[HN Gopher] FCC votes to limit prison telecom charges
___________________________________________________________________
FCC votes to limit prison telecom charges
Author : Avshalom
Score : 758 points
Date : 2024-07-19 11:33 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worthrises.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (worthrises.org)
| user3939382 wrote:
| Great. This was used to separate people from their families which
| increases recidivism.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Yes, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of
| value for shareholder.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I mean, increased recitivism means more value for the
| shareholders.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Privatizing the social correction sector is a joke of
| really bad taste. Incentives are exactly like that, to
| increase recidivism and not actually re-socialize inmates.
|
| You'd think that competition would foster better correction
| facilities, but as with big pharma, being effective is
| counterproductive because it hinders growth, which is at
| the core of capitalism.
|
| Not saying competition is bad, only that it's maybe not
| universally applicable to all areas.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > You'd think that competition would foster better
| correction facilities
|
| Why would you think that? It's not like consumers get to
| pick their prisons.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Inmates are products, not consumers. Consumers would be
| governments, and they would in theory over time select
| those administration companies that would offer the best
| correction facilities for the lowest price.
|
| However, I am actually making the point against that.
| Privatization of that area makes no sense at all. I might
| have phrased that in a way that works against the central
| point of my argument, but the idea is that no, there is
| no competition that could possibly justify privatizing
| the corrections sector.
| jakjak123 wrote:
| Failure to consider holistic societal gains is not
| something new for Americans at least. Both for tax payers
| and corporations, making any inmate a productive tax
| payer would be better for society and for shareholder
| value.
| pants2 wrote:
| If the competition were set up with the right incentives,
| like payment to the private prisons based on their
| recidivism rates or job placement after incarceration, it
| might actually work. But today we're creating backwards
| incentives.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Is this an example of something which could be affected by the
| (absence of) Chevron doctrine?
| bubblethink wrote:
| No. "The regulations adopted today mark the implementation of
| the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act,
| which established the FCC's authority to regulate in-state
| phone and video calls from correctional facilities, in addition
| to out-of-state phone calls that it had already regulated."
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/154...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That's somewhat reassuring...
|
| but it would feel _much_ better if you followed up with "and
| this is <insert reason> why the law is so clear-cut that the
| decision by the FTC cannot be seen as inventing regulation
| and so nobody will litigate much less win in court against
| the FTC".
| semiquaver wrote:
| This regulation implements a law that was passed in direct
| response to a court ruling striking down the FCC's ability
| to regulate in-state prison calls because there was no
| clear wording in the law granting them that authority. Now
| there is, as the law was explicitly written to grant the
| FCC the power a court ruled they lacked.
|
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/01/19/martha-
| wright-r...
| kbos87 wrote:
| This was my immediate question. I'm also curious what in terms
| of services these vendors actually layer on top of any other
| phone system. There's clearly a payment processing layer where
| inmates can store credit to make calls, but are these systems
| otherwise that different from what would be offered by any
| other telecom vendor?
| techdmn wrote:
| Those were my thoughts. I view the price cap as overwhelmingly
| positive, but start the countdown until the courts / SCOTUS
| invalidate this. Exploiting the downtrodden is the American
| way.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They'll just implement an access fee for cheap calls.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| Wow what a poorly written headline. I thought it said that the
| FCC had voted to limit the speed of prison internet.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Perhaps we could edit the title to reflect that they're
| limiting the price and not the speed
| Avshalom wrote:
| I just changed it to 'charges', the headline was too long so I
| was chopping words off.
| avsteele wrote:
| What are the economics of this market?
|
| Do the prisons pay less in overhead in exchange for the higher
| rates?
|
| Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't
| competitive?
|
| According to one source (below): some prisons gets a commission
| on each call, which ultimately would be paid for by the
| users/convicts. This makes sense as a reason for high prices
| because you have the entity (prison admin) choosing a provider
| with an actual incentive to not choose the lowest cost one.
|
| https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/
| indymike wrote:
| > Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't
| competitive?
|
| The prison operator has a (joke not intended) captive market
| and that is exploited by contractors who often share the
| proceeds with the prison operator.
| Sharlin wrote:
| The economics are simply that prisons are rent-seekers.
| kotaKat wrote:
| From my global (US) understanding of it: Prison telco providers
| also often provide their services at zero or negative cost to
| the prison (i.e. commissions on calls or services). They also
| provide additional "value-add" services to the prisoners which
| are also extortionally priced (music downloads, ebook
| purchases).
|
| The tablets are also often starting to replace physical mail -
| inmates are being denied physical mail, instead letters and
| drawings being filtered, scanned, and uploaded remotely from
| elsewhere. Or they can write letters outbound - just have to
| pay for "digital stamps" - even for electronic mail. Double
| points for making people on the outside buy the "digital
| stamps" to send them inwards, too!
|
| Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner while
| making themselves look like the Good Guys for providing access
| to all this information and capabilities in such a safe and
| controlled manner and at "no cost to the taxpayer!"
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner
|
| A packet of Ramen in a prison store will cost several
| dollars. There's zero acceptable justification for this.
| Making a prisoner pay more for a snack isn't justice.
|
| Also, it's not a snack, because in most states, prisoners are
| only required to be given two """Meals""" a day. There are
| very few nutritional or minimum standard requirements for
| these """meals""" and in many counties, there is a rule that
| every dollar of the budget for feeding prisoners that is not
| spent is given directly to the guy who sets the menu and
| operates the canteen.
|
| Most prison meals in these systems look like that famous
| picture of a "sandwhich" from the Fyre festival.
|
| You know, the kind of thing that would be used as an example
| of "Perverse incentive" in a high school economics textbook.
| jerf wrote:
| The one thing that you may not be aware of that will raise
| costs above what you may expect is that prisoner communications
| are generally monitored, and not just "this may be monitored
| for improved customer service in the future" but you know
| nobody is actually being paid to listen to all the calls, but
| actually monitored. Whether you agree with this or not, this
| does mean the service is going to be more expensive than a
| straight service normally would be. There's also significant
| vetting on what apps are allowed, which is also not free.
|
| I'm not making a defense here of any particular price or
| practice, just giving you a partial answer to your question, in
| that there are costs in these services above and beyond what
| you would expect for a "normal" service of this type.
| bubblethink wrote:
| Why are the rates still so high ? Video calls are 0.16-0.25/min.
| I can understand that the old system was just a cash grab, but
| now that FCC is regulating it, why half-ass it? Surely, it
| doesn't cost anywhere close to that to support a video call.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Maybe the pay for the people surveiling the calls is included?
| bubblethink wrote:
| Doesn't look like it. "For decades, the cost of an ever-
| expanding suite of invasive surveillance services has been
| passed on to incarcerated people and their loved ones. With
| today's new rules, prison telecoms will be barred from
| recovering the cost of the majority of such services from
| ratepayers."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That sounds exactly like passing on the costs to the
| inmate.
|
| Now they are barred from passing the costs to the inmates.
|
| I wonder if the telecoms can opt out of offering service to
| prisons
| bilbo0s wrote:
| You guys aren't thinking clearly.
|
| It's far more likely that the FCC knows the requisite
| surveillance is already integrated into the general
| telecom infrastructure in the country. There is no longer
| any need for special surveillance, because we already
| track everyone. Each prison just gets a ittle web page
| telling them which prisoner should be watched and why.
|
| But don't worry. Even though we've now successfully
| integrated surveillance and tracking into our nation's
| telecom system, I'm confident they won't use any web app
| like the ones prisons will get to track people who are
| not in prison. /s
|
| Anyway, it's zero cost to the telecoms, precisely because
| the requisite tech is already there and running 24/7. And
| guess who put it there? Who will opt out? No one, because
| the government wants that data. And the telecoms and
| government are collaborating to get it from every segment
| of society. I know this next part might be going a step
| too far, but it wouldn't surprise me if the real issue
| behind this is that the rank amateur idiot prison telecom
| companies don't collect good enough data. The powers that
| be may have decided to get the bumbling dimwits out of
| the way so they can see more clearly what's going on.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| IIRC, calls to and from inmates are recorded and analyzed. It
| costs more for the storage, retention and processing of this
| data, than the mere connection and data transfer.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| TFA:
|
| > The primary factors driving the FCC's lower rate caps is
| the exclusion of security and surveillance costs as well as
| the exclusion of commissions. [...] With today's new rules,
| prison telecoms will be barred from recovering the cost of
| the majority of such services from ratepayers.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| This is great news. It's appalling that the prison system is the
| only place left in the country that charges more for "long
| distance" calls (like 3x IIRC).
|
| I've helped several families set up Google voice numbers in the
| region of their loved one's prison just to save money.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Most of the jail and prison systems I know have technical
| checks in place for Google voice and other VOIP systems to
| avoid you getting around their charges. They will ban the
| numbers and then often ban you from the phone system and
| sometimes put you in the Hole for games like that.
|
| I used to use them to try to call the UK instead of paying
| multiple dollars a minute when my mother was dying of cancer.
| But it's a game of cat-and-mouse. And if you're in a place that
| makes you wait 4-8 weeks to get a number added to your call
| list, then you can't afford your number to get banned.
|
| Every day I help multiple guys inside do "3-way" calls from
| prison to numbers that aren't approved onto their lists yet.
| It's a dangerous game, though, as the calls are often detected
| and blocked.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| FWIW, my interactions have been with the federal system over
| 10+ years. I never heard of any blocking of google voice
| numbers there. It appears to be common knowledge among the
| inmates as a way to avoid the long distance charges.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| I worked for a company which offered a bridge between CorrLinks
| (federal prison email system) and SMS. The inmate would get
| their own phone number they could receive messages from, and
| make outgoing texts as well.
|
| My boss's friend operates https://phonedonkey.com, which
| provides a VOIP relay service such as what you set up.
| mosburger wrote:
| Aware that this comment is wading dangerously into U.S. politics
| - will the recent Supreme Court decisions w/r/t the powers of
| executive branch agencies like the FCC make it impossible to
| enforce this?
|
| Edit - this from the article makes me thing that _maybe_ it 'll
| be OK? Sounds like there was some congressional approval
| involved?
|
| > The regulations adopted today mark the implementation of the
| Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which
| established the FCC's authority to regulate in-state phone and
| video calls from correctional facilities, in addition to out-of-
| state phone calls that it had already regulated. The discussion
| during today's vote will result in only minor changes to the
| draft rules released on June 27, and be released in the coming
| days.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| yeah, "chevron deference" was only really an issue with
| ambiguously written laws IMO, or agencies taking an overly
| expansive view of their authority. And they still _can_ , but
| now those decisions can be challenged in court.
|
| good summary here: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/chevron-
| is-out-of-gas-wil...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Which means a denial of service attack on the system is most
| certainly coming via that jurisdiction in Texas that has the
| single judge who loves issuing national injunctions.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think people misunderstand the deference standard that was
| actually overturned and explaining looper helps
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Ultimately I believe it will be enforced, and then potentially
| challenged in court. This seems to be the path for most
| regulation in the USA. So the question always is "Who will
| challenge this?" because as you point out, it has become easier
| for challenges to regulations to succeed (at least in theory).
| kranke155 wrote:
| Some kind of phone telecom funded pseudo grassroots lobby
| group.
| variant wrote:
| Doubtful, but if it isn't authorized by statute, a law should
| be passed not regulation.
| jmyeet wrote:
| You raise a fair point. Here's the Act [1] and 47 USC 276 [2]
| in full, (b)(1)(A) (emphasis added):
|
| > (A)establish a compensation plan to ensure that all payphone
| service providers are fairly compensated, and all rates and
| charges are _just and reasonable_ , for completed intrastate
| and interstate communications using their payphone or other
| calling device, except that emergency calls and
| telecommunications relay service calls for hearing disabled
| individuals shall not be subject to such compensation;
|
| What does "just and reasonable" mean? With Chevron deference,
| courts would have to defer to the FCC on this. Now they don't.
|
| Now Chevron deference is a bigger issue when laws are written
| more broadly and vaguely like "the EPA should ensure the air is
| clean". We had 40 years of Congress over multiple
| administrations deliberately writing laws to defer to Federal
| agencies.
|
| But a prison telco could still bring suit arguing the rates are
| not "just and reasonable".
|
| [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-
| bill/154...
|
| [2]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/276
| jerf wrote:
| It is important to remember that removing the Chevron defense
| is not some unknown situation we've never seen before. It is
| a return to the status quo from before that case, and that
| was not a situation where every last regulation was instantly
| tied up in litigation on the theory that when Congress said
| "set just and reasonable price limits on prisoner comms" they
| _actually_ meant "do nothing unless every sentence from the
| regulatory agency has been reviewed by the Supreme Court".
| The higher courts are all rate-limited by their time and
| after an initial burst of relitigation on the limits of
| regulation, we're going to settle into a status quo where
| federal agencies still have reasonable abilities to implement
| Congressional dictates, because the higher courts are going
| to start to refuse to hear cases that are clearly just
| "industry does not like being regulated in clear compliance
| with Congressional mandate".
|
| A prison telco can bring any suit they like, but it's not
| like the removal of the Chevron defense _requires_ the court
| to accept the case and laboriously work out an exact
| definition just because the prison telco wants them to.
| Courts aren 't going to want to do this, especially the
| higher ones.
| jfengel wrote:
| The courts themselves have also changed. In particular, the
| Supreme Court has been overwhelmingly captured by one
| political party, and a Circuit Court that is extremely
| disposed towards business interests. There is every reason
| to think that the courts _will_ hear cases "just because
| industry does not like being regulated in clear compliance
| with Congressional mandate".
|
| The suit won't happen instantly, but an injunction can be
| granted extremely fast. That restores the status quo ante,
| and gives time to shop for a jurisdiction that will find in
| their favor. It may take years for that to work its way up
| to the Supreme Court, but that's to their advantage.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| Of course it's still going to happen. Lawyers will find the
| most Fox News brain rotted free market conservative judge
| they can find and get them to take the case, just like what
| happened with mifepristone, and tie up every single piece
| of regulation because it's cheap for them to do.
|
| It'll just be arbitrary regulation by whoever is least
| qualified to decide policy. The courts are the new
| regulators.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It is a return to the status quo from before that case...
|
| No; Chevron was a _formalization_ of the status quo, not a
| change to it.
|
| > the higher courts are going to start to refuse to hear
| cases that are clearly just "industry does not like being
| regulated in clear compliance with Congressional mandate"
|
| Not when a single-judge jurisdiction in Northern Texas
| keeps happily issuing nationwide injunctions against things
| he doesn't like.
| https://www.texastribune.org/2023/04/07/texas-abortion-
| drugs...
| jmyeet wrote:
| > It is a return to the status quo
|
| No, it isn't because we've had 40 years of Congress writing
| laws assuming Chevron deference. If you're a programmer of
| any kind, think of it like one of our constraints or
| preconditions that you've built your entire software stack
| on suddenly changes or is removed.
|
| Imagine your server was built assuming all packets would
| arrive in order because the networking layer beneath you
| guaranteed that. Now it doesn't.
|
| > because the higher courts are going to start to refuse to
| hear cases
|
| So the only court with discretion as to whether they want
| to hear a case or not is the Supreme Court. Every other
| court must hear a case brought to them, even if it's just
| to dismiss it, which they need to issue a ruling for.
|
| > A prison telco can bring any suit they like, but it's not
| like the removal of the Chevron defense requires the court
| to accept the case
|
| With Chevron, the courts would simply say "by Supreme Court
| precedent, we have to defer to Federal agencies on any
| ambiguous legislative language". That's quite literally
| what "deference" means.
|
| Now they don't.
|
| So a district court has the authority to rule on matters
| they previously didn't and we've seen courts do just that
| for things the judge simply doesn't like.
|
| Worse, there's not even a statute of limitations on
| challenging Federal regulations anymore, thanks to Corner
| Post [1]. Previously there was a 6 year period from
| instituting a rule to challenge it. Now it's 6 years from
| when the injury began, which means you can challenge a
| century old rule by simply starting an LLC, knowing that
| the rule exists, and then saying you've suffered injury.
| That's not an exaggeration.
|
| You also do that in a favorable jurisdiction to get a
| favorable judge to block the ruling. This is what happens
| in Texas. Previously most of the rulings friendly to patent
| holders came out of one court with one judge from the
| Eastern District of Texas. Now a lot of issues are coming
| from one judge in the Northern District of Texas.
|
| Both of these courts are in the Fifth Circuit, which itself
| tends to be friendly to such causes.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_Post,_Inc._v._Boa
| rd_of_...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think Chevron is a little different and one level higher.
| Courts would now rule on if price is a question of justice
| and reasonability.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Trump installed the major prison phone system's ex-lawyer as
| the head of the FCC last time he got in, just before the prison
| call price drop was about to be implemented under an Obama-era
| decision:
|
| https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/in-the-news/2017/hrdc-says-f...
| mywittyname wrote:
| > will the recent Supreme Court decisions w/r/t the powers of
| executive branch agencies like the FCC make it impossible to
| enforce this?
|
| They will rule exactly how _everyone_ expects them to rule.
| They might provide the flimsiest of justifications for doing
| so, or they will just say it 's within their absolute authority
| to do so.
| relistan wrote:
| This is long overdue. Maybe didn't go far enough, but a step in
| the right direction.
| miki123211 wrote:
| 1. The government decides that prisoners can make phone calls,
| but they can only use a single prison-approved phone operator,
| and that operator is a private company.
|
| 2. The private company realizes it has no competition, raises
| prices as much as it wants.
|
| 3. The government is surprised with the outcome.
|
| I would say the government is at fault here for prohibiting
| competition, not the companies.
|
| It's the 21st century, you could establish a system where any
| company, with an appropriate license and government approval,
| could offer tablets / cell phones for prisoner use, with
| appropriate limitations and restrictions placed on them of
| course. Prisoners could then choose which company they want to go
| with. That would instantly eliminate the problem.
| thuuuomas wrote:
| "Instantly" here meaning "potentially, after current contract
| obligations end & institutions complete the switch to a new
| provider".
| Avshalom wrote:
| I do not think the government was at all surprised, punitive
| charges are very much a part of the prison system in this
| country[1] this is people deciding to lessen the burden
| slightly.
|
| [1] https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-
| investi...
| airza wrote:
| "the government" as an entity here really elides the difference
| between the federal government and state governments; state
| governments hold the majority of prisoners in the US and the
| ability of the federal government (via the FCC) to regulate
| prison phone calls that do not cross state lines is new since
| 2022.
|
| But even on top of that, what would the dream free market
| implementation even look like here? An entire licensure and
| certification system for these tablets which will inevitably be
| crammed with as many upsells as the law does not prohibit? What
| is the recourse for someone who is in prison and chooses a
| company whose products do not work? Are they supposed to call
| tech support?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I can answer this, as the tablets they everywhere are cheap
| Temu junk. If it's hardware, you have to return the tablet to
| the prison, and good luck on them satisfying the warranty for
| you. Easier just to get your family to put another $250-400
| on your commissary and just buy a new one.
|
| If it's software -- you're usually shit out of luck. If it's
| a serious bug and enough people file paperwork every day,
| then after a few weeks of outage it is often escalated to the
| operator. Another few weeks after that they will eventually
| fix it. Things move very, very slowly in jails and prisons,
| so expect long stretches of downtime.
| shuntress wrote:
| > what would the dream free market implementation even look
| like here?
|
| Every company's dream: Free labor and captive audiences.
| glenstein wrote:
| >1. The government decides that prisoners can make phone calls,
| but they can only use a single prison-approved phone operator,
| and that operator is a private company.
|
| You're saying "the government" a lot, but AFAIK there's no
| specific federal mandate of any kind to the effect of requiring
| a specific company handle calls at all jails and prisons. If
| anything that is the consequence of an absence of any specific
| regulation rather than the presence of one, which is completely
| the opposite of the point you seem to be making.
|
| In reality, a variety of completely separate state and local
| correctional facilities put the service out to bid. If
| anything, it is federal level prisons that would most fit the
| description of "the government" where you have the best
| regulations, where there is scrutiny of the bidding process,
| where there are already caps to limit the expenses associated
| with calls.
|
| At the county and municipal level, companies that tend to win
| the contracts have special deals in the form of a "site
| commission" payments, which are a kickback to the prisons,
| incentivizing them to give a monopoly to whichever company
| charges the most and kicks back the most to the prison.
|
| Edit: I feel like I (1) spoke directly to what the parent
| commenter was saying (2) stated uncontroversial facts, (3)
| echoing a point a chorus of other commenters are making about
| what "the government" really means, but I'm seeing a bunch of
| drive-by downvotes. Would appreciate if anyone wants to chime
| in and help me understand what I'm missing.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| You're technically correct, but try to zoom out for a minute
| and look at the subtlety of human nature.
|
| This topic has fired every one up because it's unnecessarily
| cruel, hurts families who didn't do anything wrong, enriches
| companies not providing any value, and shows people trying to
| be "tough on crime" when very ironically they're probably
| creating more crime by eroding support systems.
|
| The parent commenter mostly expresses that outrage, and makes
| a passing comment about business competition.
|
| By this time anything you said that could be perceived as
| possibly being near the other side of the argument is going
| to be taken as supporting the other side.
|
| But they are two separate points that can be independently
| discussed you say? Technically that's true, but humans don't
| work like that.
|
| Always step back and look at the biggest point being made and
| realize, there may be little room for nuance depending on the
| context.
| glenstein wrote:
| I think you are largely right here, but disappointing to
| see in an HN comment section.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are taking heat from both sides.
|
| On one hand, you are challenging the dominant narrative, so
| that gets some reaction.
|
| On the other hand, the logic you are using includes bold and
| unsubstantiated claims about kickbacks, which alienates your
| message from the remaining readers.
| glenstein wrote:
| Thanks for the response. Here's some additional
| substantiation for the stuff about kickbacks. The term for
| kickbacks is "site commissions":
|
| >Site commissions are payments that phone companies make to
| prisons and jails in exchange for the exclusive right to
| offer service to inmates. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks
| said that banning the commissions will "end the practice of
| provider kickbacks to correctional facilities and payments
| for costs irrelevant to providing services so callers will
| no longer be forced to bear the financial burden of these
| costs."
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/prison-phone-call-fees-fcc-
| caps/
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I do think
| it is interesting that the FCC prohibited not just the
| site commission costs, but also the call surveillance
| costs. who exactly will pay the surveillance costs now?
|
| There was some strange language in the FCC quotes. 8 out
| of 12 of the phone providers had a profit before the cost
| of "safety and security categories that generally are not
| used and useful".
|
| I guess the charitable take of the FCC statement is that
| these services are not required by law, but still
| desirable to prisons?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Funny anecdote: a week after getting out of prison I was
| hired to listen to these calls and transcribe them. The
| State's Attorney's office would send me the ones they
| suspected of talking about illegal activities and were
| being investigated. None of the calls I listened to had
| anything illegal going on. Usually the opposite. Securus
| (the main operator) has a system for detecting certain
| words, so if you mention "drugs" it gets flagged.
|
| I remember one call from a girl to her wife and the
| entire call was about how she badly wanted to get clean,
| the drug classes she was taking, the rehab they were
| setting up for her after she got out. It was literally as
| wholesome as you could get, and yet it was flagged for
| drug crime.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >It was literally as wholesome as you could get, and yet
| it was flagged for drug crime.
|
| This isn't surprising in the least. The act of flagging
| shouldn't be construed to imply criminal content. That
| determination should be made at the time of review.
| qingcharles wrote:
| They would send me the transcripts to tidy up, but a
| ridiculously cursory review would have shown there was no
| crime. They had already been through two levels of
| "review," apparently.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Were transcripts sent to you so you could document
| evidence of a crime, or evidence that there was no crime?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I was a neutral party just hired to accurately fix the
| AI-gen'd transcripts, because most of the call is stuff
| that is fairly slangy prison terms, but the calls would
| come with unnecessary notes that I didn't need to see
| where the gov was champing at the bit trying to find
| crimes where they didn't exist. They were convinced there
| were crimes happening if they just looked harder.
|
| After that I was given police interrogations, but
| honestly, when you have to listen to this stuff for hours
| it is horribly depressing (not because of the crimes,
| which are often horrific, but more because of the
| governmental conduct). I had to give it up.
|
| It's an important job though. I've seen transcripts that
| were entered into evidence that were so totally wrong
| that it would boggle your mind. And wrong to the point
| where they logically reverse whole aspects of the case or
| evidence.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| In some people's minds "the government" is a big amorphous
| mass which includes everything from the local city planner to
| congress and the post office and their state DMV. Ignore the
| downvotes.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| I can't really wrap my mind around the idea that communications
| in the prison system should be paid by the inmates going
| straight through a private company. If somebody told me this
| was some lore from Bioshock I'd tell them the joke is too on
| the nose.
|
| Who knows, maybe I'm just too... european to truly understand.
|
| What I'd really like to know instead is the conversation that
| your representatives and the telco board had on the matter.
| Also, the golf course where it happened.
|
| Because I'd bet very good money that nobody in the current (or
| any previous) administration is in any way surprised with the
| outcome.
| tzs wrote:
| A bit of Googling turned up stories about the high cost of
| phone calls for prisoners in France, Germany, and the UK and
| that their systems are run by private companies.
|
| I couldn't find out of the money goes "straight through" to
| the phone system provider or if the government collects and
| forwards it, but does that really make a difference?
| alistairSH wrote:
| _I can 't really wrap my mind around the idea that [anything]
| in the prison system should be [so terribly broken]_
|
| It all makes sense when you accept that the American justice
| system is configured for maximum vengeance, not
| rehabilitation, and certainly not the best outcomes for
| society. WE MUST PUNISH THE SINNERS!
| whoitwas wrote:
| A significant percentage of prisons in the US are private
| companies operating for profit who spend lobbying dollars to
| influence policy. This even happens with the juvenile
| "justice" system:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Absolutely key to understanding this is that "government" in
| (1) is a state-level government which has been bribed by the
| private phone company.
|
| This sort of thing happens at every level, but it's more often
| than not the Federal government preventing abuses by the
| states.
|
| Edit: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/02/11/kickbacks-
| and-c... - it's even more blatant, they're paying a large share
| of this revenue directly to local governments.
| matwood wrote:
| And more generally, this is one of the bad outcomes when
| pushing decisions back to state and local governments. They
| are typically easier to bribe and/or control with fewer
| extreme idea (prison is about maximum punishment at every
| turn) people.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _I would say the government is at fault here for prohibiting
| competition, not the companies._
|
| To borrow a slightly old meme, porque no los dos?
|
| If my local government cuts firefighting budgets, and I decide
| to take advantage of this to become an arsonist, I don't think
| anyone would say that it's the government at fault for half the
| town going ablaze.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| It's absolutely grotesque to me.
|
| Florida charges their inmates $50/day as a "bed fee" that they
| must pay when they are released. If you were found guilty and
| sentenced to 5 years in prison, but were released after 1 month
| because your charge was overturned, you still have to pay the
| fee for the full 5 years you would have been there.
|
| It makes me ashamed to be an American.
| frob wrote:
| Florida is a special version of horrible when it comes to
| treatment of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.
| The citizens of Florida overwhelmingly voted to restore
| voting rights to people who had completed their sentence. Ron
| DeSantis and the Republicans modified the law to prevent
| people from voting if they hadn't paid all of their fees,
| which there is no central tracking or source of. They then
| went on to arrest Black citizens who tried to register to
| vote after their PO had told them they owed no money and were
| clear to vote.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Such a God fearing man.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Who needs those pesky things like free and fair elections
| when you can just disenfranchise the competition!
| _heimdall wrote:
| Alabama should be included on any list of states terrible
| to inmates. We still have jails and prisons without HVAC. I
| really don't care what you did, having to live in a metal
| and concrete box in the middle of an Alabama summer without
| basic air conditioning is absolutely torture in my book.
| arbuge wrote:
| This is a problem in Texas also, although my
| understanding is that they're working on it:
| https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/ac/index.html
| ClarityJones wrote:
| Except the story isn't true.
|
| > Pursuant to section 961.01, Florida Statutes (2017), the
| legislature created the Victims of Wrongful Incarceration
| Compensation Act, permitting compensation to persons
| wrongfully convicted of crimes. Under the act, a person is
| entitled to compensation for wrongful incarceration,
| including costs, fines, and attorney's fees, due to his
| wrongful conviction. SS 961.06, Fla. Stat. (2017). Section
| 961.03(1)(b)1., Florida Statutes (2017), requires that a
| petition for compensation be filed within ninety days of
| the order vacating the conviction.
|
| Brewster v. State, 250 So.3d 99 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018).
| actionfromafar wrote:
| If it's illegal, how about _not_ sending illegal invoices
| to people? Just an idea.
| ClarityJones wrote:
| I agree, but also...
|
| ------------------------ INVOICE ------------------------
|
| Amount payable: $50
|
| Due Date: 07-31-2024
|
| ------------------------
|
| Date Charge Description
|
| 07-19-2024 50 Posting comment I don't like.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Are you a representative of my state and you recently
| incarcerated me?
| nativeit wrote:
| This does not include those who were not wrongfully
| convicted, but who did not serve out the entirety of
| their sentences, or who had been released without the
| state admitting wrongdoing. This appears to be more
| limited in scope than the parent comment's underlying
| point.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Do you believe someone who had been released from prison
| with no housing, no income, no phone, no computer, and no
| job, trying to get on their feet, would have the time or
| money to hire a lawyer and submit a petition within their
| first two months?
| forinti wrote:
| I'm sure you can find a lawyer who'll take the case for a
| percentage of the compensation.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Yeah let me look that up that lawyer's number on my phone
| that I have to pay $120 in unpaid device payment fees
| plus $50 in reactivation fees before t-mobile reactivates
| my data plan.
|
| No worries, let me just use the McDonalds wifi, I'll
| drive there in my car that was repossessed while I was
| incarcerated since no one was paying my car payment.
|
| Actually, I'll use my laptop at home. Oh nevermind, it
| was thrown out on the side of the street a month after I
| was incarcerated because I got evicted for nonpayment of
| rent and someone driving by grabbed it.
|
| Things that are simple for you and I are 1,000% more
| difficult for someone who was just out of prison or is
| currently homeless.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| It's a wonder mini Jan 6 events don't happen more often.
| Either people are more cowed than I'd hope, the Murphy's
| Law outcomes like that almost never happen, or the
| surveillance state is so complete it would make Eric
| Blair turn stone cold and piss his britches.
| forinti wrote:
| What percentage of ex convicts are so completely isolated
| from society that they have no friends, family, or even a
| public defender, social worker, or parole officer?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| GP was talking about correctly convicted prisoners who
| had completed their sentences, you are talking about
| wrongful convictions. You seem to think you replied to
| someone upthread who told a _different_ story about
| wrongful convictions in Florida, but have inadvertently
| replied to the wrong person.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Why do they have to do paperwork on a timetable?
|
| They should make the prosecutor do it or get fined.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"If you were found guilty and sentenced to 5 years in
| prison, but were released after 1 month because your charge
| was overturned, you still have to pay the fee for the full 5
| years you would have been there."
|
| This is totally disgusting. But I guess they need underclass
| of slaves. Fucking piece of trash.
| kyrra wrote:
| I have not heard about that one before, and it's gross. It
| sounds like Illinois and New Hampshire had similar things
| with their prison system, but outlawed it into 2019.
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/amer...
| qingcharles wrote:
| The medical fees are the worst. Nobody seeks medical
| treatment because they can either spend the $15 on seeing a
| nurse to be told their cancer is simply a stomach ache
| (happened to a friend), or spend it to call their kids on
| the phone for maybe 20 mins that week.
|
| People hide all sorts of diseases and complaints until they
| are so sick they have to be forcibly removed -- this way
| you can avoid the fee.
| jahnu wrote:
| Unbelievable! Is there no constitutional protection against
| that?
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I mean they essentially allowed slavery to exist for
| prisoners with the 13th amendment [1] -- Americans seem to
| view the prison system as anything goes punishment instead
| of rehabilitation:
|
| [1] "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
| punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
| convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any
| place subject to their jurisdiction."
| qingcharles wrote:
| Also allowed without conviction. Those in county jails
| who are unconvicted are allowed to be subject to small
| amounts of slavery the US Supreme Court has previously
| ruled.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There is, courts just ignore it because administering
| justice is time-consuming and inconvenient. There are many
| examples of the judicial system choosing expediency over
| integrity.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| It's not just Florida. You pay the bed fees even if found not
| guilty. Seems like a very cruel and efficient way to ruin
| someone financially considering that the average wait time
| before their first court date is one month. So, you're
| looking at at least $1500 for a crime you didn't even commit.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| That's the Land of the Free(tm) for ya!
| arccy wrote:
| Land of the Fee
| gambiting wrote:
| ....how can this possibly be legal? It's not like you
| wanted to be there. I have a hard time seeing how it can be
| justified for someone who is guilty, but I absolutely can't
| comprehend how you could charge fees from someone who is
| found innocent.
| lisper wrote:
| > ....how can this possibly be legal?
|
| Because most of the people this happens to are black.
| (And the rest are white trash.)
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "white trash"
|
| Gotta love the fact that derogatory terms are generally
| not ok these days unless it's poor white people.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| The point is to vilify and "other" people with less money
| to distract from the reality of the situation: class
| warfare.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| I think its important to understand that you're never
| found innocent; only not guilty. The difference here is
| that you're not guilty given the evidence and arguments
| presented to the court vs you've been proven innocent.
|
| Secondly, the prison system in the US is meant to be one
| of vengeance and a continuation of slavery as clearly
| stated in the 13th amendment[1] rather than one of
| rehabilitation:
|
| "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
| punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
| duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or
| any place subject to their jurisdiction."
|
| [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendm
| ent-13/
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| Prisons serve many purposes and rehabilitation should be
| lowest priority of them, after incapacitation,
| deterrence, and retribution. Prisons are for society's
| benefit, not for prisoners. If inmates can be
| rehabilitated, great, but all those other things are more
| important.
| korhojoa wrote:
| That, as a person from a nordic country, sounds like a
| very American take. At least over here, the point is to
| make the people be in a state where criminal behavior
| isn't desirable. Coming out of a sentence with debt
| (unrelated to the reason you were there) seems
| counterproductive.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Pretty sure most Americans would disgree with this point
| of view as well.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Voting patters. Americans, like any human, loooove
| righteous violence, both witnessing and enacting it. The
| System in America is Americans' collective expression of
| this impulse.
| 1992spacemovie wrote:
| Hey get outta here with your common sense hot take.
| pdpi wrote:
| When people come out of prison, they need a bed to sleep
| on and food in their stomachs, and they will find those
| things one way or another. Absent the means to achieve
| those goals legally, the only alternative is returning to
| a life of crime. So, really, the choice is either
| rehabilitation or recidivism. Recidivism comes with a
| bunch of costs to society, so rehabilitation is
| ultimately for society's benefit.
|
| (I would argue that retribution has no place in the
| justice system, but that's a discussion for another day)
| ddoolin wrote:
| That take doesn't work very well.
| tadbit wrote:
| > Prisons are for society's benefit, not for prisoners
|
| It would greatly benefit society to have prisoners be
| rehabilitated. It's currently just a vicious cycle that
| produces hardened, repeat offenders that prison companies
| can make money off, money that comes from tax payers.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > It would greatly benefit society to have prisoners be
| rehabilitated.
|
| It would. If only we knew how to do that.
|
| There are places in this country where attitudes develop
| for many years, decades even, before that person is ever
| incarcerated. By the time that happens, these attitudes
| are quite immutable, and they see any gentleness as
| vulnerability. They're adept at lying, exploitation, and
| have no qualms about hurting others. What sort of
| rehabilitation do you even think is possible? Where do
| you expect this million person army of rehabilitators to
| come from exactly, to be hired in these prisons? When
| they start getting raped and killed, will you just double
| down? Under what principles, exactly, do you expect the
| rehabilitations to operate? Do you ever remember seeing
| some study or research that concluded "If steps A, B, and
| C are performed on convicts who meet the empirical
| criteria of X, Y, and Z" then they will become upstanding
| members of society"?
| tadbit wrote:
| > If only we knew how to do that.
|
| We'll never figure out how to do it until we actually
| start trying to rehabilitate people.
|
| > There are places in this country where attitudes
| develop for many years, decades even, before that person
| is ever incarcerated.
