<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>philwelch</author><text>This conspiracy theory doesn&amp;#x27;t really check out. Private prisons exist, but only account for 8% of the US prison population. There&amp;#x27;s probably a larger vested interest from corrections officer unions than from private prison contractors.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, there isn&amp;#x27;t even a need to find some shadowy special interest to explain the high incarceration rates in the US, when the laws that led to those high incarceration rates were passed very publicly for very straightforward reasons: to curb the late-20th-century crime wave of the 1970&amp;#x27;s-1990&amp;#x27;s. This was a major, high-profile political issue, and the majority of voters at the time favored &amp;quot;tough-on-crime&amp;quot; measures that led to mandatory sentences, longer sentences, three-strikes laws, and fewer judicial prerogatives. That&amp;#x27;s why they elected the people who promised to pass those laws before getting elected and kept those promises after being elected. And just like every other well-intended law that&amp;#x27;s ever been passed, there were unintended consequences that we can and should fix.</text><parent_chain><item><author>oblio</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a shame. It&amp;#x27;s intentional.&lt;p&gt;Considering the fact that the US prison population is heavily skewed in one direction, that the US has the highest per capita prison population, that prison populations are used as forced labor, I&amp;#x27;m quite convinced it&amp;#x27;s intentional. The small number of people that are accidentally targeted unintentionally are just collateral damage nobody really cares about.</text></item><item><author>javiramos</author><text>Heartbreaking. The US criminal justice system is a shame.</text></item><item><author>cududa</author><text>Wait to have your mind blown further. In Missouri if you’re exonerated for a crime via someone else pleading guilty, DNA, etc and have used up all your appeals you still have to serve out your sentence, even if it’s life in prison &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;why-are-wrongly-convicted-people-still-imprisoned-in-missouri&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;why-are-wrongly-convicted-peopl...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>opdahl</author><text>The last line in this article is the most insane one of them all.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; ... Bento, who did not respond to a request for comment, said officials in that office had instructed him not to hand over any documents related to Castleberry’s 2006 drug case, including all records filed after May 2017 that actually pertained to Spriestersbach.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Spriestersbach was not entitled to the documents, officials said.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The reason: He was not the defendant in that case. He was not Thomas Castleberry.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are saying he is not allowed to get the documents for the case &lt;i&gt;which he was the main suspect and subsequently hospitalized for&lt;/i&gt; since the documents for the case is for the other person. Even though it happened to him and not the other person. I&amp;#x27;m dumbfounded.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Officials put the wrong man in a mental facility for two years</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/05/hawaii-mistaken-identity-arrest/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>cronix</author><text>&amp;gt; that prison populations are used as forced labor&lt;p&gt;I was recently reminded of this due to a strange story having to do with covid and a shortage of license plates in Washington state, due to &amp;quot;social distancing&amp;quot; in the DOC. So that state contracted with another state whose prisoners were still incarcerated and still hard at work making license plates.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The DOC has experienced issues since last summer, when compliance with social-distancing requirements slowed production, according to spokesperson Rachel Ericson. To address the issue, the agency has increased staffing and started outsourcing some production on July 31.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; License plates first began to be manufactured by individuals incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in 1923. It’s now one of 43 prison factories around the country that produce plates for 40 states and the federal government.&lt;p&gt;Original: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&amp;#x2F;seattle-news&amp;#x2F;washington-state-grappling-with-license-plate-shortage-as-pandemic-slows-production&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&amp;#x2F;seattle-news&amp;#x2F;washington-state-g...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Outline (no paywall): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;outline.com&amp;#x2F;YnDVG6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;outline.com&amp;#x2F;YnDVG6&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>oblio</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a shame. It&amp;#x27;s intentional.&lt;p&gt;Considering the fact that the US prison population is heavily skewed in one direction, that the US has the highest per capita prison population, that prison populations are used as forced labor, I&amp;#x27;m quite convinced it&amp;#x27;s intentional. The small number of people that are accidentally targeted unintentionally are just collateral damage nobody really cares about.</text></item><item><author>javiramos</author><text>Heartbreaking. The US criminal justice system is a shame.</text></item><item><author>cududa</author><text>Wait to have your mind blown further. In Missouri if you’re exonerated for a crime via someone else pleading guilty, DNA, etc and have used up all your appeals you still have to serve out your sentence, even if it’s life in prison &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;why-are-wrongly-convicted-people-still-imprisoned-in-missouri&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;why-are-wrongly-convicted-peopl...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>opdahl</author><text>The last line in this article is the most insane one of them all.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; ... Bento, who did not respond to a request for comment, said officials in that office had instructed him not to hand over any documents related to Castleberry’s 2006 drug case, including all records filed after May 2017 that actually pertained to Spriestersbach.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Spriestersbach was not entitled to the documents, officials said.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The reason: He was not the defendant in that case. He was not Thomas Castleberry.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are saying he is not allowed to get the documents for the case &lt;i&gt;which he was the main suspect and subsequently hospitalized for&lt;/i&gt; since the documents for the case is for the other person. Even though it happened to him and not the other person. I&amp;#x27;m dumbfounded.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Officials put the wrong man in a mental facility for two years</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/05/hawaii-mistaken-identity-arrest/</url></story>