Working on databases from prison
(turso.tech)838 points by dvektor 3 days ago
838 points by dvektor 3 days ago
This sounds good. It is important that we recognize all of the purposes of punishment instead of overemphasizing one or neglecting the other.
Punishment has three ends: retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. It is important that you pay for your crime for the sake of justice; it is charitable and prudent to rehabilitate the criminal, satisfying the corrective end of punishment; and would-be criminals must be given tangible evidence of what awaits them if they choose to indulge an evil temptation, thus acting as a deterrent.
In our systems today, we either neglect correction, leaving people to rot in prison or endanger them with recidivism by throwing them back onto the streets with no correction, or we take an attitude of false compassion toward the perp by failing to inflict adequate justice, incidentally failing the deterrent end in the process.
> Punishment has three ends: retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence.
One might argue a fourth end as well: removal.
When people talk about "cleaning up the streets" they don't mean causing ruffians to clean up their act, what they refer to is removing the ruffians entirely. To "someplace else". To "Not in my backyard". Out of sight, out of mind as is often said.
For profit prisons may view prisoners as cheap labor or levy bait, but for the voting public who gets no cut of that action the real inducement starts and ends with "make the problem go away". Sweep human beings we do not know how to cohabitate with under a rug.
Retribution may appeal to those directly wronged, or to the minority of sadists in a population. Deterrence is oft admired, but few honestly believe it's really possible given that harsh sentences never seem to cause crime to go to zero (sensationalism-driven media that magnifies every mole-hill notwithstanding) and that repeat offenses outnumber first offenses. Rehabilitation appeals to those with compassion, though nobody has a clear bead on how to actually land that plane with more than the lowest hanging fruit of only-slightly-off-course offenders.
So I think the real elephant in the room is that people want/demand/rely upon removal.
Yeah, and part of the problem is that punishment cannot be made inevitable (any more than crime can be made "zero" as I'd inferred, despite what public expectation might look like xD).
First of all you have criminals who are low-functioning enough for whatever reason to fail to understand how actions connect to consequences in reality. Be it due to mental illness, or overestimation of their abilities. No amount of certainty is enough to dispel the "That won't happen to me" presumption from a pretty big chunk of the population.
Next you have desperate people: either due to "risking punishment may actually be safer than risking privation while obeying the law" and/or due to presumptions of having nothing left to lose.
And finally you have cartels, where folks organize so well that their internal governance and capacity to levy violence actually stands toe to toe against the civil governments that they operate within the jurisdictions of. This is the civil equivalent of a tumor, with all of the oncological complications that that often implies.
So I would caution that "inevitability of punishment" is an unreasonable goal to try to justify harsh sentences, and I would estimate that any historical accounts of governments who have achieved that feat were probably also totalitarian enough to be able to lie about their resulting crime statistics along the path.
You're missing a function: Removal. Locking up criminals prevents them committing additional crimes that impact the general public. Data from the last few years shows that there's definitely a Pareto aspect to criminal populations, and absent an ability to rehabilitate, removal is the next best option for society at large.
I would argue that removal can be analyzed into the other categories, or into something that isn't the province of punishment.
1. the deprivation of freedom is retributive
2. the prevention of additional crimes can be said to be deterrence of an active sort
3. the protection of society isn't part of punishment per se, but a separate end
This becomes clear when we consider imprisonment in relation to various crimes. Violent criminals are imprisoned in part because they are a threat to the physical safety of others. However, is an embezzler or a mayor embroiled in shady accounting a threat to anyone's physical safety? Probably not. So the purpose of their removal is less about crime prevention and more about retribution.
The idea is that if they are making a rational choice to embezzle or not (and have other viable options for living), then knowing jail time is a possible outcome changes the expected payout equation. In that way it can be preventative, but only in those specific sorts of cases.
Would love to read into this research if you have a link or something to search
I think there's also a fourth "end" to prison punishment, but I don't know the proper name for it.
It's when you remove the dangerous person from a society for a while, so they can't commit crimes for that while. This is very important part of prison punishment with people with criminal tendencies, and this is why recidivists get longer prison sentences for each subsequent repetition of a similar crime.
Unfortunately we have to admit that some (small) percentage of criminals cannot be rehabilitated, so they must be isolated from society.
The technical term is incapacitation. (Other commenters in this thread are also referring to it as “removal”.)
