Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If there is no real penalty for being a career criminal, people will continue to be career criminals.

If someone knows they can rob people and get away with it, why would they do honest work for a living?

What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration as a possible outcome for people breaking the law… especially those who do it repeatedly? It’s easy to talk down to solutions being used today, but without offering up a realistic alternative, this provides no value.

 help



> If there is no real penalty for being a career criminal, people will continue to be career criminals.

I know this is a wild idea, but what if they had better options than career criminal for a living?

Americans are so invested in the penalties they can’t imagine the incentives approach.


I asked for a realistic alternative solution and you offered none, just more criticisms for the status quo.

There are already incentives for honest work… a paycheck, benefits, etc. Not to mention being a net positive to society. There is also the option to start a business, which has unlimited upside.

Some people put a lot of effort into breaking the law and making life worse for other people. If that effort was directed in a positive direction, they could be successful, without being a criminal.

This also goes for the white collar criminals that get a pass while running large companies or governments. If those efforts were directed in a better direction, life would also get better for everyone.

I wish there was as much sympathy for the victims as the criminals.


> Americans are so invested in the penalties they can’t imagine the incentives approach.

It's not Americans generally speaking, it's a vocal minority of white supremacist fascists.


This may be hard to accept - but there are some people who can’t help themselves. They are career criminals and even when presented with honest work they still choose to commit crimes. There exist sociopaths who don’t feel empathy or remorse, and are driven by their own desires and needs regardless of the cost to other people and society. They cannot be rehabilitated. They need to be locked in a cage forever. Society has known about these people since civilization began

Yeah there are people who can't help themselves, but they are a fraction of a fraction of the population. When presented with an honest and decent alternative the vast majority will choose it.

https://x.com/arthurmacwaters/status/2015533344914878923?s=4...

Maybe we just incarcerate you permanently once you have 31 arrests


Maybe we shouldn’t incarcerate anyone who hasn’t been convicted.

It’s not hard to accept.

They’re just a lot rarer than you imagine.


Tell me more about the US government.

Those people are getting locked up more in the US than in any other country. Yet the crimes rates are not lower. In fact they're higher

> If there is no real penalty for being a career criminal

When did I say there should be no penalty for crime? When did I say there should be no penalty for a career of crime?

> What is your solution to prevent crime without incarceration

When did I say we should eliminate incarceration?

You're putting words in my mouth. You're creating a strawman.

What does crime mean to you?

What does crime look like?

What sorts of people commit crimes? Why do they commit crimes? What crimes do they commit?


You said incarceration is “neo slavery”. The base assumption is slavery is wrong.

So what should the penalty be?


I said *mass*-incarceration is neo slavery.

> The base assumption is slavery is wrong.

Do you disagree that slavery is wrong?


Obviously slavery is wrong, that’s why I said it.

You continue to dodge my question about the alternative to incarceration, when we continue to have significant numbers of repeat offenders. You know what I’m asking, yet continue to try and distract from it by nitpicking semantics. I don’t think you have an answer.


Hoss, if you cared you'd know about all the many, many efforts at things like "Restorative Justice". Hell, you'd know what the statistics are around recidivism in the US versus other countries and be able to tell us why other places in the world have such different outcomes.

There are plenty of reasons. Mass incarcertaion is a strategy, and it's unique to the US.

If you're really curious, a good entry point is the film "13th".

As a third person observing this conversation, you seem neither curious nor interested in learning why someone might think of US mass incarceration in such strong terms.

The answers are out there, if you actually cared to find them.


Looking for opinions on the open internet doesn’t tell me what the person I asked actually thinks about the topic. The strong term they used is precisely the reason I asked.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: