I've been to at least 10 different county jails and to Florida State Prison twice, and I feel like I know already what you're biggest problem is going to be...
It's going to be the one(s) that screw it all up for the many.
All it's going to take is one criminal in your program to go out and kill and rob an elderly couple for society to force the politicians to end your noble and well-meaning experiment and put those people back behind bars.
I've seen it over and over in my many years of being locked up...programs designed to give inmates and convicts a shot at bettering themselves are totally abused by a few totally selfish and uncaring dickwads that actually enjoy the fact they just fucked it up for everyone else.
But regardless of that, I think your program holds great promise and wish you nothing but success with it.
Yep; for experiments like this to work you need a judicial system with a level of pragmatism that doesn't exist in the US; that is, to give some very high value to the ability of the non-repeated offenders to go back to e.g. support their children economically or go to college, etc; so any outliers who do go back to crime are seen as outliers and the work is done towards spotting those criminals earlier in the experiment rather than closing the experiment all together. But like I said is a level of cool-headedness uncommon in the US judicial system and in general a country where many politicians win elections through emotional manipulation.
Or not necessarily pragmatism, but a shift in focus from overbearing justice (commonly seen as retribution and punishment, or more generally some kind of revenge) to rehabilitation and giving people the resources they need to get out of crime, rather than ostracizing them or putting them to manual labour for pennies an hour. In this sense Promise is being pragmatic because it can't transform the American attitude to crime all by itself (the punishment of which doubles up as a profit motive for the prison industry), but it can attempt to make one aspect of it less shitty. However, it is miles away from ideal.
Coming from a European perspective I find it utterly perplexing that a society would not only accept high rates of incarceration but also support venture capital to optimize that status quo. Because that's what is being offered - making it affordable for poor people to go into custody, as opposed to lobbying against private prisons and extreme sentences for trivial crimes, and disentangling this horrific 'tough on crime' narrative that has taken hold over the past decades. How on earth is it positive to see an opportunity for profit in all the people being locked up before trial and to what end will that investment be pursued?
It's fascinating that many viewpoints from the US are so exceptional in their notion that they completely ignore how systems in other countries tackle the problem without generating a criminal underclass.
I'm a US citizen and was about to part exactly this ... we need fewer people in jail period. That probably applies to most if not all of those who Promise would help so I can't help thinking this is simply putting lipstick on a pig.
EDIT: I should also note that it's nice to see teams are trying tackling to tackle harder social problems.
What does that mean? How do you know we have too many? Are you claiming we have many innocent people who haven't broken the law in jail? Or that some laws prescribe incommensurate penalties for certain crimes?
The US leads the world in incarceration, with a rate of 737 per 100,000.
Canada has 438 per 100,000... and on virtual all measures Canada and the US are very similar (old joke... What is a Canadian? An unarmed American with healthcare).
Amazingly the UK is 148 per 100,000, Scotland 134, N.Ireland 79, Ireland 78, and Australia 168.
What are the rates of crimes committed per 100k population in the US and the countries you mentioned? Obviously that's a loaded question, but just trying to illustrate the point -- perhaps the US criminal justice system is just as good (or possibly even better) at investigating, arresting, and jailing those who commit "crimes"?
Is the problem really with the criminal justice system, or is it with the laws, perhaps even just the sentencing laws?
FWIW I am firmly against, disgusted by, the extremely elevated incarceration rates in the US -- especially those incarcerated for "non-violent crimes" -- but I tend to think that the issue is more with the laws (sentencing, plea-bargaining, due process, etc) than it is with the prosecutors themselves.
Of course there are bad apples too, from judges to prosecutors to defendants themselves, but I tend to see more issue with the disconnected legislation than I do anything else.
Heck, the US AG wants to crack down on marijuana -- despite numerous state ballot initiatives legalizing it at state levels. Meanwhile, there's a serious opioid epidemic which is killing thousands of people; 'crackdown' is failing to address that problem. I know, let's crack down on marijuana too -- throw them all in jail, that's the way to save lives. It just blatantly defies logic or basic reasoning. :(
> perhaps the US criminal justice system is just as good at investigating, arresting, and jailing those who commit "crimes"?
Having worked with statistics around this issue and compared them with many other countries, I don't think this is the case. The USA seems to have two problems: A very, unusual high crime rate (about 10 times higher than in the country where I live for example!) and by comparison, a very harsh jurisdictional system. Combined, you get the result you have.
