Ohio prison inmates 'built computers and hid them in ceiling' (2017)

Posted by harambae 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by Quarrelsome 1 day ago

That's some fine problem solving, albeit not the problems the prison wanted to be solved.

I sometimes wonder if these sorts of people who "succeed" in these odd ways on the wrong side of the criminal fence, would have had rather successful careers had just a couple of things gone differently towards the start of their life.

Comment by alexpotato 1 day ago

I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught."

I'm not sure how true that is but what I do believe is that the following is 100% true:

- smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison

How do I know this? I've worked with a couple people like this. Some ended up in prison, others almost went to prison and later on went to work in corporate America (no sarcasm intended here).

Comment by qingcharles 1 day ago

Some people really activate their brains once they get locked up. The things I've seen people construct from literal garbage in prison. Tattoo guns are a popular one. Obviously half the population has a way of making some sort of device analogous to a car cigarette lighter in prison by finding staples, bits of wire, foil etc that they can stick in a 110V outlet to heat up and light their drugs from. Necessity really is the mother of invention.

A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation. Knowing this would happen we'd come up with a way to communicate across the facility. We had these 5x5 grids of letters, no "K", where 11 on the grid was A, 15 was E, 55 was Z etc. They had these touchscreen commissary kiosks where you could order food. The quantity of each item allowed up to 4 digits, e.g. 9999. So that gives you two letters. 1121 = AF for instance. We'd start at the top, Beef Noodles, 1121. Chicken Noodles, 2412 etc and work through the menu. We shared our login IDs with each other. We'd place these huge orders into the cart but never checkout. Then we'd log in to each other's accts from our separate cell blocks multiple times a day, read our messages and write our replies. Got caught eventually, 10 days in the Hole. I FOIA'd their investigation and it was very amusing seeing the report from the facility "Intelligence Dept" trying to decode all the messages.

Comment by nextaccountic 1 day ago

> A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation.

Are they legally able to prevent inmates from helping the litigation of another? That's insane

The US is not a free society

Comment by qingcharles 1 day ago

Yes, especially when it is civil rights litigation, e.g. facility conditions. They will do everything within their disposal to interfere with litigation. A lot of county facilities in the USA will retain private counsel, not government lawyers, for these kinds of cases, and it is enormously expensive. I can remember one case where they took a newspaper from a prisoner and he sued, and the jail took it to trial and lost and had to pay not only damages of $15K, but also their legal fees, which were somewhere around $1.5m, but also the plaintiff's counsel, which was another $900K IIRC.

Comment by _DeadFred_ 1 day ago

Don't forget if an inmate starts to look like they are winning all they have to do is change that one inmates conditions and the inmate no longer has standing and the case is dismissed (unless they have permeant damages and they are suing for damages), yet the system is designed for those lawsuits to be the check/balances. It seems like a good system, but in actuality the check/balance is easily negated by those in power.

And the 'change' of the condition is often the inmate getting shipped to a different prison, with the transfer/shipping process having the nick name 'diesel therapy'. So if you do are challenge, you are going to get punished, your safety is going to be put at VERY high risk (you are going to have to fight, and who knows who they lock you up with at night and what might get pulled on you), and you are going to be VERY hungry (meal times/shipping times often accidentally don't work out) you don't stay anywhere long enough to purchase commissary to make up for them not feeding you, etc.

Look at how upset immigration people are now that the Fed loopholes I point out are being made very public in immigration stuff (all the movement between facilities to limit court access). These are things that have happened forever, just no one cared when it was normal inmates.

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

I'm aware of a businessman who did high profile pro se case, regarding some alleged white collar business license violations . They moved him to different jails 300 times in a year to sabotage his defense (SDNY, so they had unlimited amount of money to fuck with him). He miraculously still won the case.

Comment by kelseydh 1 day ago

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with approximately 541 to 614 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents as of 2022–2026. While representing only 5% of the global population, the US holds roughly 20% of the world's prisoners, totalling over 1.8 million people.

For many crimes, the U.S. loves giving eye watering long sentences for offences that would result in a tenth of the prison time in other countries.

Comment by dnemmers 1 day ago

I read ‘helping the litigation’ to mean they both may have been involved in the same crime, and they mean to stop collusion after the fact, before trial concludes?

Comment by qingcharles 1 day ago

Both ways. Mostly it is just helping with the legal process. Rarely is it a multi-plaintiff case as the courts don't like those from prisoners. It causes too many logistical nightmares. How are two plaintiffs to communicate their wishes to each other on how to proceed? How will they both appear in court together if they are in different buildings or even different institutions?

I remember being on one join-plaintiff civil rights case and the government lawyer told the judge they were going to criminally charge me with impersonating a lawyer as I "must have given legal advice to the other plaintiff." The judge asked how they thought the complaint was written. "As I see it, one plaintiff must have pressed one key, then the other plaintiff pressed the next key on the keyboard. That is our belief."

Comment by _DeadFred_ 1 day ago

The feds used to allow you to appeal your sentence forever. I mean if there are problems with a sentence, the government should want to fix it, right?

But then they decided it was too expensive giving convicts access to the courts. So they changed it to I think 7 days. But they decided that was too short.

