I worked midnight to 8am as a security supervisor at a hospital. It was nice in some ways and awful in other ways. Honestly, all the ways it was awful occurred outside of the actual shift itself. It was harder to hang out with friends, I was always tired, I had to try to get tired and sleep while it was sunny out (blackout curtains and sunglasses on the drive home ftw), and the world was waking up while I was going to bed. It was hard on my relationship with my wife.

The shift itself was pretty great actually. The hospital was quieter at night. As a supervisor, I did have some issues with my guards falling asleep at desks or trying to hide and take naps. Two people got fired over it. But most of them were pretty good. One guy fell asleep while driving the patrol vehicle and crashed it into a gate. That was embarrassing for everyone and he ultimately lost his job (he didn’t admit to falling asleep, but we all suspected it - he was working two jobs and was perpetually tired). The best thing about the job was sneaking up onto the roof early in the morning on my patrols and watching the sun rise.

I think a more serious and probable question is what would happen if your doctor had a heart attack during surgery. Doesn’t take a degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical School for that to happen!

LENNY!!!

What purpose does throwing someone in prison for ten years do though for something like forgery? Would it not be better if they were forced to do community service and lost access to the tools that led to them committing forgery? Why pay money to remove someone from society for a decade? Is it to teach any other potential forgerers a lesson? Is it to teach the forgerer themself a lesson? Is that really a lesson that needs to be worth a decade in a cell to learn? The world’s justice systems have generally erred too much on the side of retribution instead of rehabilitation. It’s especially sinister when you consider how much our capitalist system places more value on things like capital over people’s lives and wellbeings. To be clear, I consider myself to be a capitalist, but a social democrat that believes in heavy regulations on our capitalist systems. I think our retributive, excessively pro-business justice system is a clear example of what happens when you let capitalism go unfettered and bleed into every aspect of our lives. Forgery is not violent. Most of the time it is not actively dangerous. Why don’t we come up with more creative and proactive ways of punishing people that would benefit people at large rather than ruin the criminal’s entire life? Even in a case where I am not on the criminal’s side I find myself pretty appalled that ten years could even possibly be on the table in a forgery case.

Seriously. Why the fuck is it even a possibility for ten years of prison over something like this? It’s crazy to me that a nonviolent crime could be punished so severely. I mean, why do we have prison? Is it to remove dangerous people from society? That’s certainly how I think it should be, but these sorts of punishments really show that it’s all about sating the bloodlust of victims.

This is very true in my experience. My college expenses were slashed in half when I moved out of the dorm and into a tiny studio apartment across the city from my campus. It also really hurt my ability to study when I was so far from campus. It hurt my studies even moreso when I needed to take on a part time job to try mitigating the costs of my rent. It’s a really toxic system, because the parts of cities with universties tend to be the expensive parts of cities.