[HN Gopher] Free prison phone calls boost family ties, rehabilit...
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Free prison phone calls boost family ties, rehabilitation
Author : ohjeez
Score : 157 points
Date : 2023-07-28 18:45 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| US prison systems appear to want to brutalize prisoners at every
| opportunity.
|
| Exactly _what is the punishment_?
|
| Is the punishment loss of liberty for a period of time?
|
| Or is the idea that for a period of time you are subjected to
| whatever punishments and humiliations and dehumanization the
| system can hit you with?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| If you watch US media it's obviously the latter. Otherwise
| there wouldn't be so many jokes about "pound you in the ass"
| prison. Prison sexual assault is often even cited as a positive
| when talking about criminals like rapists of pedophiles.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The main goal of the prison system is to keep criminals apart
| from society, preventing them from re-offending as long as they
| are locked up. The conditions of the imprisonment don't matter
| at all from this perspective.
| falcolas wrote:
| This research won't matter for prisoners in the US.
|
| We (Americans at large) send criminals to prison for punishment,
| not rehab. It's why we care so little about their treatment while
| in prison. Why we make rape jokes about prisoners. Why we rarely
| get angry about prisoners dying in prisons.
|
| And that's when they aren't sources of revenue for private
| companies.
|
| Yes, I'm to angry about this state of affairs to even begin to
| think it can be changed.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Edit: To clarify, the court interprets this statute as baring
| rehabilitation considerations in Federal prison. A Federal
| Prison sentence has zero intention of being rehabilitative, by
| statute and Congressional intent:
|
| Title 18 U.S. Code SS 3582 - Imposition of a sentence of
| imprisonment
|
| (a)Factors To Be Considered in Imposing a Term of
| Imprisonment.-- The court, in determining whether to impose a
| term of imprisonment, and, if a term of imprisonment is to be
| imposed, in determining the length of the term, shall consider
| the factors set forth in section 3553(a) to the extent that
| they are applicable, recognizing that imprisonment is not an
| appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Odd interpretation, I think. To me it sounds more as if those
| who wrote the text, meant "Don't keep people in prison for
| too long, transfer them elsewhere to some place better for
| rehab as soon as reasonable." But not "rehab is forbidden and
| prisoners should get bullied by sadists"
| enlyth wrote:
| I am always amazed at the amount of online discussions where
| masses of people cheer on about prisoners getting raped in
| prison, as if that is some logical consequence of getting
| incarcerated and should be the default punishment in addition
| to the time done.
|
| These people want retribution, not justice. It's scary and I
| don't want to live with the same people in society who think
| it's okay to think like this.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > We (Americans at large) send criminals to prison for
| punishment, not rehab.
|
| Mostly, we send them to prison so they are out of the streets
| and aren't committing more crimes. Their fate doesn't matter to
| us beyond that; out of sight, out of mind.
| majormajor wrote:
| > This research won't matter for prisoners in the US.
|
| From the link:
|
| > This year California became the second state in the nation,
| and the largest to date, to mandate free calls in state
| prisons.
|
| It's news that directly contradicts you, not research.
|
| I think this is a HN headline auto-edit that impairs
| understanding, sadly: "California's free prison calls are
| repairing estranged relationships and aiding rehabilitation" -
| removing "California's" and changing "are repairing" to "boost"
| significantly changes what it means.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > And that's when they aren't sources of revenue for private
| companies.
|
| *slaves
| ROTMetro wrote:
| The Thirteenth Amendment forbade slavery and involuntary
| servitude, "except as punishment for crime whereof the party
| shall have been duly convicted."
