[astro_robot]

Prison reform issues always make me feel so contrasted. On one hand, a lot of the people held there did awful things. The article mentions El Chapo, mobsters, drug dealers, etc. as some of the people held there. It's extremely hard to feel any sort of sympathy for those people. They've done extreme amounts of damage to communities and have done far worse to other people.

But on the other hand, no one should be sexually assaulted and beaten to death.

[majos]

I would argue that you can 1. assume all prisoners are guilty and 2. not care about their welfare (both assumptions that I disagree with) and still support prison reform on the grounds that it reduces criminality in society overall.

Look at the current state of American prisons. We crowd prisoners together and make them feel angry, scared, weak, and ignored by the law (except when it hammers them down) for years on end. That makes it much harder for them to integrate back into normal, law-abiding society.

We should be trying to make it as easy as possible for a convict to eventually leave criminal life behind. But our current system does the opposite.

[gshdg]

These are also people who have been accused of doing awful things, not convicted. It’s not a huge stretch to suggest that some of them are innocent.

[soneil]

When it's difficult to find any compassion for these people, keep in mind that many of them are still awaiting trial, and haven't actually been found guilty yet (a poor example, but Epstein's trial was scheduled for June 2020 - it blows my mind that you could spend a year in prison without being found guilty. Or that others may spend their year and yet be found not guilty).

Or cases like the 'Manhattan Five' (and innumerable others) where entire sentences could be spent before being ultimately exonerated.

I'm not saying it should operate like a day spa on the assumption that someone may be there improperly. But if you need to scrape up a shred of humanity, remember that the worst we have to offer may not be the only people in there.

[fuckhnmods]

> It's extremely hard to feel any sort of sympathy for those people

It's very easy for me. Compassion is for all people, not just those you perceive to be nice. I think the inability or extreme difficulty to have compassion towards fellow humans, as you've described here, is a major problem in America today.

We must all work towards a better future by understanding why bad people were bad in the past. This would enable us to build a better future where fewer bad things happen. But you're not going to understand why Epstein was the way he was if you hate him so much you're not going to feel any compassion to someone presumably as tortured as him. By making him into a monster that everyone wanted to die in the first place, then we'll constantly be faced with Epsteins in the future.

> But on the other hand, no one should be sexually assaulted and beaten to death.

Obviously.

[jcoffland]

In a just system, guilt has to be proven before the accused are punished.