the major city the company is based in.
Punishment has three ends: retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. It is important that you pay for your crime for the sake of justice; it is charitable and prudent to rehabilitate the criminal, satisfying the corrective end of punishment; and would-be criminals must be given tangible evidence of what awaits them if they choose to indulge an evil temptation, thus acting as a deterrent.
In our systems today, we either neglect correction, leaving people to rot in prison or endanger them with recidivism by throwing them back onto the streets with no correction, or we take an attitude of false compassion toward the perp by failing to inflict adequate justice, incidentally failing the deterrent end in the process.
Do you mean for private interest? If so, I would agree that prison labor should only be used for public benefit. And this labor should be part of the sentence.
Some surprise me, others, don't.
There's no scenario here where this guy is innocent. The distinction here is whether he's a wife-beating drug dealer or just a drug dealer. There's some evidence to suggest the former but not really enough that you can definitely state it.
Personally, I'd give a convicted drug dealer less benefit of the doubt than the average person.
So many things can never have full repatriation. The best we can do is have society acknowledge, forcefully, the wrongs done via prison sentencing.
But then many countries go wrong on policy - punitive imprisonment leads to worse individual and social outcomes than a rehabilitation focus.
No need to worry about rent, no need to worry about healthcare, no need deal with all this social crap.
In a free market, very little is determined by its "value". Clean drinking water costs pennies, but its value is far higher. People in developing countries routinely spend hours a day getting clean water, which works out to a price far higher than even bottled water from for-profit companies.
>they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC.
Is there any evidence there's more collusion happening in London?
>employers will pay as little as they can get away with.
You're making it sound like this is some sort of profound insight, or that companies are being extra dishonorable by doing this, but literally everyone in an economy is trying to pay "pay as little as they can get away with". When was the last time you tipped a gas station?
Much of 'justice' has been usurped from the victim into a jobs campaign for the state.
Someone can both work towards rehabilitation and pay their 'debt to society'. If they earn over what it costs to house them in a Maine prison then, by all means, let them keep the excess earnings. If they earn $100k/year and the state pays them $1.35/hr then there are deeper institutional issues around prison labor exploitation which should be addressed.
I used to have an uncle who was constantly in and out of prison over drug-related issues and he would do all sorts of work programs just to break up the monotony. Ironically, none of these rehabilitation efforts did any good and what finally 'set him straight' was the Three Strikes Law.
Mediocre talent ... maybe not so much, but these are also the folks that could be replaced by AI.
For fucks sake, have some human decency. If your name was the one involved, how would something like this make you feel?
https://www.wbay.com/content/news/New-Hampshire-man-suspecte...
Even if you just paid him the state minimum wage, it would stop him from having a giant employment gap.
The next step would be background check reform. A DUI record isn't relevant to anything not involving driving.
Excluding a very small handful of SVU level crimes everything should be wiped clean after 5 years or so.
I had an experience with a co worker who would brag about robbing people, selling substances and when he got caught his family money made it go away. He's a CTO at a mid sized tech company now. Had he been poor he'd have a record and be lucky to work as a Walgreens clerk.
Was the biggest "tough on crime" person I've ever met. I think people with means don't understand if you don't have money you can't afford bail.
Can't afford bail you'll just be indefinitely detained without trial for months if not years.
Everything about the criminal justice system is about exploitation. Get house arrest, that's a daily monitoring fee. States like Florida are forcing released inmates to repay the state for the cost of incarceration.
It's past fixing tbh, I'm personally hopping to immigrate to a functional country soon.
Indeed. Top talent can say no to lower offers because they are confident that companies are unlikely to find other top candidates who will say yes.
I have some basic questions if anyone knows:
a. do all inmates get computer & internet access? (or only some, dependent upon the crime you committed)
b. do the inmates have to pay to use the computer & internet? I ask because I hear commissary is prohibitively expensive in prison.
c. how much time per week do inmate get to use the computer with internet access? (and is that time guaranteed they will get)
d. are there job boards specific to helping inmates find remote friendly jobs that are accepting of incarcerated individuals?
My understanding, is that's what the UK does, with an exemption for certain jobs, like teachers and creche hosts. In the US, I think some states have the ability to expunge convictions. Not sure about federal crimes, though.
The "scarlet letter" of a past conviction is a very real issue, and keeps some folks down. People can get past it, though. I know folks that served time for murder, that have very good careers, and people that have misdemeanor records, that have always struggled.
This then combined with the fact that the abuser is going to jail for on unrelated convictions. This is a huge relief to any abuse survivor. The person is going away, and I will be safe.
The other component is all the steps involved with filing charges which will often feel invasive and have to bring it all up again.
I have seen this up close and personal on a few occasions, I have begged the victim to go to the police but they would not do it.
The worst outcome of this is when the abuser is let out, the abuser may seek out the victim again, or the abuser will find new victims.
In this case the police had a call from a close family member accusing the person of domestic abuse. They had suspicious behavior from the accused person. They also witnessed that the possible victim had multiple injuries consistent with domestic abuse. As well as the arm injury the call from the family member had initially reported. But probably no charges or at least no convictions.
Just the thought of maybe being able to peacefully read a book for 30 minutes, at times I almost wished to be imprisoned...
However, on any individual case the same is not true, because that moves from talking about averages and general cases into specifics, and the burden of proof changes significantly. While there is a connection on average, that isn't enough to say any specific drug abuser commits domestic abuse. For that, ideally, you need criminal charges proven in court. That's missing here.
Or maybe they do understand. This kind of politics ensures the privileged stay privileged.
I know people who dropped out of college because they had a very small drug charge, no use in finishing if you will have a scarlet letter over your head forever.
DV applications: ~8800
DV ex parte granted (no chance for defendant to defend him(her)self): ~5100
DV final order granted after defendant able to defend him(her)self): ~3200
So for example in CT on just a civil standard, only 2/3 of the accusers were able to get even a temporary order when the defendant had zero chance to tell their side of the story. Once the defendant was able to come to court and defend themselves, only about 1/3 of them made it to a final order. And that was by the much weaker civil rather than criminal standard.
[] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tYBTsF7-px-3lCnBFOol...