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-.
| ..
| guerrilla wrote:
| Okay? This is well-known. What is your point?
| Philpax wrote:
| They were supporting your claim for other readers by
| demonstrating the exception in the amendment, not trying
| to raise a new point.
| worik wrote:
| > except as punishment
|
| So if making a profit is the purpose it is illegal?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| What research? I read the article expecting a study, but it
| never even mentions the word "research" so that was a dud. The
| title OP is using here isn't the title from the article, which
| may be why people only reading the headline here might assume
| that the article delves into some sort of study, but it
| doesn't.
|
| I have no dog in this fight, but I don't like how this is being
| treated as something academically sound, rather than an article
| that is basically a collection of vox pops.
| anon-uaSh1mur wrote:
| It's not just the costs that get you, but also the arbitrary
| minutes-per-month limit.
|
| I was in federal prison for years. One week from release, I got
| an email about a friend in poor health. I had to pay by the
| minute to access that email account at a prison kiosk, by the
| way. One minute of email access cost roughly the same as what I
| was paid for a hour's labor at my prison job as a GED instructor.
|
| I called my friend as soon as I could get access to a phone. I
| had 5 minutes left of my monthly minutes budget because I'd spent
| nearly all of my 200 minute monthly allowance release planning
| with family. As we had only a few moments on the phone, they
| demanded I come see them the moment I was released. They had
| something very important they wanted to talk about.
|
| I spent the next few days appealing to every prison official for
| extra phone minutes to speak with my dying friend. Several of
| them had phones on their desks as we spoke, and could have just
| picked up the phone and given me a few minutes right then and
| there. They all had the authority and ability to assist, and they
| all refused. From case manager, church chaplin to assistant
| warden. One said because the other person isn't direct family,
| they don't count as important enough to grant me an extra phone
| call. They took three days to consider my request before denying
| it. Another accused me of lying to manipulate them into giving me
| extra phone minutes because I'd "wasted" what I was given and
| they thought we all got way too many minutes anyway.
|
| A few other prisoners offered to let me use their phone accounts
| to make calls, but if I had done that and been detected by prison
| staff who randomly monitored phone calls, I risked a disciplinary
| proceeding that could result in going to solitary confinement
| instead of going home, and throwing my release arrangements into
| disarray.
|
| My friend died the day before I went home. I still don't know
| what they wanted to tell me.
| gambiting wrote:
| Man, that's fucking insane. Really sorry about your friend.
| sva_ wrote:
| I want to say that I am sorry for what you went through. If
| that had happened to me, it probably would have radicalized me.
| sixothree wrote:
| I had a friend in jail for a short period of time. I couldn't
| let her languish. So I did those $25 hamburgers and $13 phone
| calls. Everything about this was repulsive to me. But for
| someone so gentle I couldn't not do these things.
|
| Recidivism is the goal and not something we try to avoid. So
| sick of the way this country treats people.
| OO000oo wrote:
| It's a free country so prison companies should be free to profit
| from anything they want. The big evil government needs to stop
| influencing the private corporations.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Let's start allowing police departments to pay officers per
| arrest, then.
| hkt wrote:
| Or forcing them to downsize and not overspend on militarised
| weapons?
| twiddling wrote:
| Hello Civil Asset Forfeiture
| nameless912 wrote:
| This is one of those findings that feels so unbelievably obvious.
| Of _course_ giving prisoners the ability to stay connected with
| the outside world helps rehabilitate them.
|
| It also really highlights just how cruel for cruelty's sake our
| modern prison system is. I know there's an almost fetishistic
| worship of punishment in the US and many other countries with
| large prison populations as a method of "rehabilitation", but the
| data shows us that if you actually care about healing people
| (spoiler: the US does not), it's both not very expensive and
| extremely positive for society to do it right. It starts with
| free phone calls, work transition programs, reducing restrictions
| on jobs held by ex-felons, and other simple changes that cost a
| hell of a lot less than taking care of the broken souls our
| prisons churn out.
| ldehaan wrote:
| [dead]
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| A similar example: educating prisoners reduces recidivism.
| Feels obvious, right? Education leads to jobs, jobs lead to
| money, money means less need to do crime. But then you get
| these "whaddya mean prisoners get free college but I have to
| pay, prison should be a punishment" takes, and so whenever one
| of these programs gets too effective and popular, it's liable
| to get killed. This is actually the first year Pell grants have
| been available to prisoners since it was banned 30 years ago.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| People always bring up that "90% of US prisons are public so
| it's not a private prison problem" but those public prisons all
| contract out things like food and communication and monitoring
| and anything else that's possible to private companies.
|
| Nobody should profit off of prison, period.