Is the problem really with the criminal justice system, or is it with the laws, perhaps even just the sentencing laws?
It's definitely not an either/or thing. You can bring up some bad laws, I can bring up some bad features of the criminal justice system, and we can go on forever. There are issues with both. Consider the bail system, where many poor folk who are simply accused of a crime are left to rot in prison because they can't come up with the cash. While they are in jail, they can't work. While they can't work, they can't pay bills. If they can't pay bills, their car gets repossessed. Even if this person walks free, they can't get to work without a car, and the cycle will probably happen again. Eventually, an overworked public defender will not be able to help.
There are other factors as well. Consider the for-profit prisons and the politicians who are lobbied to implement them.
America is a crazy country in some very obvious ways, one of them being your view of criminals in general. Everything from militarized police with military hardware , corrupted, racist cops, the war against teens doing some minor pot smoking, and the prison system being a massive industry.... Its just nuts. Compare to any other modern country. It's off the charts, the craziness.
Perhaps it has something to do with the individualistic culture that that exists in the US leads to people making risky decisions for personal benefit?
> commonly seen as retribution and punishment, or more generally some kind of revenge
Role of the incarceration is 1) incapacitation, at a bare minimum prevent continuing criminal activity; 2) Rehabilitation, in so far as causes and proclivities toward criminal activity can be remediated, do so; 3) Punishment, enjoying the rewards of criminality offend our sense of fairness.
The problem is (3) seems to be the only one we're capable of...
4) deterrent, to make you think twice before committing a criminal act.
The urge for long prison sentences can be explained by reasons 1, 2 and 4.
And I guess reason 3 as well; the longer someone is incarcerated, the longer they will have to think about what they did wrong and how to fix their life.
note: I don't believe that longer sentences are effective for any of those reasons, but others do
> commonly seen as retribution and punishment, or more generally some kind of revenge
That's not the purpose of the justice system per se, though I don't see any problem with someone offering criminals, in the spirit of charity, opportunities and help in turning away from criminality toward good ways of living. (Obviously, they must be willing, and we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking criminals are victims.) However, justice implies that retribution and punishment are merited, and if merited, then legitimately inflicted. If it didn't, mercy and forgiveness would be meaningless. Indeed, crime and evil actions would cease to have any substance. A justice system that does not punish in a manner that is commensurate with crimes committed is no justice system at all. The word "retribution" for some reason offends modern sensibilities. Part of that stems from what appears to be the false belief that retribution entails hatred, which it does not.
If there are flaws in the justice system because either the punishments for some crimes are excessive, or innocent people are being convicted at high rates and possibly because of perverse incentives, or whatever, then those things need to be addressed. But I do not support a generally lenient attitude toward crime in the spirit of Norway's treatment of Breivik. That that unrepentant criminal is alive and in relative comfort is a sickening insult to his victims.
I think this depends very much on what you consider the intention of a justice system to be. If it is to strive towards balance between individuals, then you are correct. If a person causes suffering, then they should experience suffering themselves. Balance attained.
However, if the intention of a justice system is to reduce the total amount of injustice done in the world, then punishment is surprisingly ineffective.
Being a criminal does not _preclude_ a person from also being a victim. People who inflict violence have very, very often experienced a great deal of violence against themselves. In these cases, punishment is going to do far more harm than good in society. Harsh punishment, especially incarceration, makes pre-existing issues much worse. It creates recidivism, and increases the total amount of injustice over the long term. Compassion, support, empathy, education, and carefully guided opportunity to improve would, in many of these cases, improve that person's circumstance to a point where they no longer have cause to harm others. The original victims may not have received the recompense that they deserve, but the likelihood of more people experiencing pain at the criminal's hand in the future is reduced.
So it's not quite as simple as all one way or all the other. I think that is why the raw concept of 'retribution' is a less desirable idea these days than it has been in the past. It makes the demands of individual balance at the expense of community balance.
Don't get me wrong, I think that ignoring individual balance outright in favour of community balance is equally flawed. The trick is providing lots of options, so that someone like a judge can make the call as to where that balancing point should be and be confident that it is played out.
> If a person causes suffering, then they should experience suffering themselves. Balance attained.
> However, if the intention of a justice system is to reduce the total amount of injustice done in the world, then punishment is surprisingly ineffective.
This.