For criminals that act alone, variations in the severity of the sentence doesn’t seem to have the impact you might expect it to have on how much it actually deters people. (And there is the issue that people in prison can share strategies between themselves for how to more effectively commit crime, which is not an ideal outcome.) So indeed, incapacitation is a very important factor. When it’s studied, you often see numbers like “increasing the sentence by 10 years prevents 0.2 crimes due to deterrence and 0.9 crimes due to incapacitation”.
I say this applies to people acting alone because, although I have no proof, I suspect that organized crime is a bit more “rational” in their response to changes in sentencing. If sentencing were set up so that engaging in a category of crime was not profitable for the criminal organization, I’m pretty sure they would realize this and stop. This logic doesn’t apply to individual people, because the average person committing a crime has no idea what the sentence is or their odds of getting caught, and they obviously don’t do it often enough that the random variation is amortized out.
>"It is important that you pay for your crime for the sake of justice"
Oh dang, there's that pesky religious mechanic again! Why can't we build on pragmatism rather than ensuring the Justice God has enough blood-years drained from criminal-victims? Two crimes don't make a justice!
Irrelevant addendum: I think I will mix atheism and anarchism as they are very compatible concepts, in that they stand in skepticism of essentially the same species of entity with two masks: church and state.
One of the most baffling elements of the justice system is how little the victim is involved in the justice. 'Society' should not lord the lion's share of the justice decisions over the victims. Quite often the victim would prefer compensation and release over getting fuck all while the perpetrator languages in prison at the tax dollar of the victim.
Much of 'justice' has been usurped from the victim into a jobs campaign for the state.
You are baffled by the western concept of justice.
In western philosophy an offender is considered to have offended against society even if their crime is of a personal nature. As such, they are tried, condemned, and punished by society according to codified rules. A victim, if there is one, is not really a part of this process.
There is a fundamentally sound basis for this philosophy, including equity (different justice for different people is no justice for anyone), impartiality, and respect for human rights.
There are other philosophies of justice: for example, the traditional "I'm strongest I get the best stuff" or "you dissed me ima kill you." Some are codified similarly to western justice ("killing a man is requires you pay his heirs 100 she-camels of which 40 must be pregnant, killing a woman is half that, killing a Jew one-third, and so on"). Others involve negotiation between victim (or their families) and offender -- which often works out well, since the offender is often is a position of power to start with and is very likely come out on top.
The simple "an eye for an eye" is just the beginning of a very very deep rabbit hole you can go down on the road to enlightenment.
I think you're confusing or conflating civil and criminal courts. If someone breaks a law, that's generally a matter for the state to decide in a criminal court. If someone was damaged (i.e. if the victim feels the perpetrator owes them compensation), that's a matter for them to bring up themselves in the civil courts. These are separate functions; one situation could be tried in both courts. A famous example off the top of my head is that even though OJ Simpson wasn't criminally convicted of murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, a civil court found him liable, awarding tens of millions of dollars in damages, to be paid to their families.
Distancing the victim from the outcome of sentencing is by design and, arguably, for the better in a democracy. Crimes violate the social order, not just the victim. It behooves us all to have a system wherein (in theory) the system, not the victim, applies a set of rules to determine punishment, as contrary as that might seem to one’s sense of self, morals, etc. It’s a part of why “justice is blind.”
I strongly disagree. The victim is generally deeply incapable of being objective about the situation. How many perpetrators of domestic violence would go free because their spouse is too scared to ask for proper punishment? This is already a big problem with securing cooperation for prosecution, and I'd aim to make that better, not worse. You'd have enormous disparities in sentencing based on the personality of the victim. Should mugging a vindictive asshole carry a harsher sentence than mugging a nice person who believes in second chances no matter what?
The justice system is pretty far from actual justice in many cases, but this wouldn't get it closer.
Most criminals aren't in a financial position to pay compensation. And even if you get a judgment, good luck ever collecting. When a drunk driver damaged some of my property I didn't bother sueing him because he was obviously a worthless deadbeat.
In most US jurisdictions the victim of a crime is allowed to make a statement during the sentencing phase of the trial. So the victim can certainly request release if they want it although the judge isn't obligated to adhere.
Rehabilitation is retribution.
So many things can never have full repatriation. The best we can do is have society acknowledge, forcefully, the wrongs done via prison sentencing.
But then many countries go wrong on policy - punitive imprisonment leads to worse individual and social outcomes than a rehabilitation focus.