| Avshalom wrote:
| I've mentioned it before but Ruth Wilson Gilmore points out
| that prisons form a system of rural jobs programs. Tying
| together the 1980s farm crisis and the rise in incarceration
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_crisis#1980s_crisis
|
| https://archive.org/details/goldengulagpriso00gilm
| CPLX wrote:
| It's even worse than that, at least in New York.
|
| The prisons also counted all the people in them as
| residents, for apportionment of votes, money, and so on.
|
| You would have a rural county where 6,000 people, including
| 1,500 prison guards, actually live. And then 6,000
| prisoners.
|
| Which would count as 12,000 people in terms of
| congressional and state representation. But only half of
| them are actually allowed to vote.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| The counting makes sense: prisoners, too, require the
| resources of the locality in which they reside, even if
| they can't vote at the moment
|
| They should be able to vote though
| jstarfish wrote:
| The lifelong ban does seem arbitrarily harsh and
| engineered for abuse (anybody subject to taxation should
| retain voting rights); who benefits from this and how?
| (It's been 20+ years since my last civics class.)
|
| Racism was the historic angle-- but even if you target a
| black community and make felons of all the men, they
| would only comprise a minority of voters in a white
| district, and it just reduces the number of all eligible
| voters in an all-black district. Is this a local politics
| thing (school funding, etc.)?
|
| Or is it just a way to suppress voting by as much of the
| Left as possible?
|
| The Right are the ones who define all these laws. The
| Left are the ones who seem positioned to run afoul of
| them (pro-drugs, pro-abortion, pro-prostitution, etc.),
| then lose their ability to influence change.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Racism was the historic angle-- but even if you target
| a black community and make felons of all the men, they
| would only comprise a minority of voters in a white
| district, and it just reduces the number of all eligible
| voters in an all-black district.
|
| Reducing the number of voters by eliminating a disfavored
| class from representation while retaining the political
| power of apportionment that counts the disebfranchised
| citizens was the whole point of the 3/5 compromise, and
| mass criminalization plus felon disenfranchisement is its
| direct replacement.
|
| Also, you maybe want to consider the effect on a mixed-
| race district where, say, a sufficient minority of whites
| are sympathetic to black interests that together they
| would, before selective disenfrnachisement, constitute a
| majority.
|
| > Is this a local politics thing (school funding, etc.)?
|
| That, too, but its largely a _federal_ politics thing.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > Reducing the number of voters by eliminating a
| disfavored class from representation while retaining the
| political power of apportionment that counts the
| disebfranchised citizens was the whole point of the 3/5
| compromise
|
| Thanks-- I [think I] see where you're going but still
| don't get where this ends. You have a district with a
| minority of people who can't vote. Yet they are counted
| among the population.
|
| This directly suppresses presidential votes, but what
| besides the House benefits from an inflated population of
| non-voters?
|
| > you maybe want to consider the effect on a mixed-race
| district where, say, a sufficient minority of whites are
| sympathetic to black interests that together they would,
| before selective disenfrnachisement, constitute a
| majority.
|
| The thought crossed my mind, but the only example I'm
| familiar with is Atlanta-- a few blue droplets on a red
| ocean, yet the state is currently represented by two
| Democratic senators, and the House is split. There's
| something weird about this but I'm not a political
| strategist enough to understand what's going on here. Is
| this where population matters-- density of the metro area
| outweighing the rest of the state?
| hgsgm wrote:
| Ah, the Five-Fifths Compromise.
| jrussino wrote:
| > 12,000 people in terms of congressional and state
| representation. But only half of them are actually
| allowed to vote
|
| This is egregious.
| cltby wrote:
| If illegal aliens count for apportionment, why shouldn't
| prisoners?