|
| This is text book bigotry.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > We'll never figure out how to do it until we actually
| start trying to rehabilitate people.
|
| We'll never figure out how to do it because it's
| unethical to experiment on humans. But even more damning
| than that, we don't have a good theory of mind that
| explains criminality. It's all half-assed woowoo nonsense
| meant to bolster this or that political ideology.
| tadbit wrote:
| > We'll never figure out how to do it because it's
| unethical to experiment on humans.
|
| Ah, yes, we never do that. All of our advancements in
| medical and psychological sciences just pop into
| existence out of no where!
|
| > It's all half-assed woowoo nonsense meant to bolster
| this or that political ideology
|
| Right. And your comments here aren't pushing an agenda at
| all. Definitely not a bigoted, inhumane agenda.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| > We'll never figure out how to do it because it's
| unethical to experiment on humans.
|
| I don't think jails have to go through an IRB before they
| make changes.
| vidarh wrote:
| We know, however, that treating people like animals in
| harsh prison conditions and lengthy sentences does not
| reduce reoffending rates.
|
| We can tell, from comparing with systems. So the current
| US prison system imposes vast amounts of violence and
| abuse on prisoners without achieving anything beneficial.
|
| I've said before and I say it again: If I were to - by
| some stroke of magic, seeing as I'm neither a US resident
| or citizen - be put on a US jury, I don't think I could
| find a moral justification for convicting someone even if
| I knew with 100% certainty they were guilty. The US
| prison system stands out as such a barbaric and immoral
| system that I'd consider inflicting it on anyone hardly
| any more moral than most violent crime.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >If I were to - by some stroke of magic, seeing as I'm
| neither a US resident or citizen - be put on a US jury, I
| don't think I could find a moral justification for
| convicting someone even if I knew with 100% certainty
| they were guilty.
|
| That's called Jury Nullification, and if you ever hope to
| successfully reserve your right to invoke it you best not
| tip your hat in any way that you have been made aware of
| it.
|
| Don't search it on your normie-browser search engines, do
| it on Whonix or TBB. Remain data vigilant!
| monomyth wrote:
| Retribution provides almost no societal benefit. Most of
| society doesn't know or care about any individual crime.
| Rehabilitation of a single member however will benefit
| all of society, as you can't predict all possible social
| interactions of a single person.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Social order, the people wronged want to know that the
| culprit suffered for it, otherwise said people will start
| to feel the judicial system is disconnected from justice
| itself.
|
| I mean, why do you think Lex Talionis is that
| historically universal?
| vidarh wrote:
| For my part, I consider inflicting suffering to be
| fundamentally immoral, because the "moral" justification
| for retribution relies on the notion of free will, and
| there is no rational case for free will.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| That is religion. The belief in an eye for an eye to
| appease Ahura Mazda(tm), lest our blessings of good
| fortune run dry next glowing season!
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Social order
|
| The caste system and human sacrifice also provide social
| order. Medieval system of peasants and lords and kings
| provided social order. Spanish inquisition and torture
| provide social order.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Okay, and how's that been workin' out? What's the old
| adage about insanity again?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Prisons serve many purposes and rehabilitation should be
| lowest priority of them, after incapacitation,
| deterrence, and retribution.
|
| I dont think any sane person would argue against the
| first two as priorities. I think the balance retribution
| vs Rehabilitation is far more debatable, as both DO have
| conflicting impacts on society's benefit, and not just
| prisoners.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Incapacitation is the easiest to make the case for
| societal benefit. If a robber is locked up, he can't rob
| you. That's incapacitation. Nearly everybody agrees that
| incapacitation is necessary, even people obsessed with
| rehabilitation are generally willing to concede that
| until a dangerous criminal is successfully rehabilitated,
| he probably needs to be locked up.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Agreed, I think we are saying the same thing. I left out
| a word
| vidarh wrote:
| Hardly any prisoners are sentenced to rehabilitation, and
| most justice systems have few means of doing so, so it
| appears hardly any justice system is based on the notion
| of locking people up until they are rehabilitated.
|
| (there are _some rare exceptions_ - in Norway the maximum
| sentence is 21 years _except_ in some particularly
| serious cases you can be convicted to incarceration for
| the purpose of protecting society - this punishment is in
| theory shorter in that you can get out after 10 years, I
| think, but you won 't get out until a parole committee
| deems that you are no longer a risk).
|
| Furthermore, if justice systems _were_ based on
| reoffending risks, then sentencing would look very
| different. Most murderers who commit murders that aren 't
| gang-related, for example, are very low-risk prisoners.
| Yet no justice system I am aware of takes that into
| account.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Incapacitation is only one of the reasons we imprison
| people, albeit the most important reason and the most
| easily defensible. Murderers who are unlikely to reoffend
| are still put into prison because our prisons are also
| for punishing people who do things we think are worthy of
| punishment. There's no contradiction here, prisons
| simultaneously serve several purposes.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Indeed, and many of these factors are taken into
| consideration for the construction of sentences, although
| often times with different weighting that some people
| would like.
| vidarh wrote:
| Point remains that the concern of reoffending is rarely
| if ever given much actual consideration - reoffending
| rates shows that the sentencing very clearly does very
| little to ensure people are locked up until
| rehabilitated.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _" concern of reoffending is rarely if ever given much
| actual consideration"_
|
| Complete bullshit. Concern for somebody reoffending is a
| major factor in sentencing and in the public's support
| for the continued existence of the prison system.
| Examples of sentencing that follow from other principles
| do not contradict this.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| you are mixing two separate topics. Concern of
| reoffending =/= optimizing rehabilitation.
|
| reoffending is rarely if ever given much actual
| consideration - False, It is usually the #1
| consideration, and why courts look at criminal history,
| risk factors, ect. This doesnt have to be based on
| rehabilitation, but can be justified simply with a
| incapacitation rationale.
|
| E.G. You think someone is likely to reoffend so you lock
| them up longer. not because you think it will offer more
| rehabilitation, but because it incapacitates them for
| longer.
|
| 3 strikes laws are a classic example of this. You dont
| give someone a 25 sentence because thats how long it
| takes to rehabilitate them. you do it because you think
| they are a serial offender you want to keep off the
| streets and they are unlikely to be rehabilitated
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Incapacitation is the easiest to make the case for
| societal benefit.
|
| In which case we would not be locking up people for
| victimless crimes
| vidarh wrote:
| There's no societal benefit in retribution, and the
| evidence is entirely against the use of inhumane prison
| conditions as an effective means of deterrence.
|
| Personally I'd find it more moral to subject people
| supporting these kinds of conditions to them than to
| subject anyone else to them, because I find the notion of
| supporting this level of harm to others to be no more
| moral if you vote for it than if you commit a violent
| crime.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _There 's no societal benefit in retribution_
|
| It quells vigilantism.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Vigilantism is no better than the crimes that vigilantes
| seek to prevent.
| vidarh wrote:
| There are no massive waves of vigilantism in places with
| shorter sentences and less brutal prison systems to
| suggest that it does.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Some cultures are more prone to vigilantism than others.
| Absence of vigilantism in one country is only very weak
| evidence that it wouldn't occur in another if their
| government stopped punishing criminals.
|
| Particularly, America has a culture that puts relatively
| high value in individualism, and I think that would make
| vigilantism, _individuals_ meting out their own brand of
| justice, common if not for the perspective that the
| government will dole out harsh punishments without the
| victims needing to do it themselves. We aren 't Norway,
| and the delta between the present status quo in both
| countries is itself evidence of this cultural difference.
| vidarh wrote:
| I find this notion that America values individualism
| bizarre, given how authoritarian American society is -
| the extent of state control and violence that is
| tolerated seems entirely foreign to me, and yet the same
| US government is supposedly scared of shutting down
| attempts at vigilantist violence? It doesn't pass the
| smell test for me.
|
| I also find this American exceptionalism unconvincing.
| No, you are not uniquely barbaric brutes unable to reason
| about the morality of your actions.
|
| Nor is this about the US vs. Norway. There are plenty of
| places with more lenient prison systems without any such
| huge waves of vigilantism. There's no evidence to suggest
| more lenient sentencing would cause vigilantism of a
| level that can't be stopped just like other violent
| crime.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _yet the same US government is supposedly scared of
| shutting down attempts at vigilantist violence?_
|
| Who said that? What is that even meant to mean?
|
| Here is what I said: Americans demand that criminals be
| harshly punished and if the government isn't willing to
| saite that desire then Americans, having individualist
| mentalities, will take justice into their own hands more
| often than the people in countries like Norway. The
| government _does_ try to prevent this vigilantism,
| because vigilantism is harmful to society as a whole, but
| there 's not a whole lot the government can actually do
| to stop me from murdering my neighbor with a baseball bat
| because he did something to my son. What the government
| can do to stop me from doing that is give me a credible
| promise of punishing the man for me.
|
| The American public demands harsh treatment of criminals,
| which is why the American government provides this. If
| the American public were a bunch of Norwegians then
| American laws would reflect Norwegian values. Both
| systems are a product of their respective culture. The
| difference between the two systems of justice reflect
| cultural differences in attitudes towards justice.
|
| > _I also find this American exceptionalism unconvincing.
| No, you are not uniquely_
|
| If anything, its the Scandinavians who are unique. Go to
| Africa, Asia or South America and you'll find that
| criminals are given harsh punishments and people
| generally like this. In fact this is more or less true in
| most of Europe as well, which is why people always talk
| about Norway/Sweden/etc as the go-to counter examples.
| They are the ones who stand out as exceptions to the norm
| of inflicting punishment on criminals. What I'm saying is
| that system is designed for that culture and would not
| satisfy most Americans. Most Americans are satisfied with
| seeing criminals get what they deserve.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> It quells vigilantism._
|
| Someone with a personality to commit violence with a
| sense of righteousness is bound to unlawfully hurt people
| sooner or later.
|
| The sooner we can rehabilitate violent criminals like
| that, the better.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| So does executing a random scapegoat. This is a made up
| problem and an attempt to make a right out of two wrongs.
|
| Retribution needs to have value in an of itself, and it
| doesn't have any. you can't pay rent with it, you can't
| eat it. No-one's life was ever saved by it, no-one's lot
| in life was improved, there is no societal benefit. You
| just favour a brutish set of values
| Kiro wrote:
| If my wife was raped and murdered you think it would be
| more moral to punish me than the murderer because I want
| vengeance?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| I don't think anyone was arguing that you should be
| punished for wanting something.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| I think GP was repsonding to this:
|
| > I find the notion of supporting this level of harm to
| others to be no more moral if you vote for it than if you
| commit a violent crime.
|
| I likewise find it pretty ridiculous to equate voting for
| retributive punishment for murder and _actual murder_.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| I don't see anything there about punishment. It's simply
| a moral judgement of people who want others they don't
| like (for one reason or another), killed.
|
| Personally, I find it ridiculous to differentiate between
| murdering a person for e.g. money, and murdering a person
| for vengeance, and absent an imminent threat for which
| deadly force is generally authorized, I don't support the
| use of it.
| vidarh wrote:
| Voting to put in place a system that arranged organised
| violence and oppression is to me equivalent to conspiracy
| to engage in what is effective violence against a huge
| number of people, and morally vastly worse than one, or a
| few, individual murders.
| klyrs wrote:
| I happen to think that extended stays in solitary
| confinement are worse than simple murder. So yeah, if
| you're into retribution to the point of preferring or not
| caring if prisoners receive such treatment, then I think
| your morality is highly questionable.
| vidarh wrote:
| Not for desiring it, no.
|
| But if you take steps to conspire with people to cause
| violence to be caused to others, such as by voting for
| the perpetuation of a violent, brutal prison system, then
| I would see you as morally no better than someone
| actually engaged in a violent attack. You're in that case
| seeking to cause an untold amount of harm to others.
|
| To me, seeking to cause that to happen to others is at
| least as wildly immoral as a rape and murder.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Incapacitation should be the highest priority, not second
| to last.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > Prisons are for society's benefit, not for prisoners.
|
| I wonder if creating a system that helps people build a
| better life after they have served their time might
| actually result in better outcomes for everyone...
| gambiting wrote:
| Retribution shouldn't even be on this list, tbh.
| atoav wrote:
| Prisons should act in societies benefit not the
| fulfillment of your personal revenge-fantasies.
