> The Last Mile’s program is defying the country’s 83 percent recidivism rate. In its 10 years existence, there has been zero recidivism amongst it’s nearly 100 graduates, graduates that include Jason Jones.
Those numbers tell you everything you need to know. They're not "solving mass incarceration" any time soon.
Holy shizz, that's a lot. It's as if US laws and prisons aren't there to rehabilitate an individual but to turn him against society for good, making him a returning "customer" so that certain interest groups can keep profiting. But that's just probably my imagination running wild.
One theory I've heard is that for some particularly bad areas, Baltimore for example, the purpose is to keep people off the street for as long as possible to give young people a chance to grow up without seeing crime as a viable career choice. The idea being that some neigbhorhoods are too far gone, and rehabilitation won't work when people will be released from prison back into crime infested neighborhoods. Whether it's effective or not, I don't know.
Monday's segment of Marketplace is worth listening to.
The gist of it was that in many (all?) places in the US, a landlord can be sued if they rent to someone who has a criminal record who then went on commit another crime. As a result, few landlords will rent to them. I hang out on real estate forums and have never met anyone who would rent to someone with a criminal record.
Getting a job is a whole other problem.
That's just one example of the challenges they face.
I can't find it right now, but there's also a TED talk by a former state official (state senator?) who committed a crime and spent a very brief time in prison. It was eye opening to him how he was denied pretty much everything once he got out, and only through his connections was he able to get employment.
Couple that with the fact that the US is the country that imprisons the highest proportion of its own citizens, and it's terrifying.
That's pretty bonkers since in most European countries, your crime record is only relevant for certain jobs where money or sensitive data is at stake and nothing else.
How does society expect ex-cons to become functioning members again if they're denied housing and employment?
It's unfortunately a self-feeding circle... in the US, if you see a felon, it's likely they will go on to commit more felonies, so you won't want to hire them.
But if you don't hire them, they may be forced to commit other felonies... tragedy of the commons I suppose, just like shopping at Walmart is bad for the community but good for the individual.
It's hard to overcome these effects without legislation, but noone (sane) wants to be in the community that starts it.
As far as I can tell that’s the rearrest rate, and possibly only the rearrest rate for state offenders, which is higher than for federal (it doesn't exactly match any of the sources I've found, but that's what it seems closest to.)
Reconviction (including determination of a parole violation) rates are much lower (somewhere between 50-60% im various sources.
And both are heavily tied to other demographic, offense type, and criminal history factors that I'm going to guess are also very influential in selection for the program, so the the expected recidivism rate for those entering the program—whether measured by rearrest, reconviction, or any other standard—would probably be much lower than the overall criminal population.
> It's as if US laws and prisons aren't there to rehabilitate an individual but to turn him against society for good,
To the extent something like that is a factor, it's almost backwards: US criminal laws are very disproportionately used against people that society has turned against for reasons other than criminality. Now, it's true that the criminal “justice” system isn't rehabilitative, but it's targets not being turned against society further by it wouldn't protect them from being retargeted.
Quite possibly they are educating people out of the 17% that would not be re-offenders.
However, is is bloody obvious that if a person cant survive/earn money legally, they will do so illegally - so the system of 'justice' is just an offence to the senses cause it causes more crime.
It's especially strange to me to see such future-blind thinking in the message board of the world's most famous startup accelerator.
The Last Mile's website (https://thelastmile.org/about/) lists not 100 graduates, but 240 "returned citizens" who have successfully rejoined society, still with a 0% recidivism rate. This article said they only have 100 or so graduates, and the article was published in January of last year.
Assuming the article's graduates are the same thing as the website's returned citizens, that means that The Last Mile has managed to produce about 1.4 times more graduates in the past year than in the entire previous 10 years combined.
Healthy skepticism is healthy, but to dismiss this program's meteoric rise, huge potential, and noble cause without even a cursory attempt to understand them is being intentionally obtuse.
I suspect it's likely to promote a certain viewpoint. Hacker News has a vested interest in not questioning a system that it benefits from.
For instance, anyone who might be critical of a US historical policy typically has "no business" here because politics cause ideological flame wars, or some other half baked reasoning.
While it is very encouraging at fostering dialogue on tech, once the dialogue goes against Hacker News's ultimate purpose, to make money, that's where you start to see weird accounts and strangely offensive comments questioning the act of questioning.
you realize that because they're in prison there's this other thing that prevents them from graduating to a job... namely their prison terms. just so we're clear: that there have only been 100 grads that successfully didn't return to prison doesn't tell you anything about how many finished the program and haven't been released yet.
moreover, a small program with limited funding running in a few prisons not solving mass incarceration isn't anymore surprising than a thumb in a dyke not preventing a flood.
instead you should be saying/asking/imagining: what would the completion and recidivism rate be if this program ran in all prisons. or even better: what would the incarceration rate be if this kind of vocational training were available for free in all poor neighborhoods.
> California Fair Chance Act, which assists Californians with conviction histories to re-enter society by prohibiting employers from asking about conviction history before making a job offer.
I guess if they are significantly cheaper than others, people will hire them. There is a long way to $0 from the salaries people on HN say developers make in the US. I do not know any convicted people, however, I do know jobless people who were 'made redundant' by covid or before that and they would work for very little (enough to get by, but not more than that) if they could work from home as developer. I bet that goes for many people including ex convicts.
That would include me. I am not a convict, but I am unemployed. My many years of professional development experience is all in embedded and other hardware control software that generally needs to be done onsite. At this point I would be glad to do any remote work, regardless of pay.
In 2011-2014 I taught English and mathematics as a volunteer in a prison, and unless you’ve been there, nothing can prepare you for how truly awful America’s prison system is. The federal system is a little better, but when you get down to state prisons it gets exponentially worse.
In my humble opinion, we have a vengeance and retribution mentality towards prisons in this country, when we should have a rehabilitation and re-integration focus.
I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons. Somewhere the scales must be balanced, and if not in prisons, where then? Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
That is not to say that prisons should be blind to the fact that inmates will eventually be released. There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch?
What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me.
Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that since it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.
Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished, so that they don't fall back into a life of crime as the only life available to them. If justice is mostly retribution, then society is not well served. Even further, society can profit from the valuable contributions of people who've learned the error of their ways.
> What makes you think retribution is the principal component of justice? That seems very wrong to me.
It seems right to me. In my opinion, justice comes from the concept of reciprocity. In other words, if someone does bad, it is just that bad is done to them (retribution). The reverse is also true: it is just that good things occur to people who do good deeds.
> Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that the fact that it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.
It's wrong to write as if this is a closed question. There are plenty of philosophers who aren't utilitarians and who see justice grounded elsewhere than "whatever I think will be good for society".
Sure, it's not a closed question. I'm mostly pointing out, as an example, the fact that society operates the mechanics of justice these days, it is the interests of society that are paramount. Making individuals whole is a part of that, but avoiding repetition is also vital, or else the punishment plays a part in causing crime later.
I don't think I have the ability. I can, however, say with a some certainty that retribution is not principal component of justice, because a moment's consideration shows more considerations at play.
Retribution had a place - in Babylonian times, when eye for an eye was the rule. Things have moved on.