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > It's even worse than that, at least in New York.
|
| This is known as prison gerrymandering, although in New
| York it was made illegal in 2010[0].
|
| However, it's still legal in many other states[1].
|
| [0] https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/NYS_A9710-D.html
|
| [1]
| https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/models/chart.html
| hgsgm wrote:
| The Constitution has a word for those kinds of "jobs".
| Avshalom wrote:
| I don't mean the prison(er) labor. Prisons employ not
| just guards but doctors and nurses and groundskeepers and
| secretaries, plumbers, electricians, HR, food service
| companies... Just like colleges or military bases,
| prisons are a source of jobs for the surrounding area and
| can be the only thing keeping them even vaguely
| economically viable.
|
| Making the slave labor illegal wouldn't get rid of most
| of the economic/political incentive for prisons.
| arp242 wrote:
| But the prison still gets to set the policy, no? Like how
| many minutes people can call, and what they can charge?
|
| "Nobody should profit off of prison, period" is very
| simplistic: the electricity company makes a profit; the store
| selling bread, sausages, milk, potatoes, and whatnot makes a
| profit; the supplier selling books makes a profit; AT&T will
| make a profit from the phone lines regardless, just as they
| make a profit off phone lines to offices, etc. etc.
|
| The problem isn't private companies: it's the prison
| officials. How much of that revenue goes back to the prison?
| A substantial amount I bet. That's why they do it; that a
| private company is involved isn't all that important. Yes,
| it's exploitive and counter-productive, but few seem to care
| as prisons are for evil people who deserve to be assraped on
| a daily basis anyway, and anything more than bread & water is
| a luxury.
|
| This fully fits with the general attitude that exists in the
| US towards criminals. This is a country that puts 9-year olds
| in full leg and arm shackles for stealing bubble gum[1]
| (putting a kid like that in court is already dubious), and
| there are plenty of examples ranging from the existence of
| the "innocence project" to all the drug tests for employment,
| etc. etc. What is wrong with you people?
|
| [1]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/courts-
| shackle-...
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm sure it's a multifactorial problem, but I have a hard
| time seeing direct profit as being the original cause of this
| issue, as opposed to a parasitic growth that developed on top
| of it. The core issue has to be the basic voter fear and
| attitude that so harshly punished any politician of the 80s
| and 90s who was seen to be "soft on crime." Misdemeanors
| converted to felonies. Mandatory minimum sentences were
| introduced. Police got free military surplus gear and became
| more of a hostile occupying force than part of the community.
|
| There's discord between the discussion in this thread and
| discussion any time the subject of San Francisco policing
| comes up. They're too soft and let crime happen. They ignore
| shoplifters. People are just shitting in the streets. Okay,
| well what do you want the police to do? It seems the options
| are you either kill petty shoplifters and homeless people or
| you send them to prison. But then the same people will
| complain about exploding prison populations.
|
| Am I lacking in creativity? Because there are three options I
| can see:
|
| - Create a society where even unskilled, somewhat antisocial
| people who went through great trauma as children do well
| enough that they don't turn to crime, and actually treat
| those who are so mentally ill that they'll be long-term
| homeless virtually no matter what.
|
| - Allow some amount of non-lethal crime to happen and live
| with it.
|
| - Put massive amounts of people in prison.
|
| It seems like voters have converged on the third as their
| preference, not because they're being brainwashed by private
| prisons and corrupt corrections officer unions, but because
| the first option is too expensive and the second option would
| mean they need to see human shit and broken windows when
| they're walking around the city. At least prisons tend to be
| in the middle of the desert or swamp where it's out of sight,
| someone else's problem.
| jstarfish wrote:
| We used to let people do military service as an alternative
| sentence for minor infractions, but that led to a lot of
| antisocial behavior in an institution that requires order
| to function (it stopped after Vietnam). There's a reason
| why when Russia did the same thing recently, the prisoners
| were used as first-wave cannon fodder and left the actual
| fighting to Wagner...criminals tend to lack discipline.
|
| There's room for a middle option between passivity and
| slavery/prison. Some people need to be wards of _somebody_
| , so set up an institution _like_ the military (endless
| boot camp, or the mining-town setups of old) and use that
| for alternate sentencing. Last chance: you get training, a
| mandatory job, shitty housing, and limited freedom (shore
| leave /weekend passes). It's not ideal, so work the program
| as long as you need to and GTFO. Fuck it up and next time
| you _will_ go to prison.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Right, the criminal industrial complex is a problem, just not
| private prisons... they are, I just mean insofar as being a
| significant factor today.