Yep - turns out the Nordic countries had it right all along. When you focus on rehabilitation and not just punishment you get lower redicivism rates. Who would have thought it?
> When you focus on rehabilitation and not just punishment
From a book I recently read on the subject they seem not just to focus on rehab and lack of punishment. If there are disputes with others within the facilities the ones in the dispute must sit down and talk through their issues and find a resolution. This helps ingrain proper anger management & helps re-acclimate them to normal society where violence is rarely the best option. And it makes a ton of sense, if they never are taught how to talk out their issues they will go back to how they have handled those issues all along.
Nordic countries have essentially exactly the same 1/3 two year recidivism rate as the US, the one exception being Norway at 1/5, and mostly not for rehabilitation policy reasons.
https://inquisitivebird.xyz/p/the-myth-of-the-nordic-rehabil...
It depends on the crime IMO.
I live in Sweden and now the gangs are recruiting children because they don't get sentenced even for murder (maybe 2 years max).
The other side of prison is keeping the public safe - you also have zero recidivism with the Bukele approach.
Preston was free to negotiate his pay with us, and we pay him a full salary. Just no health care benefits.
One of the biggest problems with the prison system in the US is that prisoners are often saddled with the debt related to or imposed on them by their incarceration which they can't pay back.
The inability to find a job coupled with the crushing interest is what leads to desperation, and then repeat criminal behavior.
> There is a real risk of exploitation
Centralized systems always have a risk of corruption when power is concentrated in few people. Those job roles also many times attract the corrupt; and even when you have people who go in with a good moral caliber, the regular dynamics of the interactions may also twist them into being corrupt.
Its a rare person with sufficient moral caliber that can survive such a job (as a guard or other prison staff) unscathed and still be a good person afterwards.
Many avenues of education also do not prepare them appropriately for work in the private sector, and some careers are simply prohibited. For example becoming a chemist or engineer when they have a conviction related to ethics violations in such fields.
It's amazing. Absolutely insane that people are incarcerated so long for non-violent drug crimes, though.
Turso also looks really neat for small Payload sites.
"Non-violent drug crimes" brings to mind hippies selling weed or mushrooms. But this guy was selling carfentanil. I'm not saying he's to blame for the opioid crisis turning street people into shambling zombies, clogging emergency services with overdoses, and causing death, but he certainly played a part.
He played a lot smaller part than the Sackler family, who ran Purdue Pharma and pushed their drugs into communities. They killed a lot more people than this guy, and yet none of them are in jail.
> But this guy was selling carfentanil
Do you have a source? It seems that guy was selling MDMA and marijuana. Here's the relevant quote from https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/
I was caught with MDMA coming in the mail from Vancouver, and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now)
I find it somewhat amusing that I woke up to this post at ~9 AM, and was surprised at the crowding-out of discussion about the article, by people sort of half-groping at a straw or two they picked up, trying to make a definitive case on his...goodness? morality?...based off the straw they're holding.
It is now 4 PM, about to clock out for the day because I gotta wait for CI run thats >30m. I come back here and it's still going on. This is #3 comment I see when I open HN, ensuing thread takes up two pages scrolls on 16" MBP.
It's bad of me to write this because, well, who cares? Additionally, am I trying to litigate what other people comment?
The root feeling driving me to express myself is a form of frustrated boredom -- rolling with that and verbalizing concretely, a bunch of people writing comments with the one thing they're hyperfocusing on their record to drive a conclusion on their value as a person/morality, and then people pointing out that's not some moral absolute, asking for links, discussing the links...
...well, it's all just clutter.
Or YouTube comment-level discussion, unless we're planning on relitigating every case he's been involved in.
This all would be better if it the kangaroo court stuff was confined to a thread with all of the evidence against him, so we didn't have a bunch of weak cases, or if people didn't treat this as an opportunity to be a drive by judge. Article def. ain't about his crimes, and he ain't saying he's innocent or an angel.
(and the idea that "drug crimes" implies "hippie selling weed or psychedelics" so calling them "drug crimes" is hiding the ball...where does that come from? Its especially dissonant b/c you indicate the mere fact he sold an opiod is so bad that this guy is...bad? irredeemable? not worth discussing?...so presumably you care a lot about opiods, so presumably you know that's whats driven drug crime the last, uh, decade or two?)