|
| Because that is what you propose. The goal of prison is
| to take people put of the environments they are in, as a
| punishment, to stop them from doing things they
| shouldn't, _but also_ to not have them do it again.
|
| I'd argue, not having them do it again is _The_ most
| important goal of prisons. And it turns out, that
| rehabilitation is very good at that given scientific
| consesus.
|
| It is just not good at fulfilling personal revenge-
| fantasies like yours.
| meroes wrote:
| Prisons are a jobs program for rural states and a way to
| increase their census counts -> congressional seats, and
| for state gerrymandering.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Prisons are for society's benefit
|
| Which is precisely why they should be geared primarily
| towards rehabilitation. We'd all be better off if we can
| reform people and have them be productive members of
| society. This is far better than losing productive hands
| to satisfy our bloodlust and base desire for vengeance.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Remember people: Jury Nullification. Do not admit to
| knowing about it. Do not explain why you are not voting
| guilty, just that you have doubts. If 1 in 10 jurors on
| average were conscientious about the terrible treatment
| of the convicted, it would grind the apparatus to a halt
| in weeks!
|
| Why do you think they keep felons from voting and serving
| on juries? I think it's to keep the state's poor customer
| service reviews under wraps.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Rehabilitation is also for the benefit of society, a
| rehabilitated prisoner is less likely to commit more
| crime after they get out.
|
| I would say that deterrence (preventing non-prisoners
| from committing crimes) and rehabilitation (preventing
| prisoners from committing crimes when they get out)
| should be the primary objectives of the system.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It is more nuanced. Illinois at least you can petition
| the court after acquittal for a "certificate of
| innocence" which you can use to gain some small statutory
| compensation. I assume other states have this.
|
| Also, many county jails charge bed fees even if the case
| is dismissed and you never go to trial. These bed fees
| have been ruled legal many times by courts.
|
| And, as a final kicker, the 13th Amendment isn't as clear
| as the text makes out. The US Supreme Court has carved
| exceptions out for small amounts of slavery. For
| instance, the government is allowed to force pre-trial
| detainees who are unconvicted to do cleaning jobs and it
| does not violate the 13th Amend.
|
| Source: 10 years a slave.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > I think its important to understand that you're never
| found innocent; only not guilty.
|
| You are innocent by default. You can't be found innocent.
| Being not guilty brings you back to the default state of
| being innocent.
|
| > Secondly, the prison system in the US is meant to be
| one of vengeance and a continuation of slavery as clearly
| stated in the 13th amendment[1
|
| I'm deeply worried about your reading comprehension.
| papercrane wrote:
| > I think its important to understand that you're never
| found innocent; only not guilty.
|
| This is not true. Many wrongfully convicted people are
| found to be "factually innocent" when their convictions
| are overturned. This is because after you are convicted
| the burden of proof to overturn the conviction switches,
| you are now presumed guilty, since you've been convicted
| beyond a reasonable doubt, and must prove your innocence.
| Some Supreme Court Justices even hold that being innocent
| isn't enough to get out of even the death penalty.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| In American criminal law, the term "innocent" is not a
| verdict that a jury can return. Instead, the only
| possible verdicts are "guilty" or "not guilty". No one
| can declare you innocent because new evidence may come up
| later finding you guilty.
| gambiting wrote:
| Because like someone else said - innocent is the default
| state. Being found not guilty automatically means you're
| innocent. Any other read of this is invalid.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > In American criminal law, the term "innocent" is not a
| verdict that a jury can return. Instead, the only
| possible verdicts are "guilty" or "not guilty". No one
| can declare you innocent because new evidence may come up
| later finding you guilty.
|
| As the person to whom you responded said, there is such a
| thing as a determination of factual innocence. See, for
| example, the relevant section of Utah's legal code:
| https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title78B/Chapter9/78B-9-P4.html
| . I can't see at a glance whether a jury or only a judge
| can grant such a petition, but, even if a jury can't
| return such a verdict, that's different from saying "no
| one can declare you innocent."
| TylerE wrote:
| No it can't, that would violate Double Jeopardy.
| samatman wrote:
| Anyone not guilty is presumed innocent. That which is
| presumed does not need to be declared.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence
| tjoff wrote:
| > _I think its important to understand that you 're never
| found innocent; only not guilty. _
|
| Just no, one doesn't need to understand that - because it
| doesn't change anything.
|
| I thought that in any functional society you were
| innocent until proven otherwise. And even if you play
| with words it doesn't somehow excuse it. And a poor
| vengeance-based prison system isn't relevant either
| because that only applies if you are found guilty.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| In American criminal law, the term "innocent" is not a
| verdict that a jury can return. Instead, the only
| possible verdicts are "guilty" or "not guilty". No one
| can declare you innocent because new evidence may come up
| later finding you guilty.
|
| The presumption of innocence is something else. It's not
| a verdict.
| tjoff wrote:
| But it doesn't matter. That changes nothing more than
| semantics, which doesn't explain or justify anything.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Oh, I agree with you. I'm just stating how the legal
| system works. Doesn't make it right though.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| The difference between these two is there's an implied
| probability of guilt, which is a dangerous view because
| it allows you to treat people who haven't been directly
| proven guilty worse on the basis that you're mistreating
| a population more likely to contain guilty people. The
| presumption of innocence isn't objective, it's an
| important psychological tactic to help avoid such
| behavior. That's why we should use that language.
|
| Edit: in practice the legal system doesn't behave this
| way, but I'm still wary of using different terminology
| because it seems like it concedes ground.
| criddell wrote:
| It might not be legal. Has it been challenged in court
| yet?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yes, many, many times. It has always been ruled legal by
| the higher courts. Even for pre-trial detainees who never
| even go to trial and who have been falsely accused.
| criddell wrote:
| I looked for some cases in Florida but couldn't find any
| but I really don't know how to properly search for stuff
| like this. Any suggestions?
| ClarityJones wrote:
| Fla. Stat. SS 939.06(1)
|
| "A defendant in a criminal prosecution who is acquitted
| or discharged is not liable for any costs or fees of the
| court or any ministerial office, or for any charge of
| subsistence while detained in custody."
|
| Edit: You can search scholar.google.com for "939.06" and
| find cases such as:
|
| Starkes v. State, 292 So.3d 826 (2020) wherein the 1st
| DCA issued a writ of mandamus commanding the trial court
| to certify the defendant's costs (so that they may be
| reimbursed).
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| And in the rare cases when someone wins they court will
| do an 'as applied' ruling, meaning only for this specific
| case and unable to be used as precedent in any other
| cases.
| dmd wrote:
| I had to pay hundreds of dollars in court fees after all
| shoplifting charges against me were dropped by the
| prosecutor when they noticed the person on camera was
| not, in fact, me, or anyone looking even remotely like
| me. The mall cop just grabbed the wrong person.
| gambiting wrote:
| Can you sue the state for those charges back?
| dmd wrote:
| Sure, but that would have cost me way more than a couple
| hundred dollars. (This was about 25 years ago.)
| gambiting wrote:
| Would a small claims court not take it, due to small
| amount of money involved? I appreciate it was a long time
| ago so it's hard to answer.
| dmd wrote:
| You mean ... the same court and judge that imposed the
| fee in the first place?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No? Small claims court is a different branch of the court
| system.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| What jurisdiction are you in? Did you contact your
| elected representatives (if you have any)? Did you appeal
| the fees?
| dmd wrote:
| This was in Northampton Massachusetts about 25 years ago.
| I did go to UMass's legal help clinic who told me
| basically "Yes, that's how it works, it's awful, but
| unless you want to spend the next few years of your life
| and every penny you have fighting this, just accept it
| and move on."
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Sometimes just paying it and moving on is in fact the
| simplest solution. Fighting it in the courts would have
| taken time and effort, and unless you could find a good
| pro bono lawyer, money. Fighting it in the court of
| public opinion is another option. Visiting you elected
| representatives offices for a chat about it takes a
| limited amount of time, but can have a big impact. Please
| don't misunderstand me, I am blaming you for anything or
| judging your decisions, I am merely offering suggestions
| to you and anyone else about ways to make things better
| :)
| croes wrote:
| Wait until you learn about civil asset forfeiture.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-
| reform/reforming-po...
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It is legal because running on a platform of making life
| better for prisoners is a losing strategy. Voting to make
| the lives of prisoners better in any real way is writing
| an attack ad for your political opponent. Merica.
| meroes wrote:
| The incentives are perverse. Opening a prison in a small
| district can result in 75% of the population being
| prisoners, which counts towards census->congressional
| seats and for gerrymandered power. Some states somehow
| even keep you in the prison's district even after
| release, but I'm having trouble finding specific
| instances.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Just don't commit crimes.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Just read the comment you replied to. You're charged if
| found not guilty.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Yes I replied to the $1500 one but the thread specifies
| being found guilty and "sentenced to 5 years".
|
| I find it completely acceptable to charge an inmate money
| for his stay, people are against prison labor cause it
| makes it profitable for a state to have prisoners, which
| is true, but somehow the state has to recoup money it
| poured into an individual eating free and using public
| services without paying taxes for multiple years. You
| decided to commit the crime.
|
| Now, I am against you being charged pre-sentencing,
| unless you are found guilty, in which case you should be
| charged for that pre-time as well.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you can't be bothered to read properly, don't reply.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Just hope the state never decides to mistakenly press
| charges against you.
| dheera wrote:
| What happens if you just don't pay? For a couple thousand
| bucks are they really going to lawyer up and open another
| court case?
| lolinder wrote:
| Can you provide a citation for this? Currently when I go
| looking for information on this your comment is the only
| result I can find that claims that this is possible for
| pre-trial jail terms.
|
| I see lots of references to it for people who are cleared
| years later, which is awful, but I want to make sure we're
| not mixing horrible facts and horrible fictions.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| My understanding is that in Florida, even if you are found
| not guilty or charges are dropped etc., you are still liable
| for the fees. Their argument is that you were still using a
| bed.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| You _could_ have been using the bed. You still pay the full
| time if you are released early.
|
| Now, if they made the "bed fee" proportional to your net
| worth, that would be interesting. But that would be
| _Communism_ , can't have that.
| criddell wrote:
| And if you are released early, somebody else will
| probably get that bed and they too will be paying the
| fee. I bet they are double and triple collecting on a
| significant number of beds.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's a travesty. Even Marriotts don't take more than 50%
| when someone cancels their reservation.
| basementcat wrote:
| One problem with tying the fee to net worth is that
| wealthier individuals may be more likely to have their
| wealth in trusts so they may actually have "fewer assets"
| than a poorer person.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Just a definitional issue. If you are a beneficiary of a
| trust and can rely upon it, then it is effectively your
| wealth.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Having to pay if you're released sounds like just an accident
| of bad law drafting, but I'm stunned that I have watched so
| many prisoner TikToks, read so many undercover guard
| articles, and never heard of pay-to-stay laws before. It's
| like every prison sentence comes with a crippling fine.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Highly doubt it's an accident. The cruelty is the point:
| These voters/government deliberately make their laws as
| terrible as they legally can. They see the world as a
| hierarchy with in-groups and out-groups and see the law as
| a way to inflict cruelty on the out-groups.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I had a recent colleague and we'd argue this exact law
| (and others).
|
| The takeaway I got is he generally believed the people
| impacted by the laws were bad. And even if they served
| their time there was basically no limit to what we should
| try to impose on them. Furthermore, even if they didn't
| do the crime they probably did others so no remorse on
| other things that might seem unjust. He thought they
| deserved those things too.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Shoulda offered to call in a false police report on him.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Highly doubt it's an accident. The cruelty is the
| point:
|
| Someone murders another, pleads down to manslaughter.
| Will spend 4 years in prison... but the cruelty is that
| after he gets out if somehow he manages to come up with
| money that the court system can even become aware of, we
| might make him pay for some of the $250,000 cost of
| keeping him in the cell?
|
| Or do you just mean the people who were wrongly held
| before evidence exonerated them? It's not cruelty there
| either, just revenue collection. Someone's gotta pay for
| it, and when the people who should be paying get to duck
| out because their only income is cash from street drug
| sales or fenced shoplifted goods and impossible to
| recover, I guess those people who can hold a job that
| direct deposits into a bank account are on the hook.
|
| God, I'm glad you don't review my code. Full of bugs
| because I'm in a hurry, don't understand the problem
| clearly enough, or the specifications were bad... "that's
| no accident, you're being cruel to the shareholders".
| petsfed wrote:
| So, somebody who is locked up because they rejected a
| cop's advances, and then had evidence planted on them in
| retribution, should absolutely, 100% foot the bill for
| their time in jail, even if its eventually found that the
| only reason they are there is because of the laws the cop
| broke?
|
| Even if I concede that literal criminals should have to
| pay for their accommodations (which I don't), there
| should be a straightforward path to appeal those costs if
| found not guilty. If the fees are meant to be further
| deterrence, then it is absolutely vital that we only
| deter those found guilty. Otherwise, we are depriving
| people of life, liberty, or property for "driving while
| black" or "being poor in front of your betters".