|
| We're happy to send people to public prisons, and they're not
| that many private ones.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| If nobody sells food to prisons, then what will the prisoners
| eat? Do you propose that prisons be run as farms where
| prisoners are made to produce their own food? I've heard that
| prisons in South Korea work that way, but I've also heard
| that prisons in South Korea are brutal by even American
| standards, such that the US Military has an agreement with
| the South Korean government that any US servicemen put into
| Korean prisons will be fed more than a starvation diet.
| Apparently conditions in Korean prisons are such that an
| agreement like that is necessary.
|
| Maybe, prisons buying food isn't the problem with American
| prisons.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> US servicemen put into Korean prisons_
|
| Out of curiosity, how many servicemen did the US allow to
| get into foreign prisons?
|
| I know at least two highly mediatized cases of US
| servicemen committing murder in Europe[1][2] but were
| instantly airlifted to the US before they could be arrested
| by the local police, so they couldn't be trialed and jailed
| in the EU and instead got to walk free back home.
|
| If the US stepped in for them in Europe, I doubt they won't
| do the same in Korea.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter#Death
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The American soldier who recently defected to North Korea
| had previously been in a South Korean prison for two
| months for assault:
| https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/07/18/us-soldier-who-
| fled-...
|
| Here is a 2007 article in _Stars and Stripes_ (USDoD
| newspaper) about the special treatment American service-
| members receive in South Korean prisons:
| https://www.stripes.com/news/u-s-servicemembers-treated-
| diff...
| jstarfish wrote:
| > Apparently conditions in Korean prisons are such that an
| agreement like that is necessary.
|
| I don't know the current state of them, but you can tour
| Seodaemun prison (operational 1908-1987; it's now a
| museum/memorial). They make no attempt to hide the fact
| that the conditions were historically even worse than
| you're describing-- basically concentration camps sans gas
| chambers. Food was watery gruel, toilets were rat-infested
| holes in the ground, etc.
|
| Visit in the winter when it's 30F out for the full
| experience; the prisoners weren't given adequate clothing
| for the cold themselves so even bundled up to the teeth you
| can appreciate their misery.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Don't forget the per minute charge to use kiosk computers to
| send electronic communication with family, or the pay to use
| phone app for family members to get those same
| communications.
|
| Or that you have to buy any medications sold in commissary
| from there and won't be given them at medical (which costs $5
| a visit when you don't make $5 a month) like aspirin at the
| for profit commissary that buys from jacked up 'prison
| commissary' distributors and has a way shorter than what you
| buy in the store expiration date. Keep in mind you are not
| allowed to share 'medication' and that having expired
| 'medication' in your locker can be a shot (writeup, potential
| loss of good time, potential to have your security points
| increased and shipped to a higher security(i.e. less safe)
| prison).
| nickff wrote:
| > _" Nobody should profit off of prison, period. "_
|
| What about the guards? Should they be volunteers? Should all
| services be provided by donation? Where do you draw the line?
| Should the government farm the food, ship it to the prison,
| and serve it? What about the clothing, beds, toilets, etc.?
| conscion wrote:
| Being paid for labor is not usually considered "profit".
| mcpackieh wrote:
| If you're not profiting from your work you should find
| new work. The point of work is to profit. Or has profit
| been redefined by Marxists with some new _" it's not
| profit when we do it"_ BS definition?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm sure most people who are employed make money from
| their employment but they're also not running a business
| which has "costs", "revenue" and, hopefully, "profit".
| They enter a contract with such a business which will
| treat the individual's salary as a "cost" which lessens
| the "profit" from the "revenue".
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| If you view a profit on a supply basis, as "the
| difference between the sold value of a good and the price
| to produce it", then somebody living paycheck to paycheck
| is, by definition, not profiting off of their labor. The
| cost of living, and thus be able to produce labor, is
| approximately the same as the amount they're being paid.
|
| If you view profit on a demand basis, profit is the
| difference between what the the seller values the good at
| and the value the buyer places on the good. In that
| regard, labor is never sold at a profit for the laborer:
| companies only purchase labor that they can use to
| produce more value than they pay for it.
|
| Framed another way, if the value of labor is the price
| the market is willing to pay for it, then employment is
| almost always a negative exchange for the worker. The
| value of someone's labor is the price that employers are
| willing to pay for it, and the price employers are
| willing to pay for the labor is greater than the wage the
| employee receives (because employing somebody is more
| expensive than just paying them a wage).
