Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-peter-sunde-released-prison-141011/

by lelf • 12 years ago

380 200 12 years ago

torrentfreak.com

carlisle_• 12 years ago

There was no concern for his vegan diet

I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.

JoeAltmaier2• 12 years ago

How about his Tuesday lunch with his mother? And his yoga lesson? Prison sucks.

jevinskie• 12 years ago

Lunch with family (in the prison) sounds like a great way to improve recidivism rates. I'd bet that yoga or another form of meditation would also be beneficial.

UrMomReadsHN4• 12 years ago

Prisoners are actually practicing yoga.

http://prisonyoga.com/why/

The Prison Yoga Project was founded in the belief that yoga, taught specifically as a mindfulness practice, is very effective in releasing deeply held, unresolved trauma, allowing us to address the resultant behavioral issues
Our objective is to provide prisoners with a mindfulness tool to draw on their yoga practice when they’re not doing yoga. If they’re tangled in a confrontation on the yard, or upon release, or tempted to go back to using, they can draw on what they have learned from yoga for practical solutions. They can do it without actually having to do a yoga pose to get the value. That’s the transformational, rehabilitative value of yoga.

Video - http://youtu.be/cmiAtV5zAmw

ohyesyodo• 12 years ago

I'm sure you are not the only one, but why wouldn't the prison do that?

Goronmon• 12 years ago

Why should a prison accommodate a prisoner who is a vegan any more than one who wants to eat filet mignon for every meal?

chunkstuntman• 12 years ago

Well if (I assume) you're coming from the mindset of how US prisons treat their inmates, expecting prisoners to be treated with any kind of humanity at all would certainly seem rediculous.

sejje2• 12 years ago

Well if (I assume) you're talking about the prisons that aren't max-security, it's not very ridiculous at all.

Most of the inmates in our prison system are treated "with humanity."

MrSlo• 12 years ago

Heres a short program that the Finnish Broadcasting company did with an American visiting Nordic prisons/correctional institues, just to show a different thinking. Punishment or Rehabilitation. http://arenan.yle.fi/tv/2428667

r00fus• 12 years ago

I can't be the only one that thinks it's ridiculous for a prison to accommodate voluntary diets like this.

Well, it all depends on whether you think a prison is meant primarily for rehabilitation or punishment.

paulhauggis• 12 years ago

on HN, it depends.

a greedy corporate fat cat that cheated people? punishment. Drug or copyright infringement related crimes? rehab.

baddox10• 12 years ago

Why does it depend on that?

scoofy• 12 years ago

Because there is little or no downside to providing it, and to do otherwise is basically cruel.

adnam• 12 years ago

You're possibly not alone, but yourryou're certainly not right.

mikeyouse• 12 years ago

Is it really much different than Jews keeping Kosher or Muslims keeping Halal? Prisons are for punishment for crimes that we consider significant enough to jail people, they don't have to dehumanize the prisoners.

The cost of 'specialty' food for a few tiny percent of prisoners is a minuscule figure in the total cost of imprisonment, and could easily be accommodated within the wider food offerings. If every meal had Kosher / Halal / Vegan offerings as a subset of the total meal, we could both imprison people and treat their ethics and morals with respect. Seems like a win-win.

MichaelGG4• 12 years ago

It's still unelegant and inconsistent. If I claim my diet requires high-quality food determined by me daily, that gets ignored.

I understand Kosher for commercial enterprises like airlines: with a minimum of effort, they can satisfy many customers. But governments should have consistent treatment of citizens.

wamatt• 12 years ago

The cost of 'specialty' food for a few tiny percent of prisoners is a minuscule figure in the total cost of imprisonment, and could easily be accommodated within the wider food offerings.

Agreed, this would seem to be manageable without much burden on the system.

On the other hand however, this reasoning discounts scenarios where inmates are pushing these subjective demarcations, for furthering their own needs, at the expense of being fair to everyone.

For example, in many states prisoner's may earn exemptions based off their religious practices.[1] If, an atheist prisoner, was denied sex, just because of their beliefs, I suspect they would have a right to be upset.