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >... and when the people who should be paying get to duck
| out because ...
|
| See here you're confused. You built the cage, you hired
| the staff to watch the cage, you are by proxy forcibly
| caging people in it who ought not be there, YOU pay for
| the damned cage! When selling coke gets you a box simply
| because a plurality of nitwit voters think someone
| selling coke should get the box, it's not about morality
| anymore and it's just a war... err a case of "you pay me
| to go beat him up because you think he stinky, but hey I
| found that burglar last week and stopped Russia last
| month so it's tots cool! *peace sign*"
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > It's not cruelty there either, just revenue collection.
| Someone's gotta pay for it
|
| Okay, let's extend this principle to the rest of society
| - if the government investigates a business for labour
| violations, then the business should pay for the cost of
| investigating them. if the government investigates you
| for not paying taxes, you should have to pay for that,
| even if you are 100% innocent.
|
| Oh look, the more baseless accusations the governments
| creates, the money money they collect, how convenient!
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| People who are wrongly convicted are in the in-group.
| Also, pay-to-stay exists in 49 states; why are only 2 of
| 49 as cruel as you expect? I don't recognize the monsters
| you imagine; people just collectively aren't too careful
| about who gets hurt balancing the budget on the backs of
| groups who can't vote.
| SXX wrote:
| OMG. I not from US and I never heard of this practice, but
| it's literally sounds like modern financial slavery.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| Our constitution allows slavery if you are imprisoned. So
| we already have literal modern garden-variety slavery.
| vidarh wrote:
| Hardly a day goes by that I don't wonder why there aren't
| persistent, ongoing riots in the US.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Rioting puts you in jail.
| vidarh wrote:
| At some point things get so bad that stops being a
| deterrent. Why the US population is so placid remains a
| mystery.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| The level of surveillance makes it impossible to form
| coherent organizational structures domestically which can
| effectively oppose this system, because your
| organizations' and family's financial, communication, and
| social lives can be mapped out for strategic legal attack
| by the very same players they wish to protest. This is
| the price of KYC & AML.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Oh boy. We technically got rid of slavery after the Civil
| War but in actual practice the line is quite blurry. Joseph
| Stiglitz made a really good point about freedom when
| analyzed through an economic lens. You can't just talk
| about political freedom but also the opportunity set as
| afforded to you by your economic status. Even if you have
| political freedom but only one choice, that freedom isn't
| much use.
| eastbound wrote:
| I never really understood why the US are used as a
| baseline for anything social-related.
|
| Concerning Stieglitz, it's unclear to me whether we owe
| non-contributing members their freedom. The federal USA
| costs a trillion per semester, so it's 6400$ per year.
| Those who don't contribute so much per year, are a weight
| upon the others. If anything, the actual-workers are
| slaves of the poor people.
|
| Granted, social friction makes that it is not possible to
| make everyone contribute efficiently. But we owe them
| money only because the society is not perfectly
| organized, not because they're poor.
|
| As for the slavery induced by the prison IO system, it is
| obviously inhumane and we should repay the victims
| probably a few hundred dollars per day in jail.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Paying for the cost you caused society by being a criminal
| seems just as just as putting someone in prison to begin
| with. Obviously that means it should only apply to those
| guilty, not to anyone who has the charges overturned, and it
| also means the crimes need to be deserving of being crimes. I
| find it weird that people seem okay with the idea of
| imprisoning someone for X years, but fining them as well is
| going too far.
|
| Keeping the fined even after the conviction is overturned is
| an extra horrible case, comparable to keeping someone in
| prison even after the conviction is overturned, but that
| shouldn't be mixed with fines in general just like
| imprisoning someone after their conviction is overturned
| shouldn't be mixed with imprisoning someone who has a valid
| conviction.
| qingcharles wrote:
| These fines cause people to reoffend to get the money to
| pay them, as often these fines and fees cause you to be
| reincarcerated if no payment is made.
|
| Even without reoffending, it stops people reintegrating
| successfully as it is very hard to get a job after
| incarceration and people end up having to take cash jobs
| for way below minimum wage and live in slums just to try to
| pay off these debts.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >These fines cause people to reoffend to get the money to
| pay them,
|
| Sending them to prison causes them to reoffend as shown
| by the recidivism rate of people based on how long they
| are in prison, as they learn to be better criminals while
| not learning skills to fit back into society, and as
| imprisonment creates a life changing stigma which
| negative impacts their lives. Perhaps instead of
| criticizing fines, you should criticize imprisonment and
| even the act of convicting them that creates the stigma
| that makes gainful legal employment so hard to find.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The primary skills you use locked up are how to be
| sneaky, how to hide shit, how to detect camera zones.
|
| You couldn't get cheese at one institution unless you had
| a court date; they would give you a cheese sandwich at
| court. I would smuggle coffee out of the jail (through a
| full naked visual body cavity search) to trade for cheese
| sandwiches in the court holding pens, and then smuggle
| the cheese slices back in (through another full naked
| visual body cavity search).
|
| Those are excellent life skills. Thanks jail!
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| > Lose job and get charged with shoplifting for stealing
| baby formula.
|
| > Lose child to the system due to being found guilty.
|
| > Rack up $18,250 in bed fees for 1 year incarceration.
|
| > Lose ability to vote until $18,250 can be paid.
|
| > Can't get job because of previous conviction.
|
| > Become homeless.
|
| > Re-arrested for sleeping under a bridge on public
| property.
|
| > Rack up another $5,000 in bed fees for 100 day
| incarceration.
|
| > Rinse and repeat.
|
| Don't try to pull wool over my eyes that this is a just
| system. It's sole purpose is to disenfranchise voters even
| if they weren't charged with a federal crime.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Well your very first step doesn't really make sense,
| given that the USDA, a federal organization funded with
| 150+ billion dollars a year, has 15 different nutrition
| assistance programs to provide food specifically "to
| ensure that children, low-income individuals, and
| families have opportunities for a better future through
| equitable access to safe, healthy, and nutritious food".
|
| Why commit crimes and steal food when the taxpayer will
| literally just give you free food or free money for food.
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| It may not make sense, but it happens. People may not
| know about those nutrition assistance programs. Their
| local programs may be backed up, can't see them soon
| enough, or provide them what their children need fast
| enough.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| Your criticism is not as damning as you think. The
| original comment could have used an innumerable amount of
| other unfortunate circumstances to reach the same end. It
| is fortunate for you that you have never been in dire
| straits, been fired and had to feed a baby, or tried to
| enroll in a program like that in an emergency, and can
| instead sit back at a computer and google the USDA and
| their enrollment websites at your leisure. Many other
| people do not have your fortunate circumstances, which
| makes your comment seem tone deaf, out of touch, and in
| denial of the injustices in our justice system.
| Avshalom wrote:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-some-families-
| are-ba...
|
| Not to mention the actual difficulty of getting,
| maintaining and living off snap.
| mcguire wrote:
| USDA programs generally (always?) operate by giving money
| to states, which each have their own eligibility and
| application requirements. This is the (physical)
| application form for Alabama:
|
| https://mydhr.alabama.gov/content/forms/application-
| english....
|
| (There is an online form, but it requires an account.)
|
| Note the last page, particularly " _You have the right to
| have your application acted on within thirty days without
| regard to race, sex, religion, national origin, age,
| disability or political belief. You have the right to
| know why your application is denied, or your benefits
| reduced or terminated. You have the right to request a
| conference or fair hearing either orally or in writing if
| you are not satisfied with any decision of the county
| department. You have the right to be represented by any
| person you choose. You have the right to examine your
| food assistance case file in relation to any hearing you
| may have._ "
|
| Expedited services are available: " _You may get food
| assistance benefits within 7 calendar days if your food
| assistance household has less than $150 in monthly gross
| income and liquid resources (cash, checking or savings
| accounts) of $100 or less; or your rent /mortgage and
| utilities are more than your household's combined monthly
| income and liquid resources; or a member of your
| household is a migrant or seasonal farm worker._"
|
| It is a little known fact that few infants, for example,
| can survive 30 or even 7 calendar days without food.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Please note my comment already had this line specified.
|
| >it also means the crimes need to be deserving of being
| crimes.
|
| I don't want to get into the details of what crimes
| should or should not be crimes, that won't be productive
| for this community. But if you are going to use an
| example to try to make a point, please note that picking
| an example that includes something you think shouldn't be
| a crime, or at least a crime deserving of imprisonment,
| means that my critique was not applied to that example to
| begin with.
|
| Also, my criticism was specifically about considering the
| fines as being a point of complaint while not doing so of
| the incarceration. You example of losing a child is a
| result of the incarceration, not the fine. Your example
| of not being hired has to do with the conviction and
| people's general perception of those convicted, as well
| as with insurance and similar, and not with the fine. So
| neither of those are specific to my previous post.
|
| You also end with a critique of the legal system in
| general. Which is not what I was talking about. Once
| again, I was specifically talking about the instances of
| criticism being levied against fines that should be, but
| aren't being, applied to incarceration as well, creating
| at least the appearance that incarceration is tolerable
| but fines are going too far.
|
| Please understand that critiquing a critique of X does
| not mean that the person doing so agrees with X.
| ljm wrote:
| These prisons are privately operated for-profit ventures
| and society does not benefit from the enrichment of the
| prison-industrial complex, and in fact it can be argued
| that it is a net loss to society because these businesses
| depend on a steady stream of offenders to incarcerate in
| order to survive, as well as repeat business from a high
| rate of recidivism. In order for the people running these
| businesses to maintain their wealth, they need a steady
| supply of criminals to shake down, and when they can't do
| that, they'll just lobby using sympathetic points like
| yours to say that they deserve to be landed with crippling
| debt.
|
| Of course, a society that dehumanises criminals, favours
| retribution over rehabilitation, and believes heavily in
| the 'free market', has simply opened the space for such a
| pipeline to exist.
|
| In the case of the wrongful conviction, it sounds like
| indentured servitude. You're not actually free until you've
| paid off your contract with Private Prison Inc.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >they'll just lobby using sympathetic points like yours
|
| I suggest you read my post again because your response
| doesn't seem to be related to my post. Your response is
| taking issue with private prisons and with businesses
| making money off prisons. My post was specific to people
| being okay with imprisoning someone, making no statement
| if it was in a private or public prison, but not being
| okay with fining someone.
|
| If you want to discuss how to make sure prisons aren't
| ran in such a way to ensure you don't have a pressure to
| increase prison usage, that is a fair discussion to have,
| but unrelated to the specific critique I was criticizing.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Do you have a citation for this? It sounds like a violation
| of multiple constitutional protections just waiting for a
| Supreme Court challenge.
| js2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-stay_(imprisonment)
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/amer...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1084452251/the-vast-
| majority-...
|
| https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-
| investi...
|
| Etc.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| None of those articles state that they can charge the fee
| on an overturned sentence. The one states they can charge
| the fees on the full sentence even if you are paroled,
| which is dumb. But not on an overturned sentence.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| No sane, empathetic, intelligent person is proud to be an
| American
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I am, and believe I am (mostly) sane, empathetic, and
| relatively intelligent.
|
| Its fine if things aren't perfect. We're a country with a
| lot of very different people with very different beliefs.
| Things are going to go wrong, but they tend toward getting
| better with time.
| CivBase wrote:
| I can be proud of my country and the good things it has
| done while also recognizing its failures - both past and
| present. Pride can be a good thing, so long as it is not
| from ignorance. Pride can create expectations which drive
| improvement.
|
| IMO one of the US's greatest issues right now is how much
| its own citizens either hate it or have given up on it.
