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.
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).
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.
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?
>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.
>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.
>"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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
>"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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
A lot of "crime" isn't crime at all--it's just exercising freedom in a way that the system and its adherents don't like.
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?
>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?
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.
>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.
Yes. The biasing function is that (mostly) only the less smart ones get exposed and caught.
>"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
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.
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.
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.
I'd argue prison iq distribution is more flattering than that of most c-suits, with less crime to boot.
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.
>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.
>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.
"A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes the ruler of a nation." - Chuang Tzu
No conspiracy required, it's perfectly open.
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.
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.
> 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...
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.
The assertion was that prison populations commit less crime and are higher-IQ than CEOs.
Drug crimes are still crimes, irrespective of public opinion.
Still pushing that pseudoscience crap from a century ago?
You guys just can't let go
>"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.
"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.
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.
Excellent lateral thinking, and result driven mindset. I’m not being sarcastic either
previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14093970
Just give them computers already...
What is with this BS idea of medieval jail conditions...
I wonder if the those articles are from textfiles.com?
Boredom and time breeds creativity.
This makes me wonder if people might be getting Starlink Minis smuggled in by corrupt guards.
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.
Nearly a decade old story now
Creative.. someone should hire this guy when or if he gets out.
[2016]