Things haven't moved on. All modern justice systems continue to be based on retribution. They seek to punish the guilty (proportionally to their crimes) and to exonerate the innocent. It's all well and good to argue "this punishment is too severe, it does not fit the crime". But to argue that "the world has moved on" from retributive justice is just naivete.
If you're interested in a defense of retributive justice, read Kant:
> Punishment by a court can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. Punishment can only be inflicted in response to a crime committed, i.e., retributive justice only. A human being ought never to be treated merely as a means to an end as all human beings have an innate personality even thought they may be condemned to lose their civil personality. The law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises, in accordance with the pharisaical saying, “It is better for one man to die than for an entire people to perish.” For if justice goes, then so does the value of human beings. However, what if a proposal comes forwards to preserve the life of a criminal sentenced to death in exchange for allowing dangerous experiments to be performed, so that physicians can learn something of benefit to the commonwealth? A court would reject with contempt such a proposal form a medical college, for justice ceases to be justice if it can be bought for any price whatsoever.
You'll notice, I hope, from my comments that I've never said retribution wasn't an element. What I've been arguing is that it isn't and shouldn't be the principal component in modern justice.
An anecdote that frames my thinking: the most recent crime I've suffered was when I've been assaulted on the street - bikejacked, in fact, pulled off my motorcycle at a stop light by one hoodlum, kicked in the head (though helmeted), while another rode off on my bike. In the moment, there's anger at the perpetrators. But more than that, I feel pity; pity that their lives are so empty that the only way they see to get their kicks is to do this kind of thing.
They should suffer consequences (i.e. a deterrent), sure, but I don't really want retribution. Revenge wouldn't have brought back my bike (I'd put months of work into that bike, getting it back on the road, but when the bike was recovered it had been crashed into a parked car). It certainly wouldn't have made me feel safer on the road; if anything, it would have made the us (well paid) vs them (aimless, hopeless poor youth) dichotomy worse, not better.
As it turned out, the London police are much worse than the hoodlums. Didn't get a line-up of faces until more than 4 months after the fact, long after any hope of remembering anything. I have a lot more anger at the police than I do at those hoodlums.
I want that kind of crime to no longer be a risk. That requires a systematic solution, not a point fix of retribution, which I don't want - I don't and didn't want those kids' lives ruined. They'll just do even worse things.
I can imagine different crimes where retribution and revenge might play a larger part in the emotions of the victim. I think those crimes are a small minority of total crime, and even then justice is and needs to be rational, not emotional. Revenge, as a reaction, overreacts. Justice needs to be balanced. So I'm not sure it can be a principal component even for that minority of crime.
Turn the other cheek; violence begets violence; etc. But some people seem to use the word "justice" and mean "revenge".
The idea of prisons should be to simply keep people away from society so they cannot harm others. There's no need to heap punishment on top of that. That's medieval and doesn't belong in modern civilization.
It's part of modern civilization for the same reason people enjoy it when the bad guy gets punished at the end of a movie. This is the essence of justice, whether you have the stomach to face it or not.
I enjoy watching movies as much as anyone, but that doesn't transfer into enjoying people being hurt/punished in real life. I'm happy to leave my darker impulses behind when exiting the theater.
You can't leave them behind and I'm sure you've wanted someone punished for some misdeeds they've committed. This isn't a bad thing and is an overwhelmingly natural response.
> That's medieval and doesn't belong in modern civilization.
The concept of retribution as justice goes far back beyond medieval, to at least the Bronze Age (see Hammurabi).
In addition, it seems a common component across cultures. The utilitarian view is by no means nearly as universal.
Here is a modern example: every few years you hear about some former Nazi Concentration Camp guard that was arrested. From a utilitarian point of view it is completely useless. The old guard is never ever going to take part in anything like that again. However, from a justice as retribution for misdeeds, it make perfect sense.
Or if someone kills his wife in a passion crime, along that logic, what is the point of jailing him then? He doesn’t have another wife to kill and so there is no further harm to society expected. So he should walk free if the only objective is no further harm to society.
> Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished
Food for thought, but this is only true if we release them. For most of history, we simply executed criminals.
In most of the world, that's still the case (thieves without hands etc).
Without making a moral judgment on what's right or wrong, if most societies evolved that way, it probably means it's conducive to the long-term health and survival of societies. Survivorship bias and all that.
I think this actually varies a lot across cultures, although one common principle, historically at least, is that justice is less deadly for the rich than it is for the poor. For instance, the concept of blood money reduces the punishment of murder to a fine
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
Um... what? This is borderline advocating for all sentences be for life.
If a sentence is given and served, the convicted deserve a chance at living. The US has a terrifying and awful fetish for punishing lower/middle-class folks who commit some of the pettiest of crimes, many of which struggle to re-integrate with society if/when they're released and therefore continue to serve a sentence long after they're no longer in prison. Compared with, for example, a vast majority of white-collar crime that often has victims an order of magnitude or two greater than most petty crime.
You were complaining that inmates would deign to find work after being incarcerated.
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
YES, everyone should be happy if ex-felons are able to find work after leaving prison. Otherwise, they just go back their previous behaviors (eg ~80% recidivism). If they can't get work, that's effectively a "life sentence".
I was not complaining about anything. They aren't ex-felons, after they are released, they are felons.
I do not think you understood my original comment, since you keep quoting that sentence only. Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater? There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work ...
You seem to have a very limited understanding of why people commit crimes, which makes for extremely uninformed opinions.
Punishing those who commit crime demonstrably does little to nothing to dissuade them from future crime. Given an understanding of the reasons why many people commit crimes makes this obvious: by taking angry people without hope, and giving them more reasons to be angry and even less hope, we end up with an incredibly high recidivism rate. Meanwhile, harshly punishing those who've committed crimes usually doesn't make the victims of those crimes feel better, either.
So if it's not benefitting victims, and making re-offense more likely, why do we do it? So third parties can feel a sense of self-righteousness that they call "justice?" That seems to be the primary reason!
Sometimes people in dire straits do bad things, and hurt others. Punishment is reasonable, but objectively, rehabilitation is also needed. Restitution to victims, and victim statements, also help. We can look around the world and see objectively that there are many ways to do this better than we're doing, by any measure. It's both more humane, and more effective.
If someone murdered a loved one of mine, I don't see how having the state execute them would make things any better for me. I'd be satisfied if they were simply imprisoned so they could not hurt others. Punishing them further wouldn't help me at all.
> Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater?
Criminal law is about wrongs against the state. In regards to payment for restitution, how is the state being restored by somebody rotting in jail?
What sort of payment is this that the state may end up even poorer than before? In fact, if serving in prison is payment, then I'd say it's the state that's paying for the prison and all the harms which follow.
If the state should find itself awfully harmed from its own criminal justice policy, from where shall the state seek remedy?
1) Most DV cases are false allegations. In the West, no proof is required for a female to file a complaint against a man she knows.
In some areas, almost all criminal court cases now involve false DV allegations. There's various reasons for that, but when you have a child custody battle, everybody tells the wife to just fill something in the complaint form. There's no penalty for the wife regardless of the trial outcome.
2) Serving your sentence should be enough, esp. given #1.
> There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work
If you're a man, you're only one phone call away from a false allege. Something to think about if you're in a relationship. Or hiring.