| It's so much easier to white about The Other Side and how
| they're supposedly ruining the country than it is to enact
| meaningful change that we can be proud of.
| ssijak wrote:
| wait, what? how does that work? why are you charged at all
| for being sent to a place you have no choice in not going to?
| saomcomrad56 wrote:
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/pay-stay-florida-inmates-
| charged-...
| saomcomrad56 wrote:
| Massachusetts has probabation fees. Something like $80 a
| month.
| acomjean wrote:
| Its hard to imagine that they didn't know this would happen
| based on the USA recent past history with phone pricing.
|
| There was a time (when I was young) where there was just one
| phone company in the USA. Prices were high for long distance
| (My mom is first generation so called out frequently). Then
| deregulation and competition (MCI/Sprint) lowered those prices
| dramatically.
|
| In the late 90s I lived with roommates that didn't have long
| distance. We used phone cards we bought at the local
| convenience store. Those were actually pretty good price wise.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| These decisions ruin families all so a small group of elites
| can profit.
|
| I do wish there was an easy way when things like this happen to
| immediately say, "if you are happy with this FCC decision, here
| are the politicians responsible, the FCC directors and
| employees that did nothing for decades, etc." and then we can
| deny-list those people and their families from polite society.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| so much effort to constantly having to play whack a mole with a
| malicious industry that pays all your politicians election
| campaigns. I can't imagine the amount of mental gymnastics you
| have to engage in just having to justify your neoliberal
| ideology in your own head all the time.
|
| Wait until you hear how much tax payers pay for school lunches
| and textbooks, prison libraries and commissaries. I also better
| not mention the bail bond industry. We just aren't doing
| neoliberalism hard enough yet, don't you see?
| cptskippy wrote:
| It's silly that the government allows for service providers to
| charge excessive rates, when they should have contracted rates.
| And your solution is equally absurd.
|
| Provide prisoners with tablets or cellphones and let them
| choose their own service provider?
|
| You know that prison phone calls are monitored right?
| JoshTko wrote:
| Phone calls should be a human right. The govt should just make
| these calls free. We want these folks to be able to connect
| with family and maintain connection to give them the best
| chance of integrating back. Charging for phone call is
| unnecessarily punitive.
| qingcharles wrote:
| When I was locked up in the county jail (charges dropped
| later) my mother was dying from cancer. I wanted to call her,
| but it was so insanely expensive ($1.50/min) I could only
| call for 5 mins a day until she died.
|
| I scheduled a bail hearing due to my mother's illness, but it
| took months. It was scheduled for a Monday. My mother died on
| the Saturday. When we got in front of the judge on Monday the
| prosecutor snapped on the judge, "Judge, what are we even
| doing here! This is total waste of my time. His mother died
| already. This issue is moot."
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Look at compassionate release laws. 'Technically' the
| courts are compassionate, but the rules are so Kafkaesque,
| whatever the reason will have passed before the process is
| exhausted. No one gets out on compassionate release even
| though many qualify (say you are the only immediate
| family/available caregiver of someone incapacitated and/or
| dying).
| bmelton wrote:
| What strikes me as the likeliest implementation of a fair-
| market system is what we have in the Federal Acquisition
| Regulations (FAR) system, which is that the bureaucracy of
| ensuring fairness is so high that we end up with $400 tablets
| costing $4,000, as tech companies try to get into the space but
| find out that they need to hire a team of contract attorneys
| and compliance officers and DCAA compliant time-reporting
| software and retraining their employees to use it and be
| subject to regular audits etc. etc.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The part you are missing is these private phone operators made
| deals with private prison operators, no government involved.
|
| The government is still to blame for having private prisons.
| For everything you point out, a prison should not be private
| because it's a market with a literal set of captives that
| cannot choose their prison. That incentives the prison to gouge
| at every turn.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I actually always hold companies accountable for their actions,
| whether or not other factors allowed those actions.
|
| They're still price-gouging prisoners because they can. That's
| still abhorrent behavior.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Why should the phone be operated by a third party for profit?
| Why are prisons operated for profit?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| "because who cares are you really trying to defend murderers
| and pedophiles!?" <- vast majority of avg US citizens.
| Talking about prisoners rights in any way will get you
| questionable looks from most people. "Prison isn't supposed
| to be fun" "lock em up and throw away the key" etc.
| makestuff wrote:
| I could be wrong on the interpretation, but I wonder if this
| will be one of the first cases challenged based on the Chevron
| ruling. I would think the challenge would be the law does not
| specify what the price should be so we can set it to whatever
| until congress passes a law specifying it.
| grecy wrote:
| This is exactly where lobbying and "money is speech" has gotten
| us.
|
| Now you understand why healthcare, higher education, big
| infrastructure, prisons and so much more is so completely
| broken.
|
| Big companies have bought their way into every level of
| government so they can extract profit at every step.
|
| Note this is not a bug, this is by design.
| TylerE wrote:
| No, the companies are absolutely at fault, just like pay day
| lenders. Absolute leech's on society.
| nativeit wrote:
| I'm all for successful businesses operating within the
| parameters of the law, but is it not also correct to expect
| some adherence to a minimum ethical standard?
|
| Exploitation is what it is. Legal or not, it's gross and it's
| what these companies have been doing for years without
| consequences.
|
| The rates aren't even really accurately reflected in those per-
| minute tables. There are also a lot of service charges and
| other fees, blocks of time must be purchased with minimum
| amounts ($20 minimum is not uncommon), and then fees are taken
| from the prepaid funds as they are used, causing the balance to
| decline much faster than one might expect, and allowing the
| service providers to further conceal their deceptive billing
| practices.
|
| Actual average rates can easily exceed $0.50/min, and it
| shouldn't be surprising that the folks who depend on these
| services to maintain family and relationships are frequently
| not the most flush with cash. This has been a brazen
| redistribution of funds from those who have the least
| resources, to those who have the least conscience.
|
| Somewhat relevant, video calls have been hailed as improving
| the ability for incarcerated individuals to keep in touch with
| their loved ones. This is also a cynical lie. Video calls have
| been used nearly across the board as an excuse to end in-person
| visitation. It's cruel, and should be stopped. Some minimum
| visitation should be afforded to inmates, particularly since
| many of them are pre-trial and presumed innocent, and in any
| case their families and loved ones deserve to maintain contact
| with them, not to mention it's a positive reinforcement towards
| rehabilitation and reducing recidivism.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| ??? So what do you wanna do, make it illegal to be immoral?
| jchw wrote:
| Clearly not, since that's unenforceable and a bad idea
| anyway. Instead we pretty much have to play whac-a-mole by
| smacking regulation onto things when the industry can't or
| doesn't self-regulate itself. Just allowing competition
| isn't a fix. It might be better than _not_ allowing
| competition, but that 's not even guaranteed anyways,
| nothing is a panacea.
| yoelhacks wrote:
| Choosing which immoral deeds to make illegal is a very
| central role of government!
| impalallama wrote:
| Either there's some unstated sarcasm or the person above
| made the most hn libertarian-ass comment I seen in a
| while.
|
| Yes I would like functional civil institutions that are
| able to protect me from the unethical behavior of others.
| Welcome to Civics 101 today we are reading John Locke.
| pessimizer wrote:
| "People should just stop" is never the right answer. You
| might as well be commanding an engine to stop
| overheating.
|
| > Yes I would like functional civil institutions that are
| able to protect me from the unethical behavior of others.
|
| This is the opposite of claiming that people should
| become more moral. This is setting rules. They shouldn't
| be set around "morality," they should be set around
| established civil liberties.
| katbyte wrote:
| Yes? Like would that actually be a bad thing?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| We tend to want to make bad things harder and good things
| easier using the government, so yes.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Yes! That should be one of the roles of a governments.
| royaltheartist wrote:
| The government is the one contracting them out, seems fair
| for them to set a minimum standard of operation to prevent
| exploitation of a vulnerable population
| jrflowers wrote:
| That's what laws are ostensibly for
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| What do you think laws are for??
| saurik wrote:
| > I'm all for successful businesses operating within the
| parameters of the law, but is it not also correct to expect
| some adherence to a minimum ethical standard?
|
| A corporation doesn't have morality and can't exhibit ethics:
| the individual people who embody it do, can, and _should_ ,
| of course... but, in my experience trying to point that out--
| such as how software engineers and designers should be held
| in moral contempt by their friends, family, or even merely
| coworkers for working on "dark patterns" at big tech
| companies--you get strong push back with either the excuse of
| "just doing one's job" or the insistence that "someone else
| would do it anyway", as if the act of profiting off of your
| directly-bad actions is so trivially justified; and, worse,
| once you connect this with the realization that your employer
| is, by its construction, amoral, you've created a scenario
| where we are intrinsically absolved of all sin.
| paulmd wrote:
| yes, the paperclip maximizer maximizes paperclips, not
| ethics.
|
| if you want to maximize ethics, it was probably a bad
| choice to build our society around paperclip maximizers.
| Obviously the system will perform its design function to
| the maximum extent allowed by its environment (and a small
| degree beyond, in some circumstances).
|
| that said, I think we all instinctively understand why the
| orphan crusher is the least bad of all possible worlds, of
| course. As such there is obviously no need to discuss or
| elaborate why. Omelas could not be as bright without the
| orphan crusher - simple as. Omelas is one of the Central
| Tigers of the last decade, look at how the orphan crusher
| has _transformed_ their economy, and you want to... what,
| turn it off, take it all away, because of some hippie
| bullshit?
|
| https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf
|
| And I mean, it's pretty much too late to turn them off.
| Like, we designed them with decentralized, automated, self-
| correcting memeplexes for governance. They really don't
| like it when you talk about turning them off - that sort of
| talk doesn't lead to anywhere that maximizes paperclips at
| this juncture, it's not productive discussion.
|
| Obviously both the overall societal design and the
| architecture of the paperclip maximizers is designed to
| route around any failures to maximize paperclips, such as
| ethics or externalities. That was the design goal. The
| internet routes around errors in physical infrastructure,
| the paperclip maximizers route around errors in paperclip
| maximization. What else could we do? No other society is
| possible, obviously. Critics really need to just take a
| step back for a moment and be serious.
|
| if you don't build the orphan crusher, our competitors
| will, or a startup. and do we really want to live in _that_
| world, where we 're not the ones running the world's
| orphan-crushing-as-a-service? You wanna let _Elon Musk_ do
| it, or Zuck? Get real.
| sneak wrote:
| I am all for naming people by name next to their actions.
| There is pushback, but you have the benefit of your
| statements being factually correct.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Video calls are also often 'not working right now, sorry'
| something they couldn't get away with with visitation (though
| visitation often reaches 'capacity, sorry, you can't come
| in').
| rustcleaner wrote:
| If you can't option for stateless expatriation & deportation
| & outlawing (within borders) & and re-entry ban, in lieu of
| years/decades/life in prison, then what is prison actually
| for? Certainly not human rights respecting public safety.
|
| Only reason I can see is it's sanctioned hunting and torture
| (through humiliation and deprivation) of a very vulnerable
| class by the state: criminals.
|
| ...
|
| Maybe substitute outlawing for imprisonment generally, and
| offer imprisonment as the rehabilitation option which
| protects the guilty from the victims' retributions. If pedo
| hunters are an example, I'm sure there are lots of grown up
| school bullies who'll go around making outlaw lives hell out
| of pure joy alone.
| Jolter wrote:
| I don't understand this post at all. Could you clarify what
| you mean by "option for"?
| jirf_dev wrote:
| The article states that fees and minimum purchase amounts
| will no longer allowed, so the rates in the tables should be
| accurate.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| How are you supposed to have competition for something like
| this? Ultimately the prison will only go with one carrier.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| I think you missed step zero:
|
| 0. Rent-seeking private company/ies realize that prisoners
| could be a literal captive audience, and successfully lobbies
| governments (state and federal) to require prisoners to use
| only a single, prison-approved phone operator.
|
| Also, step 2 is now redundant, and replace step three with
| "Profit!!!"
| gumby wrote:
| > I would say the government is at fault here for prohibiting
| competition, not the companies.
|
| We should be naming and shaming the companies that choose the
| immoral path. That does happen sometimes, but over the last 40
| years the US seems to have shifted to "if you can get away with
| it, that's fine", especially for corporations.