This is already the case in some countries, including The Netherlands. A background check is done for a specific "profile", and convictions which aren't relevant for your job-to-be don't show up. Someone with a DUI can't become a taxi driver, but they should have no trouble getting a job as a lawyer. Got convicted of running a crypto pump&dump? Probably can't get a job as a banker, but highschool teacher or taxi driver is totally fine.
It's nice to think that people should be able to fully pay back their debt to society but (a) criminal court proceedings need to be public in a free society and if they are public, people should be able to record and distribute the results as private citizens if we believe in upholding the principle of freedom of speech.
Even if it were possible to prevent this, (b) this does a small but not entirely negligible harm to people that never committed a crime by casting some doubt upon them. This is most apparent for minority groups that are associated with criminality; they experience worse employment prospects when the state makes criminal records unavailable.
In practice, only "involuntary servitude" has been used. "Community service" - unpaid - is a very common low level sentence.
The eighth and fourteenth amendments almost certainly forbid enslavement - permanently becoming human property - as a criminal sentence.
Even before the 13th amendment, enslavement as a punishment not common, if it happened at all.
There is almost no case law on the 13th amendment. There are no legal slaves in the US today, and there have not been since the 19th century.
In location A you might spend 80% of your salary on fixed expenses, whereas in location B you only need to spend 20% of that same salary to pay for those expenses - leaving you with far more money for discretionary spending.
The trick here is to be fortunate enough to have a biiiiig monthly retirement pension that the courts can barely touch, or enough wealth to have already bought your mother a nice house (though I now read OJ screwed that up by not transferring her the title).
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/1997...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-dec-01-me-59847...
Hopefully, we see more of this throughout the country!
One might argue a fourth end as well: removal.
When people talk about "cleaning up the streets" they don't mean causing ruffians to clean up their act, what they refer to is removing the ruffians entirely. To "someplace else". To "Not in my backyard". Out of sight, out of mind as is often said.
For profit prisons may view prisoners as cheap labor or levy bait, but for the voting public who gets no cut of that action the real inducement starts and ends with "make the problem go away". Sweep human beings we do not know how to cohabitate with under a rug.
Retribution may appeal to those directly wronged, or to the minority of sadists in a population. Deterrence is oft admired, but few honestly believe it's really possible given that harsh sentences never seem to cause crime to go to zero (sensationalism-driven media that magnifies every mole-hill notwithstanding) and that repeat offenses outnumber first offenses. Rehabilitation appeals to those with compassion, though nobody has a clear bead on how to actually land that plane with more than the lowest hanging fruit of only-slightly-off-course offenders.
So I think the real elephant in the room is that people want/demand/rely upon removal.
They had a computer lab, but it was only for Mavis Beacon. I found the C# compiler that's hidden away in the Windows directory and started teaching programming on the sly. Luckily one of the nuns at the facility took pity on me and bought C# Weekend Crash Course on Amazon (with the CD) and sneaked it through the security checks for me so I'd have a good reference to teach from.
https://theappeal.org/louisiana-prisoners-demand-an-end-to-m...
Some notes: in Connecticut, restraining orders can be granted for a variety of reasons, not restricted to domestic violence alone. Fairly close correlation but it does include, for example, stalking.
It seems unwise to assume that restraining orders alone represent the entire count of domestic violence complaints that reach the legal system. For example, surely domestic violence arrests should be counted? Which seem to be a much higher count than restraining order applications -- 24,850 DV arrests in 2011 vs. 9033 DV applications. I'm not sure how to count the 32,111 "Family Violence Protective Orders" in 2011; are they the result of arrests? Are they yet another possible outcome of law enforcement involvement, separate from either a requested restraining order or an arrest?
There are way more reasons a restraining order might not make it to a final order besides "the requestor was proven wrong." I'd want more detailed data here before reaching a conclusion. Otherwise, this assumes that failure to grant a restraining order proves lack of DV. I am not sure that it would change the percentages you've shown significantly -- we're all aware of cases where restraining orders weren't granted with very bad results, but there's always a tendency to report on the most clickbaity outcomes. Still, worth digging into that one a bit more.
Again, appreciate the cite.
In most US jurisdictions the victim of a crime is allowed to make a statement during the sentencing phase of the trial. So the victim can certainly request release if they want it although the judge isn't obligated to adhere.
But he will also be met with His mercy, and I am happy to extend him some mercy for his repentance here on Earth before his day comes.
It's when you remove the dangerous person from a society for a while, so they can't commit crimes for that while. This is very important part of prison punishment with people with criminal tendencies, and this is why recidivists get longer prison sentences for each subsequent repetition of a similar crime.
Unfortunately we have to admit that some (small) percentage of criminals cannot be rehabilitated, so they must be isolated from society.
The biggest issue is that once the perpetrator is removed and/or charged the victim often petitions the prosecutor and police to drop the charges. The prosecutors I know will generally not do this and will push for a guilty plea or trial. It's hard for the prosecutor to know whether the victim is being manipulated into asking for the charges to be dropped, and regardless, a crime has probably been committed, and in the justice system the plaintiff is the state, not the person who was battered. This can lead to a stand-off where the victim refuses to come to trial to testify, and where the prosecutor has a Hobson's Choice of whether to arrest the victim and jail them until trial to get them on the stand or let the case drop.
DV cases are hard.
If victims determined the sentences, I expect people would spend a lot more time in prison, way more than a non-emotionally involved and wronged person would think fair.
IMHO letting victims set the sentence would be the worst way to do it.
It’s like saying: it’s your fault that you got shot for being in the wrong neighborhood at night. Were they knowingly taking a risk? Sure, but the murderer is still a murderer.
And we long got rid of the concept of “outlaw” where if you commit a crime any subsequent crime on you is fair game. That’s rather barbaric.
EDIT: I was assuming that it is obvious that no one takes such synthetic opioids on purpose. They are known not to be much fun and very dangerous. They are mostly used as a cheap filler in other more mainstream drugs, most notably in fake branded prescription drugs.
I just helped someone to complete a year-long paralegal course and qualification while inside. The Illinois prison system has now banned this since (a) it came with the option of facilities awarding a 6 month reduction in the length of a non-violent sentence, (b) required the facility to allow someone to proctor the final exam.
If not, what is the reason you decide the two situations differently?
Even though the enrolled people are completely trustworthy, doing this prevents untrustworthy people to simulate interest in the program just to be able to contact the external world for illegal activities.