So the compromise between forever and 7 days? 14 days. If you don't appeal within 14 days you can only appeal on a very narrow scope. Now realize, those 14 days after sentencing you are being transferred from a federal detention center (fed jail) to a prison, either via con-air or prison bus, cross country, staying in various country jails with minimal access to your lawyer or a legal library if you can't afford a lawyer.

The American Justice System is designed to appear like a justice system but to in actuality be non-navigable unless you have expensive paid lawyers working for you. It is very much a multi-teared system. Have you ever tried canceling the WSJ? Imagine if every single step of a Justice system was designed to be as frustrating/stiffling/delaying (when every day counts) as the WSJ canceling process. Oh, you are being transported, and you want access to the law library? Well we can only get you that during lunch hours, so chose if you want to eat. And oh yeah sorry that the morning transfer to the bus was messed up and you happened to miss breakfast. Sure you want to skip lunch? We might ship you again any time and you might miss dinner if we do.

Comment by qingcharles 1 day ago

Also, certainly for state cases, a lot of appeal routes are not available unless you are actively in prison. Post-conviction relief, and federal habeas corpus are basically only available while you are locked in prison. If you do all your time in pre-trial detention, or your sentence is too short to fully complete your appeal then your conviction is stuck forever, even if you have meritorious claims. For instance, if your lawyer was drunk, high or not a real lawyer, there is no way to appeal that after you're released, you just have to live with the conviction for the rest of your life and all the collateral reduction in civil rights that comes with that until you die.

Comment by gruez 1 day ago

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Comment by nextaccountic 1 day ago

Incarcerated people have the right to sue, right? They have right to appeal. Prisons shouldn't be able to interfere with prisoner's rights, specially when it's about suing the prison itself.

Comment by gruez 1 day ago

They're not blocked from suing or appealing, only from conversing with their non-lawyer inmate friends.

Comment by _DeadFred_ 1 day ago

There is the appearance of this, but the reality isn't quite so clear.

The USAs gives you a 14 day window to appeal. After that you are blocked from the majority of appeal options. It used to be unlimited time but the Feds decided that was too expensive so the right to appeal was limited to accommodate Federal financial considerations. Limiting what was a unlimited RIGHT was found to be acceptably replaced with a 14 day right (14 days in which the person is being processed into the system, shipped to prison, etc).

https://federal-lawyer.com/what-is-the-time-limit-on-federal...

If you sue due to conditions, should those conditions be changed, you no longer have standing and your case is dropped. If ABC facility is unfit for habitation, the check is supposed to be inmates sueing. But if you just ship any inmate who looks like they are starting to win in court to facility XYZ, their lawsuit is dropped for lack of standing (the aren't housed at ABC facility).

If you make the transfer from ABC to XYZ as painful as possible, you limit the number of inmates willing to sue and get to keep things as bad as you want at ABC facility. You can't have the main check on the Feds be inmates when if the inmates exercise the check the Feds can punish them. That system is not fair and does not work.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

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Comment by Illniyar 1 day ago

The extra line supposes that being smart reduces the chances of getting caught.

Which from what I gather isn't very true - being smart can often lead to over confidence and making mistakes, and also a lot of crime is not premeditated.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

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Comment by RealityVoid 1 day ago

> it's just exercising freedom in a way that the system and its adherents don't like.

Yes, that is what the law is, by definition. A reduction in freedom. Most times, for very good reason.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

At least 80-90% of US laws are in fact un-Constitutional.

Furthermore, any secular law that is in conflict with the laws of God (laws of Nature) is immoral, and therefore null and void.

So the War on Drugs for example and all of the "laws" connected with it, are not actually law. It's the scribblings of tyrants.

Comment by RealityVoid 1 day ago

Which of the gods are we talking about here? Odin?

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 23 hours ago

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Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

And 80-90% of the adherence to 80-90% of those laws are self-imposed.

Once upon a time I used to buy tamales from a guy on the street corner. He was probably breaking half a dozen business licensing and preparation laws by doing his little street corner business.

HN dwellers would mostly debate for days about getting the right license or some other silly nonsense. Meanwhile tamale man is cooking, tamale man is selling, tamale man is doing his thing. Is he paying his taxes? Who knows. No one ever bothered to find out and from what I can tell nothing ever happened to him.

There's also probably the majority of the US who just make up laws that don't exist and then enforce it against themselves. Most people think they have to give an ID to a cop if he asks for it on the street.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

They assume everything is illegal and self police because that's what the tyrant programmed them to do.

Same effect in HN comments also. Many people hold back from expressing their real views here because they are afraid to run afoul of the Flag Police.

They actually did change that law. Citizens of the Great Empire are now required to identify themselves to any cop who asks their name. For the childrens.

The "show him your government ID which you are now required to keep on you" part hasn't yet been instated, but it's coming. That will be introduced along with a whole heap of other big anti-freedom changes (like Central Bank Digital Currency) during the coming World War.

Comment by jamilton 1 day ago

It's still crime if it's moral! I think it's really important to not conflate the law with morality.

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

“Crime” has multiple meanings. It can be used to describe a violation of morality, not just law.

Comment by carefree-bob 1 day ago

No, crime does not mean violation of morality. It only means violation of the law.

