> Anthony Jackson has a sixth-grade education and worked as a cook. He was convicted of burglary for stealing a wallet from a Myrtle Beach hotel room when he was 44 years old. According to prosecutors, he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away. Police arrested him when he tried to use the stolen credit card at a pancake house. [...] Because of two prior convictions for burglary, Jackson was sentenced to mandatory life without parole under South Carolina's three-strikes law.
Emphasis mine. I can't get too worked up about a system that sentences this guy to life in prison. What would be the point of letting him out? He knew he wasn't supposed to walk into other people's hotel rooms and take their wallets. At what point does society get to tell people "you know what, knock it off"?
> After serving two years in prison during his mid-twenties for inadvertently killing someone during a bar fight, Aaron Jones turned his life around. He earned an electrical technician degree, married, became an ordained reverend, and founded the Perfect Love Outreach Ministry. Years later, Aaron was hired to renovate a motel in Florida, and was living in an employee-sponsored apartment with two other workers, one of whom had a truck that was used as a company vehicle by all the co-workers. Jones decided to drive this truck home to Louisiana to visit his wife and four children. When Aaron's co-worker woke up to find his truck missing, he reported it stolen. Aaron was pulled over by police while driving the truck.
I don't understand this one at all. Shouldn't the truck owner have testified on his behalf? Declined to press charges?
I made a cursory effort to look up the case itself, but I have no idea how to do that.
You should try looking at prison differently. It's incredibly expensive to lock someone up for their life - that's four walls, meals, space to exercise and guards for say another 40 years. We shouldn't spend that unless the alternative would cost a lot more (say violence against another person, a person's life).
he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away
Crime is often impulsive, irrational. Now this guy had poor impulse control and started from a difficult position in life. He then did stupid things like petty crime. The loss to these golfers was probably $100 - balance that against the cost to society of a life in prison. I disagree that's a worthwhile trade or is protecting society to any significant degree. It costs huge amounts of money, throws away a life that could be turned around, results in disproportionate and inhumane punishments, and doesn't even help the victims. This is little better than deportation for stealing an apple.
The US has 1.6 million of its population in jail, and that figure rose very rapidly in the last few decades, probably due to laws like this and jailing people for minor drugs offences, I'm not convinced that has saved US society any money or even made it much safer.
U.S. violent crime rates have plummeted in part because of higher incarceration. A lot of people on this list don't remember when cities like New York and Washington, DC were very dangerous places and all native born inhabitants were leaving.
That's not true. Take Sweden for example. Violent crime has plummeted there as well, and they are closing prisons because they are putting _less_ people in jail.
It's even more viable to explain violent crime as being directly correlated with popular drug price. As the price of popular drugs rise, dealers have more incentive to maim and kill; as it falls, more reason to write off a small stash and focus on the next trick.
"Changes in incarceration and crime are significantly related during the period under consideration. Increases in state prison committals per 100,000 residents tend to reduce crime the following year, whereas increases in the number of persons released from state prisons per 100,000 reidents tend to increase crime the next year."
The National Research Council's "Understanding Crime Trends Workshop Report," eds. Goldberger, A. and Rosenfield, R.
It's tricky to isolate other social trends in the research though. Steven Levitt did a major study of prison overcrowding legislation, which can suddenly change incarceration rates if the legislation is successful, but not if it fails, a bit of a coinflip not directly connected to social or demographic shifts. He found evidence of a link under these conditions.
Levitt, S. The effect of prison population size on crime rates: evidence from prison overcrowding litigation.
Obviously those aren't the only two studies on the subject, it's been a focus of criminology research since it's been a discipline. Levitt followed up with a good meta-analysis that covered ten different explanations for the reduction of crime over the last few decades:
Levitt, S. Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004. pp 163-190.
He cites John DiIulio (ie, DiiuLio) in that work. DiIulio has written a lot on the subject as well, usually arguing that incarceration rates have an impact on crime rates, but adding the nuance that three strikes laws rarely do much good.
Crime rates are very complex, and tied to many complex factors. Incarceration rate appears to be one such factor.
I've never seen evidence of a hard correlation between incarceration rate and crime rate, it sounds intuitive if you assume everyone has equal chances in life and has other options, but do you have figures?