Depending on whether you look at state or local prisons, anywhere from 1/3 to almost 1/2 of inmates are detained for non-violent offenses. With a reasonable rehabilitation program that focuses on getting people out of the situation that led them to petty theft, drug dealing, etc in the first place, we could probably take 30-40% of the population out of prisons and reintegrate them to society with no discernible impact on public safety.
This would be without even touching any “wife-beater,” rapist or murderer.
There are a lot of people unnecessarily locked up for absurd sentences compared to the crime who absolutely deserve another chance at society. We should actively want that. It’s a net good for society and it happens to be a lot less expensive, too.
I can empathize with how you feel (even how a victim could feel) but a public good will come from teaching prisoners a skill so they don't have to victimize someone else when they get out.
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice
That ain't necessarily so, and not every penal system has that philosophy. If prisons turn out people who are unemployable, they will simply keep doing whatever they can do to make a living. If lawful society doesn't take them, someone else will. Justice has to work at the societal level.
I can't think of anything more cruel and worse for society as a whole than to permanently damage some people because it feels vaguely cathartic and might serve as a "warning" to others.
I upvoted you, but I want to make sure my reasons for doing so are accurate. This was sarcasm, yes? It might not be so obvious if others read through this so just want to clarify.
I was drily sarcastic yes, as it is obvious that very few people are in prison for assault any argument that makes an appeal to the emotions with the phrasing used is somewhat deserving of being punctured. I thought my response good at indicating the absurdity.
By stating your hypothetical "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" you made a condition only sometimes encountered - violent crime - a reason to treat all criminals worse.
I assumed that you did not actually believe that all criminals in America had assaulted someone, but if you did not believe it then arguing for the punishment of people who did not commit violent acts (by making it more difficult for them to get jobs when released) seems far worse than if you just did believe a ridiculous thing.
And really by using in your argument an emotional hypothetical about the assaulted to argue for denying something to people who have not committed assault it becomes difficult to know exactly how to take it.
The argument is hard to take seriously if you don't really believe it is true for all criminals, and it is difficult to believe you think it is true for all criminals.
You are building the strawman of strawmen here. I never gave a reason that prisoners should be treated worse, as that implies I am arguing for an increase in punishment compared to the situation today. Which I nowhere did.
Perhaps to nuance the discussion a bit, the majority of people in state prisons in the US are there for violent offenses, and state prisons hold a majority of all prisoners. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
There's a program helping people prepare for getting jobs after release - you said "Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?" it seems at least some part of you is arguing maybe this program should be done away with. I mean maybe this is not what you are arguing, but it is sort of reasonable that a lot of people seem to be taking that as what you are arguing based on what you wrote.
But I never said that, you're building a strawman.
I said that punishment is a necessary part of prison, it is the main thing of justice. You may or may not agree with that position, but unless you are willing to reply to me on a good faith basis maybe you just shouldn't. The HN guidelines say
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It is not sort of reasonable that you think "some part of me"(what do you mean by that?) argues for it, because I never wrote it. If you or other people did not understand some part of my original comment, ask for a clarification instead of what has happened in these comment chains.
I am interested in whether there is any actual evidence retribution works, in terms of recidivism. My first guess would be that the awful experiences in prison just fuck up people more.
Given that some percentage of people in jail or prison are there for the crime of possessing drugs, something which college students seem to do regularly without consequences, I'm not really surprised that those people don't re-offend.
One way to see whether 87% is high or low might be to compare it to the rate in other countries. We seems to be near the top of that list, but not alone there.
Jail or prison itself may or may not drive people toward more crime, but the difficult in finding housing or a job with a criminal record certainly does a lot to kill hope.
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.
One of the arguments that Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is that prisons, by virtue of hiding the retribution from public view, can perform nearly arbitrarily heinous retributions on people. When we tore people apart in the street as punishment it was public and could provoke outrage. Now basically nobody knows what happens inside prisons.
I say this knowing full-well that I might seek retribution if something awful were to ever happen to me or my loved ones, but:
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.
No amount of retribution will ever be enough. The concept of making things right is a delusion that parents infect their children with.
However, the most effective way to inflict retribution is to teach an individual the meaning of their actions and have them live with the guilt of those actions. Another word for that is rehabilitation.
American prisons are based on childish like-for-like retribution (your limited someone's rights, you get your rights limited). It didn't work when I was 8, so why would it work for an adult? All that we achieve is sending people to crime college, where fellow inmates further numb moral fiber and empathy, then release graduated criminals back into the wild. That's certainly one way to make sure that there is always demand for retribution.
It sure seems like some people on this page are very much in favor of people who've committed crimes going hungry, even after they serve their sentences.
Idiomatically, I'm also in favor of every person, inside or outside of prison, getting the education they need in a trade that suits them.
Our society would benefit enormously, far beyond the cost of providing the education. So again, free lunches for all! Literally and metaphorically!
My grandfather and my high school science teacher both taught in youth "detention centres" for periods in their career. They both said students there were better behaved than regular schools. For the "inmates" (for lack of better term), school was a privilege and if they misbehaved, they couldn't attend. School was a good break from your cell/room.
Honestly, I have seen that mentality on HN a lot, but not much outside on real life. I think HN has strong bias here - and partially ideological bias, surprisingly often they want everyone to home school.
It's really hard for an audience on HN to truly appreciate the situations incarcerated people find themselves in.
I think it's fine to "teach prisoners coding" as along as the people involved are aware that to even get to that point, how much BASIC education has to be re-done or done for the first time. Moreover, things like resumes, job hunting, and relating to people in a work environment is something that these folks need to learn and practice. Most have never done that. I've not taught in prisons, but have done ABE (Adult Basic Ed, which is all but required for folks to get through before they can even start a GRE program, and which many parolees are required to enroll in).
In other words, "learning to code" is great, but instruction for literacy, numeracy, and socialization HAVE TO OCCUR before that's even considered, otherwise it's just a cruel pipe-dream.
We so lucky, most of us, to have grown up in an environment where learning achievement is expected and supported by responsible adults. Most of the incarcerated folks have lived a level of depravation that we can't even imagine.
It's hard to improve the situation without people screaming about how you're CODDLING MURDERERS! Especially when it involves spending taxpayer money, even if it saves enormous sums in the long run due to reduced recidivism. Many voters are unhappy with anything less than recreating Dante's Inferno, so it is politically risky to implement these reforms that have been so successful in other countries.
> It's hard to improve the situation without people screaming about how you're CODDLING MURDERERS!
Who? Twitter idiots?
If you're going to take the weakest of strawman arguments for the opposing side, you're not going to get very far in your thinking.
There are plenty of ideas that aren't politically risky that don't get implemented, that would positively affect criminals and non-criminals alike - what's your explanation of such phenomena?
Blaming voters for the deeds of politicians has got to be one of the weakest strawmans I've heard in a while. It is the job of the politicians, domain experts and the media to present viable options for the populace to choose from. If the option chosen is shit, it isn't the person working 9-5 and raising a family that was asked to choose who is at fault, I hope that much is obvious.
It's more like no politician wants to be seen as "soft on crime," and this carries over to "soft on criminals." Doing anything to help people in prison once they get out is politically risky in a lot of places. Just look at the number of states where it's still legal to ask if someone has a criminal record on a job application. This not wanting to be "soft on crime" is particularly pathological in jurisdictions where judges are elected.