Now some people, say, look at a pair of expensive shoes and comically blurt out "these prices are criminal!"

That type of usage is a linguistic device known as "exaggeration", but these types of comical exaggerations don't actually change the meaning of words. Like when someone says "You're robbing me!" when a seller proposes a high price, they are not actually changing the meaning of the verb "to rob" and this does not mean that the definition of "to rob" involves charging high prices. That, too, is just an exaggeration.

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

May I suggest reading a dictionary?

Incidentally it appears that the meaning of sin or breaking God's laws came before the meaning of breaking secular law.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

You don't get to decree whatever it is that you like and then call it "law". If a "law" is un-Constitutional, as most US "laws" are--or in violation of the highest laws of the Universe (the Laws of Nature), as the most US "laws" are--then it is not law. It's the scribblings of a tyrant.

There just might be an entire army of goons ready to enforce that so-called "law." With an Empire, there always is. But any so-called "law" enacted without permission of the The People are in fact the workings of a tyrant and deserve no serious consideration among free individuals, except whatever minimum is necessary to protect oneself from the tyrant while awaiting (and planning for) his inevitable downfall.

Comment by carefree-bob 1 day ago

This is called a "strawman" argument. I am not decreeing anything and calling it a law, so you must be responding to some interlocutor that lives only in your imagination, and then pointing out flaws in this imaginary conversation makes you feel better I guess. Or it gives you some kind of virtuous thrill. Why would you do this? Imagine yourself winning verbal victories with imaginary debaters in the shower, don't do it in public in social media.

And now you are going off on some laws being unconstitutional and that "most US laws are", when the point I made had nothing to do with a particular jurisdiction or nation, but when laws are deemed unconstitutional they are struck down and are no longer laws, so by definition you have now positioned yourself as a one man supreme court, voiding most US law, when the actual supreme court does not do this. Wow, what an active imagination you have. How you glorify yourself. But please do all that stuff in the privacy of your own home, no need to do it online. Here, e.g. outside of your imagination, people make arguments and you can if you want respond to that argument. Think about it.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

"I am not decreeing anything," he said, as he attempts to argue me into the grave concerning the definition of the words "crime" and "law." As if the tyrant's definition should be the only definition and God's (or Nature's, if you prefer) can just be ignored.

It's going to surprise the shit out of you one day when you wake up to find that this entity called the "US Supreme Court" no longer exists, and has been replaced with some other entity which has vastly different ideas about things.

This will likely be accompanied by many people being put on public trial and convicted of various crimes that you and they will vehemently insist weren't against this "law" that you believe you understand the definition of. Yet despite your protestations they will be tried and convicted nonetheless, and in many cases executed.

On that day you will finally understand the definition of Law.

Comment by card_zero 1 day ago

That's like a crime against literality.

Comment by adeelk93 1 day ago

Wouldn’t that be a sin?

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

Oddly enough, not only can a word have multiple meanings, but a meaning can have multiple words.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

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Comment by 47282847 1 day ago

You may enjoy the movie “Sovereign”.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

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Comment by red-iron-pine 1 day ago

kdhaskjdhadjk is a 1 day old account pushing anti-US and soverign citizen BS

remember: this is the loud bot, so that you think you've found all of the agit-prop; it's a distraction. the real shill-botting is far more subtle

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

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Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

>>kdhaskjdhadjk is a 1 day old account pushing anti-US and soverign citizen BS

I'm shocked no one has figured out who this is. For anyone that hasn't figured it out -- hi weev!

>Your Empire murdered my Cherokee ancestors and made up lies about them; said they were all a bunch of dirty savages.

Weev has native american ancestry.

>Your Empire murdered my Confederate ancestors and made up lies about them; said they were all a bunch of inbred racist losers.

Weev is well known for southern / confederate rhetoric

>Your Empire has fucked me over personally in numerous ways that I will never, ever forget or forgive. And no, it wasn't my fault, as you Imperial goons always like to claim about your victims.

Weev was falsely convicted under fraudulent jurisdiction, then the morons that did it were forced to release him, and then essentially run out of the country before it could happen again.

>Your Empire continues to murder people around the entire world in my name, which despite being against everything I stand for, will in the end only bring more destruction to my doorstep.

Weev also has jewish ancestry.

>I am only one of a giant growing horde of Others who feel exactly the same way about the crookedness of your dying Empire. Finally, hundreds of years of murder, robbery, and lies are coming to their ultimate conclusion. Many are much less kind and charitable than I. Some of these guys and girls have entire warehouses full of axes to grind, and are establishing machine shops just to grind those axes.

Weev used this rhetoric during his trial.

>You accuse me of being a bot, but in fact the mindless automaton is you. Your nation is doomed, but you are incapable of perceiving this information as it conflicts with your programming. I predict your future will be a difficult one.

This sort of high IQ, boisterous, machine-gunned shock rhetoric followed by Revelations sort of premonitions for his enemies is the exact sort of unique rhetoric weev uses, and the unique application of it is pretty obvious on inspection. There is no on else on HN I've ever read that uses quite this same method of speech in this exact style with the same background (look up user 'rabite' for other examples).