Oh absolutely. Voters always favor harsher punishments or making things worse for those already convicted of crimes. You never get any more votes by pushing for lower punishments for any crime or by doing anything to reduce recidivism. I suspect that a pretty solid litmus test for "politician who is actually trying to make the world a better place" based just on how they vote for lowering recidivism.
Sure, some people might say that. I’d say that’s also quite cruel, and that there might be a third option that’s better than both.
Any yet there are coke-cola machines everywhere including inside police stations which kills more people each year.
And only one company is allowed to import the specific leaves/material (coca leafs). The government restricts everyone from importing them unless it's one of the biggest companies in the world.
He didn't kill anyone, unless he misrepresented the product and the customer used the product incorrectly and died as a result. Even then there's argument for tainted product and considering the persecution around the industry, I as a juror would acquit any charge reliant on that as the underlying logic. Even then, if I foresaw more than 12 years sentence for anyone I would acquit and jury nullify on human rights grounds. Humans must be free. The big moral failure of modern states is their lack of unmolested opt-out.
People like big strong dominating government until it gets replaced with the Mormon church, or a Caliphate, then nooo it's not statesmanship but just religion. (Hint: all states are religions, and codes are religious texts. What do freedom of religion and freedom of association mean in this context, instead of the toothless safe-for-government one you're used to thinking of it in?)
How do they make sure the prison isn't just employing people already experienced in the field to make the prison money? How do they ensure people are treated fairly (normally prisoners aren't really even allowed sick days, they can't chose not to work overtime if required, etc)? Do they audit to ensure number of sick hours are comparable to non-prison work? Do they ensure prison guards bonus' aren't based on inmate performance (UNICOR does all of the above bad practices resulting in sick people being forced to work overtime in order to get the guards their bonus)?
UNICOR/the Federal system 'strongly encourages' people with CAD experience, etc do the McDonalds remodel contracts, the World Trade Center work, etc. These are people that worked in the industry prior to prison and that are not traditionally been hired back after release, so it's simply being used to make UNICOR money on big contracts based on incarcerated individuals pre-existing training being exploited. In addition having structural CAD work done by people with zero say in their job, their deliverables/quality, their hours, etc seems like a bad idea. I don't know why outside engineers are using this work. The UNICOR McDonalds remodels are probably fine (though you can tell by the current feel of McDonalds that the remodels were literally done by prison inmates), but the UNICOR World Trade Center stuff seems super sketchy.
Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit.
For those who don't want to hit Google, the conviction was for possessing 30g of a synthetic opioid "U-47700". A normal dose is ~1mg, 10mg can be deadly (so this was 30000 trips or killing 3000).
The drug became illegal across the US on November 14, 2016.
"Police said they found the drug in Thorpe’s apartment in Manchester in December 2016" (https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...)
"Preston Thorpe, age 25, was sentenced by the Hillsborough County Superior Court (Northern District) to 15 to 30 years stand committed in the New Hampshire State Prison for possession of the controlled drug 3,4-dicholo-N-[2-(dimethylamino)-cyclohexyl]-N-methylbenzamide (also known as "U-47700") with the intent to distribute. U-47700 is a synthetic opioid that is classified as a Schedule I drug." (https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...)
Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. Even if the amount implied dealing, that still seems really high. Don't people typically get less than that for sexual assault or armed robbery?
> Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession.
The sentence was for intent to distribute. It's an extremely potent substance. This would be like discovering someone had 30,000 pills. You can't really argue that it was for personal use at that point. They also found him in possession of carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl), scales, baggies, and other products. This looks like a very clear case of someone importing high-potency synthetic opioids to redistribute.
High potency synthetic opioids are a high priority target for law enforcement. These are most often cut (diluted) and then sold to buyers expecting some other opioid product. As you might expect, perfectly diluting a 1mg dose of a powder into a 500mg - 1000mg pill form is extremely hard to do and there's a high risk of "hot spots" forming in certain pills (or sections of a powdered product). This results in a lot of serious overdoses.
It's a severe problem right now. Most fentanyl overdoses are from users who thought they were taking some other drug. They might have even "tested" it before, but missed the hot spots.
I'll add on, he mentions in his blog that he was making "tens of thousands of dollars a week" selling drugs. He was not a small time dealer and certainly wasn't just buying drugs for himself.
His current sentence also (15-30 years) isn't his first prison sentence. He was released and reoffended which absolutely contributed to the longer sentence.
15-30 years is a bit heavy for 30 million doses even. 1.5-3 years is way more fair.