If that were the case, the US, Cuba and Rwanda should be the safest countries in the world (all near the top in incarceration rates) and Sweden one of the worst. The opposite is true if you look at (for example) homicide rates. I'm not sure there is any evidence of even a good correlation between higher incarceration and lower crime.
Also because of lead control, vaccines, expansion of the earned income tax credit, the shift from the extroverted thrill-seeking 80s to the cocooning 2000s, and many other factors.
Where do you draw the line? I bet you wouldn't go for life in prison for someone who get three speeding tickets. Once we agree that there is a line, then it just comes down to which side of the line a particular crime is on. I don't see wallet theft as being all that serious. Yeah, it sucks to be the victim (been there, done that) but it's fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
Ultimately, the point of letting him out is that he is still a human being who deserves freedom unless we can show some very good reasons why he doesn't. What would be the point of keeping you out of prison?
> I bet you wouldn't go for life in prison for someone who get three speeding tickets.
Sure.
> Once we agree that there is a line, then it just comes down to which side of the line a particular crime is on.
I actually don't find this to follow, because your example is exceptionally poor. I don't favor speeding tickets at all; as far as I can see, they're just a way for governments to capriciously collect extra revenue from people without giving it the politically unpopular name of "taxes".
Repeated-burglaries guy is obviously opting out of functioning in society. If the cost of keeping him out of it exceeds the cost he inflicts by his presence, I'd say we should keep him incarcerated and spend less, not just tell him "OK, burgle all you want".
> I don't favor speeding tickets at all; as far as I can see, they're just a way for governments to capriciously collect extra revenue from people without giving it the politically unpopular name of "taxes".
> Repeated-burglaries guy is obviously opting out of functioning in society. If the cost of keeping him out of it exceeds the cost he inflicts by his presence, I'd say we should keep him incarcerated and spend less, not just tell him "OK, burgle all you want".
So reckless, dangerous driving is part of being a functional member of society, but 3 (apparently) non-violent and (in the scheme of things) minor thefts over 44 years gets someone thrown in jail for the rest of their life. That could be 30+ years on the dole. We (the taxpayers) are paying for his feeding, his clothing, his medical, his guards, his shelter. I seriously doubt another 3 thefts over the remainder of his life is worth that cost.
The thing is, it's not just the financial cost of a theft, it's the emotional and practical cost too.
Having had 5 laptops stolen in one hit - because I was updating staff that weekend and the guy got lucky - the cost of changing passwords, and the nagging feeling I may have missed something somewhere and I may get hit with another internet theft....
Then the feeling that the guy(s?) were in my house while my partner and I were sleeping. Na. People who do this need to be taken out of society.
For the speeding point, you can kill people at 30mph if something goes wrong with the car or you do something stupid.
Best I can tell it's an issue of philosophy. Many people in the US (my people, lucky me) are fearful and angry. We really seem to like our vengeance (consider the country music songs that were coming out post 9/11 as we entered Afghanistan and Iraq). When it comes to crime we don't bother with "rehabilitation". When it comes to mental health, that's clearly a lack of personal responsibility. If I can tell that they aren't really a knight in King Arthur's court on a holy quest, then they should be able to realize it too. Lock them up, throw away the key.
- Driving below the speed of surrounding traffic is much more likely to cause an accident than driving at a "high" speed. The speed of traffic is essentially always above the speed limit. (Which might itself give you pause in characterizing it as "reckless, dangerous driving".)
- Reckless, dangerous driving is an independent offense, which can be (and is) charged separately from speeding.
Oh come on... Speeding clearly implies more risk, in the case of an impact (in the city for example) the end result can be much worse.
On the other hand a guy who has comitted 2-3 non violent crimes in his life because hes probably broke and has mental issues. I am not saying thats ok, but spending the life in prison for that? He wouldnt even have to go to prison for that in the country i live in.
Burglary is punished so severely because, like you said, the end result can be much worse than just stealing property. Can you honestly say that chances of speeding causing any harm what so ever are comparable to chances of burglary turning into an assault, rape or murder?
It's quite worrying that a country seems to do some sort of precog on these people; i'm sure there are cases where stealing a wallet goes on to assault, rape or murder. I don't think locking people up because that could happen is a brilliant plan. Why not lock up a lot more people? I mean little boys who torture (and kill) animals turn into killers? It's pretty vague and weird to think like that.