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

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Comment by peyton 1 day ago

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Comment by alphawhisky 1 day ago

Same, that's why I get super abortions every week. Might even get gay married. If it's not immoral, it's not a crime.

Comment by wookmaster 1 day ago

Good luck telling that to a judge

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

It's probably a better system for what to live by. The government can and will imprison anyone they want by a variety of methods they have for putting anyone they want away at any time. If you follow "god's / natural law" as they put it, it is a better guide to whether you will anger some victim who will call the police on you. Most of the rest of the law are just the excuse the powers that be will use for putting you away if the powers that be find you threaten their order. The vast majority of victimless crime laws are selectively chosen to be "enforced" for the actual reason that you've done something to challenge the ruling class, trying to adhere to them as if they are applied as 'rule of law' is probably irrational.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

I make it a point to keep a healthy distance between myself and Imperial Officials.

During any unavoidable interaction with Imperial Officials, I always pretend subservience and submission. I am aware that many others do also.

The result is a large and growing body of people who secretly despise Imperial Officials, while said officials are under the increasingly detached from reality impression that everyone loves them. It usually doesn't end well for them.

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

Or being disliked by a DoJ who can pressure a judge (who's other legal experience is being a career prosecutor for the feds as well) to not allow many forms of defense, while expending millions upon millions of their own money and "expert witnesses" to tell lies that you can't afford to defend against, and if you will only sign on the dotted line you will only get 3 years instead of a gazillion.

This is how they got Samourai Wallet guy to admit to "operating an unlicensed money transmitter" business despite FINCen saying he wasn't even a money transmitter which means how would he even get a license?

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

Likewise a lot of crime isn’t “crime” at all. Kill someone by putting lead in their lungs by means of a firearm and we call it murder and you go to prison. Do it by dumping lead into the air from your factory smokestack and we call it business and you get rich.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

Murder some foreigner at the behest of your empire and they'll call you a hero and pin shiny medals to your chest. Kill the guy who ordered you to murder the foreigner and they'll call you a murderer and feel self-righteous when they murder you.

Comment by red-iron-pine 1 day ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences

each ACE you experience ups the likelihood of all sorts of negative outcomes, with crime and addiction being very common.

strong linkages to bad health outcomes, too.

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

I wonder if there are any benefits of the adaptations made by those with higher ACE scores. Surely the adaptations we've evolved to make can't be entirely maladaptive.

Here's one

   Emotional abuse: verbal threats, swearing at, insulting, or humiliating a child.[1][3]

I'm trying to imagine what someone would be like if they reached 18 without ever having been "sworn at, insulted, or humiliated." Given this is one of the gentlest ways of correcting anti-social behavior, I can only imagine such person would be a maladapted nightmare.

Comment by red-iron-pine 1 day ago

resilience is talked about in the wiki article.

there are strategies that can be taught to increase resilience, and sometimes that may include some tough love.

but there are differences between some tough love to build character vs. years of emotional and verbal abuse. one of the big kids calling you a loser on the playground is not ACE; your mom telling you're worthless and she hates you and you should have never been born for most of your childhood is.

put another way, 8 weeks of military boot camp teaches you to handle some of the stresses you might encounter; it builds resilience. but 18 years of it would create someone deeply screwed up.

Comment by cjbgkagh 1 day ago

The average IQ of a prisoner is 90-95 which is a long way from 100.

Comment by Enginerrrd 1 day ago

Prison IQ is a very different distribution. As I recall, the top 2% IQ of the general population makes up something like 20% of the prison population. You also have quite a few at the other end.

The gifted are more over represented in prison then black males, however, most of those gifted are themselves minorities.

Comment by cjbgkagh 1 day ago

I’ll have to see some evidence on that, in my search it’s basically a normal bell curve shifted 8 pts down. The idea that 130+ IQ individuals make up 1/5th of the prison population does not pass the sniff test, that would be a crazy statistical aberration. In my search I found reports that 130+ IQ individuals only represent less than 0.4% of the prison population.

Comment by LAC-Tech 1 day ago

Is the average IQ of the US still 100?

Comment by red-iron-pine 1 day ago

isn't the point that 100 is roughly the average? or 100 at the year they made the test, anyway.

Comment by throwawaymobule 1 day ago

Isn't it always 100, by definition?

Comment by LAC-Tech 23 hours ago

I dont think IQ is based on american adults.

Comment by cjbgkagh 1 day ago

Roughly yes, it is declining. The Flynn effect was just smart people having kids later which has now normalized and reversed (with smart people having fewer kids).

Comment by coldtea 1 day ago

>I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught."

This includes white collar crime and all kinds of non-violent crimes though.

Is it the same for the violent crime subset?

Comment by cortesoft 1 day ago

Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes?

My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence.

Comment by 9x39 1 day ago

IQ is positively correlated with impulse control.

Example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

Comment by alphawhisky 1 day ago

IQ is negatively correlated with reactive violence, but positively correlated with premeditated violence, per the evolution of our species. Despite our greater emotional regulation and lack of reasonable contextual circumstances to support the need for violence, we're still killing people all the time just like our ancestors.

Comment by coldtea 1 day ago

>Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes?

For starters there's the lead exposure relation to violent crime, that is accepted as a factor, and which is also known to lower IQ.

