What does society <i>gain</i> from a prison like that?<p>Imagine a person spends 10 years in that situation, and gets out, what the hell are they supposed to do now? They have no job skills, no life skills, they're psychologically damaged. The rate of re-offense isn't high because 'bad people are bad', it's high because we take people in bad situations, and break them further. We take someone almost-functional, and make them completely disfunctional.<p>And anyone who disagrees with this model isn't "tough on crime".
Ms. McMillan was convicted, unanimously, by a jury of her peers. The video of her assault on the police officer is widely available and can be viewed here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=devvY1cCVFE&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdevvY1cCVFE&has_verified=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=devvY1cCVFE&oref=https%3A%2F...</a><p>You can draw your own conclusions, but what I see is somebody preparing, consciously, to use the force of slamming their elbow into a police officer's face in order to escape from that officer.<p>Perhaps you disagree with a lot of things -- police militarization, incarceration rates in this country, unequal outcomes and opportunities based on socioeconomic factors.<p>But I don't see how a fair-minded person can agree that we ought to go around solving our problems by elbowing officers of the law in the eyeball: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/nyregion/officer-testifies-about-encounter-with-occupy-wall-street-protester.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/nyregion/officer-testifies...</a><p>The woman in this case has repeated problems with the law (and the truth) and was arrested again last year for impersonating a lawyer in the subway and interfering with an arrest: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/nyregion/occupy-wall-street-protester-is-out-of-jail-and-back-in-court.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/nyregion/occupy-wall-stree...</a><p>As the prosecutors say in that case: "This new arrest mirrors what was on display throughout the trial: the defendant’s utter contempt for the police and the important job they do on a daily basis."<p>Fact-free magazines like Cosmopolitan may display sympathy for people like Ms. McMillan, but here at HackerNews we should not.
Name one important person who ended up in jail for more-or-less-violent protesting, and ended up having this as a "self transforming" experience. I can name at least one... <i>Adolf Hitler</i> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler</a>) ...and I think Mr. <i>Joseph Stalin</i> followed a similar career path, though I know less about the details (but here's a cute mugshot of him: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Joseph_Stalin#mediaviewer/File:Stalin%27s_Mug_Shot.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Joseph_Stalin#med...</a> )<p>So, here you go:<p>Q: How do you severely radicalize a random semi-moderate non-violent protester?<p>A: Send him/her to jail.<p>Thankfully this girl kept a cool head and drew a sane interpretation from it, but seriously, what are you Americans trying to do, 'cook up' the next generation of world-wrecking monsters in some insane social-engineering experiment?!
<i>I'll agree not to charge you with a felony and potentially lock in you in cage if you agree not to have a third party examine the facts of this case, and instead plead to a misdemeanor and pay a fine.</i><p>Is there any possible reform for the disaster that is the plea system? I realize it's necessarily in some situations but the result is you are never not guilty of some crime. The prosecution virtually never loses. Truth and justice are nowhere to be found.
> The judge didn't allow evidence that my attorney wanted to show the jury, including a range of videos of the incident.<p>That's the part I find the most shocking in this article. Aren't trials supposed to be fair? What are the kind of evidences that are not allowed to be shown?
I live in NYC and I didn't read the entire article, but what stood out for me (beneath the picture) was the $167K per year that each prisoner on Rikers costs NYC!<p>The story of her re-arrest for confronting a police officer in the NYTimes story mentioned in the first comment suggests some underlying contributing psychological issues.
the grad school -> prison movement isn't new.. i recall a friend who, as far as i know, went from a ritzy grad school to jail based on some fairly radical eco-"terrorism".... incarceration is a really scary thing, and there's a gamut of types there. i have a feeling that this was an experience for the article's author for sure, but, although it may be a platitute, i feel as though i ought to say, "it could be worse."
I'm glad she wrote this. In prison you don't just "serve your time". Instead you are abused and neglected, criminally so.<p>Source: My brother went to prison with a 70 year sentence. He was 17.
I don't love cops, but you don't hit cops. No matter what the cop does, you don't hit the cop. 58 days... she got off with a slap on the wrist.
prisons in the US are unconscionable. the abuse by guards, the prevalence of prison rape (by an HIV-positive inmate, no less), the capricious behavior by the staff. It is a shameful system.