Comment by edgyquant
3 years ago
So he chose to go back to a life of crime and we’re supposed to feel bad for him? There’s a reason he was able to make 20k in a weekend, it’s a high risk high reward business and I have no sympathy for someone who skirts societal norms and makes a shit ton of money in the process while plenty of people suck it up and earn the 10.50 until they can get back out in their own. This guy and his entire post reeks of entitlement, beginning with “non-violent drug offenses” in the first paragraph.
That’s an opinion, he wasn’t arrested for possession in reality he made a ton of money selling dangerous drugs to kids. Maybe they should be legal, some of that I agree with (I spent a lot of my late teens and early twenties in jail or on probation for simple possession and have a felony to this day for it) but that doesn’t mean you should be able to peddle chemicals you don’t understand in large quantities. Your upbringing being bad doesn’t make that okay either.
I don't think it really matters if you feel bad for him or not, and focusing on that aspect does more harm than good. I think, given a choice between living in a fucked-up halfway house with your only prospect for the future being a shitty minimum-wage job, or falling back into your old crimes where you can make pretty solid bank doing illegal things (yes, with high risk)... most people would probably pick the latter.
I absolutely agree that "non-violent drug offenses" is a cop-out when describing high-volume drug dealing. Maybe he wasn't directly violent, but dealers like him directly contribute to dragging many more people into addiction, violence, and even death. I don't think people should be jailed (or even punished) for simple possession, but dealing -- especially on a large scale -- well, that's a different matter.
But ultimately what I really care about is outcomes. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what we want someone to choose when they get out of prison. If we don't provide a compelling path for an ex-con to go straight, that's just us shooting ourselves in our feet. If that means spending more time and money housing someone in actually good conditions, and providing them direct access to higher education and better job opportunities, so be it. Ultimately that ends up being a lot cheaper for taxpayers than what we're doing now. And we get a much healthier society in the bargain.
Acting punitive toward convicts and ex-cons doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the person involved, and it especially doesn't help ourselves.
I agree. But society has a hard time accepting that rehabilitating people with criminal records is more useful than punishing them.
You’re saying if only we’d given this particular guy more free stuff he wouldn’t have gone back to flipping carfentanil for $20k a weekend? That seems pretty far-fetched.
He's not asking for sympathy. The entire article is about how he ended up where he is now, how the prison he's at now has saved him from a life of crime by giving him a meaningful chance at a career, that this is an anomaly, and that it shouldn't be.
I'm wondering if one of the factors here is that the public is funding this opportunity, and that many, many non-criminal members of that public are doing the $10.50/h thing with no such support and very limited opportunity.
If I were to choose between (a) getting such a funding/opportunity but having to spend 10 years in jail to qualify for it, or (b) not getting this funding and staying free, I’d certainly pick (b), even if my only alternative was a minimum wage job.
I’d also argue that the reason for the public to fund such opportunities is not primarily an act of humanity, but it’s rather a long-term “investment” into lowering overall recidivism rates. That being said, one way to look at it is that the public is not funding him, but it’s funding its own interests.
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The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. The non-criminal members of the public shouldn't be subjected to this either.
Yes, there must exist unskilled, low-paying labor -- but there also must exist ample opportunity for education and self-betterment for (almost) ALL individuals.
The most heinous of persons excepted, of course.
I agree with you that just on the basis of this piece, he does not sound accountable and can appreciate given what you've shared about your own history why it might be particularly frustrating. At the same time, there are factual elements of the story that deeply bother me about the way we treat those who have previously transgressed. I believe that we do need systems of accountability, but I also believe that our current system is broken beyond repair and is not ultimately effective. Or rather it can only be effective if we collectively agree to condemn a certain class of people as criminals and therefore deserving of treatment we would never accept of non criminals. We would all do well to remember our own incredible good fortune in life.
Of course there are people in prison who are a menace to public safety and must be dealt with. And there must be consequences for harmful behavior even when it is "nonviolent" (which is a word that diminishes non-physical harm). But I truly struggle to understand how it is a good idea to segregate all the people who have previously transgressed, deny them opportunities for betterment and fully initiate them into criminal life.
Guilty once, guilty forever right? You're defined by your lowest moment and surely can never come back from it ; and surely serving your sentence is never enough to be allowed a second chance.
There's not a mention asking for sympathy in there. It's mostly factual, and explanatory of his experience. And the fact that giving opportunities to convicts to educate themselves and find their way seems a much better solution than just educating them to gang life.
*guilty twice
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I love this thought that people in the US with felony convictions can just go out and be: "productive, tax paying member of society".
I'll place a wager that if you called <$CURRENT_COMPANY> and ask them if they even HIRE felons, they'll tell you "No, as a matter of corporate policy."
So, what then -- work for $10/hr so that you can barely make rent in your project housing and spend your entire life a single injury or natural disaster away from financial insolvency and homelessness?
That's a bleak existence to even think about, much less spend a lifetime living.
The US criminal justice system is fundamentally broken, and we DO NOT AFFORD convicted felons the opportunity to have a decent life as a normal member of society.
1000x this. I only became a successful, productive member of society because a friend personally asked the CTO of a tech company to approve hiring me despite my computer crimes felony -- and the CTO took that chance. The company later went public for $B and now I am an angel investor and open source contributor etc, but I got lucky that I knew the right person at the right time. Our records follow us forever, and corporations/HR departments do not take risks like that.
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He was not born a drug wholesaler. He made that choice…twice! Rehabilitation is not the sole or even primary goal of incarceration. Nor should it be. But I do agree. People who’ve done their time shouldn’t have to wear a permanent scarlet letter. I just have little sympathy for repeat offenders of very serious felonies. This guy wasn’t a small time street dealer. He is probably partly responsible for many fentanyl overdose deaths.
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I think there are two independent issues here.
Getting out and going straight back to dealing drugs is obviously a bad move.
But it’s a move that is far more likely to happen because of the abysmal state of the system and the kinds of “opportunities” it affords to people trying to transition back to normal life. It’s a system that is predisposed to getting people stuck in the same patterns.
“He had his chance to be productive” is stretching the word productive pretty far.
“The system” is made up of individuals. People who have offended and their tendencies. People who think they know how an offender must live their life and the limits that must be placed on them post-incarceration. And if the system leads to recidivism, that is a reflection of the whole system, not just the individuals re-offending.
So while I agree that going back to dealing drugs is not a winning move, it should give us pause that people regularly end up doing exactly this despite the consequences.
If the goal is to transform criminals into functioning members of society, then from a purely utilitarian perspective, the system is broken. And the “opportunities” one is given and told they should be grateful for are often laughably insufficient.
To draw an overly simplistic analogy: people stopped pirating music and started paying for it as soon as it was reasonable to do so. I don’t condone piracy, but I certainly understand why people did it.
Selling drugs that can kill people obviously puts this in a different category. But the overarching ideas are similar.