Commissary is generally "gas station" prices in jails and prisons.
Some of the inmates I work with right now have tablets that allow music streaming from a small catalog, but I think it is $3/hour to listen to it.
Obviously the families and friends of the loved are the ones burdened with paying for all of these, unless you can get an in-prison job that pays, e.g. dealing drugs is probably the highest paid, sadly.
"I am the one who hired Preston. Whatever he has done in the past, I have all the evidence in the world in front of me to assure me that he has a transformed heart."
Instead, you had to drag down others, the people who you haven't blessed with your benevolence.
"It is not a common thing to see."
You are being praised for showing kindness to one of us (a nerd, a programmer) while disparaging the others. You can show kindness to Preston without condemning the others. Ask ChatGPT to explain exceptionalism to you if you still do not understand. Every person in prison is a person who can change given the opportunity.
Preston isn't uncommon, Preston isn't rare or exceptional, Preston is the average prisoner: someone who, when given an opportunity, has been able to reform. You can celebrate Preston without disparaging his less fortunate cellmates.
The only rare thing here is that he was given an opportunity (and for that you should be praised).
In California they teach inmates coding, while in other states all computer-related technical books are banned as security risks. Same with basic electrical work — Promising People has an interesting VR program for teaching electrical helper skills, but in some correctional systems that would be considered unacceptably risky. Tablet and similar system operators/vendors have to shape the material available to the inmates to suit the local restrictions.
List of prohibited items: https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840...
Federal crimes (and I don't think that applies in this person's case since they're in a Maine DOC prison, although drug crimes of this kind easily could be charged by the feds) aren't usually expunged. Even if you receive a pardon, the original crime (and a note of the pardon) will exist on the record.
It's a really strange system. You're meant to lie and say "no" during interviews after your conviction is expunged if you are asked "have you ever been convicted of a crime," although I believe in many states it's now illegal to ask such a question.
I've worked with a lot of prison facilities though in many states across the US and a few international, and have never seen that. That's not to say it doesn't happen of course, but out of curiosity do you (or anyone else) know of any facilities/jurisdictions that do that?
My former (brilliant) student developed schizophrenia and tried to rob a bank with a gun because the voices told him to do it. He got 10 years in jail. I think every EU country would treat him for his condition until he was safe to rejoin society. In the US, he was thrown in the slammer.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/irishman-jailed-for-10-years...
For those who don't want to hit Google, the conviction was for possessing 30g of a synthetic opioid "U-47700". A normal dose is ~1mg, 10mg can be deadly (so this was 30000 trips or killing 3000).
The drug became illegal across the US on November 14, 2016.
"Police said they found the drug in Thorpe’s apartment in Manchester in December 2016" (https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...)
"Preston Thorpe, age 25, was sentenced by the Hillsborough County Superior Court (Northern District) to 15 to 30 years stand committed in the New Hampshire State Prison for possession of the controlled drug 3,4-dicholo-N-[2-(dimethylamino)-cyclohexyl]-N-methylbenzamide (also known as "U-47700") with the intent to distribute. U-47700 is a synthetic opioid that is classified as a Schedule I drug." (https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...)
In western philosophy an offender is considered to have offended against society even if their crime is of a personal nature. As such, they are tried, condemned, and punished by society according to codified rules. A victim, if there is one, is not really a part of this process.
There is a fundamentally sound basis for this philosophy, including equity (different justice for different people is no justice for anyone), impartiality, and respect for human rights.
There are other philosophies of justice: for example, the traditional "I'm strongest I get the best stuff" or "you dissed me ima kill you." Some are codified similarly to western justice ("killing a man is requires you pay his heirs 100 she-camels of which 40 must be pregnant, killing a woman is half that, killing a Jew one-third, and so on"). Others involve negotiation between victim (or their families) and offender -- which often works out well, since the offender is often is a position of power to start with and is very likely come out on top.
The simple "an eye for an eye" is just the beginning of a very very deep rabbit hole you can go down on the road to enlightenment.
The justice system is pretty far from actual justice in many cases, but this wouldn't get it closer.
From the article, his parents express frustration at their inability to get him committed for treatment in Ireland. They cite the lack of response there as a key factor in his spiral.
Also, the US facility he was sent to did offer psychiatric treatment and the judge urged him to accept it:
> The judge recommended that Clarke serve his sentence at a prison that would give him access to psychiatric treatment and he urged Clarke to accept it.
I understand your objections to the “slammer” but the sentence was actually as lenient as could be, offered the psychiatric treatment he needed, and had an opportunity for him to return to Ireland in a couple years:
> Speaking on behalf of the Clarke family, solicitor Eugene O'Kelly said that they were relieved at the relative leniency of the sentence and expressed the hope Clarke could be returned to Ireland "within a year or two" to serve out his sentence.
I don't see how that's similar to a driver running into a jaywalker. Just because he's jaywalking doesn't mean he wants a driver to hit him.
https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/50-s...
I certainly cannot act like I did not deserve to come to prison, and it's definitely the only reason I am even alive right now. Coming to prison, specifically in Maine, was the best thing that ever happened to me.
He shouldn't be in prison, period.
You're hiring the person as they are today, long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth. Not who they were at the time of past actions.
Having your own mini trial, where you sit in judgement over the candidate, from your ignorant position of privilege, using whatever details you can dig up with google may be entertaining for you, but is tells you nothing of what kind of employee they might be. Your mock trial may be especially traumatic to endure for the candidate, because their side of the story is rarely included in any reporting you can dig up. Especially for those unfairly convicted.
With everything going on today, do you really trust our justice system to be fair, especially to someone who is not a wealthy and connected straight white male?
If you're only willing to give people a chance when you judge their offence to be trivial by your own ethics, you're not actually providing second chances for those that need it.
1. the deprivation of freedom is retributive
2. the prevention of additional crimes can be said to be deterrence of an active sort
3. the protection of society isn't part of punishment per se, but a separate end
This becomes clear when we consider imprisonment in relation to various crimes. Violent criminals are imprisoned in part because they are a threat to the physical safety of others. However, is an embezzler or a mayor embroiled in shady accounting a threat to anyone's physical safety? Probably not. So the purpose of their removal is less about crime prevention and more about retribution.