I recall being asked on a job application whether I was ever arrested, regardless of conviction. In some places, mere involvement with law enforcement is taboo.
Possible but costly. The US lacks a single information system regarding criminal history. There are private investigators, other private companies in the business of "record retrieval", but the results are not 100% accurate.
Maybe not right away, but 5 years down the road when you're in an ugly power struggle with some other jerk for a middle management position HR might get an anonymous tip about how you lied on your resume.
If it made financial sense, there would be rehabilitation and re-integration.
In my humble opinion, we have a magical wishful thinking (should this, should that) mentality towards the way the world works, when we should have an evidence based, rational approach
instead.
Often times in my opinion, those people then when they get released are a whole different person and you can learn lots from them about life and especically appreciating things we (outside) take for granted. And in my opinion such a program solves the last step after the release, and that is reintegrating.
Entry level tech jobs are remarkably scarce and difficult to obtain/maintain. Even with a masters and experience it takes 100+ applications. Most companies don’t hire programmers and the ones that do often contract it out overseas.
I know there are caveats and counter-anecdotes but this has been my set of observations over the last 10 years.
It is beyond frustrating to me to see how many jobs get filled with fraudulent H1B employees when there is no shortage of entry level coders available domestically.
A lot (and I mean 90%+) of H1Bs are outright lying about their experience in the tech field. At least from my short time doing hiring for a position in Texas. I eventually went to our management and got them to stop listening to recruiting body shops and hire someone local.
It's because the 10x engineer is real: many people learn coding just for earning money, not like 20 years ago when most people did it out of passion. This means that there are more people that can't provide enough business value to be justified in a tech company.
At the same time they can use their coding skills to make non-tech office jobs more automated.
When I look over the interview and coding exercise results from entry-level applicants, I can understand how some of the candidates will apply and interview a lot before landing a role. There’s a pretty sharp clustering into “can very likely code” and “did not demonstrate they could productively code”.
Well, we certainly hope they’re decent candidates. ;)
But to the point of your question, no. It’s Boston-area typical entry-level SWE, whether self-taught, boot-camp, or college grad. We’re not even top-15 CS program competitive at that rate.
> If the bar is considerably higher than "can very likely code", then I question whether those roles are actually entry-level
I think discussions around "entry level" jobs are often muddied by the dual meanings of the term.
Companies want to hire experienced people as "entry level" to their company. As in, the position we are hiring you for does not have any kind of seniority.
Fresh Grads want to find an "entry level" position to the entire industry.
This confusion is part of why you see "entry level" job postings asking for years of experience, essentially asking for an intermediate skill level, not a junior skill level.
In my experience hiring for jr webdev and full stack roles, about 1 in 5 people could pass fizzbuzz (even when the mathematical algorithm was explained in writing). About 1 in 100 completed the basic web app demo (untimed, take home, expected to take between 30 minutes and 2 hours, in any language, with a test suite included as a shell script). I often hired the first person even remotely qualified with the intent on teaching the gap because hiring took so long. This was in Chicago from about 2011 to 2018.
What does it have to do with the quality of the candidates? Salaries are often not discussed before the end of the process, especially for junior roles where applicants can rarely force the hiring manager/recruiter to disclose a budget.
Even entry-level candidates have some idea of what jobs pay.
Some recruiters are more circumspect, but a lot of them will give a salary range if you ask.
That information can also be found on places like Glassdoor or by talking to acquaintances about the offers they got or getting second-hand accounts of offers that people got. That information can be pretty inaccurate, but people still make decisions based on it.
There is a big difference between knowing coding syntax (for beginners that is typically what they call coding) and being able to write applications.
A lot of false hope is raised like this. And even worse: there are programmes where they ask for money to teach people how to code and give them the false impression of getting a job easily.
> Entry level tech jobs are remarkably scarce and difficult to obtain/maintain.
Entry level jobs are available everywhere - contributing to open source programs. Of course, nobody is going to immediately write you a check for that. But once you build a track record of competent contributions, people will be willing to pay you for more, and may even hire you.
I'm proud that many contributors to the D language have leveraged that into very well paying jobs.
> But once you build a track record of competent contributions
how hard is this? especially for the population who is in need of actual employment.
I am a cs student and has worked professionally but even then making any meaningful contribution to any decent language is beyond what I can afford (time/energy/financial-wise).
More often than not, there is a lack of documentation (yes, I know this can be something I can contribute), very strict requirements for any pull requests, etc.
Dunno, I never kept track. But I also know that a big motivator for D Conference sponsors is recruiting, and a big reason people attend is to get recruited. It's a win all around.
> how hard is this?
It's as hard as you can handle. Of course, competently doing the harder things gets you more leet cred.
> beyond what I can afford (time/energy/financial-wise).
If you're out of work, you have the time, and it costs nothing to contribute.
> very strict requirements for any pull requests
That's right. We're only interested in quality professional work, as any business would. Sub-par work just causes the rest of us problems.
WRT to the last point, just put what you can in a PR and we'll review it - always tell someone if you think they're wrong, but work just hard when helping them be right and the world ends up a better place.
I recently started working for the D foundation - the pay per hour is pretty reasonable considering I'm 20, but I nominally only do a few hours a week so I wouldn't be able to live off of it.
I basically got the job by bothering to write a nice email asking to do it as far as I can tell - I like to think I know what I'm doing (!) but realistically this is a sociopolitical thing not magic.
We have a few more people also working for the foundation who are paid more than me, you could live off that.
The D community is small but very efficient in places, there are a bunch of companies hiring D developers for quite a bit of money, just no where near as many as there are (say) C++ shops. For example, the company funding my position at the foundation manages about 6 Billion dollars raised to the power of D - we're lucky to have them.
We do need some fresh blood, but we can change that now we have people working on it.
Edit: Forgot my birthday was 2 days ago (too much programming rots the brain)
This seems like a neat idea, but wouldn't it be more pragmatic to teach them skills they can use more universally to get jobs for which maybe there's much more cultural inclination?
Like carpentry, electrician, construction, plumbing?
Maybe it's prejudiced, but all the people I know that 'got in trouble' eventually made their way to construction crews. It worked well.
White Collar jobs come along with a ton of other social baggage and expectations (and prejudices) whereas highly skilled labour tends not to.
And there are construction jobs literally everywhere.
Finally, they can pay very well. Everyone is in need of a good carpenter.
You are right. I don't want to sound bitter but I guess this is easier to teach by trainers who are not very skilled or experienced; following a bootcamp might be enough to write a programming texbook for beginners and the inexperienced not able to tell the difference, whereas making a cabinet by an inexperienced trainer will immediately be obvious.
In addition, I can imagine there is more funding available for this and therefore easier to milk.
> Like carpentry, electrician, construction, plumbing?
This may not be a popular opinion on HN, but it is much harder to learn how to be a passible electrician or plumber than it is to learn how to be a passible programer.
I worked plenty of construction jobs when I was younger. Electricians and plumbers are blue-collar jobs, but they tend to be pretty smart people.
> This may not be a popular opinion on HN, but it is much harder to learn how to be a passible electrician or plumber than it is to learn how to be a passible programer.
Perhaps another unpopular opinion, but you don’t even have to be a good programmer to make what most people would consider decent money. Is this the same for any trades?