One should keep in mind, that it's quite possible to be supportive of increasing prisoner's rights and benefits, whilst also pushing for prisoner equality.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014...

jsemrau• 12 years ago

Well said. Basic human rights.

ddod• 12 years ago

This sort of thing is pretty off-topic, but at least in the US, some states (like Florida) have laws requiring prisons offer kosher meals. Considering both diets are voluntary, it does seem unfortunate that certain ideologies are state sanctioned while others are not.

a3_nm2• 12 years ago

I agree with the fact that it is problematic to say that prisons should accommodate any kind of voluntary diets (vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, etc.). I do not say this because prisons should "punish" inmates, but because it would require to draw a line between "common" or "reasonable" voluntary diets, and other diets. (Of course, this does not apply to special diets required for medical reasons.) In fact, I have the same problems with voluntary diets being honored in other State-run facilities such as school canteens.

However, I do not see why, as a general principle, prisoners should not be allowed to buy food and have it shipped to them, using their own money.

DanBC6• 12 years ago

The lines are pretty clear:

Vegan; vegetarian; Halal; Kosher; medical; none of the above.

These rules cover most religions and most lifestyle diets; these do exclude wishy-washy bullshit.

Not providing foods guided by a person's religion is probably a violation of article 5 and is a violation of article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights.

You can ask that the prisonor provides evidence of adherance to the restricted diet in their lofe before they became a prisoner. For example, a prisoner who claims to be vegetarian could show that they had been a member of the vegetarian society in their life outside prison.

vacri2• 12 years ago

Religion is voluntary, reading books is voluntary, using exercise equipment is voluntary, using a phone or room to talk to your family is voluntary. A prisoner doesn't have to do any of those things, and plenty of prisoners get by without doing each one of those. Do you have a problem with these voluntary activities as well?

geofft4• 12 years ago

My vegetarian friends say that they literally can't eat meat any more, in the sense that their stomach physiology (acids? bacteria? not sure) isn't capable of digesting it. Yes, it was voluntary at some point, but it's not clear that you can still apply that label.

As someone with food allergies, I could understand (and be unhappy) if a captor decided to feed me allergens as intentional punishment, but I'd be pretty upset and feel pretty dehumanized if a captor just did so because it was the cheapest way to prepare a meal.

Carrok• 12 years ago

I don't believe your friends. They may notice the meat in their stomachs and feel more 'full' than usual, even feel bad. But 'incapable of digesting it'? Not likely. What, the toilet has whole hotdog pieces in it?

UrMomReadsHN4• 12 years ago

Any new diet can cause digestive issues at first. People generally aclumate over time.

[Note: i personally am in full support of prisoners being allowed to keep their diet while being incarcerated. Especially as someone who has a special diet myself. ]

VLM2• 12 years ago

"in the sense that their stomach physiology isn't capable of digesting it"

Its a very popular strightdope urban legend discussion topic. You'd die pretty quickly if you couldn't adsorb complete proteins. Astrologically speaking, iron ions from spinach are dramatically different than iron ions from a steak, but your biochemistry won't know the difference.

You can get three interesting effects:

1) Any time you mess with your diet you mess with your gut flora and ... residue. Not to mention the "feel" in your stomach before its all broken down to constituent molecules indistinguishable from plant sources (other than less fiber) So minor tummy ache is theoretically possible. Less fiber intake = less... output the next day, etc.

2) From my M-i-Ls adventures in gallbladder problems, its theoretically possible for vegan types to chug olive oil especially in the form of salad dressing, but to really consume huge quantities of oil/fat all at once you need a greasy triple cheeseburger with bacon. So you can have some bile / gallbladder related fun (whoa I just ate three days worth of oils/greases in one meal, totally freaking out my gallbladder type of reaction). You'll be fine.

3) Psychologically you can get really messed up. Try eating some dog sometime in a foreign country and then focusing on your stomach (assuming you're standard American) is going to be all messed up. Still meat is meat and if they told you it was pork you wouldn't have blinked, but here you are feeling like you're gonna hurl. Its really not as much fun as my description sounds. Think of that soy stuff instead of cows/chicken/fish/pigs/dogs and you'll be just fine as long as you can avoid getting all anxious. Being anxious is never fun, no matter if due to diet or relationships or tiny enclosed spaces or public speaking or whatever.

Johnny_Brahms2• 12 years ago

Well, you would have to introduce it slowly. I lived in an anarchist separatist vegan collective in my time in germany (long story), with the result of me not eating any animal products for over a year. The first time (after 11 months) that I ate meat after that (a steak. bleu) I puked my guts out and had the runs for over a week.

It took about a month of slowly introducing meat before I was back to normal. There are others that made the switch cold turkey without problems though.