This guy obviously has issues and they need to be looked at; locking him up has no use whatsoever besides 'making the public feel safe'. While it makes things less safe; if I know I'll go to jail the rest of my life, i'll make sure to kill the people in the room so I have a chance of escaping; what have I to lose? This guy didn't think like that, but with this kind of strangely harsh punishment, why would I hold back on any crime I commit?
Indeed, it's very stange to think like that. We don't punish some future consequences. We punish dangerous and harmful behavior. "Dangerous" does not mean "correlated with some future harmful developments". It means the immediate possibility of harm. This is why torturing animals is not dangerous (for humans at least), speeding is a minor danger and burglary is a severe danger.
Also, I believe you are implying that the guy from the OP got life in prison for the single burglary. I appologize if I get it wrong but in case you really are: even OP says it is not so. It's been his third strike i.e. he had been convicted for two more violent/gun/drug related crimes before (more burglaries in his particular case).
> Burglary is punished so severely because, like you said, the end result can be much worse than just stealing property.
Also you:
> We don't punish some future consequences. We punish dangerous and harmful behavior.
Please help me make these two statements make sense together. In this case, the severe penalty is only justifiable with a view of what might happen or what might have happened (that he might steal again, that he might become violent in future thefts, that he might have hurt those men). Now to the first might, I'll grant it's actually pretty likely. But to the second might, it's hardly clear, every summary I found suggested none of the past thefts or youthful cocaine charge (possession? couldn't find specifics) were violent. And the third might is the justification you offered in the earlier post. Which means, what, punish people for how bad their crimes could have been rather than how bad they actually were? I was in a car accident (my fault, rear ended a guy), it could have resulted in a fatality had it been at higher speeds (we were, at most, moving 10mph), should I be treated as if I had committed vehicular manslaughter?
What might happen in a crime ought to be irrelevant, what did happen is the important part. And again, in this case it appears that violence didn't enter into the equation. Might the victims have felt there could have been violence? Sure, but fear of violence (in this case he didn't even threaten violence, he came up with a lame story and ran off) is not the same as being the victim of violence.
I guess the problem is that you are conflating this particular burglary and burglary and general. I only meant burglary in general.
Also, we don't punish every possible outcome of every action. We, however, punish more likely and more harmful (= more dangerous by definition) outcomes more. In your example, if you had been at higher speeds or if you had been drunk you'd had been punished more even for the same outcome.
>What might happen in a crime ought to be irrelevant, what did happen is the important part.
You are free to believe this. I hope you vote libertarian to remove all kinds of licencing (starting from driving and ending with medical), various safety inspections, crimes like stalking, conspiracies to commit other crimes, blackmail, death threats etc.
1) I've not seen the numbers, but I'll concede that's likely true, particularly on highways.
2) For someone who wants long sentences for other offenses, it seems odd that you don't see that control of speed (particularly on city streets, my view on highway speed limits is different) and ticketing of speeders is also a pretty effective mitigator of reckless driving on those same streets. It doesn't stop it, we'll never stop crime until everyone becomes a saint (IOW, never), but reducing the occurrence is a nice tradeoff.
Now that that's out of the way, care to respond to the part where you suggest the cost of life in prison (to the taxpayers) is worth preventing 3 more non-violent burglaries (if he keeps to his average)?
What about the huge time cost of replacing everything that was in the wallet, if replaceable, and the intangible emotional feelings of insecurity that result from letting wallet-stealers run free stealing wallets? Probably doesn’t exceed $1.5 million, but to say the cost of a wallet theft is only $50 shows absolutely no sympathy for a victim, and is not that far removed from saying, “well, the guy who stole it probably needed the money more than you do.”
> If the cost of keeping him out of it exceeds the cost he inflicts by his presence
You do realize that it costs $40,000+ per year to incarcerate someone, right? So to meet your justification for imprisonment, this guy would have to be an excellent criminal. Why not just give him $40,000 per year and let him be free? He'd probably not need to burgle anymore.
As I understand it's substantially more than 40k GBP per year per prisoner. If the American system is costing less in the order of half what we're paying it must be absolutely horrendous.