My construction experience was mostly moving heavy crap from one pile to another pile, so I can't really judge the relative skill of individual electricians or plumbers.
However, an unskilled or sloppy electrician will have a pretty low life expectancy.
Edit:
Sorry. That might have seemed snarky.
Most of these jobs have pretty strict licensing and certification requirements. An improperly wired or plumbed house is pretty dangerous, so a lot of effort is put into making sure that does not happen. I think the unskilled electricians would be filtered out earlier in their training.
True. I’ve worked with skilled trades electricians, industrial weld inspection, etc. The programmers found in your average IT department wouldn’t make it far.
> Like carpentry, electrician, construction, plumbing?
Yes, there should be more of an emphasis on the skilled trades but I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think most of the objections to one approach over the other are answered by having a range of options for inmates based on interest and aptitude. Tech would just be one option. There is enormous human potential for good going to waste in our prisons. There is no silver bullet, including efforts like this, but every ex-con given a real chance is a victory.
This is nice and all, but why is everyone focused on "coding" trade schools? Can you really learn enough to make $200k a year in a "boot camp" style coding school? If so, why not doctors and lawyers too?
So, i'm not a big supporter of these things because I think it trivializes the amount of effort it actually takes to be a useful team member. The people I work with are doing the logical equivalent of rebuilding the flight control surfaces of a helicopter while its flying in formation. These aren't the kinds of skills you learn in 6 weeks. Many of us have years of formal schooling combined with 10x that in personal learning hours before we even landed our first jobs. Add on a decade+ of professional work experience/etc. I'm not trying to sound arrogant, but I suspect that if someone tried to measure the knowledge required for some of these jobs people on this board hold, it would dwarf pretty much all but a few other professions. Its also not to say, that its not possible to be productive with a couple years of HS/AP level comp-sci classes and a year or two of toy programs (I landed my first programming job in HS, making barely more than minimum wage). Only that those jobs are the floor, and much harder to come by now that everyone and their brother is learning coding.
So frankly, some people have the interest/drive/aptitude into making software engineering their life, and some peoples strengths lie elsewhere. I think its doing everyone a disservice not to provide other options to prisoners, be that AC repair, or law degrees.
At my company, we've had two people transfer over from non-dev department to our dev department after going through a coding bootcamp, and both have worked out well.
They come in pretty junior, of course, and they're not making $200k either, but I'd say that anyone with the right mindset can learn what they need to learn at a bootcamp as easily as they can in an undergrad program, and anyone without the right mindset is going to struggle with either.
There is MUCH more pure memorization required for doctors and lawyers, and it's not even close.
That said, I agree overall: software development shouldn't be the only thing taught in prison--or any other similar program.
It’s a good experiment then. Either you’re wrong and these programs will be a success. Or, you’re right and these programs will fail. I think the latter will happen
Tangential question - is the ability to "code", i.e. develop software, an innate talent or can anyone learn to do it well enough with sufficient training and self-motivated work? Will there be a percentage of incarcerated, or bootcamp students for that matter, that just won't get it?
My personal opinion based on experience, it's similar with driving but harder. If you want to learn, anyone will eventually able to achieve "average" / "good" level. But only a portion with aligned interest, dedication and passion can breakthrough to expert / master level.
And for those who haven't had any interest on those topics and don't want to try won't be able to.
Disagree on this analogy. The standard deviation in the driving ability curve is much smaller than the one for coding ability. There are a TON of mediocre coders who many companies won’t touch. The other commenter’s basketball analogy is more apt.
Then people just discriminate on the basis or race/appearances. I don't think there's any getting around the fact that employers want to know this information and will try and infer it if they don't have it.
Certain fields legitimately should ask. If you’ve been convicted of financial crimes or theft a bank should know before hiring you. Likewise schools should know if you’ve hurt children before.
100%. We’re seeing a huge (loud) “help the cons” movement, but the fact is a lot of them are bad people and we need to tread carefully. I for one will certainly not hire somebody who has committed certain classes of crimes, no matter how “rehabilitated” they claim they are.
> On average, it cost about $75,000 a year to house a prisoner in a state like California
Damn, that's, um, a lot. And here I am, with a degree in CS and over 2 years of experience, earning less than one-third of it in my third world country.
Huh, I wonder if they're going to let Ross Ulbrict get back online. I mean the guy is serving Double Life +40.
Good the last mile, I hope these prisoners find some solace in these opportunities and can channel their time and energy into a skill like this. I'm not sure how many tech firms will take ex-cons, but maybe this changes things as so many tech firms will turn a blind eye to drug related matters now.
You could also look at this from another perspective: teach prisoners coding so we have another source of desperate and obedient just-barely-competent tech grunts to swamp our actual experts and turn them into babysitters and quality control while in turn driving down their wages.
I think it’s a wonderful idea but it’s going to require a ton of help both political, social, and economic to really become a thing that makes a difference.
State prisons in the US are hell holes. The facilities are terrible, the people (many) are legitimately terrible, and the staff are terrible too.
First you have to find a place where you can have computers at all, no googling for answers because they won’t be allowed internet access.
Then you have to select from the general population, people who won’t destroy the machines, have the social and study skills required to complete the training. It’ll be very few.
Then there’s the absolutely dipshit power tripping staff. Do you know of any good teachers who want to drive out to a Texas prison in the middle of nowhere each day to teach programming?
I have a brother in state prison who would love a program like this. He’s also far more intelligent than me. But to hear him describe the people and conditions, it’s really bad.
I want this to be a thing for inmates but it’s going to require a lot of work.
I’m a felon with a computer science degree from a well known university ( not MIT level ). I have 8 years of progressive industry experience. Granted I didn’t get the felony until I already was working for many years, and it’s a felony DWI, and I’ve never been to jail
180 comments
[ 39.8 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadThose numbers tell you everything you need to know. They're not "solving mass incarceration" any time soon.
Holy shizz, that's a lot. It's as if US laws and prisons aren't there to rehabilitate an individual but to turn him against society for good, making him a returning "customer" so that certain interest groups can keep profiting. But that's just probably my imagination running wild.
The gist of it was that in many (all?) places in the US, a landlord can be sued if they rent to someone who has a criminal record who then went on commit another crime. As a result, few landlords will rent to them. I hang out on real estate forums and have never met anyone who would rent to someone with a criminal record.
Getting a job is a whole other problem.
That's just one example of the challenges they face.
https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/01/the-afterlife-of-mass...
I can't find it right now, but there's also a TED talk by a former state official (state senator?) who committed a crime and spent a very brief time in prison. It was eye opening to him how he was denied pretty much everything once he got out, and only through his connections was he able to get employment.
Couple that with the fact that the US is the country that imprisons the highest proportion of its own citizens, and it's terrifying.
How does society expect ex-cons to become functioning members again if they're denied housing and employment?
But if you don't hire them, they may be forced to commit other felonies... tragedy of the commons I suppose, just like shopping at Walmart is bad for the community but good for the individual.
It's hard to overcome these effects without legislation, but noone (sane) wants to be in the community that starts it.
> Holy shizz, that's a lot.
As far as I can tell that’s the rearrest rate, and possibly only the rearrest rate for state offenders, which is higher than for federal (it doesn't exactly match any of the sources I've found, but that's what it seems closest to.)
Reconviction (including determination of a parole violation) rates are much lower (somewhere between 50-60% im various sources.
