For private prisons, the Corrections Corporation of America reportedly spends over $1 million each year on lobbying. [1][2]
Beyond private prisons, there's lobbying from prison guards' unions. For example, the California union appears to have substantial political influence, and in 2008 successfully spent $1.8 million to defeat a ballot initiative that would have reduced the prison population.[3]
Further, in some municipalities, cities use fines as revenue-raising tools, and arrest and jail people who fail to pay. See e.g. the Ferguson DOJ report.[4]
None of what you cited is actual evidence that private prisons have had an impact on incarceration rates.
I will also point out that lobbying is something every industry and interest group does in the United States, including many groups who support drug and sentencing reform. $1 million isn't even really that much.
It's because the money isn't given to the politicians or their campaigns. The money is spent hiring the lobbyists, and their teams to dedicate manpower to finding convincing arguments which can then be presented to the politicians.
Yes lobbying is usually associated with evil corporations, but the fact of the matter is that in order to fix it you would need to remove the power for citizens to speak to their representatives.
Lobbying in the UK sure sounds like lobbying in the US to me.[1] So does Volkswagen's lobbying of the EU parliament.[2] Do you have an example of a functional democracy that doesn't have lobbying like this?
To get someone's (or your own) Google+ ID, you can also click the profile picture and copy the oid parameter out of the URL. (Pulling it out of "View Source" didn't work for some reason.)
There were two fundamentally different proposals for concepts:
Indiana— concepts are records of signatures; checking is done "by signature"; an arbitrary mapping (adapter) can be defined. Notable authors: Doug Gregor, Jeremy Siek, Jaakko Jarvi, a lot of others I'm insulting by forgetting.
Texas— concepts are predicates of "actions" (usage of signatures; expressions). Notable authors: Bjarne Stroustrup, Gaby Dos Reis; later, Andy Sutton.
The crux of the issue is that Doug Gregor actually implemented the Indiana proposal (twice?) and Gaby never implemented the Texas proposal. By 2009, the Indiana proposal was well on track to being accepted; then ... it wasn't.
Fast forward 5 years, and now we've got a re-imagining of the Texas proposal, with no serious dissent, as all the Indiana folks moved on (out of exasperation, frustration; age; interest, whatever).
He's also mentioned the Indiana proposal led to increased compile times (as in at least 100% slower) and that the Committee came up with a ridiculous number of concepts for the standard library, which suggested they were looking at things wrong. For instance, there's little value in having CanCompareForEquality, CanCompareForInequality, HasLessThan, HasGreaterThan, HasLessThanOrEqual, and HasGreaterThanOrEqual be separate concepts; they should be grouped into, say, HasTotalOrdering, EqualityComparable, and HasPartialOrdering. The current STL gets this wrong, it wants a concept of HasPartialOrdering but it actually requires HasLessThan (and fakes equality comparison by assuming if a is not less than b and b is not less than a, then a and b must be equal). I don't fault Stepanov for this mistake, it's not obvious and it's relatively easy to tell people "just implement operator< for your types and we'll be able to sort them when needed" instead of "implement the relational operators that make sense; some implementations may use operator< to sort, while others may use operator>, and others operators < and <=, and yet others operators <, !=, and ==, etc."
I'd suggest looking at the papers that were submitted for discussion at the upcoming Lenexa Standardization meeting for references. They're located here: https://isocpp.org/blog/category/standardization
Here are some others that Stroustrup listed. I think they're probably important proposals. I imagine Stroustrup has at least some priority order in his list.
Yesterday I needed to run some errands and it hit me pretty hard how silly we've become. My seven year daughter didn't want to come with me and while I'm sure she's mature enough to stay at home by herself I went to Google to determine if I'd be viewed as a criminal or not in the eyes of my parenting peers or the state. It turned out that my local child protective services had a Q&A on their site stating that it's okay to leave a child home alone at age 11. I then went to my city and state statutes and couldn't find a single law which said it would be illegal. After a bit more research I found plenty of parents recommending that kids not only can, but should be left home alone if they are okay with it. This helps to build independence and self-esteem. I ended up leaving her at home alone for about an hour and not a single bad thing happened.
I grew up with both parents working long hours, and I was definitely a Latchkey kid. From the time I got home until right before dinner I was usually alone to do what I wanted.
I think for a few years, when I was 6 or 7, my mother required I call her every hour as a check-in, but even that relaxed by the time I was 8 or 9. My only requirement was to be home by dark, regardless of the time of year and if parents were home.