That lead-affected criminal population would drive average violent criminal IQ down, even if the lead exposure worked through a different causual mechanism and lower IQ was just an orthogonal effect.

Besides several studies have found the general correlation.

>My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence.

Choice of outlet for the outburst, impulse control and other factors however are related to intelligence.

Besides you're just covering "crimes of passion" here. There are career criminals doing homicides, gang shootings, etc, plus physical violence unrelated to passion, but related to intimidation, theft, etc.

Comment by alphawhisky 1 day ago

Don't forget indirect violence, like electing politicians that use your tax money to blow up kids.

Comment by conradev 1 day ago

My initial instinct would be that the higher IQ someone is, the better they are able to do most things including control their impulses.

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

Higher IQ would correlate with an increased ability to predict the consequences of one’s actions. “If I stab this person I will go to prison” versus “if I stab this person everyone will think I’m great because that person sucks.”

Comment by Melatonic 1 day ago

And possibly also getting away with hiding the consequences of one's actions

Comment by jcgrillo 1 day ago

Yes. The biasing function is that (mostly) only the less smart ones get exposed and caught.

Comment by FpUser 1 day ago

>"smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison"

I believe this to be true and some of my former schoolmates who were brilliant IQ wise and got high marks on math and physics still ended up in jails. Some were later able to recover and lead more productive life

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

Crime is also just more accepted in "disadvantaged locales."

Drinking openly is illegal in most of Mexico and the USA. If the area is run down and the shops are broken I will crack open a beer on the street without a second thought. I wouldn't think of doing it openly in some yuppie neighborhood where some Karen will rat your ass out in 5 minutes.

Comment by shmeeed 1 day ago

Aka the Broken Window Theory.

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

Sort of yeah, but in this case "broken windows" are used to determine the culture of an area, even if you fixed the "broken windows" I would use some other clues. I think the broken window theory relies on the idea if you fixed the broken windows crime would change, which I don't think is necessarily true.

Comment by cindyllm 3 hours ago

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Comment by AngryData 1 day ago

Most certainly many could. You don't get 25% of the world's prison population without spending every effort to screw over your own citizens.

Comment by frakt0x90 1 day ago

Of course they would. A criminal is just a person. And with such an extraordinary percentage of the US population in prison, you can expect the full spectrum of ability, intelligence, passion, compassion, and everything else. Our prison system is an extreme tragedy that most people are numb to because it's been that way forever.

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

There are way too many people that think the human condition can be fixed through powers of the state. The overly broad application of the "justice" system is one aspect of that.

Unfortunately there's no clean way to prove this right or wrong, it is a religious like belief the populace holds. Therefore changing the status quo probably requires a religious like message that anyone coldly analyzing it with facts is incapable of delivering. The very method of changing it is out of the hands of those that might recognize what's wrong.

Comment by roughly 1 day ago

This is the other side of the coin of Uber violating state and local regulations for the better part of a decade to get their business off the ground or HSBC laundering money for the cartels.

Comment by Grimblewald 1 day ago

I'd argue prison iq distribution is more flattering than that of most c-suits, with less crime to boot.

Comment by stackghost 1 day ago

You'd be incorrect. It's been well established that lower IQ is moderately associated with higher rates of criminality.

I have no comment on whether C-suite types commit more crimes than prisoners, but I'd wager they don't.

Not everyone in jail got busted for benign stuff like selling a joint. There are lots and lots of incarcerated murderers, rapists, fraudsters, drunk drivers, etc.

Comment by coldtea 1 day ago

>You'd be incorrect. It's been well established that lower IQ is moderately associated with higher rates of criminality.

Consider who is doing the "establishing" and what criminality they ignore because those doing it do not even go to prison or jail 99% of time.

Comment by stackghost 1 day ago

>Consider who is doing the "establishing" and what criminality they ignore because those doing it do not even go to prison or jail 99% of time.

Ah yes, I'm sure it's just a conspiracy to keep brilliant people in prison, and let stupid CEOs off the hook.

Look, a quick jaunt through my comment history will show you I'm no corporate bootlicker but this is ridiculous.

Comment by constantius 1 day ago

Parent meant that almost no white collar crime gets prosecuted or results in jail time for defendants. Which is a very fair statement to.make, no conspiracy involved.

The claim is that the makeup of the prison population would be different if the law was as expeditive and indiscriminate with the well-to-do as it is with the poor: the entirety of Enron in prison, of VW, of Uber, etc.

Your correlation is by and large about criminality among the poor. It would still probably hold in the above scenario, but you can't claim it looks at "criminality" full stop.

Comment by coldtea 1 day ago

No conspiracy required, it's perfectly open.

Comment by kdhaskjdhadjk 1 day ago

"A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes the ruler of a nation." - Chuang Tzu

Comment by ButlerianJihad 1 day ago

I wonder about the IQ distribution in mental health facilities. The mental health system is basically a penal system in white coats.

My parents often pointed out a very tall bearded homeless man who would stand in the intersection and shout at cars. They called him “Bigfoot”. Mom explained that he had multiple college degrees, such as physics, and indicated that he was a waste of a life.

Comment by Avicebron 1 day ago

Maybe he realized screaming at cars was more productive than being an actuary so someone who inherited their way through Yale and Blackrock could make the world a worse place.