And both are heavily tied to other demographic, offense type, and criminal history factors that I'm going to guess are also very influential in selection for the program, so the the expected recidivism rate for those entering the program—whether measured by rearrest, reconviction, or any other standard—would probably be much lower than the overall criminal population.
> It's as if US laws and prisons aren't there to rehabilitate an individual but to turn him against society for good,
To the extent something like that is a factor, it's almost backwards: US criminal laws are very disproportionately used against people that society has turned against for reasons other than criminality. Now, it's true that the criminal “justice” system isn't rehabilitative, but it's targets not being turned against society further by it wouldn't protect them from being retargeted.
However, is is bloody obvious that if a person cant survive/earn money legally, they will do so illegally - so the system of 'justice' is just an offence to the senses cause it causes more crime.
The Last Mile's website (https://thelastmile.org/about/) lists not 100 graduates, but 240 "returned citizens" who have successfully rejoined society, still with a 0% recidivism rate. This article said they only have 100 or so graduates, and the article was published in January of last year.
Assuming the article's graduates are the same thing as the website's returned citizens, that means that The Last Mile has managed to produce about 1.4 times more graduates in the past year than in the entire previous 10 years combined.
Healthy skepticism is healthy, but to dismiss this program's meteoric rise, huge potential, and noble cause without even a cursory attempt to understand them is being intentionally obtuse.
For instance, anyone who might be critical of a US historical policy typically has "no business" here because politics cause ideological flame wars, or some other half baked reasoning.
While it is very encouraging at fostering dialogue on tech, once the dialogue goes against Hacker News's ultimate purpose, to make money, that's where you start to see weird accounts and strangely offensive comments questioning the act of questioning.
you realize that because they're in prison there's this other thing that prevents them from graduating to a job... namely their prison terms. just so we're clear: that there have only been 100 grads that successfully didn't return to prison doesn't tell you anything about how many finished the program and haven't been released yet.
moreover, a small program with limited funding running in a few prisons not solving mass incarceration isn't anymore surprising than a thumb in a dyke not preventing a flood.
instead you should be saying/asking/imagining: what would the completion and recidivism rate be if this program ran in all prisons. or even better: what would the incarceration rate be if this kind of vocational training were available for free in all poor neighborhoods.
A background check produces information not a decision.
> California Fair Chance Act, which assists Californians with conviction histories to re-enter society by prohibiting employers from asking about conviction history before making a job offer.
In my humble opinion, we have a vengeance and retribution mentality towards prisons in this country, when we should have a rehabilitation and re-integration focus.
That is not to say that prisons should be blind to the fact that inmates will eventually be released. There are plenty of people who have committed no crime, but go hungry. Where is their free lunch?
Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that since it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.
Society has a vital interest in reintegrating people who have been punished, so that they don't fall back into a life of crime as the only life available to them. If justice is mostly retribution, then society is not well served. Even further, society can profit from the valuable contributions of people who've learned the error of their ways.
It seems right to me. In my opinion, justice comes from the concept of reciprocity. In other words, if someone does bad, it is just that bad is done to them (retribution). The reverse is also true: it is just that good things occur to people who do good deeds.
> Justice is a deep concept - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/ is an overview, and it's not short - but on plain sight, I'd say that the fact that it is the public, through the medium of government, that enforces justice, it should do so with a utilitarian view.
It's wrong to write as if this is a closed question. There are plenty of philosophers who aren't utilitarians and who see justice grounded elsewhere than "whatever I think will be good for society".
Retribution had a place - in Babylonian times, when eye for an eye was the rule. Things have moved on.
If you're interested in a defense of retributive justice, read Kant:
> Punishment by a court can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. Punishment can only be inflicted in response to a crime committed, i.e., retributive justice only. A human being ought never to be treated merely as a means to an end as all human beings have an innate personality even thought they may be condemned to lose their civil personality. The law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaemonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises, in accordance with the pharisaical saying, “It is better for one man to die than for an entire people to perish.” For if justice goes, then so does the value of human beings. However, what if a proposal comes forwards to preserve the life of a criminal sentenced to death in exchange for allowing dangerous experiments to be performed, so that physicians can learn something of benefit to the commonwealth? A court would reject with contempt such a proposal form a medical college, for justice ceases to be justice if it can be bought for any price whatsoever.
An anecdote that frames my thinking: the most recent crime I've suffered was when I've been assaulted on the street - bikejacked, in fact, pulled off my motorcycle at a stop light by one hoodlum, kicked in the head (though helmeted), while another rode off on my bike. In the moment, there's anger at the perpetrators. But more than that, I feel pity; pity that their lives are so empty that the only way they see to get their kicks is to do this kind of thing.
They should suffer consequences (i.e. a deterrent), sure, but I don't really want retribution. Revenge wouldn't have brought back my bike (I'd put months of work into that bike, getting it back on the road, but when the bike was recovered it had been crashed into a parked car). It certainly wouldn't have made me feel safer on the road; if anything, it would have made the us (well paid) vs them (aimless, hopeless poor youth) dichotomy worse, not better.
As it turned out, the London police are much worse than the hoodlums. Didn't get a line-up of faces until more than 4 months after the fact, long after any hope of remembering anything. I have a lot more anger at the police than I do at those hoodlums.
I want that kind of crime to no longer be a risk. That requires a systematic solution, not a point fix of retribution, which I don't want - I don't and didn't want those kids' lives ruined. They'll just do even worse things.
I can imagine different crimes where retribution and revenge might play a larger part in the emotions of the victim. I think those crimes are a small minority of total crime, and even then justice is and needs to be rational, not emotional. Revenge, as a reaction, overreacts. Justice needs to be balanced. So I'm not sure it can be a principal component even for that minority of crime.
Turn the other cheek; violence begets violence; etc. But some people seem to use the word "justice" and mean "revenge".
So I wouldn't call them dark.
The concept of retribution as justice goes far back beyond medieval, to at least the Bronze Age (see Hammurabi).
In addition, it seems a common component across cultures. The utilitarian view is by no means nearly as universal.
Here is a modern example: every few years you hear about some former Nazi Concentration Camp guard that was arrested. From a utilitarian point of view it is completely useless. The old guard is never ever going to take part in anything like that again. However, from a justice as retribution for misdeeds, it make perfect sense.
Punishment achieves fairness and deterrence.
Food for thought, but this is only true if we release them. For most of history, we simply executed criminals.
In most of the world, that's still the case (thieves without hands etc).
Without making a moral judgment on what's right or wrong, if most societies evolved that way, it probably means it's conducive to the long-term health and survival of societies. Survivorship bias and all that.
Um... what? This is borderline advocating for all sentences be for life.
If a sentence is given and served, the convicted deserve a chance at living. The US has a terrifying and awful fetish for punishing lower/middle-class folks who commit some of the pettiest of crimes, many of which struggle to re-integrate with society if/when they're released and therefore continue to serve a sentence long after they're no longer in prison. Compared with, for example, a vast majority of white-collar crime that often has victims an order of magnitude or two greater than most petty crime.
> Should the assaulted be happy with the fact that the inmate will get a job?
YES, everyone should be happy if ex-felons are able to find work after leaving prison. Otherwise, they just go back their previous behaviors (eg ~80% recidivism). If they can't get work, that's effectively a "life sentence".
