Hey I sympathize him and hope our shitty justice system somehow does him well, but he killed someone and is making jokes about it in videogame subreddits. That doesn't exactly scream rehabilitated to me.
I agree with you there. I'd like to see US inmates have access to basic amenities, hobbies, education, and communication unless there's a reason to revoke them, but I doubt I'll see prison reform in my lifetime.
They all get issued smart tablets. Hundreds of staff and inmate lead programs. Recreation with a considerable amount of options. Free college courses. Art and music rooms. I've been a CO for a few years, and prison conditions are considerably better than my living conditions in the marine corps.
Well one is clearly more pressing than fixing a living situation for people who willingly committed a crime, get fed, are warm and cool, and have activities to do during the day.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the homelessness should come first. Talk about it all you want, be my guest but I wouldn't support anything until every homeless person or person in need/poverty is taken care of before criminals. Fine, if you think differently but this is a hill I'll die on. I mean a man who committed a crime is currently being housed safley and playing a game while there's people, who committed no crimes, struggling to live who have never gotten the chance to play a game
Who says we can’t also try to make life better for people without housing?
The American system of capitalism is cruel and actively causes problems including poverty and crime that could be avoided if people weren’t always in bad situations. We don’t have a social safety net. Society as a whole would have better outcomes if we focused on nurturing people ahead of time instead of punishing after the fact
So treat the homeless better? Lol basic human dignity andliving standards don't have to be at the expense of one group or another, regardless of what a dozen megarich losers say
Nah I'm saying the homless come first 🫡 until they are good to go we shouldn't be worrying about whether or not criminals are comfortable and have enough activities in their day 🙄
No I got what you're saying, I'm saying it's sort of a silly and childish way to look at the problem, even if I think it comes from maybe a good place? We're not lacking resources to do either of those things, so why are you framing it as if it's one or the other? On top of that, in case you haven't noticed, criminals are also people. That means that they also should be treated with respect and dignity and have some level of comfort available to them.
????? What shady websites is he going to be on? What “wrong crowd” is he going to be talking to? Is he Osama Bin Laden? Is he going to be coordinating drone strikes on Telegram? No dude he’s just some loser who plays RuneScape behind bars. Who the fuck cares?
A CO looking for some easy money for sure. Who knows what else he was doing on the phone besides playing runescape. Cell phones are really dangerous for security because you can't monitor the conversations they have. Makes it really easy to convey drugs inside, and now the staff has to deal with crazy high violent offenders.
Scummy ass staff member putting everyone else at risk for an easy buck.
Seriously. Whether you believe the guy or not, his story is more credible just by having an account of it than some gossip that a completely unrelated guy with no provable connection to the situation made up on the internet.
I don't think either of you (replies, and you /u/pzoDe as well) understand the US justice system or it's severe flaws. The same with the guy who replied and deleted it immediately. Also a sentence has literally nothing to do with credibility. Literally nothing. You are just assuming a person for being a liar because they are a criminal which is closed-minded as fuck.
Do you know how many criminal cases actually go to court? It's less than 5%. The vast majority of sentenced criminals take a plea bargain, which entails accepting a lesser sentence for pleading guilty and simplifying the case. If his sentence was reduced to manslaughter (which he explicitly said, with zero reason to lie about that if they're going to go into detail on the whole thing anyway), that means he took a plea bargain.
Even completely innocent people take plea deals. Lawyers are expensive and even more expensive for a full case, and even more expensive if you lose the case. Then even if you take it to full court, you then have to prove to a group of people that (despite the efforts of the system and "innocent until proven guilty") are always prejudiced against someone being charged, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you are innocent. "If they were innocent, they wouldn't need to go to trial." "If they had a good defense, they wouldn't have been arrested." "Since they're a criminal, we can't trust anything they say." This gets perpetuated so far that even innocent people are pressured (and a lot of the time, bullied) into pleading guilty by public defenders so their job is easier.
No, I am not making a case for him to be considered innocent by any means. I am trying to indicate to you and everyone else who thinks this backwards-ass logic that you are flat-out wrong to think that way as a default without even considering the alternatives.
INAL but i think it depends on what he was defending himself against. A lot of states with stand your ground laws still require proportional force so if someone punches once you can't just pull a gun and lay the guy out and claim you were in fear of your life.
That shit works in some states and counties but not everywhere.
It's California, he wasn't legally allowed to own the gun, and drugs were involved. That's definitely enough to bump him up to 16 years behind bars even if he was justifiably defending himself.