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

I had a US jail as a client for my long ago RFID business and they had 4 types of meals: 2 kosher (jewish and islamic), "normal" and medical/special as I recall.

I used to tell people our app tracked inventory that was trying to escape.

fleitz• 12 years ago

No you're certainly not alone, however the vast majority of prison systems have very high recidivism rates.

You have to ask yourself whether you want prisons to punish people or to get them to not commit crimes in the future, if your goal is to punish people, then sure, feed them the opposite of their preferred diet.

If your goal is to change their behaviour then the breaking of bread can be instrumental in creating change. By showing respect for their culture you can begin to bridge the gap and help them respect yours.

PhasmaFelis6• 12 years ago

So what happened to the votes here, BTW? Earlier today, this and quite a few other comments descended from it were downvoted to invisibility. A few hours later, I checked in and they're all back in black. Are the Million Moms Against Vegetarians running a sockpuppet campaign, or what exactly?

boomlinde2• 12 years ago

What is ridiculous about it? One of the primary goals of prisons, at least here, is to rehabilitate the inmates. Whether that works in practice or not, it's recognized that if you can't practice your most basic beliefs, whether those are religiously founded or otherwise, your mental health and general well being is going to suffer.

ohashi• 12 years ago

Welcome back Peter.

johansch7• 12 years ago

Going back to enjoying the off-the records millions made by putting shady ads on thepiratebay.se for 10+ years.

I seriously have a very hard time time to understand the widespread sympathy for this gang. If they would have gone without ads, sure.

adamnemecek2• 12 years ago

Running servers costs money. And IIRC they were actually losing money even with the ads.

film422• 12 years ago

Although Sunde did not provide Ars with specific financial details regarding The Pirate Bay's operational expenses, he did argue that the site's high bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/02/pirate-bay-big-re...

rhino369• 12 years ago

I don't believe that.

johansch7• 12 years ago

That's all their claims. They were not able to show that they were losing or making money in court. There were no records, at all.

However, they would have to been incredibly incompetent not to make millions off the advertisment, based on their amount of traffic. This was key in the procedings.

I mean.. right now thepiratebay.se is at top 90 in the alexa ranking. More traffic than e.g. nytimes.com, ebay.co.uk, redtube.com, dailymail.co.uk, etc etc.

Meanwhile, the hosting cost for this service is comparatively extremely small. Saw some list recently of 20 servers. Perhaps true, but seems inefficient. Still, at that level, peanuts compared to the ad revenue.

dwild3• 12 years ago

I can believe they weren't making much but I have an hard time believing they were actually losing money. At that scale, if they were losing any money, it would be way more than they could afford to.

tedks• 12 years ago

When did they stop hosting .torrent files? Hosting only magnet links means they have nearly nil bandwidth costs (just some sparse HTML pages, by far the biggest piece of content on a tpb results page are the ads) and require very little infrastructure.

In contrast, they have banners on the results page, pop-ups when you interact on the results pages, and massive banners on the item pages.

A good chunk of their clientèle hopefully runs adblock, and I also can't imagine the ads they're serving are very lucrative since few legitimate companies will want to do business with them, but I can't imagine that it balances out.

achamayou2• 12 years ago

Aren't everyone's taxes and incomes meant to be public in Sweden ? Assuming he did file his taxes properly, this should be verifiable.

johansch7• 12 years ago

Since they ran a multi-million dollar business for like ten years without "having any idea of how much money the ads brought in" (as stated over and over in the court proceedings) that is a pretty big assumption you made just there.

johansch7• 12 years ago

TIL: HN is no better than reddit. Truth is downvoted here as well.

cpach• 12 years ago

Can you prove that brokep is a millionaire? If not, how can you call it ”truth”?

zanny3• 12 years ago

Personally I hope hes rich, They did not invent torrents, they did little to improve the market for them directly, but they have provided something valuable in making one of the most takedown resistant sites on the Internet. That kind of technological exploration is incredibly valuable, and they provide a service a lot of people wanted, and it makes sense to profit off that if you can.

jsmthrowaway8• 12 years ago

It's pretty rich that almost this entire thread is arguing about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan wishes and his personal wealth and ideals. There are more than ninety comments here and all of them hang off nearly-dead comments.

