HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

On the topic of prison systems in America vs. the civilized world, this is absolutely worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtV5ev6813I

When you design for the "edge cases" you end up with a bunch of Supermaxes were people vegitate 23 hours a day in solitary, which is btw commonly considered torture [0]

Maybe the goal shouldn't be to design for "unchecked edge cases to apply maximum punishment" but rather a fundamental change in US prison and incarceration policies [1]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture-idU...

[1] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I

⬐ jdjdjrj

Corrections theory has evolved a lot since 1950s and it hasn't been about applying punishment for a long time. If someone is locked up 23 hours a day, it is because it was determined through a classification process that they are a danger to the staff and other inmates to be in any less restrictive housing. Modern corrections theory is about putting inmates in the least restrictive housing necessary to keep them.

Some considerations of the many are often that the inmate has a history of assaulting or extorting other inmates if they are housed in a general population dorm.

Source: Corrections in America book

As for your article, it's not proper to lump together prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, which is a military prison, to the typical state and federally run facilities. These are completely different types of prisons with different ways of operation, and inmates are inside for different purposes. Issues at Guantanamo Bay are not representative of issues present at the state run prison mentioned in the HN article.

⬐ LocalH

Politicians capitalize on a large percentage of the public seeing incarcerated people, as a whole, as "undeserving of rights". That is the root of the current system. Anecdotally, I have had a large number of people offer that very opinion - "well if they wanted rights they shouldn't have committed a crime", never mind that the situation is far more nuanced than that.

⬐ freeflight

> Corrections theory has evolved a lot since 1950s and it hasn't been about applying punishment for a long time.

It's apparently also not about rehabilitation, so what is it actually about?

> Source: Corrections in America book

At the danger of sounding a bit too flippant; The US ain't the only country that has written books on "correction". Maybe it's time to expand the horizon a bit and try to look for inspirations and solutions outside of America?

> As for your article, it's not proper to lump together prisons such as Guantanamo Bay

The article is explicitly about the UN envoys visit to US domestic prisons.

His potential visit to Gitmo was another story, there the US offered him to visit but only under such extreme restrictions that he wouldn't have been able to do his job, as the US even denied him unsupervised interviews with inmates [0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/11/un-torture-e...

⬐ jdjdjrj

It is in fact about rehabilitation which is why the criminal justice system and prisons have rehabilitation and education programs.

"Corrections in America" is the name of the book and it discusses the history of criminal justice back to the earliest recorded times. As the original article is about a state run prison in America, it seems much more relevant than most of what is being discussed in this topic.

I was referring to your Reuters article. In respect to this guardian article, it says they did permit him but on terms he did not agree with. To expect to roam around freely as you wish within a prison seems like a ridiculous proposition and inherently presents a security risk to the institution.

⬐ freeflight

> It is in fact about rehabilitation which is why the criminal justice system and prisons have rehabilitation and education programs.

Just because some US prisons have rehabilitation and education programs does not mean that's the focus of the system as a whole.

What that actually looks like can be observed in many other places, places with much lower recidivism rates, much lower incarceration rates, much higher qualification and training demands for the guards, and most important of all; No profit expectations.

> I was referring to your Reuters article.

And that Reuters article is still about domestic prisons, please read it more carefully.

> To expect to roam around freely as you wish within a prison seems like a ridiculous proposition and inherently presents a security risk to the institution.

His main demand was unsupervised interviews with prisoners, which is a very legitimate demand if he wants to get even remotely anything useful out of that visit.

Or do you really expect potential torture victims to openly speak out, when they know their torturer is standing right behind them, ready to punish them the moment the UN envoy leaves?

Would you accept such conditions if the country in question here was Russia or China? Then why should anybody accept such conditions from the US? Why even set such conditions in the very first place?

> That social stigma will not work in big, diverse and marred by identity politics countries like the US or even Canada (in my opinion).

The social system analogue to the US is not Canada, Canada's policies in that regard are way more resembling of European systems than the US's, that applies not only to welfare systems, but also crime and incarceration [0].

As such, Canada is very much an example of how at least part of these policies can also work in North America, even with its allegedly exceptional scale and diversity.

[0] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I

> He stated "modern policing," which I would guess is since the 1980s and the drug war, then 9/11. All this is fairly new, and started within my lifetime. This is "normal" to the younger generation, but it's horrifies me.