15-30 years of adulthood is like putting your child in timeout for 6 to 12 years (childhood being 0-19)! Is there anything your child could do to spend half his childhood living in a concrete room, maximum grounding? This is what we are doing to a man.
No. 12 years is public school length so that should be the life sentence, in the interest of keeping government in check. Think it's unfair in your case? Murder him when he gets out and serve your 12. Or... get over it, life goes on, etc. :^)
By what logic? I could just as easily say that 150 years is "way more fair."
A comparison with a literal child is disingenuous, children clearly aren't held to the same standards as adults.
I don't know. If you are in posession of enough of a controlled substance to kill 300 people I'm kind of okay with a drastic response. For every Preston Thorpe who turns their life around there 100s of others who will just go out and keep endangering lives like this. I think this is a nuanced topic and 10-30 years is too much for drug possession is entirely lacking the necessary nuance to evaluate. Comparison to other crimes is not particularly useful either without going into the relative harms of each as compared to the harms of the other.
"enough of a controlled substance to kill" is an absurd, inflammatory metric. They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers and we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone.
He shouldn't be in prison, period.
A pack of cigarettes is enough nicotine to kill a grown man. Provided you smoke them all at once.
It's a bad measurement.
How many deadly chemicals are in an average home? Every time I fill up my car with gas, I buy enough to commit dozens of cases of arson.
Intent matters and there's no reason to believe he intended to harm anyone. I believe it's a crime and should be a felony but this sentence is a bit extreme in terms of punishment fitting the crime.
Unless you do something so heinous it captivates the public or have a bunch of priors the only crimes that reliably will put you away for that kind of time are ones that the government takes specific offense to. Usually that means ignoring their monopoly on violence but seeing as this guy is behind bars for dealing and not murder I'd bet he just got unlucky and happened to sell the dose that some more equal animal or their relative OD'd on.
Preston's recent interview with the changelog podcast[1] explains that he's been convicted twice. Repeat offenders don't usually get light treatments.
Unlikely...He's an incredibly callous individual that was cutting drugs with a substance orders of magnitude more dangerous than fentanyl so he could drive an Audi and live the high life. Given that they tied several deaths back to his operation, and that it was a multi-state joint effort, I doubt he'd get a slap on the wrist by a European judges.
in addition to the other comments, this was also not his first conviction. They get extremely punative.
Turns out TFA lies on his blog:
> and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now). (https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/)
He's downplaying his crime. It wasn't just Marijuana.
Definitely a manipulative framing on his part. He originally was convicted for MDMA and marijuana, was released on probation and then was convicted for synthetic opioids. He's probably serving time right now for the marijuana for breaking his probation but he's not in prison now because of it.
> He was picked up for breaking his girlfriend’s arm, a detail that’s missing from his own apologies.
Since the top comment seems to be judging the worthiness of this individual to work with databases after prison, for those considering working with or hiring someone with a criminal record, I'd beg you to consider:
You're hiring the person as they are today, long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth. Not who they were at the time of past actions.
Having your own mini trial, where you sit in judgement over the candidate, from your ignorant position of privilege, using whatever details you can dig up with google may be entertaining for you, but is tells you nothing of what kind of employee they might be. Your mock trial may be especially traumatic to endure for the candidate, because their side of the story is rarely included in any reporting you can dig up. Especially for those unfairly convicted.
With everything going on today, do you really trust our justice system to be fair, especially to someone who is not a wealthy and connected straight white male?
If you're only willing to give people a chance when you judge their offence to be trivial by your own ethics, you're not actually providing second chances for those that need it.
Your comment doesn't seem applicable to this scenario since this is not about "work with databases after prison" or "long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth". Even the title says it: "from prison". This individual is actually still undergoing their punishment, not long after it.
I'm not judging anything at all. What part of my comment makes you think I judge the worthiness? I just decided to share what the crime was since OP left it out.
To make it unambiguous I added a prefix: "Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit."
Maine's remote work program is an incredibly promising development to prevent recidivism. The amazing thing about it is that it gives real jobs to prisoners that they can seamlessly continue after they get out of prison. Normally when you get out, it's impossible to get a job, and the clock is ticking. This leads to desperation, which leads to bad behavior.
There is a real risk of exploitation, but if it's properly managed, remote work for prisoners is one of the most hopeful things I've heard about the prison system. It gives people purpose while there and an avenue to success once they're out.