The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime. Louis CK has a bit about this in one of his recent specials:

    ...but we really need the law against murder, for
    one simple reason: the law against murder is the number
    one thing preventing murder. We'd like to think it's
    because "oh, I would never do that," no, it's because
    it really sucks getting caught murdering. A lot. [1]

Debating the prison's respect for Sunde's vegan wishes misses the forest for the trees. Honestly, if that's your biggest concern from reading this article, you have really messed up priorities. How about the fact that he went to maximum at all?

Anyway, just an oddly off-topic thread here, thought I'd point it out. It's even more fun because I've been detained, so reading some of the arguments makes it clear that I'm one of the only people with that experience here. Prison's not something you can just try, to see what it's like, so unless you've been there it's usually wise to assume the worst things are true rather than being optimistic about rights and common sense. If one thing is true about detention, it's that rights and common sense don't matter at all when the door's closed and nobody's looking.

Also, welcome back, Peter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUr2RkjykU

p8952• 12 years ago

Louis C.K. wonders how different the world would be if murder was legal, or at least a misdemeanor, in his HBO special "Oh My God": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHnsajl-kB8

tn132• 12 years ago

I dont think the role of prison is to suck. The idea of justice has three components retribution, deterrence and prevention.

As a society it is of paramount importance how we define these three components and the fact that we adhere to those definitions. If it has to suck, it has to be defined apriori to what extent it sucks.

akerl_• 12 years ago

In the US, the prevailing strategy of prisons for handling all 3 aspects is to make getting caught so shitty and destructive for the person involved that people don't do things that would lead them there.

You can, of course, view any number of metrics to identify how well this is "working".

ShinyCyril• 12 years ago

The entire point of prison is to suck, otherwise it wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime.

Prison serves many purposes other than punishment - one of which is rehabilitation. Making someone's life miserable for several years, purely to punish them, does nothing in the long-run - hence why re-offending rates can be so high.

jsmeaton• 12 years ago

Rehabilitation is supposed to be one of the purposes, but is that true in many places in the world anymore?

jsmthrowaway8• 12 years ago

Two orthogonal factors undermine your observation: (1) the prison system is drifting toward private, for-profit prisons, and rehabilitating offenders incarcerated therein would be damaging to the long-term profits of the institution, and (2) believe it or not, a significant number of inmates in the American system do not want to be rehabilitated, which is directly linked to various external factors.

It's easy for those outside America to put the United States Criminal Justice System in a vacuum -- it's happening all over this thread and it's honestly ridiculous -- and try to explain to Americans that strategy A doesn't work because recidivism B, and country C actually tries strategy D so America should implement strategy E, but the fact is that the American justice system reflects a lot of other problems in the United States that need to be addressed. Key among those is a significantly substandard education compared to other parts of the world, especially the oft-cited Scandinavian countries for the purposes of this discussion.

It is my personal experience that rehabilitation in an incarceration setting only works in the majority if the criminal has some kind of education and desire for a better life. Those citing Norway's prisons, have you ever considered that education is better in Norway and most folks don't break bad by default? Norway has the 7th best education in the world. The United States is much further down the list.

Even in minimum, the majority of the people I was in with did not especially mind being there nor look at it as a serious event. "Oh, I got arrested for check fraud again, can't wait to get out and go back to selling meth, much less risky income." To most people I talked to, it was an inconvenience and mild disruption from their life of crime. The hardest of the hard criminals want to be in prison because they can actually have power in several systems run from prison, including an entire infrastructure of gangs.

To be quite honest, I think pointing at American prisons and saying "your job is to rehabilitate" is a nice, ivory tower sort of feel-good explainer for sending people to prison, but the fact is going to prison in the United States is a complete life-ender for "doing good" in almost every case. My felony just fell off my record and even in this industry, I was nearly unemployable -- my conviction wasn't even computer-related, but most people pull a report and see "felony" and discard the entire candidate. Prison is only a portion of the consequences for committing a crime.

Regardless of how you might feel criminal justice should happen, right now in the United States the policy is one of deterrence. Your life is pretty great until you pick up a felony, then you'll spend the rest of your life trying to undo the damage. And, to be honest, I can understand the logic there: your government has an implicit contract with you that the liberties offered and protected by the United States are yours as long as you don't do any of these hundreds of crimes, and once you do, the contract is void. I can understand the thinking that brought us there. I also don't think the failure thereof is necessarily the fault of the system, as criminal rehabilitation absolutely cannot exist in a vacuum of policy. Life isn't SimCity. You can't tweak a "prison life quality" slider and magically fix recidivism. There are other external inputs into that equation and any discussion thereof must include the whole picture.

na852• 12 years ago

How about the fact that he went to maximum at all?