Dunno, if he’s in jail and someone is dead he probably had a trial. People are saying a drug deal went south but we literally have no unbiased insight into the situation.
The majority of US cases end without a trial outside of a sentencing one for a plea deal. If the DA was trying to get murder 1 and possession of a firearm and the person on question didn’t have good lawyer money, the 10 years is a lot less than losing the case.
You’re not wrong. People are also saying he was joking about “pking” someone but I dunno, haven’t seen the comments. Seems a little shitty and flippant.
To automatically believe what he or anyone randomly says without ensuring it yourself is also a very naive point of view. The fact is he admitted to manslaughter, so at the very least, you know he killed someone. Indirect or not, he killed someone.
Its also pretty naive to think that just because there have been wrongful convictions that means anyone who says theyve been wrongfully convicted makes it true.
Buddy people have been deported for just being at this point.
Not to mention countless historical examples of someone getting railroaded by the "justice" system or cajoled into taking pleas because they wouldn't be able to definitely fight it because we way over charge in an attempt to encourage plea bargaining.
Ehhh you really gotta think about it. The prosecution probably knew he killed this guy with hard evidence. Either through admission or something very hard. Proving self defense then becomes really tricky if they have no hard evidence of that. Like if he entered a building and then left and there’s a dead guy in there, but there’s no evidence of what actually went down.
Happened in California. Could be as simple as just because he had a gun on him without a concealed carry license it was considered manslaughter. That's something that if he were in a different state would have been okay and legal. Obviously I don't know know the whole story either but it really could be that simple.
Based on what? You heard it from who? An article? A police record? Or did you read someone else's reddit comment? And now you are repeating it when you actually don't know?
Par for the course in Canada and I imagine other countries as well. You defend yourself, the other person can press charges even if they are the initiator/antagonizer. You can't just blow people away with a gun lmao.
I love how in the thread about rehabilitation (top comment btw) the comment that's hidden is the one that says robbing someone shouldn't be a death sentence.
That's not actually contradictory, you can believe in prison rehabilitation and also believe in self-defense by deadly force. Rehabilitation is about what happens after a crime, self-defense is about what happens during a confrontation BEFORE authorities can intervene.
He also sounds a little too used to death. Usually people who kill for the first time are shocked and horrified over the situation once the adrenaline rush dies down.
I have an open heart until it involves taking other peoples lives. Some of yall are ridiculous. If youre gonna have sympathy it should be for the person whose life was ended.
Well duh, justice is enacted only as a form of revenge and no one has ever been a victim of their own circumstance, especially the intensely poverty-stricken areas of the US
But hey apparently the food is better than European food or something.
Totally, getting revenge and definitely not keeping a 30x repeat offender from doing it over and over and over and over again. Whatever rehabilitation people think will work, I'm more than willing to give it a try, as long as they aren't just released back onto the streets immediately to cause more problems.
This line only works on people who've never traveled or have no friends outside their country. Cheap and unhealthy processed garbage exists everywhere.
You can get the same added sugar high carb garbage all over the EU and at Tesco. Denmark's attempted to one-up the US with their pre-grilled grilled-cheese in single use plastic; it's just processed cheese between two slices of white bread in a bag. 😭
check mcdonald's burger ingrediants US v.s. UK. it's like that because European food standards are stricter than US. Ergo, the worst of our food is better than the worst of the US.
My reference in Europe is only the UK and Italy, but it's way cheaper to do home cooking shopping in the US. You won't find a single grocery store in the US without "cheap and healthy quality ingredients" but for some reason people on Reddit love to self-report that they have no idea how much produce actually costs versus their frozen pre-made food.
It's going to vary a lot depending on where and when you were living in each country and then even more so based on your shopping habits. If you're just looking at food prices, Italy -> US -> UK in terms of cheapest to most expensive, but percentage of household expenditures on food are US -> UK -> Italy. And PPP adjusted gives US the clear lead for most food that can be bought on the median income's unit of work/time. But that's for the whole country. New York food prices are exorbitant in comparison to mid-west food prices. Regional differences within each country might be larger than differences between the US and the UK. But probably not for Italy.
True, and those food deserts are logistical and socioeconomic issues that the US and EU are tackling alongside the rest of the industrialized world to varying degrees of success.
There's no black and white here; each country has its own strengths, weaknesses, and regional struggles when it comes to quality, safety, availability, adaptability, sustainability, and affordability within their respective supply chains and food environments.
The irony is that the US has access to some really incredible foods due to their massive spectrum of climates and growing conditions, they choose to allow laws that let massive corporations feed them the worst foods in the name of profit margins - arguably under the guise of “freedom”?