|
| All told, unless your definition of "profit" is
| indistinguishable from "money changes hands", workers
| don't profit from their labor.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Well yeah if you're treading water living paycheck to
| paycheck, then you're not making a profit. But anybody in
| that situation with an opportunity to make more money
| will jump at it, because the idea _is_ to make more money
| than you 're spending, e.g. to earn a profit.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > has profit been redefined by Marxists with some new
| "it's not profit when we do it" BS definition?
|
| Profit as the excess retained by or on behalf of capital
| owners is not a definition created by Marxists, using it
| for other things which are seen as loosely similar to
| that central goal of the most important property relation
| in capitalism is a newer, expansive, metaphorical use.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Well you're definitely missing the spirit of the comment.
| Employees do not "profit" off of anything, it's the other
| way around. I make a cent, BossMan makes a dollar, etc.
| nickff wrote:
| Every supplier could say that about every customer.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| Agreed, GP is definitely not taking the comment with the
| most charitable interpretation.
| nickff wrote:
| I am employing reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate the
| problem with the comment I replied to.
| misnome wrote:
| No, you are being an unhelpful dick.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Yes, and if there aren't enough donations and volunteers we
| just close the prison and release the prisoners because
| obviously people didn't think it was that important.
|
| I'm like 66% serious.
| hkt wrote:
| That'd shift the cost of the prison system on to
| billionaires and conservatives..
|
| I like it.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Wages are generally not considered profit in business
| economic contexts.
| swayvil wrote:
| 99% of our movies involve "the good guy" beating down "the bad
| guy".
|
| It's some kind of deep-rooted psychological thing. Permanent
| pubescent power fantasies.
|
| Is it a plague of bad taste? A conspiracy to make everybody
| dumber?
| fnimick wrote:
| My personal take is that it's a stress response in the US.
| Our society and economic system has evolved to put the vast
| majority of people one or two paychecks away from poverty.
| When you feel like your life is miserable, and you have no
| hope of improving it, it feels good to see righteous violence
| done to someone lesser.
| swayvil wrote:
| That's an interesting idea.
|
| Stress is a drug in this way. Affecting our emotions and
| how we see and think.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The primary purpose of prisons is to keep criminals out of the
| streets and physically unable to re-offend. Punishment and/or
| rehabilitation are _at most_ distant secondary considerations.
| Tronno wrote:
| If that were true, then why do prison sentences have an end
| date?
| fnimick wrote:
| A disturbing number of Americans would be very happy if
| they didn't.
|
| See: "tough on crime" winning elections everywhere, three
| strikes laws, mandatory minimums, and the surprisingly
| popular viewpoint even in relatively liberal areas that
| more crimes should face the death penalty. The last one is
| particularly eye-opening: when I point out that the death
| penalty costs the state more due to appeals, the response I
| frequently get is that the solution there is to make the
| death penalty easier to apply and block appeals on it.
| "Execute all drug dealers" and the like.
| [deleted]
| cameldrv wrote:
| Having no contact with anyone except convicted criminals and
| prison guards for a long time has to change a person.
| hkt wrote:
| I forget where the term comes from, but in some social
| science there's a conception of prisons as "universities of
| crime"
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| The 1995 film "Heat" refers to them as "gladiator
| academies". And there's a great Willem Dafoe film called
| about the US prison system called "Animal Factory".
| teeray wrote:
| "You are the average of the five people you spend the most
| time with" applies here
| weswilson wrote:
| There is a nonprofit that is trying to address this called
| Ameelio (https://www.ameelio.org/). They were hiring in the HN
| Who is Hiring thread. I don't know much about them, but it seems
| like they have some traction in a few states. Their voice call
| product says that it offers free voice calling, with all the
| monitoring/security features built in.
|
| I hope these types of nonprofit tech companies succeed as they
| are not profit seeking off of the misery of other people.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| it sounds like it doesn't satisfy the most critical
| requirement: allowing sadistic prison employees to torture and
| extort prisoners in fun and new ways with no oversight
|
| who are they expecting to buy this, Montessori prisons?