Curiously, my parents would also occasionally hire a babysitter, but I never quite understood why and what for. It was pretty random.
Homes are pretty dangerous and sometimes children do stupid things. While child protective services shouldn't be called[1] for someone leaving a child for a short time CPS needs to have clear and easy to communicate guidelines. They might want to say "11 and up; unless they're not stupid and the home is safe and you're not gone too long" but, well, the target audience needs clearer information.
[1] it'd be good if we had a "report early, report often" culture and the funding to go with it. A single report of a mild incident means nothing happens; several reports of mild incidents from different agencies means a freindly chat to see if help is needed or wanted.
"Report early, report often" sounds extremely creepy and intrusive to me. I realize my culture is fully embracing the police state all around me, and I try not to play the Orwell card too often, but how can it not seem eerily Orwellian to suggest that parents should be reported early and often? What's next, CPS monitors in the home?
It sounds creepy because you live in a police state where people abuse their powers.
Imagine a better society. A six year old child turns up at school unwashed and hungry. The parent, who normally collects the child every day, is not there at pickup time. The child lives 3 miles from school. A couple of weeks later the same child is taken to ER. The mother is evasive, but the injuries seem to match the story. The child is again unwashed and a bit dirty and hungry. There are very many cases where these kind of signs go unreported; and one of these signs on it's own probably doesn't reach a threshold where anyone (even if it is reported) will do anything about it. But when collated they start showing that maybe there is something where the parents need more help, or ultimately the child needs to be protected by removing it from it's family.
I live in a country where every single child attending A&E deparments for any reason is reported to their local child protection social workers. In the vast majority of cases nothing happens; no letters; no visits; no threats. But in some cases abused children are detected and protected. It's not perfect, but it's better than letting untrained people guess at what should or shouldn't get reported. Report early report often culture avoids the need for mandatory reporting, which is IMO worse.
When I talk about human rights my American friends say things like "obviously we believe in human rights. The only reason we don't ratify those UN things is a constitutional matter about our courts and our laws", but looking at what Americans in power shows that some of them have no concept of human rights.
A bunch of this stuff is pretty clear in international law (freedom from arbitrary interference; right to a family life for parents; right to a family life for children; family is findamental unit and should be allowed to parent; protect children from harm).
no they don't. we don't need them telling us when our children are responsible enough for particular tasks. When our first reaction is "is this illegal" we've gone too far. When bad laws influence good parents, its wrong and needs to be repealed immediately.
The first reaction a parent should have to "I might leave my child at home for a few hours" absolutely should be "is it safe?"
CPS is not there for parents who know how to assess risk. They exist for parents who by definition are bad parents. Those parents need simplistic advice, with the threat of legal action. The fact that CPS overstepped their bounds in a few cases is bad, and needs to stop, but it doesn't change the fact that the advice needs to be clear and simple.
And government totally should be trying to influence parents. I guarantee that their are some kind loving parents reading HN right now who do not have working tested fitted smoke detectors. Government here should be playing persuasive adverts; subsidising the costs of smoke detectors; providing assistance to fit those detectors; regulating the manufacture of detectors so we know they work.
The thing that has annoyed me about the discussions of these cases is that people are only talking about the disruption to this family's life. The real outrage is CPS wasting time on non abusive parents when so many children are raped and murdered. An estimate 1600 children died as a rssult of abuse or neglect from a primary care giver in 2012; that doesn't count murders by other family members.
I fully stand by my comment that the home is a dangerous place for children. Home is where children are murdered by family members; physically, sexually or emotionally abused by family members (and siblings are the greatest risk of being the abuser); most accidents happen in the home. Children can't get jobs; can't vote; are not held criminally responsible for their actions[1] -- so parents should be thinking carefully before they leave children alone in the house.
> ...government totally should be trying to influence parents. I guarantee that their are some kind loving parents reading HN right now who do not have working tested fitted smoke detectors. Government here should be playing persuasive adverts; subsidising the costs of smoke detectors; providing assistance to fit those detectors; regulating the manufacture of detectors so we know they work.
Wow, so nobody wants the government reading our phone metadata, but its no big deal if they tell us how to raise our kids? Are you kidding me? "You can't have my privacy, but I'm OK with you taking my freedom." Really?
