Shon Hopwood and Kopf’s terrible sentencing instincts

http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood-and-kopfs-terrible-sentencing-instincts

by danso • 13 years ago

157 111 13 years ago

danso2• 13 years ago

Here's the comment by the judge's former convict:

http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/08/08/shon-hopwood-and-...

I feel like I'm in some fantasy alternate reality, where prison rehabilitation really works, and where the Internet is used for polite, intelligent, and uplifting discussion.

hobs• 13 years ago

To be fair, even the comment by Hopwood reenforces the point (...which is why the national recidivism rate hovers at 66%....It’s very difficult to “seize the day” in prison and use every day to prepare for release when you staring at a 10- or 20-year sentence in the face) that prison rehab doesnt really work.

The internet is more likely to be used for polite, intelligent, and uplifting discussion than for the American prison systems to be used justly.

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

I was soooo tempted to troll that comment :-)

I am struck however by the agreement by the judge and the ex-robber that 5 years is about the max you should give if hoping to reform someone.

In the “for what it is worth” category, I have thought for a long time that 60 months was about the maximum sentence one should impose if you were were solely hoping to make a positive impact on the prisoner.

It would be interesting if we genuinely tried prison as a reform institution. Stop the violence, stop the drugs, provide real meaningful work, and ... err.

rayiner4• 13 years ago

It was intellectually in vogue in the 1960's to treat prison as a reform institution. Then the 1970's and 1980's happened, and the great cities of the U.S. dissolved in crime and violence, and those ideas went very much out of style.

I think it's an unfortunate accident of history more than anything else. When I was growing up in the 1990's, us suburbanites from Northern Virginia would never dream of going to D.C. at night. What took the capital of the country and dragged it down into that sorry state was a combination of economic issues, the drug war, deteriorating race relations, political conflict, etc. But whatever the cause was, it happened, and the end result was that we had an entire generation of people (the boomer generation), that saw the purpose of the criminal law as keeping the criminal element from spilling out into civilized society. Hence, the focus was, through the 1990's, "victims rights" and "tough on crime" not rehabilitation.

Ziomislaw• 13 years ago

It would be interesting if we genuinely tried prison as a reform institution. Stop the violence, stop the drugs, provide real meaningful work, and ... err.

Where is the money in that? Your "clientele" numbers might actually go down - less prisoners == less money.

masklinn2• 13 years ago

It would be interesting if we genuinely tried prison as a reform institution.

Yes, until the 70s. People came from all over the world to see the californian prison system.

Symmetry• 13 years ago

The problem is that in a prison most of the people there are going to be criminals, and will end up socializing each other in ways that act against reform.

Though another part of the problem is that whenever you have a justice system anyone singled out by it as a criminal is going to have an easier time being trusted by criminals and a harder time being trusted by non-criminals in the future.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

There's another judge whose thoughts on sentencing are summed up as: there are two classes of people whom I sentence; the ones I'm mad at, and the ones I'm afraid of. I save long sentences for the second class.

masklinn2• 13 years ago

some fantasy alternate reality, where prison rehabilitation really works

Hopwood specifically notes — in his second paragraph — that in his experience prison (in the US where he was) does not rehabilitate and that the longer the sentence the lower the chances:

And to answer Russ’s question, as far as the length of sentencing, I think it had little effect on my rehabilitation. Prison is not the place for personal growth. Very few people come out of it for the better. From my experience, sentences over 5 years do little to help society or the prisoner. Five years is about the maximum amount of time for someone to “get it” and change and create a different life. More than that, and prisoners feel hopelessness and they think “why bother, I just need to get through this and go home.” It’s very difficult to “seize the day” in prison and use every day to prepare for release when you staring at a 10- or 20-year sentence in the face. And like I said, prisons are not designed with rehabilitation in mind. It’s almost solely about incapacitation, which is why the national recidivism rate hovers at 66%.

(emphasis mine)

As far as he's concerned, his rehabilitation are thanks to personal maturation/growth and an excellent support network (family and now-wife), which he was able to use thanks to a "fairly short" sentence. He also links to an article putting his sentence in perspective: he got 12 years (which I don't find short) but notes an other guy sentenced for similar crimes at a similar age got 213 years (the main difference being the other guy was armed, and got hit by the related minimum sentences).

rayiner4• 13 years ago

Shon Hopwood is a unicorn. He committed five armed bank robberies in Nebraska in the late 1990's (though he didn't shoot anyone). When he was sentenced to prison, he spent his time writing cert petitions (briefs arguing to the Supreme Court for why an appeal should be accepted for their review). A couple of them were granted, which is extremely rare (most lawyers who had a case accepted to be argued in front of the Supreme Court would crow about it at every cocktail party for the rest of their lives). After he got out, he went to law school and accepted a position clerking on the D.C. Circuit (one of the most sought-after positions you can get out of law school).