Which is a side point to the absurdity of whole-life mandatory sentencing. It's incredibly expensive and pure vengeance; there's no way the cost to society in cash or emotional harm terms is minimised by spending MILLIONS of dollars depriving these people of their liberty for decades. So why does the Land Of The Free do it? Short, often community based sentences with strong rehabilitation would be orders of magnitude cheaper and have a very similar effect on the ultimate crime rate.
> Why not just give him $40,000 per year and let him be free? He'd probably not need to burgle anymore.
If we did this, I suspect we'd see a sharp rise in burglaries.
As to the figure itself, another commenter noted that the low end of prison costs seemed to be Lousisiana, in which operating a prison cost $13K / year. That would make the per-prisoner cost much, much lower than that.
I may be missing something as I've just skimmed this thread, but 13K has got to be referring to the per-prisoner cost. Unless the prison has no utility consumption, no services, no food, and has one employee who's a part-time janitor.
As a second point, and speaking without knowledge, it's conceivable for a prison to be bringing in revenue such that it only operates at a loss of (for example) $13K annually.
Plausible. The other comment doesn't actually specify what kind of costs it's referring to; I initially thought it was per-prisoner costs and decided on second thought that $167k per prisoner per year in new york made no sense at all.
Food for a year is barely even noticeable in $13K; if they cost $5 / day to feed that would come in under $2K / year. Where's all the money going?
Well, it's not without controversy, surely. You're (a) focusing on the very short term; presumably people would only commit one burglary under this model over their entire lifetime; and (b) you're not being generous to the original case but taking it at a very literalistic level. It would be more generous to the point to suggest that the $40k/year would be spread out to support low-income folks who might have otherwise needed it. So, about 1% of American adults are imprisoned (and about 2% are on some form of probation or parole). On the other hand, 16% of our population lives in poverty. So we might reasonably expect to instead reduce the prison population by, say, half, and kick back that money to the impoverished. The salient point is that this would give a (1/2) * 1% / 16% = 1/32 dilution of the money, so we're talking about giving all the poor people in the US $1k - $2k per year in order to reduce the rate of crime being committed. This makes their finances at least 5% better (the poverty line is about $20,000 for the 16% statstic).
So the more-generous question is, would being at least 5% better off financially reduce crime more than the 50%-shorter sentences for crime would increase it? I have no idea.
there is a difference between pickpocket and breaking and entering. I'm guessing if someone else came into your house or place you were staying you'd be pretty scared and think that it was pretty unacceptable behavior deserving of some serious jail time. After 3 times, it seems reasonable to escalate the penalty a bit. Perhaps life is too severe, but it should be for a long damn time.
come on now. this article is intentionally downplaying the severity of the offenses here. breaking and entering is a serious crime. it isn't a speeding ticket. "inadvertently killing someone" is code for beat the shit out of him and he died, but i didn't mean to kill him. only maim. again, not a speeding ticket.
My theory: Hacker News has been allowing more political stories through, which attracts a certain kind of poster, which has the effect of lowering the level of discourse overall (even among erstwhile "good" commenters). The actual political threads themselves, like this one, tend to be a little ahead of the curve.
The strong aversion to politics was one of the things I liked about Hacker News. A lot of political issues are important, but they always turn discussion sites into dull point-scoring. Hopefully the moderators clamp down before it's too late.
The noteworthy politics-related stories I've seen in the last months almost always deal with either the NSA scandal or other attacks to basic human rights, including this one.
And I don't see any reason for these stories not to be on HN. Human rights matter for everyone.
Yes, human rights matter to everyone. So do urination and defecation — we quite literally could not live without them — but those aren't appropriate in all situations either.
When I say something doesn't belong on Hacker News, I don't mean it's unimportant or doesn't matter. I just mean that it isn't what this site is for. There are many, many stories that are relevant and important to me personally that are still not appropriate for every site I go to.
Think about it this way: Would you go on a My Little Pony fan site and post this stuff there? Human rights are just as crucial for My Little Pony fans, but it's easier to recognize that they aren't appropriate for a single-topic site. Hacker News is not a single-topic site, but it is still a site with a focus. If you look at the guidelines, politics are explicitly called out as being off-topic.