My take on RTO is that its a soft layoff. You can get rid of a ton of people, reduce headcount, next quarters numbers look good. The other reason? Managers just like the office. Its a spot of manager power, they like that.
Intent matters and there's no reason to believe he intended to harm anyone. I believe it's a crime and should be a felony but this sentence is a bit extreme in terms of punishment fitting the crime.
For criminals that act alone, variations in the severity of the sentence doesn’t seem to have the impact you might expect it to have on how much it actually deters people. (And there is the issue that people in prison can share strategies between themselves for how to more effectively commit crime, which is not an ideal outcome.) So indeed, incapacitation is a very important factor. When it’s studied, you often see numbers like “increasing the sentence by 10 years prevents 0.2 crimes due to deterrence and 0.9 crimes due to incapacitation”.
I say this applies to people acting alone because, although I have no proof, I suspect that organized crime is a bit more “rational” in their response to changes in sentencing. If sentencing were set up so that engaging in a category of crime was not profitable for the criminal organization, I’m pretty sure they would realize this and stop. This logic doesn’t apply to individual people, because the average person committing a crime has no idea what the sentence is or their odds of getting caught, and they obviously don’t do it often enough that the random variation is amortized out.
The inability to find a job coupled with the crushing interest is what leads to desperation, and then repeat criminal behavior.
> There is a real risk of exploitation
Centralized systems always have a risk of corruption when power is concentrated in few people. Those job roles also many times attract the corrupt; and even when you have people who go in with a good moral caliber, the regular dynamics of the interactions may also twist them into being corrupt.
Its a rare person with sufficient moral caliber that can survive such a job (as a guard or other prison staff) unscathed and still be a good person afterwards.
Many avenues of education also do not prepare them appropriately for work in the private sector, and some careers are simply prohibited. For example becoming a chemist or engineer when they have a conviction related to ethics violations in such fields.
Theyre in prison as a punishment for crimes
The sentence was for intent to distribute. It's an extremely potent substance. This would be like discovering someone had 30,000 pills. You can't really argue that it was for personal use at that point. They also found him in possession of carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl), scales, baggies, and other products. This looks like a very clear case of someone importing high-potency synthetic opioids to redistribute.
High potency synthetic opioids are a high priority target for law enforcement. These are most often cut (diluted) and then sold to buyers expecting some other opioid product. As you might expect, perfectly diluting a 1mg dose of a powder into a 500mg - 1000mg pill form is extremely hard to do and there's a high risk of "hot spots" forming in certain pills (or sections of a powdered product). This results in a lot of serious overdoses.
It's a severe problem right now. Most fentanyl overdoses are from users who thought they were taking some other drug. They might have even "tested" it before, but missed the hot spots.
In general, high-potency opioids are cut (diluted) with other powders and then sold as a different product to unsuspecting buyers.
Most fentanyl overdoses are from people who thought they were consuming a different, more familiar opioid. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids like this one are preferred by drug dealers because it's much easier to smuggle a tiny amount of powder and cut it 1000X than to smuggle the real product.
It's nearly impossible for amateurs to properly dilute a powder like this, so the end product has a lot of "hot spots" that lead to overdose.
To make it unambiguous I added a prefix: "Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit."
It wasn't just addiction. He had enough U-47700 for 30,000 trips (30 thousand). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44291172
Did you read the link? They also found scales, baggies, and Carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl).
Filling your car up with gas doesn't compare. A better analogy would be if you tried to fill up a 10,000 gallon tank of gasoline that you couldn't possibly use yourself, all while having a truck full of matches and explosives, and a map to a building with a big circle around it.
2) They wouldn't have to if they didn't insist on locking him up
How do you know that they were both willing and aware? Just how aware is your average drug buyer on what they're buying and how upfront your average drug seller on what they're selling?
Inmates are treated very differently by the legal system than regular people. Thirteenth 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”
Framing it as offsetting the cost would also make it very easy to increase the cut, bit by bit, until it gets to a truly unreasonable level. And since the person is already in prison and we have to pay for them no matter what, why would they choose to work if the deal is so bad?
This is the key of this two-pronged approach, one commenter can bury the data driven comment in source rejection (without being beheld to prove a counter point, since the asserter has the burden of proof) while the sister comment can drive the more approved comment unchallenged. Of course we really know, in many cases, the two separate commenters are advancing the same line of opinion, but using this split strategy both are compartmentalized in their burdens.
Although, the truth is, the scrutinizer is rarely offering counter sources of their own, which they of course are under no obligation to provide. But barring that, we're left at worst with "I don't know" which is a terrible standard under which to assume the word of the wife is predictive of guilt, thus even if all the sources are rejected you leave from a practical perspective no off no better than you started in predictive guilt.
Harsh sentences work great when used with the inevitability of punishment. It is obvious that a harsh sentence does not discourage a criminal to commit a crime if they expect to avoid any responsibility
This part is really debatable, based on what we're seeing with overdoses. The dealers (probably) know what they're selling but I'm not sure the buyers do, which even for a legal good would be a crime.
Where I live (Poland), only the person itself can request their criminal record from the state. This is a routine procedure required by some employers, you can even do it online these days.
Most if not all criminal offenses "expire" after some years, how long depends on the offense. If there's something you've been charged with but not convicted of, it doesn't appear on the record.
This is easier to implement for us because there are limitations on how media can report on criminals (no last names for example). Even in the US, I think that system could be workable. Instead of attacking distributions of "unedited" criminal records, you'd have to target employers and require them to only acquire the state-approved versions.
It's nice to hear about someone who can change their mind so completely; the trick is not to swing to the other end of the spectrum, trading one absolute for another.
Any clergy, whether faithful or secular, has the capacity to act in a militant fashion.
What a complete bs. If anything, in India it costs MORE to achieve a similar standard of living than in the USA. In India you can spend 3 times what a US worker gets paid - and you'll barely have enough money to get the same level of security that that worker gets.
Companies don't care, they pay the minimum amount that they think will interest the worker for long-term employment. And since in India or Thailand the workers don't have such a wide choice in work - they will be paid less, just enough to get them. And they pay the Americans just enough to get them, it is just happening that for Americans this amount are several times bigger. That's all here is.