Comment by jMyles 1 day ago

> Not everyone in jail got busted for benign stuff like selling a joint. There are lots and lots of incarcerated murderers, rapists, fraudsters, drunk drivers, etc.

In US federal prisons, drug offenders make up over 40% of the total population, by very far the largest group. The next largest tracked category, "Weapons, Explosives, and Arson" is 23%. [0]

Granted, these are almost entirely US federal offenses, which have of course been flux throughout US history with respect to proper authority, and drug offenses have tended to grease the wheels of jurisprudence so as to be regarded constitutional (albeit with a very inconsistent set of underlying principles). Murder for example is not generally a violation of federal law absent (a fairly long list of) special circumstances.

I do not believe there is any state where the number of people incarcerated for fraud convictions is in the same order of magnitude as drug convictions. In Ohio, where this story takes place, drug offenders are about 14% of the population while "fraudsters" are about 1%.

I think it's pretty reasonable to assert that a significant portion of prisons in the USA are convicted of offenses that are not easy to understand as a moral affront to society or an infringement on the rights of anyone else.

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

Comment by mothballed 1 day ago

The weapons offenses are by a longshot "felon in possession of a firearm." That one is crazy to me. You're going to send people out into the free world, where guns are legal, and owning a gun is legal, and they are supposedly off the books, and then just tempt them with owning something to defend themselves that everyone around them already has but then lock them away for a decade for doing so? Obviously most of the drug ones are just as absurd -- you're locking up drug dealer A who is immediately replaced with drug dealer B with absolutely no change to drug operations or consumption but at great expense to yourself. Thankfully we've pretty much stopped putting drug users in federal prison.

You could probably wipe out over half the federal prisons without any real change to greater society.

Comment by t-3 1 day ago

Go to your local county jail lockup, by far the most common charge is driving on a suspended license - because many crimes will get your license suspended as a matter of course, and others will give you payment plans and paperwork filing dates and if you aren't on top of everything well enough you will get suspended for missing a payment or failing to submit your stuff properly, then enjoy violating probation with an additional misdemeanor, impound fees, court fees, and possible jail time.

Comment by stackghost 1 day ago

The assertion was that prison populations commit less crime and are higher-IQ than CEOs.

Drug crimes are still crimes, irrespective of public opinion.

Comment by FpUser 1 day ago

>"C-suite types commit more crimes than prisoners, but I'd wager they don't."

On behalf / or covered by corporations they openly do things for which any normal person would be criminally charged and put behind bars. Wake me up when people who for example were involved in Bradley development scandal are punished. Or ones involved in DuPont PFOA contamination case etc. etc. So they do have criminal mind. They just know they would personally get away with it and in a worst case the corporations get fined.

Comment by AnimalMuppet 1 day ago

"For the little stealing, they give you prison, soon or late. For the big stealing, they names you emperor, and puts you in the hall of fame when you croaks. If there's one thing I've learned from from twenty years on the Pullman cars listening to the white quality talk, it's dat same fact."

From "The Emperor Jones", quoted from memory.

Comment by Geezus_42 1 day ago

I read that in Jar Jar Binks voice. :D

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Comment by hackable_sand 1 day ago

Still pushing that pseudoscience crap from a century ago?

You guys just can't let go

Comment by jackmottatx 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by jmyeet 1 day ago

I want to point out just one example.

There's a guy by the name of Michael Lacey who is popular in Tiktok under the name Comrade Sinque [1]. He spent 21 years in prison. It was a much longer sentence. I'm not sure what happened to get him out much earlier.

What was his crime? Felony murder. Sounds bad, right? So what were the details. At age 19 he and a friend burgled a house. The homeowner killed his friend. That was it.

Many Americans don't realize how this works and how insanely unjust it is. It's called the felony murder doctrine and it is unique to the US. It means that if a felony is being commited and if anyone dies then you, as the felon, can be charged with murder regardless of how they died. In states like Alabama, all burglaries are felonies. So if you and a friend break into a house, the police respond and kill your friend, you can get convicted of murder and sentenced to 30-years in prison.

Not a made up example [2].

Anyway, Comrade Sinque is better read than probably at least 95% of Americans. He is thoughtful and intelligent. He wasn't born a criminal (that's 18th century thinking). He's certainly not low IQ (as some would have you believe criminals all are). No, the issue is material conditions. Poverty and a lack of opportunity.

We probably spent about $1 million convicting and incarcerating him for 21 years. This doesn't really seem like a good investment.

[1]: https://www.tiktok.com/@comrade_sinque

[2]: https://apnews.com/article/felony-murder-officer-shooting-al...

Comment by nomel 1 day ago

Convictions/punishment is also meant to be a deterrent.

That one being: don't rob a house in a state with a castle doctrine where the owner is allowed to fucking kill you. If you first hand help someone get killed, you're at fault. Sounds reasonable.

But, I also wish we had far far more deterrents, and far more deaths, when it comes to robbers.

Comment by Quarrelsome 1 day ago

Deterrents assume criminals make good decisions though. While deterrents matter for career criminals who have the experience to make good choices about their crimes, I think they're almost entirely ineffective against initial offenders.