I read political stories here, as the responses are generally a lot better thought out than the kind you will get on Reddit. (To be fair you get decent responses on Reddit, but they are tucked away amongst a lot more noise).
I see your point, chc. And you are right. Talking politics on a site like HN is defacto undesirable. But the NSA dogs made feces mandatory conversation--if we want to live our lives *shit free--and so the door once opened just gets wider. It is sad. All this stuff is really sad.
People do talk about politics though. They do it everywhere all over the place and even those who claim to not want to talk about politics end up talking about the politics of not talking politics. I am not sure it is possible to stop them.
Granted, this specific submission can be qualified as off-topic under the guidelines. But I seriously doubt this for any NSA-related submissions, given their impact on the whole US tech/startup sector.
The NSA submissions are more of a mixed bag. A lot of them are still not a good fit as they are more outrage than information, but yeah, a lot of them are relevant to the site. (I still think even the relevant stories have a negative impact on the signal:noise ratio by encouraging people to post important-but-irrelevant stories like this one, but you're right, the NSA stories do belong here.)
all i said was "come on now." Sorry if I came off too defensive. I was simply pointing out that these crimes are clearly on the other side of that line.
No, you repeatedly told me that his crime was not a speeding ticket. Here's your last sentence: "again, not a speeding ticket." You clearly thought I was comparing the two.
No it should not; then most sentences would be torture and/or murder at which point the system stops working. If someone breaks into my house and steals something while making a mess/destroying stuff etc I want to break his/her legs. A lot of people would want to shoot him (on the spot) and even do so. I'm happy though that's not the actual punishment they get as there is a lot more behind the story than this and most criminals can be rehabilitated. There are exceptions with (some sex crimes), but even there are different methods (like chemical castration which doesn't hurt) than these over the top measures that come from 'imagine you're the victim'.
That's the kind of thinking that gets you amputations as punishment for theft, torture as punishment for murder, and mob justice on innocents who really really seem guilty.
I can't get too worked up about a system that sentences this guy to life in prison.
Is that seriously the best fucking option you can come up with? A massively expensive revenge-trip that causes far, far more damage than the theft of a wallet?
Perhaps there's some kind of much, much more effective way to get him to stop taking things that don't belong to him. I say perhaps; of course there are. Lots, that are cheaper, more effective and build a better society; but no, (parts of) the US is happy doing this. Cutting off its own nose to spite its own face and destroying a life in the process, behaving like children.
You got me thinking - it would be 'cruel&unusual' and invoke flashbacks to barbaric times, but a '3-strikes' policy that would put a permenent, visible brand "i'm a thief" or "i'm a con-man" would probably deter opportunities future crimes.
It's not humane and it restricts liberty - but it's more humane and less liberty-restricting than the corrent "solution" of permanent imprisonment.
Are you kidding me? What do you want to do instead, cut his hand off?
The sheer lack of imagination and knowledge you exhibit is astonishing. If I don't think it's smart to imprison him, I must want to cut his hand off? Let me guess; you're a US citizen and you don't travel much, so all you've ever seen regarding prison policy is identical US politicians posturing over who can be more "tough on crime"?
I wonder what his three strikes are ? I thought that for three strikes you're only fucked if at least one of those strikes involved violence and a victim ?
> At what point does society get to tell people "you know what, knock it off"?
You're thinking about this the wrong way.
First, ask yourself: Why is there the justice system and prisons?
The answer: To reduce occurrence of crime.
Now why are prisons meant to help reduce crime? By scaring people into not committing crimes? That obviously doesn't work, especially when many people live lives so bad that they can't see a way of improving their lives but by committing crimes, which is pretty much all the people in that document.
Now how would you actually get those people to stop committing crimes? The document actually shows that:
Educate them. Once they know enough to actually be able to meaningfully participate in modern society they see life entirely differently.
Only problem is: These people have reached that point and are barred from actually acting upon it.
>> The primary way prisons reduce crime is by people who commit crimes.
You realize there's a virtually unlimited supply of people that could potentially qualify to be locked up because they are criminal for violating some more or less arbitrary law, right? Are you proposing locking up each and every one of them to get to a crime-less nirvana where all criminals are behind bars, and everyone outside is perfectly pure and honest?