Happy to keep nerding out on comparative legal stuff from around the world! Just keeping this grounded in "you probably wouldn't enjoy living somewhere where your landlord can have you imprisoned for unpaid rent".
Evil is a threshold, it's not a competition with limited spots
Sometimes big crime families or notorious serial killers get away with it, but it doesn't lower the threshold for anyone else
It doesn't make it any better that someone else is doing even worse. You don't get to do a little crime, as a treat
Colluding is only one of the factors that influencing the demand for labor. Moreover, in most regions it is a rather insignificant factor. Typically, this is the degree of economic freedom, protection of investments and capitals, the level of regulation and the tax burden in the region, not the degree of colluding.
> good person, but a bad capitalist.
Capitalism is not about evaluative characteristics, but about descriptive ones. It is not "bad capitalists pay a lot, good ones pay the minimum", but about "people tend to pay minimum, so to pay the minimum is expected behavior of capitalists"
I've voted for drug legalization (including possession). However, that doesn't mean that I condone all drug dealing behavior.
This makes it clear it's not just that the prison provides such opportunities, but that inmates are motivated to take advantage of such. Too many fully law abiding folks spend 15+ hours of screen time just doom scrolling.
There's a real lesson here for similar community services. For folks whose upbringing maybe doesn't afford such advantages, if services can be available where students can find reprieve from harsh daily life and be (very) modestly taken care of, I can see value. At a much lesser level, I benefited enormously from school, church, and community services where I could apply myself, things my family could never afford. So, like school lunches but for practical developer education.
People have already addressed the "aware" part, but "willing"? Really? Do you understand how addiction works?
I'd bet a lot of money that they saved some number of lives by catching him. He was engaging in an activity that had a high probability of resulting in some deaths. I can sell knives in a store, and I have a reasonable level of confidence that no one died because of those knives. Here, the probabilities are inverted.
Do you have a source? It seems that guy was selling MDMA and marijuana. Here's the relevant quote from https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/
I was caught with MDMA coming in the mail from Vancouver, and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now)
Do i need to explain the difference between treatment at a pyschiatric center vs the offer of psychiatric treatment in a prison?
If you think they are somehow equivalent, you are very much mistaken.
You are putting somebody with pyschiatric illness in with hardened criminals. Do they welcome him with open arms?
https://www.courts.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt471/files/docu...
>"On December 24, 2016, three Manchester police officers responded to an apartment following a report of a domestic dispute. The report was made by the mother of Ashley Arbogast, who advised that her daughter had called her Stating that her boyfriend had broken her arm during an argument."
EDIT: another commentor found that it was MDMA and weed, so this discussion is purely theoretical and doesn’t apply to OP.
Once you've taken 10 years of someone's life there is no giving that back either. As technology progresses the cost of recording evidence will go down which will help convict and prove the innocence of people.
Excellent marketing. They get a remote worker who is (in HN headhunter speak) a great and passionate talent. Of course they have no risks on their side. And they get praised for it on the very grassroots YC Combinator forum.
This is a state by state thing. FWIW in this case, ME doesn't have private prisons. I don't bring this up to imply everything related to their cut is on the up and up, however, I believe Maine is very much incentivized to make this a useful program in terms of keeping people from returning to jail (as opposed to squeezing every dollar from the prisoners).
Is the story supposed to be more sympathetic because he was (brilliant)?
I understand that you're simply using this as a proxy for the actual unknowable data, but I think it's worth pointing out that the map is not the territory.
* https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...
* https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...
~2012 he was caught selling MDMA and marijuana, and went to prison
~end or 2015 or start of 2016 he was released on probation
[Edit: Added entry] December 2016 police responding to a domestic violence call enter his apartment to make contact with the alleged victim, and discover U-47700 (a synthetic opioid) https://www.courts.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt471/files/docu...
April 2017 the police find traces of carfentanil while executing a search warrant at his place - plausibly but not provably linked to some recent carfentanil deaths - and police announce they are searching for him. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/man-wanted-suspected-let...
May 2017 he ends up back in prison.
Aug 2017 he pleads guilty to possession of U47700 (a synthetic opioid) with intent to distribute https://www.wmur.com/article/defense-plans-appeal-of-search-...
Oct 2017 he's sentenced to 15-30 years on the above charge, he has not been charged with possessing the carfentanil (yet) despite the apparent evidence https://www.wmur.com/article/man-facing-carfentanil-charge-r...
The articles aren't clear on this, but given his own recounting I assume that a suspended sentence for Marijuana was un-suspended as a result of the new charges and he is serving that sentence first, or concurrently.
I just wanted to point out that there is clear evidence that this individual was involved in at least one violent act, as is often the case with ‘non-violent drug convicts’.
It is now 4 PM, about to clock out for the day because I gotta wait for CI run thats >30m. I come back here and it's still going on. This is #3 comment I see when I open HN, ensuing thread takes up two pages scrolls on 16" MBP.
It's bad of me to write this because, well, who cares? Additionally, am I trying to litigate what other people comment?
The root feeling driving me to express myself is a form of frustrated boredom -- rolling with that and verbalizing concretely, a bunch of people writing comments with the one thing they're hyperfocusing on their record to drive a conclusion on their value as a person/morality, and then people pointing out that's not some moral absolute, asking for links, discussing the links...
...well, it's all just clutter.
Or YouTube comment-level discussion, unless we're planning on relitigating every case he's been involved in.
This all would be better if it the kangaroo court stuff was confined to a thread with all of the evidence against him, so we didn't have a bunch of weak cases, or if people didn't treat this as an opportunity to be a drive by judge. Article def. ain't about his crimes, and he ain't saying he's innocent or an angel.
(and the idea that "drug crimes" implies "hippie selling weed or psychedelics" so calling them "drug crimes" is hiding the ball...where does that come from? Its especially dissonant b/c you indicate the mere fact he sold an opiod is so bad that this guy is...bad? irredeemable? not worth discussing?...so presumably you care a lot about opiods, so presumably you know that's whats driven drug crime the last, uh, decade or two?)
(sigh) another victim of the US obsession with sticking as many people as possible in prison. I wish the regime is overthrown somehow and he can get released.
Speaking for myself, I'm actually just discussing the idea that a non-violent crime like drug dealing necessarily deserves a light sentence in general.
