Locked in
by John F. Pfaff · first published 2017
7mentions
3recommended by
6HN commenters
2017–2021first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
"Pfaff argues that existing accounts of the causes of mass incarceration are fundamentally misguided. The most widely accepted explanations--the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons--actually tell us much less than we like to think. Instead, Pfaff urges us to look at other factors, including a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony charges against arrestees about twice as often as they had before"--Amazon.com.
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Privatization isn't the issue. A lot of the abuses you see in private prisons, you see in public prisons. I recommend anyone read "Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform"[1] by John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham who focuses on these issues. It addresses a lot of misconceptions about the criminal justice…
on “Do Jails Kill People?” ↗In "Locked In" John Pfaff makes the point that private prisons are not the problem. It is a more nuanced problem, but prosecutors play a large part in our national incarceration problems. Definitely recommend the read…
on “California bans private prisons” ↗Locked In by John Pfaff does a great job of discussing prison reform, and the fallbacks of common mantras (such as this one). He observes that "setting every drug offender free would cut our prison population by…
on “Study: All non-violent criminals jailed on minor drug offence should be released” ↗…is established, and it is indeed unlikely, given that the laws were passed by an overwhelmingly white legislature in the grip of a nationwide (largely unjustified) freakout about crime. John Pfaff's "Locked In" is a great source for the background on this stuff (Pfaff would be the first to say that drug sentencing laws are not the reason for mass incarceration in the US, but that's not the question at issue…
…Chiang (just finished Exhalation and I think it's great) An Ursula K. Le Guin novel, have not picked one out yet A book related to basketball (possibly Dream Team, but IDK yet) Less Leisure Stuff: Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond The End Of Policing by Alex S Vitale Either Manufacturing…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗…utilized the prison system to intentionally discriminate and keep locked up (for free labor) the african-american populations. There recently was a book discussing a different explanation. In this book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff, Pfaff argues it's the perverse incentives of prosecutors and judges that are pushing up the prison population. I don't…
on “Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard” ↗…data in this country is hard to come by. It can be messy and difficult to understand. And in many cases, the data doesn’t exist at all...Missing data is at the core of a national crisis.” John Pfaff- Locked In (https://amzn.to/3aZYB5X)— “Perhaps even more troubling, there are some issues where we simply have no data, where almost nothing at all is gathered.” Elected officials are creating criminal justice…
on “Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform” ↗