Comment by jmyeet 1 day ago

The uS has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prison population. We have a higher rate of incarceration than, say, Russia or Iran [1].

If deterrants worked, why do these incidents keep happening? Why isn't this the safest country on Earth?

Poverty costs all of us but rather than lifting people out of poverty, we'd rather spend way more on the prison-industrial complex, slavery 2.0 (ie convict leasing) and law enforcement.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

Comment by nomel 1 day ago

You're putting too much meaning into that data.

Look at the low numbers in Africa. Is it because they elevate their criminals out of poverty? Maybe their police have good relationships with the community? Maybe they're good at re-habilitating convicted criminals in prison? Or maybe it's counseling to heal generational trauma?

Nope. Strong deterrent of immediate mob justice: https://www.dw.com/en/mob-justice-in-africa-why-people-take-...

Obviously, stoning all the criminals isn't the solution, but having society rigidly define acceptable bounds of behavior that get you removed from that society if crossed (temporarily or permanently), isn't unreasonable.

To understand that high number in the US, I think you would have to look at who is in prison, and what they did, to understand. Good luck. They collect the data in a way so you can't do a multivariate analysis, because that would be unethical!

Comment by dullcrisp 1 day ago

That’s a fair point about Africa, but is Europe also contributing another 25%? Or is that also a lawless place?

Comment by nomel 1 day ago

I don't know, we would have to look at the data. Again, due to ethical concerns, they don't record or report the data in a way where more meaningful conclusions can be made.

I think many many things contribute to the difference in imprisonment.

But, federal imprisonment is 42% drug charges [1]. Just looking at that, US has a cartel run country, with a near 20% GDP based on drug trafficking [2], at its poorly controlled border, with a whole continent below that containing exactly zero first world countries, some having > 40% GDP from drug trafficking! I've walked across the Mexican border. I've seen caravans of cars driving across. It's near fiction. Now, try to smuggle some drugs into an inner European country! Or, alternatively, just hop over to Amsterdam to avoid your countries laws. And, we also have the benefit of corporations fueling drug epidemics [3]. Is that imprisonment a deterrent? I didn't look up numbers, but have some useless anecdotal evidence: I knew two drug dealers in high school. They both stopped because their buddies were arrested, and lives ruined.

For direct evidence to answer the question "is punishment a deterrent" (I find it hard to believe this is an argument), see California Prop 47 [4].

[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

[2] https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2023-09-21/f...

[3] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

[4] https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/prop-47-36-califor...

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Comment by red-iron-pine 1 day ago

with respect, if I'd spent 21 years in prison with nothing else to do I'd probably read a ton of books, too

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

I mostly think the US system is too punitive, but I don’t see a problem here. Someone died because of what he did. He did it deliberately and the death was a foreseeable outcome of what he did. I’m not too upset that he spent two decades in prison as a result.

Comment by 948382828528 1 day ago

Won't someone think of the burglar on tik tok?

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Comment by jzemeocala 1 day ago

"we are all just a few mistakes away from becoming the people we pity and frown upon"

Comment by itsthecourier 1 day ago

I have dealt with many criminals through my life.

some simply wanna be Pablo Escobar and become a reggaeton poster child. they don't do it for other reason than become their mental image of a gangster.

yes, they are intelligent but they insist and insist into do what they consider cool, and that coolness come to be a "hacker" or a criminal

so far from top of my mind I remember a serial corporate scammer, a social media middle man who constantly sell access to people working in meta (unlocking/locking accounts), a drug precursor middlewoman, a money laundering mule/scammer/errand boy. every time it was the same. they wanted to show a gangster luxury life in ig. the middlewoman was something else, never got to understand her. 60 years. probably she was just for the thrill of it.

had they opportunities to do something else? repeatedly. specially after prison or with family help. but they refuse, the next business will be the one. they will become millionaires for sure. jail again.

Comment by heffert 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by homeonthemtn 1 day ago

Whoa there fellah. Maybe take a breath your self.

Comment by heffert 1 day ago

"Oh nooo don't criticise muh heckin criminalerinos, fella!"

You're too domesticated to understand.

Comment by CursedSilicon 1 day ago

"Some people are just losers. Accept that"

At least you outed yourself in your original post

Comment by heffert 1 day ago

>Investigators found software, pornography and articles about making drugs and explosives on the machines.

These are the "winners" you are championing btw. And that's after whatever heinous crime landed them in prison in the first place, and after they stole computers from a program designed to assist them with training and reintegration.

But the soy-faced bleeding hearts of HN can't see past the sheer ingenuity of throwing a PC in the ceiling and plugging in an ethernet cable...

Comment by Geezus_42 1 day ago

As a US citizen, everything you described sounds pretty god damn American to me. What's more patriotic than getting wasted and looking at some nice melons while blowing shit up? That's real freedom right there mf'er. Only thing missing is some guns. Sounds like you hate freedom.

Comment by heffert 1 day ago

The absolute state of mutts lol

Comment by jldugger 1 day ago

previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14093970

Comment by dang 1 day ago

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Investigation finds inmates built computers and hid them in prison ceiling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14093970 - April 2017 (188 comments)

Comment by card_zero 1 day ago

I fear that "opportunities for offenders to participate in meaningful and rehabilitative programming" probably does not mean programming. It's the prisoners who get programmed.