I do not think you understood my original comment, since you keep quoting that sentence only. Where is the restitution to the aggrieved party? The assaulted, the robbed, the beaten, the raped? You pay for what you do, and if your enterprise is criminal, you pay in time behind bars. Personal responsibility. Why would anyone want to hire a wife-beater? There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work ...
Punishing those who commit crime demonstrably does little to nothing to dissuade them from future crime. Given an understanding of the reasons why many people commit crimes makes this obvious: by taking angry people without hope, and giving them more reasons to be angry and even less hope, we end up with an incredibly high recidivism rate. Meanwhile, harshly punishing those who've committed crimes usually doesn't make the victims of those crimes feel better, either.
So if it's not benefitting victims, and making re-offense more likely, why do we do it? So third parties can feel a sense of self-righteousness that they call "justice?" That seems to be the primary reason!
Sometimes people in dire straits do bad things, and hurt others. Punishment is reasonable, but objectively, rehabilitation is also needed. Restitution to victims, and victim statements, also help. We can look around the world and see objectively that there are many ways to do this better than we're doing, by any measure. It's both more humane, and more effective.
Criminal law is about wrongs against the state. In regards to payment for restitution, how is the state being restored by somebody rotting in jail?
What sort of payment is this that the state may end up even poorer than before? In fact, if serving in prison is payment, then I'd say it's the state that's paying for the prison and all the harms which follow.
If the state should find itself awfully harmed from its own criminal justice policy, from where shall the state seek remedy?
1) Most DV cases are false allegations. In the West, no proof is required for a female to file a complaint against a man she knows.
In some areas, almost all criminal court cases now involve false DV allegations. There's various reasons for that, but when you have a child custody battle, everybody tells the wife to just fill something in the complaint form. There's no penalty for the wife regardless of the trial outcome.
2) Serving your sentence should be enough, esp. given #1.
> There are millions of upstanding citizens out of work
If you're a man, you're only one phone call away from a false allege. Something to think about if you're in a relationship. Or hiring.
This would be without even touching any “wife-beater,” rapist or murderer.
There are a lot of people unnecessarily locked up for absurd sentences compared to the crime who absolutely deserve another chance at society. We should actively want that. It’s a net good for society and it happens to be a lot less expensive, too.
That ain't necessarily so, and not every penal system has that philosophy. If prisons turn out people who are unemployable, they will simply keep doing whatever they can do to make a living. If lawful society doesn't take them, someone else will. Justice has to work at the societal level.
Heck yeah! If civil penalties have been assessed, how else are they going to get paid?
Crazy how most Americans think even the smallest crime should mean life in prison plus anal rape
It was not until now that I came to realize that everyone in American prisons are actually there for assault. The mind reels.
I assumed that you did not actually believe that all criminals in America had assaulted someone, but if you did not believe it then arguing for the punishment of people who did not commit violent acts (by making it more difficult for them to get jobs when released) seems far worse than if you just did believe a ridiculous thing.
And really by using in your argument an emotional hypothetical about the assaulted to argue for denying something to people who have not committed assault it becomes difficult to know exactly how to take it.
The argument is hard to take seriously if you don't really believe it is true for all criminals, and it is difficult to believe you think it is true for all criminals.
Perhaps to nuance the discussion a bit, the majority of people in state prisons in the US are there for violent offenses, and state prisons hold a majority of all prisoners. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
I said that punishment is a necessary part of prison, it is the main thing of justice. You may or may not agree with that position, but unless you are willing to reply to me on a good faith basis maybe you just shouldn't. The HN guidelines say >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It is not sort of reasonable that you think "some part of me"(what do you mean by that?) argues for it, because I never wrote it. If you or other people did not understand some part of my original comment, ask for a clarification instead of what has happened in these comment chains.
(I think prison probably is fucking people up more, but a mere citation of high recidivism rate isn’t evidence of that to me, given the prior.)
One way to see whether 87% is high or low might be to compare it to the rate in other countries. We seems to be near the top of that list, but not alone there.
Jail or prison itself may or may not drive people toward more crime, but the difficult in finding housing or a job with a criminal record certainly does a lot to kill hope.
One of the arguments that Foucault makes in Discipline and Punish is that prisons, by virtue of hiding the retribution from public view, can perform nearly arbitrarily heinous retributions on people. When we tore people apart in the street as punishment it was public and could provoke outrage. Now basically nobody knows what happens inside prisons.
> I think that retribution, which is of course the principal component of justice, is a key part of prisons.
No amount of retribution will ever be enough. The concept of making things right is a delusion that parents infect their children with.
However, the most effective way to inflict retribution is to teach an individual the meaning of their actions and have them live with the guilt of those actions. Another word for that is rehabilitation.
American prisons are based on childish like-for-like retribution (your limited someone's rights, you get your rights limited). It didn't work when I was 8, so why would it work for an adult? All that we achieve is sending people to crime college, where fellow inmates further numb moral fiber and empathy, then release graduated criminals back into the wild. That's certainly one way to make sure that there is always demand for retribution.
Yes.
Would the assaulted be happier having to work to support the attacker for the rest of their life?
(I’m not claiming that it’s as many as we have incarcerated now, but it’s patently not “zero people”.)
Yes, nobody should go hungry. Not in prison, not out of prison, nowhere.
And by a free lunch, I meant the idiomatic expression.
Idiomatically, I'm also in favor of every person, inside or outside of prison, getting the education they need in a trade that suits them.
Our society would benefit enormously, far beyond the cost of providing the education. So again, free lunches for all! Literally and metaphorically!
When people are in prison and school becomes something that can be taken away, it looks more like a privilege.
Human brains are weird.
I don't think it's that weird: it just means that the judgement is relative.
I think it's fine to "teach prisoners coding" as along as the people involved are aware that to even get to that point, how much BASIC education has to be re-done or done for the first time. Moreover, things like resumes, job hunting, and relating to people in a work environment is something that these folks need to learn and practice. Most have never done that. I've not taught in prisons, but have done ABE (Adult Basic Ed, which is all but required for folks to get through before they can even start a GRE program, and which many parolees are required to enroll in).
In other words, "learning to code" is great, but instruction for literacy, numeracy, and socialization HAVE TO OCCUR before that's even considered, otherwise it's just a cruel pipe-dream.
We so lucky, most of us, to have grown up in an environment where learning achievement is expected and supported by responsible adults. Most of the incarcerated folks have lived a level of depravation that we can't even imagine.
Who? Twitter idiots?
If you're going to take the weakest of strawman arguments for the opposing side, you're not going to get very far in your thinking.
There are plenty of ideas that aren't politically risky that don't get implemented, that would positively affect criminals and non-criminals alike - what's your explanation of such phenomena?
Blaming voters for the deeds of politicians has got to be one of the weakest strawmans I've heard in a while. It is the job of the politicians, domain experts and the media to present viable options for the populace to choose from. If the option chosen is shit, it isn't the person working 9-5 and raising a family that was asked to choose who is at fault, I hope that much is obvious.
In my humble opinion, we have a magical wishful thinking (should this, should that) mentality towards the way the world works, when we should have an evidence based, rational approach instead.
They have no issue spending your money on this stuff with your manufactured consent.