> Sounds like a you thing
It is a me thing. That's why I said "brings to mind".
I'm a product of my time. I remember when weed and psychedelics meant demonization and heavy sentences, and it was absurd because those substances aren't that dangerous.
This is the context in which I'm accustomed to calling drug dealing a "non-violent crime". So, I feel like I need to point out that things are not quite the same with deadly drugs like carfentanil.
> and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now). (https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/)
He's downplaying his crime. It wasn't just Marijuana.
This math of weights and maximum hypothetical carnage produces very unfair sentencing.
UNICOR/the Federal system 'strongly encourages' people with CAD experience, etc do the McDonalds remodel contracts, the World Trade Center work, etc. These are people that worked in the industry prior to prison and that are not traditionally been hired back after release, so it's simply being used to make UNICOR money on big contracts based on incarcerated individuals pre-existing training being exploited. In addition having structural CAD work done by people with zero say in their job, their deliverables/quality, their hours, etc seems like a bad idea. I don't know why outside engineers are using this work. The UNICOR McDonalds remodels are probably fine (though you can tell by the current feel of McDonalds that the remodels were literally done by prison inmates), but the UNICOR World Trade Center stuff seems super sketchy.
Unfortunately, many of the laws written and policies enacted presume an idealistic fantasy where humans are much more rationally acting, thoughtful, and informed than they really are.
The clearest example of this is raising statutory penalties from "many years" to "many many years" in prison. What is this supposed to achieve? Do people think that folks out there:
1. know the laws well enough to know how many years they'll get for the crime they're about to commit?
2. (and if knowledgable about penalty changes) think, "oh well I would have done X and risked many years in prison but now that it's many many years, I won't" ?
If huge prison sentences and massive resources spent on crime detection+ enforcement were the answer, America wouldn't have an illegal drug problem.
Intent to distribute is a huge scam and calculates out to a unjustly long sentence for a lot of minor offenders. I'm not arguing it shouldn't be illegal or even tack on some extra time above just normal possession, but 15-30 years is absurd for what this guy did in my opinion.
On the other hand, GP is objectively right ("innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments"). I also think that it’s better for random people to be able to post their terrible judgements than any feasible alternative, because such an alternative probably leads to good judgements also censored. We can mitigate (not eliminate) bad judgements, e.g. by educating people better and shaming those who shame others more; and we can minimize mob justice’s effect on critical government functions like welfare and prison sentencing, e.g. by running them on mostly objective procedures and with staff who aren’t influenced by mob opinion.
Targeted harassment and doxxing (and swatting, getting people fired/divorced/ruined when they don’t deserve to be, etc.) is different (and to be clear, IMO very bad). People posting opinions in a way that the target can block (which they can usually do with blocklists and word filters) is fine. The main point I’m trying to make is: if opinions in random internet comments lead to targeted harassment and real-world consequences even when the opinions are “bad” (e.g. bigoted, hypocritical), it's less effective to try and prevent the internet comments' existence, than to reduce the factors causing them to influence the real world and create factors preventing influence.
What is your point?
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1084452251/the-vast-majority-...
Maine: https://www.corrections1.com/finance-and-budgets/maine-lawma... "the state can deduct up to 20% of their income — 10% for room and board, which is sent to the state’s general fund, not the Department of Corrections , and up to 10% to cover transportation provided by the department. Since 2020, the state fund has collected a total of $2.4 million.
From a book I recently read on the subject they seem not just to focus on rehab and lack of punishment. If there are disputes with others within the facilities the ones in the dispute must sit down and talk through their issues and find a resolution. This helps ingrain proper anger management & helps re-acclimate them to normal society where violence is rarely the best option. And it makes a ton of sense, if they never are taught how to talk out their issues they will go back to how they have handled those issues all along.
Selling drugs isn't evil. Not selling drug doesn't make you good. People take drugs for various reasons. If a doctor sells them they are good but if someone else sells them they are evil?
The person buying could have been fired and can't afford Doctors prescription so the person selling could be an angel.
> Why are they paid
Because people have expenses other than food and lodging. Prisoners do to, some save money for after they leave prison others spend it at the commissary.
People that sell fentanyl (or similar) are very bad for society, to avoid the triggering "evil". Look how many people have died in the last 10 years. It's insane.
EDIT: I personally know a young man that died from a fent overdose and it's likely he didn't know what he took had fent in it. 22 years old and the whole world ahead him. Completely destroyed his family.
And to be clear, I'm opposed to capital punishment and dangerous conditions in prisons. I'm just pointing out that I don't think your argument is very good. If you think we as a society are willing to flippantly put people in prison because it's cheap I don't see how you can trust us to no resort to other flippant measures if the cost was high.
However, ideally, I don’t think that it makes sense for someone to go to prison, which costs tax money, and meanwhile earn the same amount of money by remote working from prison as someone in the outside world, who actually has living expenses to pay for (which get taxed also).
So, I think, when it comes to fairness, it wouldn’t be unreasonable if a partial cut goes to the TCOO of holding that prisoner.
Now again, American prisons have their whole incentive model messed up, so I don’t even want to get in an argument about America’s implementation of this system and how it would lead to more problems— because it’s well-known and more than expected.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/the-hard-drug-decrimina...
And only one company is allowed to import the specific leaves/material (coca leafs). The government restricts everyone from importing them unless it's one of the biggest companies in the world.
Perhaps our laws would be fairer and simpler if enforcement were draconian and uniform
His current sentence also (15-30 years) isn't his first prison sentence. He was released and reoffended which absolutely contributed to the longer sentence.
Simply saying "you did a terrible thing, and that's irredeemable" isn't useful to society. What good are you doing if you've rehabilitated the criminal? You're just spending tax dollars on principle. It's cruel and unproductive.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-for...
Minority Report is a counterfactual to this claim. The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. Technology is a tool to extend one’s grasp to meet one’s reach, and vice versa, and is a tool that serves power. Those with power are best able to bend tools to their ends, just or unjust.
> It is the duty of the poor to support and sustain the rich in their power and idleness. In doing so, they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
What good are we doing to society if we are keeping rehabilitated individuals locked up at taxpayer expense? There's no objectively correct amount of punishment. The correct amount of punishment should be the smallest amount of time necessary to be confident that the criminal won't cause more harm to society, especially when the crime was committed as the result of a treatable illness like addiction.