Comment by codezero 1 day ago

This makes me wonder if people might be getting Starlink Minis smuggled in by corrupt guards.

Comment by eucyclos 1 day ago

I've been told by someone who'd been in jail a lot, that attorney-client privilege is a huge loophole in the prison smuggling economy and someone in prison asking if you know "a good lawyer" is asking for a lawyer who would be willing to smuggle in contraband during privileged meetings.

Comment by kotaKat 1 day ago

Cellphones are always interesting because of the weird game of "sorta legal cellphone jamming" with managed access systems.

Can't just jam the phones, but you can set up a carrier-blessed sorta-Stingray that traps 'rejected' phones into a sinkhole network while bounces 'authorized' phones out to macro networks. It's kinda funky and wild.

Comment by tetrisgm 1 day ago

Excellent lateral thinking, and result driven mindset. I’m not being sarcastic either

Comment by Anonbrit 1 day ago

Nearly a decade old story now

Comment by markus_zhang 1 day ago

I wonder if the those articles are from textfiles.com?

Comment by b00ty4breakfast 1 day ago

Boredom and time breeds creativity.

Comment by anthk 1 day ago

Free roam games in a prison would be highly praised, even if they were dumb Pokémon roms or really old GTA releases.

Or just give them long gamebooks -not necesarily fantasy themed- a la CYOA but with pencils and erasers (and, yes, they can be turned into a weapon, but inmates will use for paperwork or prison classes anyway).

Some of them allow you to roam under a whole city and solve enigmas/puzzles and fight.

Comment by coldtea 1 day ago

Just give them computers already...

What is with this BS idea of medieval jail conditions...

Comment by qingcharles 1 day ago

They had computers in one place I was in, but not connected to the Net, just for doing some basic word processing and typing tutorials.

I found the C# compiler that is hidden several levels deep by default in the Windows directory and decided to teach the other prisoners how to code. I needed some reference materials as it's really hard when you have no docs and literally just the compiler. They don't allow computer books in most places "for security reasons", but a very elderly nun took pity on me and asked me what I wanted. I told her "C# Weekend Crash Course" (I wasn't a C# dev at the time and it was the only title I could think of) and she bought it off Amazon and smuggled in not only the book but the CD-ROM that came with it, bless her. I managed to teach the guys how to write text adventures which they enjoyed. I couldn't think of what else fun I could get them to do with only console text in/out.

Comment by nextaccountic 1 day ago

> I couldn't think of what else fun I could get them to do with only console text in/out.

maybe specialized calculators that ask some parameters (like "how many days" etc) and run some formulas

could even be useful for something

Comment by qingcharles 1 day ago

I wish I'd had a bunch of those BASIC programming books from the 8-bit home computer era, they had a ton of fun games based only on simple console input and output.

Comment by anthk 1 day ago

You can just run bwbasic today (or blassic) and clone the Basic Computer Games from

https://github.com/GReaperEx/bcg

https://github.com/John-Titor/bwbasic

Comment by anthk 1 day ago

Well, Scoundrel/Donsol it's a game that can be run with just a deck of cards, and porting it to C# it's a trivial task from ANSI C with simple arithmetic:

https://codeberg.org/luxferre/scoundrel-ports

Comment by glerk 1 day ago

Their thinking is that making the conditions bad will serve as deterrent i.e. would-be criminals would think twice before committing crimes because they're scared of going to prison.

Of course, this makes no sense, as most criminals have low impulse control and don't think about the consequences of their actions in terms of risk/reward calculations. We should use prison time to re-educate these people and try to make them better instead of psychologically torturing them, but here we are, and it's very unlikely things can change within the current political system (too many "checks and balances" for meaningful reforms)

Comment by coldtea 1 day ago

>Of course, this makes no sense, as most criminals have low impulse control and don't think about the consequences of their actions in terms of risk/reward calculations.

Also there are decades and decades of this idea not working out at all...

Comment by queenkjuul 1 day ago

Not to mention the risk/reward ratio is heavily skewed by the lack of prospects for ex-cons. Once you're in, you got nothing to lose, really.

Comment by flomo 1 day ago

Ok, here's your tablet!

https://epic.org/free-prison-tablets-in-promise-and-in-pract...

Comment by jakelazaroff 1 day ago

> Investigators found software, pornography and articles about making drugs and explosives on the machines.

I mean… yes, obviously, if you look on a computer you're gonna find software.

Comment by loneboat 1 day ago

Maybe you're passing the sentence incorrectly. Could be, "They found software about making drugs/explosives, pornography about making drugs/explosives, and articles about making drugs/explosives".

Comment by dullcrisp 1 day ago

Oh then the prisoners and I have something in common.

Comment by mrguyorama 22 hours ago

I mean they are basically describing a chemistry textbook at that point

Comment by cwillu 1 day ago

[2016]

Comment by t1234s 1 day ago

Creative.. someone should hire this guy when or if he gets out.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by queenkjuul 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by tonyedgecombe 1 day ago

More likely you will just get downvoted off the bottom of the page.

Comment by 948382828528 1 day ago

So brave