So basically, yeah, it's a fantasy alternate reality. A guy like him is extremely rare. The recidivism rate for robbers is 70%.

minikites• 13 years ago

I wonder if you have your cause and effect reversed. Maybe the recidivism rate is 70% because prisons are focused more on punishment and vengeance than on rehabilitation and reintegration into society?

ISL• 13 years ago

3/10 may not be "extremely rare".

7/10 is too many.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

That's not the title.

The title is "Shon Hopwood and Kopf's terrible sentencing instincts".

Choice quote: "Hopwood proves that my sentencing instincts suck. When I sent him to prison, I would have bet the farm and all the animals that Hopwood would fail miserably as a productive citizen when he finally got out of prison. My gut told me that Hopwood was a punk–all mouth, and very little else. My viscera was wrong."

That's quite a stand-up thing to write.

Peroni• 13 years ago

I believe the title is highlighting something most folk will miss. Hopwood and Kopf have a fascinating back-and-forth in the comments section.

Whilst the article itself is a good read, the comments (which I would have otherwise skipped) are fascinating.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Indeed. The title is a little misleading (they agree, rather than debate) but I wouldn't have gone to the comments without the hint.

jneal• 13 years ago

The title refers to the bank robber and judge both appearing in the comments section.

67726e• 13 years ago

I think the title was submitted as it was to draw light to the fact that Shon Hopwood and Kopf actually have a debate in the comments section underneath the main article. Something most people would gloss over.

tych0• 13 years ago

And the title is still wrong, "debate" implies some disagreement, which I don't really see in either party's comments.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

That's not what I call a "debate". Both the ex-inmate and the judge largely agree with each other, unfortunately the judge is constrained by the system. Pretty inspiring story though!

onedognight• 13 years ago

In this case the judge wasn't constrained by the system and he still agrees with his 12 year sentence. Where the constraint often comes in is the federal minimum sentencing guidelines as pointed out by Shon here[1].

In the 1990s, Congress passed several get-tough-on-crime mandatory minimum sentencing bills. One of those laws requires a judge to impose an additional 25-year sentence for anyone convicted of a second or subsequent firearm charge. Without these laws, Adam may have received the same 12-year sentence I did. Instead, mandatory minimums allowed prosecutors to transform a crime that averages a 10-year sentence into life imprisonment.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/i-got-a-...

onetimeonly• 13 years ago

Prison works for a very small minority of people who are reasonably intelligent and curious, but lacking direction or drive. Being incarcerated for a short time is a hell of a wake-up call, and for me, Shon Hopwood, and a few others ever, leads you to turn your life around.

For most people it's not about rehabilitation, but deterrence, retribution, and physically restraining inmates from committing crimes in mainstream society.

I completely agree with Shon about the impact of long sentences. He says:

Five years is about the maximum amount of time for someone to “get it” and change and create a different life. More than that, and prisoners feel hopelessness and they think “why bother, I just need to get through this and go home.” It’s very difficult to “seize the day” in prison and use every day to prepare for release when you staring at a 10- or 20-year sentence in the face.

I would add that many people become institutionalised. After a few years in prison you can become socially important in the community. But on the outside, you are nobody. The longer you're in there, the less attractive it looks to reform and try to build a life on the outside.

RougeFemme• 13 years ago

Also helping Hopwood's situation - he had a strong, supportive social network while in prison and after his release.

nollidge• 13 years ago

Where's the "debate"? Seems like they agreed with each other.

mrt0mat0• 13 years ago

This is the beautiful of the internet. People always look at the internet and see the facebooks and the twitters that connect us, and that's cool, but people don't see the beautiful parts. this is the beautiful.

bradleysmith3• 13 years ago

agreed. The judges comment at the end nearly yanked a tear from me; sounds like an old professor, with a genuine care:

Shon,

Savor your third year! Luxuriate,now,in your incredible success.Keep a daily journal–30 years from now it will amuse you while giving your grandchildren warm insights into who you were and how you became the distinguished lawyer that you will become.

