The co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX pleaded not guilty to a seven count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
An attorney for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in federal court Tuesday his client has to subsist on bread, water and peanut butter because the jail he’s in isn’t accommodating his vegan diet.
I think it’s crazy the number is people here who think that jail/prison is supposed to primarily be about punishment. Do they not understand the concept of recitavism?
Welcome to the American corrections system, abuses like this and worse happen every day and we just don’t normally hear about them because the defendants aren’t famous like this one is
Its not a corrections system, it’s a punishment system; unfortunately.
People aren’t reformed after leaving prison. Many ex-cons are forced into even worse situations and have to resort back to crimes to survive.
I don’t think a system that’s focussed on rehabilitation rather than punishment would be popular with American voters.
Countries that do focus on rehabilitation in western democracies, often hand out less long sentences and treat their prisoners relatively nicely. Their own cell, tv, etc. Still prison though, being robbed of your freedom is punishment in and of itself. On average that leads to better outcomes, lower recidivism, …
But on a case by case basis, discovering someone who committed a heinous crime was let out after 10 years? Sure, often monitored, evaluated, and with stringent conditions. Sure, only if the chance they’ll do it again is very low. But still. It doesn’t feel right. Same thing with nice prison cells. Show the average American a Norwegian prison cell, and tell them it houses a rapist, and they’ll be understandably offended. Think it isn’t fair. Which it almost certainly isn’t, but you don’t lower the chance of repeat offending by sticking someone in a cage for ten years.
Also, I do wonder if these kinds of prisons are possible in a country without a semi-decent social safety net. If jail’s better than being homeless, and homelessness is rampant, people will commit crimes just to escape. You end up rewarding criminals, because jail is comparatively nice compared to their existence outside jail.
The American political stance of “hard on crime” is why we will never see legislation reforming our prison system.
Start talking about prison reform, lowing mandatory sentences, zero tolerance, prisoner rights, and living conditions and see how hard you get attacked.
what is it with fraudsters and weird hair
He is Vegan. Irrespective of how we feel about what he did, the failure to address his core ethical beliefs is completely unacceptable. If his belief was rooted in ideas of a higher being or afterlife, everyone would acknowledge how fucked up it is. Not that I’m planning on going to jail anytime soon, but if I could not be able to abide by that daily practice of my life it would be incredibly distressing. Unless he is doing it for environmental reasons (I don’t know) he likely seeks total animal liberation, and you’re going to force feed him stolen animal secretions? Coproducts of dead baby cows, blended up chicks, and beings bred into painful bodies? The alternative is malnutrition? I would highly consider Jainism or Sikhism on this fact alone. Fuck you if you think he should be forced to go against these ethical beliefs. It is 100% a human rights violation IMO.
Irrespective of how we feel about what he did
What he has been accused of doing. He has not been proven guilty. I’m not saying he’s not guilty but until proven so, whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?
Yes earlier in the thread it was very mob like. That’s me just placating I suppose. He has not been proven guilty and they’re already starving him. Doubly wrong.
SBF is in prison and has been relieved of his freedom.
The penal system must offer him a diet that satisfies his daily nutritional requirements because he is not free to do so on his own.
The state is not required to support his “ethical beliefs.”
Just give the guy vegan food ffs. Fucking Americans are so obsessed with making life as shitty as possible for anyone any chance they get.
For anyone? Ever heard of this guy?
Yes, I have, he’s a horrible person, but treating him poorly will not undoe what he’s done. And this goes far beyond this one person. The entire us “”“justice”“” system is based around this.
Well then, by that logic, nothing bad should ever happen to anyone regardless of what they do, meaning they’re now free to harm others as they wish.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Are you a troll or are you just thick as pig shit?
I’d personally consider it pretty cruel and inhumans to force someone to violate their own ethics on a daily basis.
In these comments, People who:
- think vegetarian is close enough to vegan.
- don’t realise vegan items are no longer vegan if they’re for example, cooked in butter.
- want prisoners to rot in jail from the inside out, literally.
I keep seeing the sentiment in this thread that if you go to prison you basically deserve whatever happens to you, which is a fucked up stance in itself, but more importantly:
Why do the cows, chickens, etc. deserve to suffer because someone is in prison? Does that make sense in any moral framework? How would you feel if we bagged random people not guilty of anything and forced prisoners to watch them tortured “on their behalf” as a form of punishment? That’s pretty much the same situation ethically and everyone would agree it’s fucked up.