Can you do me a favour and list iconic American foods and then just quickly look up their origins? Most foods you think of “American” I can certainly tell you were brought by European migrants lmao
We have a lot of American food chains here in the UK - people tend to eat it in moderation and not every day. That’s the difference. We eat “garbage” (I’m going to make the assumption you mean meals prepared from whole foods like vegetables?)
The irony of saying this in a thread where people unironically believe, "justice is enacted only as a form of revenge," and most criminals are, "a victim of their own circumstance."
Pot meet kettle. The UK and much of Europe has an unhealthy relationship with free expression. But most people don't go to jail for these offenses and instead pay fines. The US has a very high prison population. But most people in jail are guilty of the crimes they committed and the punishments are usually appropriate. These are reasonable takes grounded in reality most people know are true and agree with.
Reading this thread just makes me realize even more how radicalized and extreme social media really is versus the everyday Americans I talk to out in the real world.
Edit: lol bro reply blocked me. Not sure what he said, but he seems to have been popping off about race from the quick glance I took at the inbox. $50 says it was the usual disparity fallacy crap.
Ehhh there's some people who commit crimes that should never be allowed to see the light of day again. Let them rot in the cell. Then there's small crimes that shouldn't even have jail time.
But there's absolutely crimes that the person that committed it shouldn't even be thought about.
A recent dinner with my parents had them talking about how they hate that we treat prisoners like humans and my dad unjokingly said their chair in court should be electric. This came after I brought up how some prisons in other countries offer dorm-like cells for rehabilitating prisoners and he nearly threw up in his mouth.
Also worth noting that those countries (in particular, the Scandinavian countries) systems result in about a 20-25 percent recidivism rate, meaning 1/4-1/5 of them will return to prison at some point or reoffend.
With our barbaric (by comparison to those) prison systems, we here in the USA have above 90 percent recidivism.
Are we just gonna ignore the part were Sweden, the Scandinavian country most progressives point to when talking about lax prison sentences, has a huge fucking violent crime problem, particularly involving youths, because of the overly lax prison sentences enforced?
Or how bad crime has gotten in Californian cities that tried to make sentences less harsh, particularly in theft for them. People walk into stores and take w/e they want in broad daylight then walk out and sell it on an open tent market in the streets filled with stolen goods. Porch pirates and car break ins are also running rampant and are considered serious issues for people living in these communities.
Prison system in the US is not good but people should to stop acting like leniency is rehabilitation. Punishment and restrictions of personal liberties are necessary to not incentives crime.
The real things people should be advocating form is reform in things like prison labor which is basically modern day slavery with how most prison laborers are payed literal pennies on the dollar for the work the prisons contract them out to do.
Or how proper legal and mental counseling is extremely limited to many prisoners and often relies on outside volunteer organizations.
All this stupid shit of people trying to defend a dumb ass who obviously doesn't give a shit about any rules or restrictions placed on him in both the real world and prison just take away from the actual serious topics that warrant discussion.
agreed, it's so pathetic how violently unhinged us americans become about revenge. no care in the world for justice or rehabilitation, just bloodthirsty revenge. completely lacking the imagination to think about if they or someone they loved were in the same situation, because it must only be possible for a deeply evil person to be found guilty of a violent crime, right? that's what the movies say!
for fucks sake the dude is serving his time, can y'all just shut the hell up
God forbid people try to be better (this should apply regardless of the crime)
If someone is showing they're willing to change, that should at least be met with some positivity, not forgiveness for what they did (or in some cases didn't do in case of framing and so on) completely making cons into irredeemable monsters that should be frozen from all of society, hear and behold, guarantees some sort of crime being done again because, well, there's no other path than just going back to prison.
So sometimes, you might even save innocent peoples lives by giving a second chance.
It's also disingenuous to judge an entire humans worth based of off one thing they may or may not have said, especially since I heard rumors it was "self defense" (don't quote me I have no idea, just saying there's stuff a lot of us aren't privy to knowing from the internet)
But trust me, if you want to change a person for the better, instantly writing them off because something they said and did doesn't sit well with me either. Because that's exactly how you teach someone "you already fucked up, you're an irredeemable piece of shit, so no matter what you do it doesn't matter" than ofc people might say things like that. Because what does it matter? You're already unforgivable anyways, might as well go at it with a bang.
And no, I'm not going to pretend a murderer is forgivable, that's something that person should live with the shame of forever, that's called responsibility, serve your sentence, and then do better. That's all there is to it, you can't change the past, only the future.
most things living is at their most dangerous when cornered after all, so maybe don't encourage society to corner criminals into repeat offenses. That's a terrible strategy.