Most of all, be happy. All the best.

RGK

schoper6• 13 years ago

Smart white guy gets locked up, manages to make something of himself once his hormones cool off over the course of a few years. This is not rare. Nor is it something you can apply to the general prison population. I.e., think of what the racial makeup of prison would look like 5 years after you started giving smarter people lesser sentences due to their lower rates of recidivism (and vice-versa).

The average prison inmate has an IQ of 85. What can you do with that? That is McDonalds or a government-job level human potential. Further, large swaths of criminals come from parts of our society that don't avail themselves of a traditional means of attaining social restraint: marriage. While everyone here on HN has been solving such important world problems as gay marriage, America's underclass has more or less stopped marrying. Bizarrely, the libertine paradise has not ensued.

imownbey• 13 years ago

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/degrassi/images/9/90/Thats...

patrickmclaren2• 13 years ago

This is not reddit, grow up.

JamisonM3• 13 years ago

That is .. government-job level human potential

Plenty of smart talented people work in government, insulting everyone who works in the civil service like that is not only offensive, it is stupid.

schoper6• 13 years ago

JamisonM, please travel to your local DMV, and while you spend most of your day waiting in the line, repeat to yourself: "My government is behemoth, and therefore large enough to both hire intelligent people for important roles, and also provide sinecures for talentless individuals from groups with political clout for non-vital roles."

justin_vanw3• 13 years ago

There are plenty of smart people in government, but working for the government is soul destroying. There are great exceptions, like NASA and other research positions, but largely I think this quote from the Caine Mutiny sums up all government service:

"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one."

mason55• 13 years ago

The average prison inmate has an IQ of 85. What can you do with that?

A lot of research is now pointing to lead being the cause of a decent amount of crime. Children who grow up exposed to lead have much lower impulse control which ends up being at the root of a lot of crime.

See here[1] for a story on how the murder rate in Jamaica has dropped as a generation grows up without lead paint.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/18/jamaica_lead_...

bjhoops13• 13 years ago

I'm amazed you haven't deleted this post considering it must have been down-voted into oblivion. Or so I hope.

government-job level human potential

I'm so fucking sick of hearing (presumably conservative) people badmouth and dismiss all government employees. Are you contemptuous of the law enforcement officers who protect? The firefighters who would risk their lives to save your ass should your home catch fire? The over-worked, underpaid, disrespected teachers like my wife who slave away educating your [God I hope you don't have any] children? The National Guard and FEMA workers who would pick you up off your roof in the event of a flood? The DOT employees who construct the highways you drive on? The FDA workers who make sure that everything you put in your mouth is safe and poison-free?

But no, those whole groups of people are to be held in contempt. They're all incompetent DMV workers unfit for jobs in the private sector.

I'm sorry that I'm kind of losing my shit on here right now. Maybe you don't deserve that, IDK. I've kind of been rehearsing this diatribe since a few weeks ago when my uncles went off on this tangent at a family gathering, even declaring "the only thing a government employee cares about is their paycheck." I said nothing at the time and regretted it later as the arrogance, scorn and fucking vacuity of that comment wormed its way further and further under my skin.

The patently obvious thing to say at that moment would have been something along the lines of "Oh, and are private sector employees not motivated by pay?" What a moronic assertion, that public employees, who are frequently overpaid and certainly not overpaid compared to their private sector counterparts, are somehow more motivated by financial gain than private sector employees. I suppose the firefight working for < $30k/year is just greedy. Same for my wife, who with her Master's in Education pulls in less than a Junior developer at Innitech. Obviously the only reason they do the work they do is for the pay. Whereas the VP of Sales at GE does what he does out of altruism and selflessness.

Ridiculous.

Are there incompetent, unmotivated government employees? Certainly. Are they more prevalent than disengaged employees in huge private corporations? I'm not so sure. All I know is, with all the shitting on that gets done en masse on government employees, someone needs to defend them.

schoper6• 13 years ago

Oh, but I tell all my friends and family: "Get a government job!"

windsurfer• 13 years ago

I don't know about the rest of your argument but I know that police officers have to take an IQ test in many places, and if their IQ is too high they don't get the job: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/too-smart-to-...