Yup, the US incarceration rate started rising to these insane current day levels around the 1980s [0]

Interestingly enough, the incarceration rate kept rising even while crime was going down, but crime going down wasn't a US exclusive phenomena, Canada saw the same trend without mass incarcerating people. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

[1] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I

Or this talk about one of Denmarks neighbours (Germany) by an American, Jewish, (grand-)son of Holocaust survivors visiting a German prison with a bunch of other Americans ("60 Minutes" reporter, some Governor, a DA, a convicted murderer etc.). A bunch of stats and comparisons to underline the effects of different prison systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtV5ev6813I

And the related segment from "60 Minutes": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOmcP9sMwIE

It's debatable if the police state was actually responsible for that drop in crime.

Afaik Canada saw a comparable drop in crime, over the same time-period, without starting to mass incarcerate people [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I (Relevant stats and discussion start around 6:45, but the whole talk is rather worthwhile to watch)

> I think every society with lower crime has significantly smaller police brutality

Crime-rates do not correlate with police brutality and mass incarceration.

Canada locks up way fewer people, has way less harsh sentencing than the US, yet Canadian crime rates are not that different from those of the US [0].

It's also really weird to evoke HK in this discussion when the current police response in the US is way worse than anything reported out of HK. Particularly in the context that for the longest time the HK police actually had a rather splendid international reputation [1].

While US police had a "Dirty Harry" like reputation for several decades now, something that's reached its current peak with the whole "blueline" mentality and the glorification of comic vigilantes like the Punisher as a symbol for law enforcement.

As such a whole lot of this is rooted very deeply in policing and incarceration culture and not some countries being inherently "more criminal" than others.

[0] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/world/asia/24iht-hkpolice...

⬐ vlads_

You claim that law enforcement culture differs in the countries which you are comparing and that is indeed true. But is the crime culture the same? Or is that not a factor worth considering?

⬐ freeflight

Police are institutions with standardization, their culture isn't some random construct, it's something that's actively decided on, that's codified in legislation and training.

Criminal culture is not, it's something that emerges way more naturally, usually as a direct response to the culture set by police and punishments established by law.

If, for example, the punishment for certain crimes is so high by default that the criminal would rather die than get a sentence that would equal death, then you have taken any and all motivation from that criminal to look for a more reasonable way out, instead preferring to "go out in a blaze of glory" on their own terms.

That's why this whole "tough on crime" approach mostly leads to an escalation on both ends: Cops treat criminals more harshly, criminals respond by acting more harshly themselves because acting more reasonable wouldn't gain them anything anyway so they might as well completely live out their destructive urges.

This is further reinforced through a prison system that's not aimed at rehabilitation, but generally seen as a form of "revenge", as "punishment" and as such victimizes its inmates, which leads to even more resentment, while leaving them utterly unprepared, and with quite a grudge, when they get released back into society.

Which leads to the outcome that it usually won't take long until they get into trouble again [0] because their time in prison taught them nothing except "might makes right" and how sadistic cruelty is a valid way of interaction with other people when you are the one in a position of power.

[0] https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2019/may/3/long-term-re...

⬐ vlads_

> If, for example, the punishment for certain crimes is so high by default that the criminal would rather die than get a sentence that would equal death, then you have taken any and all motivation from that criminal to look for a more reasonable way out, instead preferring to "go out in a blaze of glory" on their own terms.

Yep. That is what happens in most cases. Which is why I reject the idea that most cops which shoot black people are racist. Sometimes, as is the case of George Floyd, the individual officer is at fault (even if that does not _necessarily_ mean he is racist), however, in the vast majority of police shootings, the victim is trying to reach for the cop's gun, assaulting the officer, or in some other way is putting the officer's life in danger. So you can not blame the individual shooter in such cases.

You can, however, blame the systems which cause the erratic behavior, that's true. However, we need to have an honest conversation about what the causes actually are.

The gang culture in prisons is indeed a problem, but making prisons less tough would not solve this problem - it would only exacerbated, as gangs would have increased influence over the prison. Of course, in reality many gangs are in cahoots with the prison staff, which is a corruption problem which needs to be solved.

Another problem the article correctly points is non-violent offenders becoming violent as a result of their time in the prisons.

That said, the gang culture in prisons is only an extension of the gang culture outside of prisons. And you can not blame that on tough sentencing, as the gang culture exists in many other places around the world - in the UK grooming gangs, in Sweden's no-go zones, in Romania's gypsy gangs and so on, all countries without harsh sentencing.

I'm not sure that incarceration (and the circumstances under which it usually happens) in the US is increasing the "freedom". See i.e. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wtV5ev6813I

Fun thing, I just watched this a couple days ago:

https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I

spoiler: no private prisons in Germany

⬐ lota-putty

Can't believe they had a wall running through their country 30yrs back.

I'd recommend to watch this talk about the German prison system from an American perspective. The main point is the difference between European resocialization and US retributive justice. Although this may show the bright sides here in Germany a little bit too bright, they do exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtV5ev6813I