The fact that there are people here defending the idea you should be sentenced to life for 3 offenses like stealing a wallet makes me sick. He who is without sins throw the first stone, some of you saying things like this would probably be in jail yourselves if this kind of 'justice' was the norm
There is not an unlimited supply of potential prisoners. As wmil says, imprisonable crimes are generally those arising from poor impulse control and low intelligence. (If you want to learn more, Russell Barkley has some informative books on the connection between brain executive function, intelligence, and life outcomes.)
If we made wearing socks a three-strikes-eligible law, the same people would go to prison. Normal people would adapt, impulsive and dull people wouldn't. American criminal law is basically a test of certain neurological abilities. If you fail the test, they hit you with the banhammer. Psychiatrists would be cheaper and better, but democracy produces popular myths, not rational plans.
Proclaiming theories as fact is not a very nice way to proceed in an argument.
That said, please consider a counter-theory to your theory: Due to the fact that many people imprisoned for long terms do end up obtaining their GED and one or more vocations, it seems quite probably that american criminal law is a test of education more than one of genetic factors.
Alas, no. Mental tests in childhood and early adolescence predict subsequent educational failure. The effect is independent of race, culture, parental socioeconomic status, etc.
It merely proved a correlation between mental ability and educational success in the current educational system.
It does not show whether the cause of crime is the actual lack of mental ability, or the failure of the education system to properly prepare them for adult life.
In other words: You've not shown that more effort to educate people would result in the same crime levels as with the current effort.
The point of the justice system is to adequately determine punishments for crimes committed.
The point of prisons is to provide a place to isolate people from society that have been deemed not fit for society (permanently or temporary.)
Neither one is there to reduce crime. They're reactive not proactive systems. Society uses them as examples to deter future crime, but that does not make that their job.
> I don't understand this one at all. Shouldn't the truck owner have testified on his behalf? Declined to press charges?
Maybe, just maybe, the ACLU account is deliberate fuzzy on the details? It's difficult to conciliate the claim that the accused "borrowed" the truck with the allegation that the co-worker found the truck missing.
At what point does society get to tell people "you know what, knock it off"?
In other countries, much, much later. And they have less crime. Blanket laws with such severe penalties always have more downside than upside. The ability to dispense such severe sentences should be in the hands of a judge that can weigh each case individually.
If you believe someone deserves life in prison for two burglaries and a case of theft, you are being inhumane. You need to change the system or these people, such that they don't feel the need to steal. That takes time and several moments to check whether it worked. Hell, most countries don't even have true 'life in prison' sentences and they manage to be safer than the US.
It surprises me how often what it takes to answer a "how do we fix this social problem" is to look outside of the US border, see how other people are fixing it. Yet it seems like it's the last idea on anyone's mind.
Your lack of empathy in these cases is frightening. Do you really feel that spending the rest of your life in prison is an appropriate punishment for stealing? I could probably concieve of some edge case where it would take some slight effort to argue against it, but none of these cases are anywhere near that.
Personally, I would rather just be shot and get it over with, than spending 40 years with no personal freedoms. You are literally condoning a fate worse than death for non-violent offenses with a relatively small impact on the victim. Please take a step back and listen to what you're saying here.
I was writing essentially the same response when I noticed yours. I completely agree with the sentiment.
What baffles me most is the idea that someone can value 'stuff' so much that the resulting damage (be it emotional, financial, or practical) justifies such a harsh punishment.
Sure, 'stuff' can be important. If someone cheats you out of a large sum of money that you've been working hard for, the damage can be considered large. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here. And even then I'd say 40 years in prison is way out of proportion.
Theft is a bad thing but hardly deserving of a life sentence, even with a history of burglary. The economic cost of this crime is at most a few thousand $, probably much less. The economic cost of incarcerating the guy for 30-40 years is going to be a few million.
depends on where he is. cost of prisons varies wildly by state and city, which i find to be a bit bizarre. According to some quick research, it can be as low as 13k a year (Louisiana) to as high as 47k a year (California) and even on smaller levels 167k (New York City).
30 years in Louisiana is just over 2 years in new york city.
True, but bear in mind that elder/end of life medical care tends to be especially expensive, so I think the total is realistic.