> Home is where children are murdered by family members; physically, sexually or emotionally abused by family members (and siblings are the greatest risk of being the abuser); most accidents happen in the home.
Most accidents would happen where one spends the majority of their time. One in three car accidents happen within one mile from home [0]. Your statement says a lot of nothing.
The government needs to protect children before they're maimed by careless or stupid parents. A government agency letting you know what it considers risky behaviour is a good thing, so long as they don't set it too restrictively.
You may say "but what kind of fucking idiot would leave an 11 year old child at home alone for more than 24 hours?"
Here's a story about a woman who left her 11 year old boy alone at home while she went on a three week holiday.
That article also mentions the case of a twelve year old boy who was left alone for a fortnight.
Thus, when CPS get a report of a child alone at home it's a good idea for them to ask (but not formally; not as part of taking action) if the child is safe or if the parents are going to be back that day or not.
> "The government needs to protect children before they're maimed by careless or stupid parents."
> "Here's a story about a woman who left her 11 year old boy alone at home while she went on a three week holiday."
Nice sleight of hand. You need to work on it though, it's still too noticeable.
We're not talking about cracking down on parents that maim or abandon their children. We are talking about parents that allow their children to walk around their own goddamn neighborhood.
I definitely could have cared for myself for three weeks when I was eleven. Maybe many 11yo kids can't, but that's a function of what they haven't been taught, not age.
Every single parent alive today is descended from a long line of parents, dating back to the origin of life itself, that did not need CPS to tell them how to act.
The idea that after all of those successful iterations we are now too stupid to raise our own kids is incredibly insulting.
An interesting side effect is that most of the general populous in a larger city has very little contact with children in public. They've been removed from society at large - to the detriment of both the children and society.
It's truly ridiculous sometimes. My neighborhood has half a dozen schools in it but it's only about a mile in any direction. It has extensive walking paths, sidewalks, crosswalks, lights, etc.
Any child is within an easy 10-15 minute walk to school, and there wouldn't need to be more than 2 or 3 crossing guards to cover all the major roads and intersections. But this would be too easy, instead all the children line up at bus stops throughout the neighborhood, take a 5-10 minute bus-ride to their school and a 5-10 minute ride in the afternoon to get back home.
Parents who want to drop their kids off create chaos as hundreds of cars pack the areas around schools so they can drop-off their children. The local message boards are full of angry parents swearing at each other for driving poorly or violating some kind of unwritten rule during this drop-off/pick-up period. To say it's chaos would by minimizing it.
My understanding is that no child walks to any of the schools, even if they live across the street. The consideration is that it's too dangerous, with all the buses and cars and all. And there's a couple largish roads with people who drive too fast.
So instead of a couple crossing guards, they've created an unsafe chaos, used millions of dollars worth of equipment and hired a dozen or more bus drivers to shuttle kids back and forth to school.
Of course once our pools are open, kids run around the entire neighborhood with complete abandon, dodging hi-speed traffic in flipflops as they frogger their way to their summer fun.
I remember when I was a young child I had about a mile-by-mile area in an urban area I could free-range within. It was naturally cut-off by some major roads, but provided more than enough area for me and my friends to play around in. On occasion, I'd walk to elementary school instead of taking the bus, 3 or 4 miles away. It wasn't seen as a big deal.
When I was about 10 we moved to a rural area, and my local free-range zone exploded to a massive wooded zone full of animals, and creeks and rivers. My mother decided she wanted me to attend an after-school program across the street from my school. It was at an intersection with crosswalks and walk signals and everything. Things went well for the first couple weeks. Then one day, in great alarm, the principal of the school grabbed me before I left for the day and forbade me from crossing the street.
For the rest of the contract period with the after-school program, I had to call a taxi, wait 10-20 minute for him to show up, have him take me the 10 second drive across the street, pay the minimum fare (I think it was $5 at the time). Finally the taxi company even started complaining that this was stupid to the school, but my parents had had enough and pulled from the after school program and just let me take the bus home....where I happily walked a mile down a busy country dirt road from my bus stop to my house to put down my school stuff before heading off into the woods until it got dark.
I remember as a kid I passed about 5 crossing guards each way when I walked to/from school. Now I drive through that same community and the crossing guards have been replaced with speed bumps, bus lanes, and extended entrances to the schools. The walking path through the woods I used as a shortcut is overgrown and I bet if I asked any of the kids there today they wouldn't even know it exists.