No, but our enforcement has limited resources. We can't arrest and jail every offender of every crime, so we pick and choose where to spend our enforcement resources. All the money spent pursuing, arresting, trying, and imprisoning this guy could have been spent going after people like the Sacklers.
Somebody who had worked for a recognizable tech company is far more hireable than somebody who is Self Employed or who has worked for the government.
The first was rejected by Mr Clarke's own country before committing any crime. The second was offered following a crime which could have cost somebody their life.
It's a very clear difference in my mind.
> From the study, they determined that because the groups were created to be approximately equal, individual differences are not necessary or responsible for intergroup conflict to occur.
> Lutfy Diab repeated the experiment with 18 boys from Beirut. The 'Blue Ghost' and 'Red Genies' groups each contained 5 Christians and 4 Muslims. Fighting soon broke out, not between the Christians and Muslims but between the Red and Blue groups.
The whole thread is silly. I don't think a lot of people here are going to stick up for a 15 year stretch for a 24 year old for selling opiates. Probably don't need to pull the Sacklers into it.
I’m not saying that I envy anyone in prison — it sucks whether you’ve “earned it” or not, but I’ve always wondered how productive a person could be while locked up.
Glad to see him making the most of the opportunity. With care and feeding, he’s got a good shot at getting out and staying out.
Drugs are an anti-social drain on society, that sickens its buyers, turning them into zombies or criminals, and turns the sellers into greedy, violent people who corrupt law enforcement.
Your edge case of an angel doesn't translate to the actual realities of drug trafficking and addiction.
This guy did years in solitary (plainly recognized as torture by all unbiased authorities on the matter) for selling marijuana.
Idk, a few?
Consumption is rising worldwide, and nobody knows what these metrics would show had Portugal not decriminalised consumption of hard drugs.
Also, the reason for decriminalisation wasn't simply to lower addiction rates, it was mostly to stop getting people in jail for consuming, which was making the issue worse.
I mean it would be sad if he was lying - but i don’t see any of that.
There is no incentive to give out "free drugs", not least because you might kill an otherwise paying customer.
The state needs to get out of domestic warfare, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on crime, quit abusing its customers (aka "criminals"), and stick only to killing and oppressing foreign tribes! Put a 12 year cap on sentences, the state should have no right to take the life of its customer even if the taking is placing in a box. Also I would like to see UBI go to released felons first as well as the vote, as they have seen significant economic sequelae and injustice at the hands of the state!
People like big strong dominating government until it gets replaced with the Mormon church, or a Caliphate, then nooo it's not statesmanship but just religion. (Hint: all states are religions, and codes are religious texts. What do freedom of religion and freedom of association mean in this context, instead of the toothless safe-for-government one you're used to thinking of it in?)
Oh dang, there's that pesky religious mechanic again! Why can't we build on pragmatism rather than ensuring the Justice God has enough blood-years drained from criminal-victims? Two crimes don't make a justice!
Irrelevant addendum: I think I will mix atheism and anarchism as they are very compatible concepts, in that they stand in skepticism of essentially the same species of entity with two masks: church and state.
15-30 years of adulthood is like putting your child in timeout for 6 to 12 years (childhood being 0-19)! Is there anything your child could do to spend half his childhood living in a concrete room, maximum grounding? This is what we are doing to a man.
No. 12 years is public school length so that should be the life sentence, in the interest of keeping government in check. Think it's unfair in your case? Murder him when he gets out and serve your 12. Or... get over it, life goes on, etc. :^)
- The rehab programs were never properly available
- The general culture in Portland made it very difficult for the city to form any coherent response to homelessness. Most people in Portland really want to be "compassionate" to the homeless/drug addicted/mentally ill, so there was strong pushback on any effort to clear homeless encampments (literally to the point that people were advocating for changes in building code that would force commercial buildings to *enable* homeless people to sleep in front of them by building sleeping platforms.)
- This time period overlaps the BLM protests (which were absolutely massive in Portland), with all the "Defund the Police" / "ACAB". Indeed, the majority of Portland has been very anti-police since the late '90s. The police, obviously, didn't like this. From anec-data, it seemed to me that the street cops just stopped even bothering arresting people. (Here's an anecdote - a friend of mine was riding mass transit, with homeless men both behind him and in front of him, who got in to a conflict that resulted in one man brandishing a knife. The police were called and showed up at the next stop, no arrests were made.)
To make the point abundantly clear, the brandishing of knives in public was never decriminalized, but the police absolutely stopped enforcing *any* laws on the homeless.
- Oregon is generally terrible at implementing anything, even well-supported, popular programs fail to achieve even basic milestones of success. There's also a general lack of funding for most everything.
- COVID
- Fenatnyl use rose massively, nationwide, in spite of local drug policy. The negative effects have definitely been more pronounced in far-left cities, but it's disingenuous to assume that decriminalization increased usage.
First of all you have criminals who are low-functioning enough for whatever reason to fail to understand how actions connect to consequences in reality. Be it due to mental illness, or overestimation of their abilities. No amount of certainty is enough to dispel the "That won't happen to me" presumption from a pretty big chunk of the population.
Next you have desperate people: either due to "risking punishment may actually be safer than risking privation while obeying the law" and/or due to presumptions of having nothing left to lose.
And finally you have cartels, where folks organize so well that their internal governance and capacity to levy violence actually stands toe to toe against the civil governments that they operate within the jurisdictions of. This is the civil equivalent of a tumor, with all of the oncological complications that that often implies.
So I would caution that "inevitability of punishment" is an unreasonable goal to try to justify harsh sentences, and I would estimate that any historical accounts of governments who have achieved that feat were probably also totalitarian enough to be able to lie about their resulting crime statistics along the path.
Hence why I typically argue for legalization and regulation. You have a pretty unique perspective though. I suppose in your position you're incentivized to always say you did the wrong thing, drugs are bad, etc etc, but to the extent you're able to discuss it, what's your take on arguments for legalization and regulation?
Also you can establish homogeneity using genetic analysis such as the fixation index. Unsurprisingly, Swedes and Finns are extremely closely related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_index#Autosomal_genet...
There are many possible metrics to measure heterogeneity, such as linguistic and religious diversity, variations in value systems, etc.