Agree. It seemed obvious to me, an outside observer, that he was being disproportionately sentenced. Someone, whether influenced by the RIAA/MPAA cabal or not, decided that he should be made an example.

king_jester2• 12 years ago

Prison still sucks even if you can follow your diet. Its not like prisoners who have allergy reasons for avoiding things like dairy and honey are having a great time.

The fact that he went to high security holding and didn't have access to his normal diet are entirely related as part of the oppressive nature of prison that goes beyond just removing someone from society for a period of time.

joe_the_user• 12 years ago

Western society once considered prisons to have multiple functions; punishment, deterrent and rehabilitation. Now it seems the punishment part has become it.

Obviously, this seems to go along with the assumption that the only thing stopping committing crimes is there fear of getting caught. I think that's probably much more true for hacking a bank for a million dollars than murder (which most people aren't just itching to get away with).

The rehabilitation assumption goes along with the idea that if person improves, if they are uplifted, they won't commit crimes. The punishment assumption goes with the idea that everyone is a criminal and the question is who can get away with it. And the "everyone is a criminal" assumption certainly makes with those presently at the top of society making out like bandits (aside from having made laws which make their actions legal).

So, perhaps what you say is true at the moment. But it's truth involves us being diminished.

jakezorx2• 12 years ago

But he didn't go to a maximum security prison at all, infact he was at Västervik a "säkerhetsklass 2" prison. [2]

"Säkerhetsklass 1" would be a maximum security prison, class 3 is the lowest class and those don't even have walls meaning that a class 2 would essentially be a "vanilla" prison.[1]

[1] http://www.kriminalvarden.se/fangelse-frivard-och-hakte/fang...

[2] http://www.kriminalvarden.se/hitta-och-kontakta/verksamhet/a...

Zirro• 12 years ago

Furthermore, the prisons in the nordic countries are among the few in the world which actively do practice rehabilitation rather than just "suck", as OP expressed it. I believe that is the reason the vegan diet was brought up as a big deal - he was treated OK in most other regards, especially when considering how prisons work in other parts of the world. Take a look at this documentary:

http://arenan.yle.fi/tv/2428667

josu• 12 years ago

Murder has always been illegal, in every society, throughout history. Nevertheless murder rates vary widely from one society to another. So no, "the law against murder is the number one thing preventing murder". There is much more to it.

mistaken• 12 years ago

Yes, but stealing usually had a much harsher punishment.

mbell• 12 years ago

Murder has always been illegal, in every society,

Only if you allow for a highly variable definition of 'murder', at which point there isn't much value in comparison.

thret• 12 years ago

I strongly reject Louis CK's assessment. I don't believe there has ever been anyone who has reconsidered murder because of the law. If anything the law protects the murderer - without it, retaliation would be far more appealing.

alexbecker• 12 years ago

What? You really don't think there would be a single additional murder if murder were legal?

If anything the law protects the murderer - without it, retaliation would be far more appealing.

...which contradicts what you just said.

nathanvanfleet• 12 years ago

Kind of annoying when people who don't sound as if they comprehend or care-to-comprehend about the complexity of capital punishment have a really hard line opinion about it. Your citation of Louis CK aside.

Is treating someone inhumanely for years going to make them actually behave like humans when they are released? Is it actually better for society to do it? America has some extreme examples of bad conditions.

jsmthrowaway8• 12 years ago

Who is talking about capital punishment? I'm pretty sure the point of the thread was incarceration, and even then I'm not actually offering my opinion on the efficacy thereof, only pointing out that the picture is far simpler than most people who have not been there believe.

tesq• 12 years ago

Prisons aren't punishment and retribution factories.

I also like that you get on your soap box about being detained as if that justifies your shitty opinion.

Having been through the system as well, I am amazed that you'd come to that conclusion after experiencing it first hand.

How can you visit a place where rights and common sense don't matter and then turn around and justify how it operates?

How long were you detained? For what crime?

jsmthrowaway8• 12 years ago

I'd like you to point out to me what opinion I offered or conclusion I reached in the comment to which you are replying, and then consider if instead of an opinion that you are upset about you have instead encountered an observation regarding our shitty world. Then dial down the indignation you have for me by a couple notches.