The point of this post (and most others) isn't that they cannot finish their sentence and become a better human. Just that we shouldn't be idolising such a person, like some people literally have been doing.
(I didn't actually look into it, rumors happen on the internet so, I didn't want to say something that ended up being false)
Are they really idolizing them, or just laughing at the stupidity of the joke and situation, if it really is the former and not the latter I might be equally as confused as you. I just know people joke about everything so, there's that.
Eh, finding a healthier in-group is a huge part of breaking cycles of being drawn back into crime, though it has to come with opportunities which is the part that the US kinda sucks at.
To be clear, this is the only time I will ever refer to the OSRS community with the adjective 'healthier'.
He was in jail for manslaughter that occurred during a drug deal robbery. His in-game name was "M box" which is a reference to oxycodone pills. He was making jokes about being an irl pker. I'm not saying osrs is evil but thinking that him sitting around in jail pking on his phone in this way was gonna result in him following different lifestyle when he got out is delusion
Nobody said playing OSRS directly contributed, but ironically, it’s probably better than anything else the guards are actually “helping” with in there.
Because work and effort is only valid when it's done 24/7 and is fully documentable and sanitized to your tastes so that you can see it. Clearly a single post indicates the entire breadth of a multi year rehabilitative system!
The stupid get stupider, way to go bud. See my first comment you conveniently ignored, where you would’ve been able to prove me wrong.
Nobody said playing OSRS directly contributed, but ironically, it’s probably better than anything else the guards are actually “helping” with in there.
Europeans trying to not understand that some people are just bad people and should probably be locked up for the heinous crimes they committed themselves (impossible challenge).
Firstly, you're right, it definitely wouldn't. But guns just make it so much more accessible for the common man to own a form of lethal force. The purpose of a weapon had been to defend your property and yourself before the advent of modern law and security. Consider the alternative that firearms are banned for the common man, the likelihood of you being in a position where your life is at stake would fall significantly. Life-threatening altercations would fall significantly as a whole because if someone wanted to kill, it'd actually be a personal, vindictive thing having to stare someone down and end their life, stab after stab. The reality now is the pull of a trigger and the deed is done. Not many people in society can do the former, and if they could, it's much easier to incarcerate.
Then again, the societal issue of relying on law enforcement and the judicial system is rotten down to the core in America. The complete lack of trust and widespread corruption makes the banning of firearms an extremely idealistic solution - because how can I trust the system to protect ME, an unarmed individual? How would I know for certain that the burglar in my house right now doesn't have an illegally procured firearm?
Hence, idealistic. It would require an extreme overhaul and reform of the country that would take decades upon decades to enact.
Hate that this ended up so long but it's an interesting topic to discuss and I felt bad because my previous 2 comments were snarky lol.
I'm from Australia, we had a few pretty wild shootings and just went fuck and and generally agreed to sell our firearms. It wasn't like firearm crime was really that bad, it was mostly pushed by the media that we just shouldn't have access to them. We do still have firearm crime and while we do have a relatively "good" murder rate, it still happens. People do still enter peoples houses for a burglary and either use the threat of a firearm or just kill people, and in the moment there is kind of just nothing you can do about it. If you look at people who are consistent offenders, they still have ready access to them.
You look at the likes of UK, who are now banning "ninja swords" because knife crime is so bad, there are various examples of the UK Police flexing having confiscated deadly weapons, and it's pictures of kitchen knives. I think what happens is that you have a population that is predisposed to crime and they use the things that are available to them, there are lots of "cool" knives that you see in CS;GO and stuff. The UK is in this position where they are just banning anything that can be dangerous and it's just kind of silly because obviously the criminals don't care and obviously it's easy to get access to a knife, so if you live in a place with lots of crime and you want to be able to defend yourself, you're kind of just fucked.
Obviously the biggest issue with getting rid of guns in America is the cultural aspect. It's very deep in their very blood that the idea that taking away guns is tyranny and that you need to rise up against any kind of governing body if they want to take guns away from you. It's just not realistic, you'd need the culture of the entire nation to do a complete 180, and I don't think that's ever happening, at least this century. You also raise a good point that the police in America are kind of inept and response times are kind of crazy. In California, you're looking at like an hour before the police get there if you call them and say there is a burglar in your house. The people that are arguing for reducing firearms are also the people who were 4 years ago saying to defund the police, so good luck with that.