I know there are caveats and counter-anecdotes but this has been my set of observations over the last 10 years.
How can you say that with such confidence?
Maybe the issue is your workplace is using staffing agency, primarily?
At the same time they can use their coding skills to make non-tech office jobs more automated.
We hire dozens of entry level roles per year. That's our bar (of course, coupled with "is authorized to work where the role is").
Many, many more than "top 10 highest-paying." But yes, generally for six figure entry level roles.
But to the point of your question, no. It’s Boston-area typical entry-level SWE, whether self-taught, boot-camp, or college grad. We’re not even top-15 CS program competitive at that rate.
I think discussions around "entry level" jobs are often muddied by the dual meanings of the term.
Companies want to hire experienced people as "entry level" to their company. As in, the position we are hiring you for does not have any kind of seniority.
Fresh Grads want to find an "entry level" position to the entire industry.
This confusion is part of why you see "entry level" job postings asking for years of experience, essentially asking for an intermediate skill level, not a junior skill level.
Some recruiters are more circumspect, but a lot of them will give a salary range if you ask.
That information can also be found on places like Glassdoor or by talking to acquaintances about the offers they got or getting second-hand accounts of offers that people got. That information can be pretty inaccurate, but people still make decisions based on it.
Entry level jobs are available everywhere - contributing to open source programs. Of course, nobody is going to immediately write you a check for that. But once you build a track record of competent contributions, people will be willing to pay you for more, and may even hire you.
I'm proud that many contributors to the D language have leveraged that into very well paying jobs.
> But once you build a track record of competent contributions
how hard is this? especially for the population who is in need of actual employment.
I am a cs student and has worked professionally but even then making any meaningful contribution to any decent language is beyond what I can afford (time/energy/financial-wise).
More often than not, there is a lack of documentation (yes, I know this can be something I can contribute), very strict requirements for any pull requests, etc.
Dunno, I never kept track. But I also know that a big motivator for D Conference sponsors is recruiting, and a big reason people attend is to get recruited. It's a win all around.
> how hard is this?
It's as hard as you can handle. Of course, competently doing the harder things gets you more leet cred.
> beyond what I can afford (time/energy/financial-wise).
If you're out of work, you have the time, and it costs nothing to contribute.
> very strict requirements for any pull requests
That's right. We're only interested in quality professional work, as any business would. Sub-par work just causes the rest of us problems.
I basically got the job by bothering to write a nice email asking to do it as far as I can tell - I like to think I know what I'm doing (!) but realistically this is a sociopolitical thing not magic.
We have a few more people also working for the foundation who are paid more than me, you could live off that.
The D community is small but very efficient in places, there are a bunch of companies hiring D developers for quite a bit of money, just no where near as many as there are (say) C++ shops. For example, the company funding my position at the foundation manages about 6 Billion dollars raised to the power of D - we're lucky to have them.
We do need some fresh blood, but we can change that now we have people working on it.
Edit: Forgot my birthday was 2 days ago (too much programming rots the brain)
https://twitter.com/UnderdogDevs
Like carpentry, electrician, construction, plumbing?
Maybe it's prejudiced, but all the people I know that 'got in trouble' eventually made their way to construction crews. It worked well.
White Collar jobs come along with a ton of other social baggage and expectations (and prejudices) whereas highly skilled labour tends not to.
And there are construction jobs literally everywhere.
Finally, they can pay very well. Everyone is in need of a good carpenter.
This may not be a popular opinion on HN, but it is much harder to learn how to be a passible electrician or plumber than it is to learn how to be a passible programer.
I worked plenty of construction jobs when I was younger. Electricians and plumbers are blue-collar jobs, but they tend to be pretty smart people.
Perhaps another unpopular opinion, but you don’t even have to be a good programmer to make what most people would consider decent money. Is this the same for any trades?
However, an unskilled or sloppy electrician will have a pretty low life expectancy.
Edit:
Sorry. That might have seemed snarky.
Most of these jobs have pretty strict licensing and certification requirements. An improperly wired or plumbed house is pretty dangerous, so a lot of effort is put into making sure that does not happen. I think the unskilled electricians would be filtered out earlier in their training.
Especially carpentry, which is the most varied.
You can work on a construction site, framing and drywalling and never pick up any real skills outside of that narrow set.
Carpentry skills generally only come by doing. So find one who's older, or who came from a family of carpenters.
Yes, there should be more of an emphasis on the skilled trades but I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think most of the objections to one approach over the other are answered by having a range of options for inmates based on interest and aptitude. Tech would just be one option. There is enormous human potential for good going to waste in our prisons. There is no silver bullet, including efforts like this, but every ex-con given a real chance is a victory.
So, i'm not a big supporter of these things because I think it trivializes the amount of effort it actually takes to be a useful team member. The people I work with are doing the logical equivalent of rebuilding the flight control surfaces of a helicopter while its flying in formation. These aren't the kinds of skills you learn in 6 weeks. Many of us have years of formal schooling combined with 10x that in personal learning hours before we even landed our first jobs. Add on a decade+ of professional work experience/etc. I'm not trying to sound arrogant, but I suspect that if someone tried to measure the knowledge required for some of these jobs people on this board hold, it would dwarf pretty much all but a few other professions. Its also not to say, that its not possible to be productive with a couple years of HS/AP level comp-sci classes and a year or two of toy programs (I landed my first programming job in HS, making barely more than minimum wage). Only that those jobs are the floor, and much harder to come by now that everyone and their brother is learning coding.
So frankly, some people have the interest/drive/aptitude into making software engineering their life, and some peoples strengths lie elsewhere. I think its doing everyone a disservice not to provide other options to prisoners, be that AC repair, or law degrees.
They come in pretty junior, of course, and they're not making $200k either, but I'd say that anyone with the right mindset can learn what they need to learn at a bootcamp as easily as they can in an undergrad program, and anyone without the right mindset is going to struggle with either.
There is MUCH more pure memorization required for doctors and lawyers, and it's not even close.
That said, I agree overall: software development shouldn't be the only thing taught in prison--or any other similar program.
Anyway, everyone starts at entry-level before they get 10 years of experience.
And for those who haven't had any interest on those topics and don't want to try won't be able to.
Almost anyone can learn to do it and to enjoy it. But to be really good takes years of effort and probably some natural talent as well.
Damn, that's, um, a lot. And here I am, with a degree in CS and over 2 years of experience, earning less than one-third of it in my third world country.
Good the last mile, I hope these prisoners find some solace in these opportunities and can channel their time and energy into a skill like this. I'm not sure how many tech firms will take ex-cons, but maybe this changes things as so many tech firms will turn a blind eye to drug related matters now.
State prisons in the US are hell holes. The facilities are terrible, the people (many) are legitimately terrible, and the staff are terrible too.
First you have to find a place where you can have computers at all, no googling for answers because they won’t be allowed internet access.
Then you have to select from the general population, people who won’t destroy the machines, have the social and study skills required to complete the training. It’ll be very few.
Then there’s the absolutely dipshit power tripping staff. Do you know of any good teachers who want to drive out to a Texas prison in the middle of nowhere each day to teach programming?
I have a brother in state prison who would love a program like this. He’s also far more intelligent than me. But to hear him describe the people and conditions, it’s really bad.
I want this to be a thing for inmates but it’s going to require a lot of work.