Radix_• 13 years ago

Try asking you uncles why they say X before you share that diatribe. It'll help to temper your arguments with their perspective of how some particular inspector wouldn't even talk to them about an exception to a rule which maybe isn't applicable to this one of five locations. Seriously it wasn't till FEMA that you mentioned organizations people bad mouthing government employees might, Might, refer to. So as worded your talk will fall on deaf ears.

1123581321• 13 years ago

Please calm down.

The person to which you replied mentioned McDonalds and government jobs together, just after mentioning that typical prisoners have low intelligence and so are not qualified for many kinds of work.

It can easily be deduced that they were talking about cashiers and line cooks at McDonalds, and about entry-level jobs in mundane government offices or in low-skill, manual labor. You had no need to defend the writers, artists, managers and scientists McDonalds employs because this was obvious -- and you didn't. Similarly, you don't need to defend the skilled professionals government agencies employ. The person to which you responded, you, me, and every other reader knows that both large public companies and governments hire employees at all levels.

I understand that you are trying to make up for not saying something to your uncle. You are upset that your uncle made a remark arrogantly, scornfully and with vitriol. I believe you. However, I do not see any of that in the post to which you responded and so don't think you have redeemed yourself here. You should talk to your uncle instead.

lambersley• 13 years ago

That is .. government-job level human potential

I'm a Gov employee and I'm not certain how to take this comment. Is my IQ no higher than 85? There certainly are plenty of Gov employees with an IQ of 85 but there are also many jobs in Gov that only require that.

PhasmaFelis• 13 years ago

I had to read this a few times to realize that you actually just said "we should give white people lower prison sentences for the same crimes because they're smarter and less likely to reoffend, unlike black people who are stupid and commit crimes because they're too stupid to get good jobs, and because they're really horny and don't get married like good Christians should. Also, gay marriage sucks."

So, um...that was a hell of a stealthy dog-whistle there. Congratulations, I guess.

schoper6• 13 years ago

Please delete your above comment. It's derogatory and wrong. In fact, I believe the following:

There are a great many intelligent black people. Christians in America's underclass are just as likely to cohabit without marriage as non-Christians. If gay people, as a class, are really excited about taking up the burdens of marriage, I have no objection. They can't change their sexual preference, after all.

bradleysmith3• 13 years ago

Alright, I'll bite.

The average prison inmate has an IQ of 85.

where'd you find that one? Assuming you've got a solid cross-section of tests to average, what kind of motivation do you think those prisoners get to score highly on THAT test? Maybe they were their school tests... What kind of motivation do you think those students had to score highly on those tests?

What can you do with that? That is McDonalds or a government-job level human potential.

Ever seen that Undercover Boss show? The CEO of Waste Management was fired for being inept as a menial trash collector and laborer. I've seen electrical engineering students (good ones!) get fired as custodians, for much of the same.

I met an ex-CPA with a rocketing hobby working at a DMV in Arizona over a cigarette outside. He was QUITE good at his job, and intelligent and thoughtful to boot. There are many many others like him.

You really shouldn't group people into big lumpy categories, and you really shouldn't look down on people or positions. It's rude for one, but it will also severely detriment your understanding of people. I could give a damn either way, but you'll be worse off for it.

Further, large swaths of criminals come from parts of our society that don't avail themselves of a traditional means of attaining social restraint: marriage. While everyone here on HN has been solving such important world problems as gay marriage, America's underclass has more or less stopped marrying. Bizarrely, the libertine paradise has not ensued.

Wait... What? did you just draw a correlation between an abandonment of the institution of marriage, and criminality?

Let me put this in terms you may understand: "In God we trust; all others must bring data"

I have the bizarre feeling I'm feeding a troll.

moocowduckquack2• 13 years ago

Bizarrely, the libertine paradise has not ensued.

It has been going on for ages actually. We just didn't want to spoil it by letting you know where it is.

michaelwww• 13 years ago

* > giving smarter people lesser sentences due to their lower rates of recidivism*

Do you have any evidence for this claim? My limited personal experience with criminals and from what I've read is that many are highly intelligent individuals who don't care about hurting other people (sociopaths), don't think the rules apply to them and have a deep and abiding grudge against society.

darkchyld• 13 years ago

Wow. This is such an amazing story.

sophacles• 13 years ago

On a side note - the level of discourse in the comments on that site is surprisingly high. It would be interesting to see how such a level is achieved.

Shon Hopwood and Kopf’s terrible sentencing instincts

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