| foogazi wrote:
| > In June, the overall prison phone bill increased more than
| tenfold, to nearly $2.4 million.
|
| They should look into getting an unlimited minutes plan
| OO000oo wrote:
| Then how would the phone company executives be able to afford
| the campaign donations?
| hkt wrote:
| The UK's ministry of justice has rolled out phones to quite a few
| prisons now and they have had an amazing impact, despite the
| opprobrium of idiot newspaper editors.
|
| It is thought that this cuts recidivism by 40% and allows people
| to stay in touch with family. The number is good, but it is worth
| considering one of the less often articulated points about the
| system: it punishes families, too. Take away a breadwinner, an
| extra pair of parental hands (however active), and put a father
| at a distance from their kids, and what do you get? A lonely
| partner who can't share domestic work. Kids with only one adult
| to relate to, where that adult now carries responsibilities that
| were previously shared.
|
| In other words, prisons incarcerate individuals but punish
| families. Phones in prisons lessen the blow somewhat, and it is
| little surprise that even this very small line of contact keeps
| people in touch with people they care about, instead of leaving
| them adrift and vulnerable to mixing with the wrong sorts on
| release.
|
| Really, they ought to be abolished. Other forms of punishment and
| rehabilitation exist. Restorative justice exists. It would be
| better that we used it.
|
| (I'm gendering the above in the way I am because in the UK, as in
| many other places, ten men are in prison for every one woman,
| give or take)
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/in-cell-phones-for-more-p...
| sokoloff wrote:
| There are probably a lot of prisoners who could safely benefit
| from alternative treatments. (Safety as judged from the
| perspective of law-abiding members of society.)
|
| But there is certainly a subset of them who would not be safe
| to treat outside of prison. And those people should remain in
| prison, IMO.
| rogerthis wrote:
| In Brazil free phone calls would* allow criminals to manage crime
| from prison, through family.
|
| * would = do; prisoners have easy access to cellphones, etc. Very
| common are scam calls originating from prisons. Classic real life
| meme is one criminal calling one person who happened to also be
| in another prison.
| dkural wrote:
| It could be free calls from prison landlines, which can also be
| listened to fully for any criminal content.
| pessimizer wrote:
| We're not interested in rehabilitation in the US. We have
| parasites here who lobby against the relaxation of drug laws
| _solely_ because they make money from the prison population. We
| elect presidents with crackhead sons that are responsible for
| passing unbelievably draconian drug laws.
|
| Of course allowing phone calls with family keeps connections with
| family secure, and of course secure connections with family
| reduces recidivism. This is the biggest non-discovery since a
| right-wing economist discovered that people who went bankrupt due
| to medical debt _weren 't all irresponsible people_, and decided
| to go into politics as a champion of the working class, trading
| on that "scholarship."
|
| When will people stop _discovering_ the poor and the weak, and
| stop voting or _actively lobbying_ against them? Prison phone
| calls have been a government-granted exploitation racket since
| forever, but somehow they 're still legal. Our progressives hire
| an unofficial credit card lobbyist to be president, and shed
| crocodile tears for black people who are poorer than they were in
| 1995.
|
| edit: here's my proposal. Let's not isolate prisoners from
| society _at all_. Let 's allow reporters in every prison, give
| them facilities within the building to work, and let them talk to
| whoever, whenever, and report whatever. Let's take the
| opportunity that we have gained from nabbing an out of control
| person to bring them back into society, rather than push them out
| farther. Let them _vote._ Let them do remote work to pay off
| their victims, the state, and to support their families.
|
| Prison should be where we put people in order to protect society,
| not a torture chamber.
| nrdxp wrote:
| Who would have that that treating people like human beings would
| improve their humanity
| voisin wrote:
| Let's cut the bullshit. Prisons have nothing to do with
| rehabilitation and everything to do with punishment and
| dissuading others. If there was any desire for rehabilitation,
| prisons would look a lot more like in-patient therapy. Phone
| calls would never have cost as much as they have, and books and
| other self-improvement tools would be freely available.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Someone else mentioned this and I don't think it's talked about
| enough: They're basically there to just warehouse shady people
| so they can't commit more crimes.
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