Hint: My opinion is elsewhere in the thread.

lettergram• 12 years ago

I'm also pretty sure Sweden's "maximum" security prison is still better than most US prisons.

kbart• 12 years ago

To stretch even further, they are even better than some dormitory rooms I've seen across the world. Check the picture at the top of this article that shows the maximum security prison's cell in Sweden: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/01/why-sweden-cl...

Taking it to the absurd level, A. Breivik, a Norwegian killer of 77 people (mostly children), demanding better video games "to end his torture": http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/14/far-right-terrorist-breiv... and here's how his prison looks like: http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1989083_21...

I guess that only proves a point that crime prevention is not about the severity of the punishment, but the well being and education.

new299• 12 years ago

    wouldn't serve its role, which is to deter crime

I wouldn't say that is the sole role of prisons. They kind of have 3 functions:

1. To remove a troublesome individual from society. 2. To rehabilitate an individual. 3. To disincentivize crime (as you say).

In our society they are often talked of as having a further role to "punish" an individual. I guess this may actually effect policy, which I guess is effectively revenge. This doesn't seem like a useful notion however.

I'm not sure that prisons being nicer would really make me consider crime as a more viable option. It sounds pretty bad even if I don't consider the culinary options.

geofft4• 12 years ago

Debating the prison's respect for Sunde's vegan wishes misses the forest for the trees.

The forest is big and scary and honestly a bit abstract. I've heard about it from childhood; I don't know where it begins and where it ends. I'm supposed to stay away from it, so I do; it serves a useful function, or so I hear.

But a single tree I can see at once. I can walk up to it, look at exactly how tall it is, imagine getting trapped under it, fear just how dark its shade is.... and then I can understand just how dangerous the forest is, in a way that my parents could never convey to me from the safety of my home.

You've been lost in the forest, so this isn't new to you. But for me, appreciating the enormity of a single tree is one of the few ways I can actually begin to comprehend the terror of the forest.

vacri2• 12 years ago

No, the point of prison is to be part of the legal system. The point of the legal system is to keep society hale and hearty. If that means prisons are horrible torture pits, so be it. If that means prisons are touchy-feely slices of utopia, so be it. "Reducing crime" is important, but whether you do it through the carrot or the stick (or a third method or a combination of methods) is up for debate.

So no, the 'point of prison' isn't 'to suck'. That's an overly simplistic view of the issue.

aragot• 12 years ago

about the prison not respecting Sunde's vegan (...)

The other half of his complaints are about boredom, which is equally non-exceptionnal in prison. And he's been there only 5 months, that's very moderate for someone who's been a fugitive.

johansch7• 12 years ago

TIL: Once people have decided that someone is a hero, facts cannot change their outlook. I thought HN was populated by smarter people than that, but I was wrong.

zxcvvcxz• 12 years ago

Does anyone know which state prisons have a gluten free option? I need to figure out where to commit my next offense.

tashi• 12 years ago

Sure. If you have celiac disease, try California. Your doctor can write you a note so that you don't have to eat food that could be debilitating or life-threatening.

Simple health issues aside, it's a weird fact I have trouble wrapping my head around that there's an uncrossable chasm between people who think prisoners should be given some measure of dignity and people who find the very idea laughable.

I would just wish for you (and for us all) a moment of vivid imagination and empathy. Imagine that the meat on the menu is dog or cat or human. Not just something you find distasteful, but something that provokes genuine sadness, and whose consumption you don't want a part of. By being convicted of a crime, should you lose the ability to say no to something you find morally unconscionable?

Johnny_Brahms2• 12 years ago

The focus on "prison as punishment" for some people seems to also mean "complete removal of any dignity". Prison can suck without forcing people to eat and live against their moral values. Do we really thing rehabilitation works better when we show no respect?

I am a meat eater, but this whole discussion is laughable in many ways. I think veganism is a healthy conviction. Stepping on that is likely to just make people more angry and feel more alienated by the system.

A bit unrelated: Back in the days when I had no money at all I lived on rice, pasta, beans, broccoli, cabbage and an occasional glass of milk for 3 months (meat is expensive, at least when your budget is about 1 euro a day) without getting any notable deficiencies (went to see a doctor when I got money). If you provide means for someone to get B12 and calcium (while serving legumes daily) there wouldn't be much trouble catering to vegan needs.

Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Released from Prison

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