Wait I’m legitimately confused about this.
I agree with you in the first paragraph.
I’m confused about what you mean by animals suffering because someone is in prison. Don’t they suffer regardless of if someone is in prison? Like, the animal would die and be eaten, regardless of where the meat is sent.
I’m pro animal rights and all that btw, I just don’t get the connection you are making here.
The meals will (I assume) be allocated on inmate numbers, so the animal will be reared, killed, transported, then thrown in the trash because someone doesn’t want to eat it.
More generally this is the weird ‘opt out’ culture of food, where vegan is considered the exceptional position, which is kinda stupid, in my opinion.
Some of the replies here are absolutely vile: if you’re going to endorse locking people in cages for years if not decades and pretend that’s a justified response to anything short of their being an immediate physical danger to the people around them, then the least you can do is accommodate their most basic needs and ethical positions.
Prisons are pitched to us as places of rehabilitation - somewhere to pay penance and right wrongs before returning to the community, better for having served the time. I think it’s a deeply disingenuous characterisation which serves mainly to let people avoid facing up to the reality which is prison’s purposeless and ultimately harmful cruelty, but it is the dominant characterisation nonetheless.
But, if we blindly accept the rehabilitation narrative, then how exactly do we expect to rehabilitate people by fracturing them psychologically? By forcing them to violate ethical commitments which are sacrosanct to them, by alienating them from their communities and forcing them to abide by a clockwork dictatorial regime without any semblance of comfort or dignity, by leaving them to rot miserably for years?
No, and no wonder prisons are factories for broken people and recidivism if this is how people think about them. Get a hold of yourselves.
Also, before anybody retreats to the flimsy position of “but prisoners shouldn’t eat better than schoolchildren” or “but what about the poor” - yes, those people are also underserved, and we have resources available to improve conditions for all of them too. All that’s lacking is will.
Last but not least, if you concede that you care about neither the incarcerated nor the society they come from and will return to in time - then there’s also the question of why animals should suffer? If people aren’t even worthy of being afforded their basic preferences, then why should the default be the option which necessitates the lifelong suffering of sentient beings on an industrial scale?
Seriously, develop a sense of empathy.
Glad to know veganism is more important than justice.
He doesn’t have the right to be a vegan in prison. He’s in PRISON. Being justly punished. When you’re in prison, you don’t get to live the way you want barring basic human rights, and being vegan isn’t a human right, it’s a lifestyle choice.
Get over that fact and take your cultists out of the thread
he’s in jail, not prison. he hasn’t been convicted of anything. i think it’s silly, but if he wants to be vegan, he should be able to be vegan.
Semantics.
And the whole debate is asinine anyway because
-
he already has PBJs and PBJs are given specifically as a vegan option.
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he doesn’t have the right to be vegan when he’s locked up
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you don’t have the right to exploit crime threads to push your shitty political agenda.
This thread is not about you, not about vegans, and you coming in here brigading and unethically deciding the fact that a dude who stole billions is claiming to be vegan (whether that claim is true or false) is more important than justice and literally everyone else is unacceptable, get the fuck out of the thread
who is brigading?
Fr it’s not even subtle
this is more hand waving and innuendo.
You. Unless you think we haven’t noticed you’re hiding behind a debate about the importance of punishment, the viability and legitimacy of the prison system and abuses of the U.S. prison system in a situation that has nothing to do with them because you’re trying to promote veganism.
Do you think we are stupid?
you might be stupid if you think i’m promoting veganism.
you’re trying to promote veganism.
i’ve never been accused of that. i’m usually accused of being antivegan.
what political agenda do you think i’m pushing?
i can literally say anything i want. what are you going to do about it?
it’s not semantics. he hasn’t been convicted
i don’t believe in rights, but there is no reason he can’t be vegan
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Crimes aside, punishment should not include limiting a person’s diet or basic food options. No one’s asking for gourmet in prisons, but basic fruits and vegetables should be the baseline.
Read the article. The jail can provide vegetarian, but not vegan.
Jail isn’t fun.
Jail isn’t fun, no, but its also supposed to be about reformation, not straight punishment.
If all we do is punish them, they have no real incentive to change. Just do a better job of not getting caught next time.
Or, in Sammy’s case, choose less influential people to bilk.
Incarceration should be reserved for people too dangerous to live in society.