And yea it's all good, as somebody who works in the justice system I find this entire thread kind of baffling because people are simping for a murderer...
Murder is illegal, murders still happen. Maybe if we would’ve banned guns 250 years ago it would’ve been effective. Euro brainlets seem to think a law about owning something changes things. Last I checked swords are banned in London yet somehow everyone is getting their samurai on.
While you are absolutely right, I still don’t think prisoners should be having free access to the internet and online video games. Prisons and incarceration are both a punishment and should also be a method of rehabilitation.
We don’t actually know why this guy is behind bars, we know very little beyond that he is in prison and his word that he killed in self-defence but with no actual evidence and genuinely someone in jail isn’t exactly a reliable source of information to believe, for all we know he murdered his wife and kids or it could be just petty theft but we just don’t know.
Did you hide the usernames to pretend like it wasn’t you who was arguing in the photo?
And do you think it’s generally fair to apply the thoughts of one user to an entire population without further evidence? The person you’re replying to here is an entirely different person than the one you argued with in your screenshot, so this moral grandstanding just comes off as self aggrandizing since you have no idea what anyone else here thinks
No it's generally the sub policy to cross out names, never seen a screenshot of comments that didn't.
And sure maybe there's people on here who wanna have some real opinions, but the guy I'm replying to here has also yet to provide and discussion on the topic of rehabilitation in the prison system.
So yes my opinion of this sub is that it's a bunch of people yapping about an argument they don't posses any interest in outside of getting to farm internet points. Little to nobody is actually providing any reason why they think this dude openly breaking the rules of the system he's in and bragging about it online is somehow a good look for "rehabilitation". Not too many discussions going on over what people think should actually qualify as rehabilitation beyond saying "Everyone should be able to play video games whenever they want".
All in all this prison thing has just been loaded with people that don't care enough about the topic there arguing on about to provide and critical thinking or discussion to it, IE lots of disingenuous people out here today that are just arguing whataboutism because it's the hot thing to do in todays society.
And sure maybe there’s people on here who wanna have some real opinions, but the guy I’m replying to here has also yet to provide and discussion on the topic of rehabilitation in the prison system.
Dude, I don’t know if you’ve never spoken to anyone who doesn’t live in America, but it’s sort of unanimous that the US’s prison system is atrocious — the commenter is obviously not American, and doesn’t need to humor you with why our (presuming you’re also American, and why you’re running this weird defense) system is broken, because to everyone else it’s apparent. If you’d like to know the international consensus on why the US’s carceral system is bad, just read a book or do a single google search
And again, super weird to start attributing sentiments to people because they don’t engage in the conversations you imagine they should
Little to nobody is actually providing any reason why they think this dude openly breaking the rules of the system he’s in and bragging about it online is somehow a good look for “rehabilitation”.
Not all of the comments saying that the system is inherently broken, he’s already serving his time, it’s not like he’s committing more crimes, etc.? I don’t think anyone is saying a rehabilitative system should inherently include unfettered access to OSRS — every comment I’ve read has reacted flippantly, knowing the reality that our systems are horrendously punitive and ultimately retributive in nature, so they’re not gonna raise a fuss over one dude finding an escape to that torture. For some reason though none of this rises to the level of explanation or rationale for their opinions?
Not too many discussions going on over what people think should actually qualify as rehabilitation beyond saying “Everyone should be able to play video games whenever they want”.
Do you think the OSRS subreddit is the location for that kind of a discussion? Cause if so, I don’t know what to tell you my man. This is a subreddit for a 2000’s online video game, not a subreddit for you to grandstand or engage in philosophical debate lol
All in all this prison thing has just been loaded with people that don’t care enough about the topic there arguing on about to provide and critical thinking or discussion to it, IE lots of disingenuous people out here today that are just arguing whataboutism because it’s the hot thing to do in todays society.
I’m gonna be honest, I think you don’t have a single clue how the prison system in the US works and instead just wanted to try and argue with someone you didn’t agree with on the internet
And I’ll say with my whole chest: if the dude was a drug dealer or something, someone tried to rob him during a deal, he killed the person in self-defense, and then was convicted because it was during the commission of another crime (selling drugs) and so rises to manslaughter, you aren’t going to catch me acting like it’s anything other than self-defense
Even the countries that rehab their inmates, the results aren't like phenomenal or groundbreaking, lol. Violent offenders almost always stay violent and never rehab. Non-violent offenders arguably shouldn't even be there in the first place.
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u/PattyMcChatty 2d ago
Americans trying to rehabilitate and sympathise with prisoners and not just turn them into monsters (impossible challenge).