Saying that he got his time for marijuana seems to be a big stretch.
Unless the circumstances of a particular drug transaction directly caused some other harm, like a fight, I highly doubt the charges would be considered 'violent' and hence carry the harm aspect.
So, a crime is a crime even if it is committed by somebody who is insane?
That is insane!
anyhow, thanks for all you did to help Clyde Preston!!! and thanks to glauber and turso for giving Preston a chance, he's such a a cool guy with such a cool story
It cannot be understated how harmful fentanyl is and how low quality of a drug it is. Low quality as in the high sucks.
(I've never taken drugs and I don't drink)
And secondly, he has a good point. We don't want to make locking people up easy or cheap. It should be high-friction, it should take a long time, and it should cost the government lots and lots of money.
Why? Incentives. The government has no reason to prevent crime if locking people up is cheap. It's made even worse by the promise of cheap or free labor. Then, you run into issues where the government actually wants people to fail and do crime, so they can extract labor from them. We see this quite aggressively in some southern states like Georgia. A remnant of Jim Crow era America.
But, if prison is expensive, the government will be incentivized to put some of that money into crime prevention programs. Things like homeless shelters, food banks, job programs.
It's a bad measurement.
If you can lock someone up and get close to free labor for it, then we're going to start locking a lot of people up. I mean, it's free labor. Which is why we used to give people 20 years for possession of marijuana. What, you think it's just a coincidence we were throwing primarily black Americans away in prison for ludicrous amounts of time where they'll spend their days picking cotton?
That's what happens when imprisoning people is cheap.
https://inquisitivebird.xyz/p/the-myth-of-the-nordic-rehabil...
More broadly, scientific racism is bunk. (This is a generalisation: I didn't establish it in my previous comment, but it's true nonetheless.)
I live in Sweden and now the gangs are recruiting children because they don't get sentenced even for murder (maybe 2 years max).
The other side of prison is keeping the public safe - you also have zero recidivism with the Bukele approach.
If he was being coerced into labour however, which the for-profit prison undoubtedly makes profit from, it’s simply unacceptable; indentured servitude, slavery, call it what you will, it’s bad for society in every way because it allows the ruling class to steal labour from the working class under the guise of “rehabilitation”.
If someone gave a loaded hand gun to a small child, there might not be any reason to believe that this person was trying to kill the small child, but when the child inevitably shoots himself or someone else, the one who gave the child the gun in the first place shares at least some of the blame.
You may protest that children are not comparable to adult drug addicts; to this, I’d suggest taking a walk through any major metro area in America and deciding for yourself if “willing and aware” are appropriate words to describe these addicts.
There are definitely countries with more expensive electronics.
Understanding that we are hetreogenic is hard.
I also, for what it's worth, think that "did you talk to the wife" is too high a standard in this case. For one thing, the wife didn't bring a complaint, as I understand it.
Here, we're talking about preparing someone for the job market when they leave. Hence, these are two separate concerns. You cannot substitute the former with the latter.
A comparison with a literal child is disingenuous, children clearly aren't held to the same standards as adults.
The divorce industry and divorce lawyers request these orders like candy, as leverage for proceedings and to take away custody briefly during the temporary order while the custody hearing is going on so that during custody hearings it can be argued the child already is only with the mom or dad and they should get full custody. It also lets you eject the partner from the home without a legal eviction process, so they are at their weakest and homeless when fighting in court. They produce a massive number of weak DV claims, the point was never to take them final but to provide enough of a discontinuity in their life to crush them.
The hardest thing in my life was to sign a committal form to send Niall to hospital.
And follows with
Irish health authorities refused to commit Clarke
That sure sounds like Mr Clarke's country refused to treat him.
And to your points:
> He refused to get treatment and actually fled the country to escape it.
What you are saying and what I said about Mr Clarke's country refusing to treat him can all be true at once.
> So, a crime is a crime even if it is committed by somebody who is insane?
Is a crime committed by somebody who is insane, who refuses to get treatment, and who flees their own country in avoidance of treatment, a more acceptable crime?
The final order is more difficult, but quite often (i.e. in divorce / custody court) the only goal was to evict them from the home and disrupt custody to get the upper hand in hearings, so temporary is all that's needed to do the job and then no need to actually defend the claim made 14+ days later when they're already homeless and with the baseline of out of the kid's life.
What you are probably thinking of is what is called the “exigent circumstances” warrant exception, and it was misapplied here by over-zealous police who violated his rights.
There is no evidence to support that the injuries sustained by the woman in his apartment were caused by him, according to that document.
Your lack of heart and compassion is shocking, tbh.
To me, it looks like a net benefit for the public, the department of corrections, and the inmate.
If you are worried about the inmate being allowed to build up savings that they can use when they are released, then that's on the judge. If the inmate has met their restitution obligations, then I don't have a problem with them being allowed to leave prison with savings that will enable them to get back on their feet again.
Prisoners should cost money, lots and lots of money. Otherwise we might just decide to imprison you and extract your labor. And that is exactly why we used to see 20 years for possession.
What, did you think we were just burning money for kicks?
NPR did a great article on the prison system in Norway: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/31/410532066/.... They are quoted as spending $90,000 per prisoner with a recidivism rate at half the US rate.
Americans have become too comfortable with their everyday sadism.
Scenario A (person not imprisoned):
- Prison cost: $0
- Labor cost: $25k (hire someone)
- Total cost: $25k
Scenario B (person imprisoned):
- Prison cost: $50k
- Labor cost: $0 (prisoner does it)
- Total cost: $50k
And some of your reasons make no sense. COVID/fentanyl didn't just hit Portland.
> stopped even bothering arresting people
Oh, look, the direct consequence of your actions and your policies. You declare that ALL cops are bad, and then complain when they stop doing what they do. And your DA releases nearly all arrested people without a charge because "compassion", so cops have no reason to arrest anyone.
Again, consider that your policies and ideas are horrible.
I will agree with you that a criminal justice system built "on pragmatism" would certainly conflict with the tenants of many world religions. I recently read Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, which outlines why pure pragmatism needs to be tempered by a respect for, and indeed love of, every person accused or convicted of a crime.
https://www.wbtv.com/2025/06/17/what-forgiveness-charleston-...