For crimes like what he committed, he should do community service, have future wages garnished, and be canned.
I knew one of you loonies was going to start demanding he be released.
Well, you’re wrong. He absolutely should be in prison, preferably for the rest of his life along with every other scumbag who stole money out of innocent people’s retirement funds, 401Ks, home equity, and every other heinous white collar crime committed on the American people by the ruling class.
You don’t care about justice, you only care about what makes you feel better and that’s wrong.
Hmmm, 4 hour old account with comments solely on this post? Pretty suspect.
Especially when you’re using the exact same language as another user in this thread.
You don’t care about justice, you only care about what makes you feel better and that’s wrong.
I’m pretty sure they even used this exact line on me. Lol any chance this is the same person, and you made more accounts to upvote your own comments and downvote those you disagree with? That’d be pretty sad.
Always accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.
It doesn’t occur to you that maybe you just come off that way and that other people disagree with you? That maybe, just maybe, you’re a douchebag defending terrible ideas?
But go ahead and keep playing the victim. I’m sure Sam Bankman-Fried’s actual victims will appreciate you shitting all over them, defending someone who stole their life savings, just so you can satisfy your little persecution complex.
It doesn’t occur to you that maybe you just come off that way and that other people disagree with you? That maybe, just maybe, you’re a douchebag defending terrible ideas?
:irony:
And here’s another little roach crawling out of the woodwork. One quick look through your post history shows I’m right – you all ARE working together and brigading and being douchebags. When other people started giving you pushback, it angered you. And here you two are now, completely unironically ganging up on me like you all think this is Reddit because you’re being called out on it.
Have you ever considered that maybe you’re the baddies?
i can comment to anyone i like, regardless of who else is commenting.
calling me names doesn’t make your statement any less ironic.
i assure you: i’m not working together with anyone or brigading.
i was one of the first comments on this article.
you all think this is Reddit
Have you ever considered that maybe you’re the baddies?
the absolute fucking
:irony:
Always accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.
L O
fucking
L
Jail should accommodate a vegan diet, but it also seems like they are to some extent. PB sandwiches are food. As long as he can cobble together a nutritionally complete diet, it isn’t cruel to have boring meals. Obviously JUST peanut butter sandwiches won’t do it but I have to think they have potatoes, beans, rice on the menu too, stuff like that.
Just because they’re on the menu doesn’t mean they’re vegan. They’re often made with meat or meat stocks.
They should get him those vegan meals the airlines have in economy class. That would work, no? Vegan enough for him to eat, but not enjoy.
Absolutely the Best solution
Airplane meals aren’t really that bad.
It is just that at that altitude, the pressure causes your taste to work worse than on the ground.
So I’m afraid it wouldn’t really be a punishment.
I don’t believe his choices are THAT limited. Most prisons will have a self-service line with a choice of boiled veg, rice, beans, potatoes, pasta, fruit, grits, oats. Also, and just generally, boo hoo for him. Funny how his ethics extend to what he eats, but not who he steals from.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I was arrested when I was protesting in El Paso. They just brought trays of slop to us in our cells three times a day. It looked close to an '80s elementary school lunch but slightly lower quality. It really wasn’t reasonable. I was found not guilty because Americans are supposed to be able to protest. The FBI felt otherwise when they cut off part of the tape proving my innocence but got caught doing so without consequence.
Federal institutions have a national menu that they’re meant to provide. I’ve linked to it elsewhere and if inmates don’t receive it then there are avenues to complain through. And to be clear I’m sure even in the best of circumstances the food still sucks, but there is a menu and there is choice. It is also VERY clearly spelt out in the MDC Brooklyn inmate’s handbook on page 13 what the food is and an inmate’s options regarding it and any religious / dietician exemptions.
IMO this is SBF being a precious entitled asshole in prison thinking he’s above the conditions that everyone else in there is subject to. “Oh look at poor me I have to eat bread water and peanut butter”. Meanwhile reality says he’s lying. This is merely the latest incident of him attempting to control the narrative. He can’t tamper with witness so he’s holding a pity party and we’re supposed to care.
Yeah, local jails are bad, and juvenile facilities are even worse. Been in both (but luckily not a federal facility).
The entire criminal justice system in the U.S. is evil. It’s all about money and retributive “justice” to get votes/campaign money. It serves no purpose otherwise, because it sure as hell ain’t built to rehabilitate people. Any attention to the wrongs of the system is welcome, IMO.