I remember one day I was walking home from school and crossed the street not at the crosswalk. By the time I got the crossing guard who spotted me had called my mom and I got a stern ass chewing about using crosswalks (never happened again :)
Try walking those six miles to go fishing. I'd probably first have to spend 10 minutes to research suitable paths to even get there and not end up in the middle of a desert of cars.
There doesn't seem to be much in the way of real intership programs for your age group.
However, your resume is super impressive, and you're clearly gifted. I'm going to bet that there will be people who will want to support your ambitions and create an ad-hoc internship for you. So here's my advice:
Treat your internship search like a job search!
Cold-call and cold-email CEOs of NYC-based startups that use Rails or React. Medium-sized and small companies might have an easier time accommodating, but it can't hurt to try bigger companies too just for kicks.
E.g. try this line for cold-calling: "Hi, this is Lachlan. Are you $CEO_NAME at $STARTUP_NAME? Yes? Cool! I'm a 13-year-old middle school student, and I built a web app with Rails and React last year. I'm looking for an internship this summer. I was wondering if that's something you'd consider."
Regarding child labor laws: Businesses with employees tend to already have a lawyer they regularly talk to (for contracts and compliance). They should be able to run the labor law issues by their lawyer for you - maybe you'll have to wait until your 14th birthday, maybe it's possible to structure it as a "trainee" program that falls under different laws, maybe something else. So I'd just bring this issue to their attention and leave it up to them to figure it out.
"You can refuse to compromise on your rates, provided that you can afford to walk away if necessary"
I also wanted to move away from so-called freelancing, but in the end I discovered that it gives me incredible flexibility: I now cherry-pick my clients, taking only projects that are challenging and truly stimulating. I charge a very high hourly rate but I also put my soul into the project, and in the end the clients are more than happy with the work. This allows me to work for ~4 months/year(in blocks, of course), and the rest of the year is spent on personal projects, travelling and building (self-driving)race cars. Try to find your niche and go for it, it's really worth trying!
>You can refuse to compromise on your rates, provided that you can afford to walk away if necessary.
This is very important advice, and I've applied it to car purchases, condo lease agreements, cable and phone contracts, you name it.
It's about leverage. If you have alternatives, and what the person on the other side of the table offers doesn't fit your needs, take your business elsewhere. You have to be prepared to leave or say no.
On the other hand, if you can't say no, then you don't have any leverage.
The key is the perception of the other party, not the actual reality of whether you can say no or not.
Robert Ringer's amazing (and must read) book, "Winning Through Intimidation." Talks about how he manufactured the perception of being able to walk away, and why image and perception are more important than actual circumstances.
It's of course much simpler to play the part of being able to say no, when you can actually walk away...but you can hack your own perception to believe you can walk away even if you can't, and pull it off... or you can be a good actor and take some risks...
Either way... The premise is true...but it's more about the story you are selling than anything else.
"I didn't mean to cut off your hands, but I had no choice when you reached for my chips."
This is his argument for DEMANDING a contract for every business deal, especially with friends or people you trust. (I admit I am not great at this...)
He opens with a theory that most successful people who claim "hard work and a positive attitude" drive success are lying. They are either too embarrassed to admit how easy it was for them...or they can't see the forest from the trees and really have no idea why they are successful.
He has a few key points that really stand out for me...
"The results you get from a negotiation are inversely proportionate to how intimidated you are."
"With every deal...The key is to hope for a good result, but expect a negative one. (otherwise you will get discouraged way too quickly and give up.)
Image is everything...
"It’s Not What You Say Or Do That Counts, But What Your Posture Is When You Say Or Do it."
I highly recommend Winning Through Intimidation. It's not about what you think. I read it after someone else recommended it in another discussion on HN.
>> financial incentives to incarcerate...
> Do you have any sources for this?
For private prisons, the Corrections Corporation of America reportedly spends over $1 million each year on lobbying. [1][2]
Beyond private prisons, there's lobbying from prison guards' unions. For example, the California union appears to have substantial political influence, and in 2008 successfully spent $1.8 million to defeat a ballot initiative that would have reduced the prison population.[3]
Further, in some municipalities, cities use fines as revenue-raising tools, and arrest and jail people who fail to pay. See e.g. the Ferguson DOJ report.[4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_Ame...
[2] http://www.diversityinc.com/diversity-management/who-profits...
[3] http://criminology.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/volume-10-issu... p. 750 (PDF page 274)
[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/0...