I don't find it so odd that cost varies - consider land price, cost of living (for prison staff), heating (much more expensive in northerly latitudes), and so on.
I don't find it odd that it varies, just that it varies so wildly. well over 10x seems unreasonable. If it is an area that is that expensive, perhaps it makes sense to transport the prisoners a bit to a less expensive area.
There are often legal barriers to transferring prisoners out of a state, not least that it imposes a significant burden on their families who may be unable to visit them (and who have rights of their own, regardless of how one feels about the prisoner).
I should have mentioned that states like NY als have more extensive rehabilitation programs (which cost money); on the upside, as far as I recall NY has one of the lower rates of incarceration and recidivism (but I might be wrong, don't feel like delving into the stats right now).
> "When Aaron's co-worker woke up to find his truck missing, he reported it stolen"
What could have happened: Aaron requests truck for a day from room-mate. Room-mate agrees. But the company finds out about it and frowns. Mate says Aaron stole the truck, out of fear.
There are any number of ways this might have happened; and perhaps the case docs talk about it. But, in any case, life sentence seems harsh.
Since the recession hit here in Spain, I have had my wages cut 7% for two years running. That's to basically to pay for the cock ups the bankers made, through bailouts, and their crap investments. No one went to jail there, but I have lost money an order of magnitude bigger than if I had had my wallet stolen.
If the article is to be believed, it was understood among the men that the truck was for everyone to use, and it was his intention to return the truck as they always did. If that was the case, I don't see how it meets the common definition of theft. (It may not be the case. The fact that he got convicted seems to fly in the face of the situation they describe.)
> What would be the point of letting him out? He knew he wasn't supposed to walk into other people's hotel rooms and take their wallets.
How do you end up concluding that petty theft is a good reason to torture this guy for the rest of his life? People do things they're not supposed to all the time.
I suspect it had something to do with driving a "company vehicle" to Louisiana from Florida, without telling the actual owner of the vehicle. There are some details missing obviously.
His prior convictions were armed robbery, negligent homicide, and issuing worthless checks. According to the ACLU, the docket number for the LA court of appeals is supposedly: 2000-KA-2117. I couldn't find anything on it though.
> Only prosecutors can decide whether they want to press charges in criminal cases.
Yes, but it generally helps if they can produce someone who says "yes, my truck was stolen".
> in most cases, i think details are pretty important. here, not really. let's say he straight up stole the truck. does he deserve life in prison? doubtful
This is reasonable, but I think the details I wondered about are important to another issue, that of "how the heck was this guy jailed at all?"
Lacking any other evidence, I tend to lean toward the theory that he did straight up steal the truck, and the ACLU is whitewashing him, which (a) is weird, since they're not apologizing for much less sympathetic prisoners, and (b) implicates a third important issue, "can we trust the ACLU to describe its own cases?"
> Anthony Jackson has a sixth-grade education and worked as a cook. He was convicted of burglary for stealing a wallet from a Myrtle Beach hotel room when he was 44 years old. According to prosecutors, he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away. Police arrested him when he tried to use the stolen credit card at a pancake house. [...] Because of two prior convictions for burglary, Jackson was sentenced to mandatory life without parole under South Carolina's three-strikes law.
Emphasis mine. I can't get too worked up about a system that sentences this guy to life in prison. What would be the point of letting him out? He knew he wasn't supposed to walk into other people's hotel rooms and take their wallets. At what point does society get to tell people "you know what, knock it off"?
> After serving two years in prison during his mid-twenties for inadvertently killing someone during a bar fight, Aaron Jones turned his life around. He earned an electrical technician degree, married, became an ordained reverend, and founded the Perfect Love Outreach Ministry. Years later, Aaron was hired to renovate a motel in Florida, and was living in an employee-sponsored apartment with two other workers, one of whom had a truck that was used as a company vehicle by all the co-workers. Jones decided to drive this truck home to Louisiana to visit his wife and four children. When Aaron's co-worker woke up to find his truck missing, he reported it stolen. Aaron was pulled over by police while driving the truck.
I don't understand this one at all. Shouldn't the truck owner have testified on his behalf? Declined to press charges?
I made a cursory effort to look up the case itself, but I have no idea how to do that.