Retribution is a terrible way to run things. "The law is reason free from passion."
"One of the first victim impact statements made outside a civil courtroom was that of the mother of actress Sharon Tate, who was murdered in 1969 by Charles Manson and his family. At the time of Manson’s 1978 parole hearing in California no state specifically allowed victim statements in criminal cases—those brought by government and “We the People.” Today, however, they are a routine part of the sentencing and parole process in every state. According to advocates, they allow victims to personalize the crime and elevate the status of the victim by describing the effect the crime has had on them or their families. Some laud the courtroom ritual as an aid in the emotional recovery of the victim, with the criminal proceeding envisioned as part of a larger therapeutic process. A few legal scholars suggest that the well-intentioned personalization of a crime can blur the line between public justice and private retribution. Conversely, does a criminal deserve a more lenient sentence if his victim was someone of so little charm or social worth that he had no one to testify movingly for him? Of course, rape charges used to be mitigated on just such grounds, that the victim had so little virtue or sexual morals that the crime against her didn’t mean as much."
Retribution is a strongly rational choice for a society aiming to minimize the total amount of injustice, since it interferes with the incentives structure of those perpetrating injustices. The majority of criminals make an intentional choice and know they are harming others, they are not irrational victims of circumstance or of their upbringing.
So, to the extent that the justice sistem can identify truly antisocial crime (and not ridiculous offenses like 5y mandatory minimums for weed), making the criminals suffer sets a strong social example: if you perpetrate this particularly heinous crime, you will a pay a price so high that it will not be worth it.
And since, by definition, only a fraction of criminals will be caught, those that are caught must suffer extra to asymptotically balance the risk/reward ratio - if I get caught stealing I don't just compensate the victim for the stolen good, thereby "paying my dues", that will just motivate me to get better at stealing. Rather, the penalty should completely obliterate any gains I could hope to make in a successful thieving career, and then some, to dissuade me to go down that path in the first place.
Rehabilitation is an important concern, but it's only secondary to the primary goal of the justice system, making crime not worthwhile. If all I get for running over people while drunk is an obligation to go to AA meetings, then the drunk driving law becomes irrelevant, you might as well leave it to the individual conscience.
I believe you can safely entrust the evaluation of the Breivik case to the Norwegians, who - judicially - came through the thing with absolutely flying colors as a civilized and rational society, not as a religiously infused flashmob baying for blood.
I'm my opinion Trump won _only_ through emotional manipulation (remember "croocked hillary"?); in many other nations (e.g. Germany) its usually a bit of rational arguments and a bit of emotional manipulation, not only the later.
This is not the first time I've seen this ratio but it still blows my mind. It's, of course, unsurprising given that although it's a huge waste of tax payer resources they're a handful of ppl that actually profit lavishly from having this many ppl, who pose no physical threat to society, locked up.
I bet that these ppl will be your biggest obstacles. You should operate with the expectation that they will do everything in their power to protect their intrest. "Saving taxpayers money" literally means "removing it from their bottom line".
That said, I wish you much success! I wish more startups figured out creative ways to align their business models with the real issues affecting society.
There is a chart here that is helpful in understanding the total number of people who are impacted by different parts of the criminal justice system. Approx 70% of people in local jails are there for non-violent offenses, approx 45% of people in state prisons are there for non-violent offenses and approximately 94% of people in the federal system are there for non-violent offenses. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html
In the US, jails and prisons are two different things. Prisons are state and federal facilities for criminals convicted of serious crimes with sentences of more than a year. Jails are local facilities for suspects waiting for trial, and those convicted of minor crimes with sentences less than a year.
Another big difference between jail and prison is that a prison sentence must be served as a single, unbroken stay. A jail sentence in many places can be served weekends.
Among other possibilities, they might work in the criminal justice system. I guess it's possible they might have been incarcerated in all of those places, but that doesn't seem as likely to me :)
It's going to be the one(s) that screw it all up for the many.
All it's going to take is one criminal in your program to go out and kill and rob an elderly couple for society to force the politicians to end your noble and well-meaning experiment and put those people back behind bars.
I've seen it over and over in my many years of being locked up...programs designed to give inmates and convicts a shot at bettering themselves are totally abused by a few totally selfish and uncaring dickwads that actually enjoy the fact they just fucked it up for everyone else.
But regardless of that, I think your program holds great promise and wish you nothing but success with it.