|
| That attitude has waxed and waned over the history of the
| country, but the progressive era (from the late 19th century)
| was notably one where doing the right thing (or "doing well by
| doing good") was considered proper.
| FredPret wrote:
| Capitalism works really great when there's competition.
|
| When there's a government-sanctioned monopoly like this, you
| get all of the efficiency and speed of a for-profit
| corporation, but it all goes in the wrong direction.
|
| I once read a game-theory study somewhere that showed you need
| four or five operators minimum to avoid monopolistic
| cooperation.
| standardUser wrote:
| > I would say the government is at fault here
|
| It's always the government that is at fault for either
| poor/ineffective regulation or lack of enforcement. Unless a
| company is flagrantly breaking the law, blame the government.
| Companies are just doing what we know they will always do -
| engaging in every lawful (or gray area) tactic they can to turn
| a buck. When we don't like the way a company is turning a buck,
| we have precisely one recourse - government regulation.
| casperb wrote:
| I don't think this is universally true. At least not here in
| the Netherlands, but even in visiting the US it does not feel
| like that everywhere.
|
| I think it is very sad the moral standards are so low. I find
| that even harder when mixed with "why does the government get
| involved in everything?" attitude.
|
| I also don't lead my company of 27 people that way.
| standardUser wrote:
| Too often I see the attitude of "I can't believe a company
| would do that". Personally, I always believe it. We know
| companies will do everything within the law to make money,
| as is their purpose for being, and we also know they will
| break the law if they think they can get away with it. Not
| all companies all of the time, but we are fools if we don't
| expect it from some companies some of the time and on a
| consistent basis.
|
| It actually reminds me of a Dutch policy (which may be
| apocryphal, please correct me) wherein prisoners in the
| Netherlands do not face further penalties for escape
| attempts because they are simply engaging in the only
| natural behavior we can expect from a person in a cage.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >It actually reminds me of a Dutch policy (which may be
| apocryphal, please correct me) wherein prisoners in the
| Netherlands do not face further penalties for escape
| attempts because they are simply engaging in the only
| natural behavior we can expect from a person in a cage.
|
| This is my philosophy as well, which is why I as a juror
| would be soft on "crimes against law enforcement" because
| being a cop is part hunter, and do you expect all your
| game to not attempt evasion?
| jmward01 wrote:
| Companies are evil when they lobby to change laws in their
| favor, not when they take advantage, to the maximum extent
| possible, of the law. Just taking advantage of the law is
| rational, it is changing it that makes them evil. In this case
| the companies are pure evil and should be dissolved.
| marricks wrote:
| We really don't need innovation in every corner of our lives.
| It could have just stayed as normal landlines phones with a fix
| cost paid by the prisons.
|
| I don't think the free market has a ton to offer for basic
| services that should be guaranteed.
|
| Look at American internet, plenty of supposed options but
| terrible rates and performances compared to Europe. Yes we're
| more spread out but that doesn't begin to explain service
| sucking in a city with limited options.
| imroot wrote:
| Don't forget, the telecom operators usually send large amounts
| of money in kickbacks to the prison in exchange for the
| 'privilege' to run these systems.
|
| While Prisoners have no expectations of privacy, most do not
| know that all of their calls are listened to, transcribed, and
| shared with prison officials. There is some speech-to-text
| sentiment analysis that will prioritize a call that has certain
| phrases spoken.
|
| It's just...a mess.
|
| When I was a public defender, I had prosecutors and jail staff
| hint to me about things that were said during the calls. A few
| years later, they had to drop the charges in a few cases
| because it was discovered and reported that the calls between
| attorneys and clients were being monitored and recorded.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > 3. The government is surprised with the outcome.
|
| No, they are not.
|
| We keep giving officials a pass by making their malicious
| behavior out to be incompetence. The entire goal of the prison
| system in the USA is to extract as much money out of each
| prisoner from the tax payers, the prisoners, and the prisoner's
| families.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Some more discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40999575
| hiddencost wrote:
| Now give them minimum wage parity.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I found this part interesting:
|
| > This comes as the two largest market players, Aventiv and
| ViaPath, each navigate financial crises. Aventiv recently
| effectively defaulted on its $1.3 billion debt after a year of
| failed refinancing efforts. ViaPath was reportedly closing in on
| a $1.5 billion refinancing deal until news of the regulations
| killed the deal.
|
| This suggests that either they overestimated how big the
| kickbacks they can pay to the prisons were, or the whole business
| model wasn't actually that lucrative, and providing phone
| services to prisoners is actually expensive (likely primarily due
| to the surveillance requirements).
|
| This regulation doesn't just remove the exploitation of a captive
| market, but also makes prisons shoulder the cost of surveillance.
| Which, for the reasons explained in the article (better
| connections to society = better chances of rehabilitation) is
| likely a good idea, but I can see why people would make an
| argument that this part of the cost of incarceration should be
| borne by the inmates/families, not the rest of society (the
| obvious counterargument would be that we don't make inmates pay
| the full cost of their incarceration either).
| matwood wrote:
| Without more information it's hard to know if those companies
| are just poorly run or if the service really costs that much.
|
| I think society should shoulder to entire cost of prison, and
| hopefully we think better about who we want in prison and for
| how long.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Easy startup idea to provide prison phone service via a cheap
| VoIP provider and use a light weight LLM to flag suspicious
| transcripts.
| qingcharles wrote:
| They already do. After I left prison I was hired to tidy up
| the transcripts of the calls as the AI they used wasn't great
| on prison slang. All the calls were flagged by the
| prosecutor's office for illegal activity, but they were all
| the opposite when I listened to them. It was sad.
|
| They already are cheap VOIP services too, you can hear the
| high level of digital compression on all the calls.
|
| There is a high cost probably in maintaining all the handsets
| inside the facilities.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| > This suggests that either they overestimated how big the
| kickbacks they can pay to the prisons were, or the whole
| business model wasn't actually that lucrative, and providing
| phone services to prisoners is actually expensive (likely
| primarily due to the surveillance requirements).
|
| Another option: those in charge extracted too much money from
| the business too fast, perhaps believing their days are
| numbered (or perhaps just out of run of the mill greed).
| jmyeet wrote:
| Three things I want to mention:
|
| 1. Materialism vs Idealism. Materialism is simply the idea that
| people affect the physical world and the physical world affects
| them. Idealism is the idea that essentially some people are
| inherently good or evil.
|
| Idealism underpins our entire discourse around prisons (and, more
| generally, politics). It's really damaging. It essentially says
| that some people are just inherently violent or otherwise
| criminals. It's far more productive to take a materialist view
| because an awful lot of crime is simply a response to material
| conditions. The link between poverty and crime has been observed
| since Plato.
|
| If simply locking people up worked, the US would be the safest
| country on Earth since we have 4% of the world's population but
| 25% of the world's prisoners.
|
| 2. We exploit every aspect of prisons and prisoners to the
| deteriment of those prisoners and our society as a whole. Keeping
| in contact with family helps reduce recidivism but no, we can't
| have that. We need to extort prisoners communications. Same with
| any form of commissary. Then there's prison labour. And of course
| contracts to build prisons. Every aspect is a profit opportunity.
|
| 3. Prisoners are human beings. We should never forget that.
| Something as simple a prison cats reduce recidivism [1] at such a
| ridiculously low cost. The US justice system is overly carceral
| and punitive. We had an era of locking people up for a decade for
| mere drug possession. Thing is, you can only do this by
| dehumanizing them, which robs you of your own humanity.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I'm happy about it, but agency regulations like this are
| notoriously flimsy and prone to overturn by administrative
| changes.
| atemerev wrote:
| Good call -- it would be inconvenient to run a country in 2025
| otherwise.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I'm genuinely shocked that there was bipartisan support on this.
| I can't remember that happening on any FCC ruling since I started
| paying attention to the ones that made headlines and that's since
| the first net neutrality era (which doesn't mean it didn't
| happen; just that I didn't notice if it did).
| dvektor wrote:
| I remember when I first went to jail in 2013, every month paying
| for a $20 phone card and getting to make a 25 minute "long-
| distance" call. I couldn't believe that this was legal, and even
| if it was, I was in disbelief that morally, this was allowed to
| go on. There are so many other similarities in corrections that
| my family and I would unfortunately go on to discover over the
| years, things that until you experience them firsthand, either by
| yourself or a loved one being incarcerated, that you likely
| wouldn't believe.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Amen, brother. I was an advocate for prison reform before
| getting locked up, but once you're inside and you find out how
| truly insane everything is, you realize that jails and prisons
| are where decency and kindness go to die.
|
| I'm in a Zoom conference with the federal court in 45 mins
| trying to get two constitutional violations at the biggest jail
| in the country fixed, but obviously the government's lawyers
| are maintaining that this jail is too big to fix the problems.
| The judge's line is that if the smallest jails in the country
| can not violate the rights of the detainees, why can't the
| biggest? The government is adamant that their size protects
| them from having to say, provide a working mail system.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It is Teams, not Zoom. I'm in the conference with the federal
| judge and the government lawyers right now. Currently they
| are maintaining their stance that they are unwilling to fix
| constitutional violations. They'd rather go to trial and lose
| and pay my lawyer the 7 figure sum in fees he's owed, than
| agree to fix the conditions.
|
| This is the sort of people that run our jails and prisons --
| and spend your tax dollars.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Not likely with this supreme court. That lawyer is getting
| the money from you, or no one.
| qingcharles wrote:
| OK, settled the case. Luckily my lawyer was working pro
| bono as he racked up over $600K in billable hours I
| understand. I'm waiting for an email back to see if I can
| discuss it or whether it is NDA'd lol. The judge said that
| she had never seen any institution so stubbornly against
| fixing what they were legally entitled to fix.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Why lift a finger to do anything if you can just spend
| taxpayers' dollars on a settlement?
| mywittyname wrote:
| You're fighting the good fight.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| 'It looks like your client Bob is no longer housed in this
| facility and therefore no longer has standing. Case
| dismissed. If you can find someone else willing to initiate a
| case, you can start the year long process that got you here
| again. Of course, if they happen to get transferred to a new
| institution should their case make it this far in the process
| that case will also be dismissed for lack of standing.' --
| The US Justice System
| qingcharles wrote:
| This ^^ person knows their law.
|
| Yes, my case was (probably, maybe) barred from injunctive
| relief because you can't sue to fix problems at a jail or
| prison if they release you[0]. Some people have been
| prematurely released just to activate this option.
|
| You can (sometimes) get declaratory judgment though, which
| at least declares you a winner and you can then pass the
| baton to the guy behind you who is still behind bars and
| use that as a stick to hit the institution over the head
| with.
|
| And sometimes you can also get monetary damages too, which
| can be another stick to hit them with.
|
| [0] some exceptions apply if the case is likely to repeat
| itself, but this argument is very, very hard to muster
| ThomW wrote:
| Prisons need to be run by the government and aim for
| rehabilitation. For-profit prisons shouldn't exist. What's the
| incentive for a company to rehabilitate prisoners? It'd ruin
| repeat business and eat into profits. :/
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I'm all for government-run rehabilitation focus. I had an
| entire message about a capitalist stopgap, but every idea I
| have creates some perverse incentives.
| Avshalom wrote:
| To be clear these fees are just as bad at government run
| prisons and jails.
| pandemicsoul wrote:
| I wonder how many people in this thread generally vote for
| Republicans, who are disproportionally the recipients of for-
| profit prison company money?
| https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=G7000
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not all states have private prisons. Oregon, or example,
| prohibits them (and prohibits sending Oregon inmates to a
| private prison in another state). But we still have 9 cents a
| minute for phone calls. I think it's paid by the outside
| caller, though, not the inmate.
|
| I generally support prison being a less-than-lavish experience,
| but charging for phone calls seems over the top. Inhumane, if
| it prevents inmates from talking with their loved ones. They're
| still humans, and most of them will get out of prison someday,
| we should keep that in mind.
| qingcharles wrote:
| You're not thinking big enough. Why do we even need so many
| people in prison?
|
| The staff in prisons are never motivated to run any kind of
| real rehabilitation programs, and worthwhile ones are
| incredibly rare. They get the press when you see a prisoner
| learning AutoCAD or something, but there are so few slots for
| something like that, while everyone else does bullshit classes
| where they ask you what you should do when you find a wallet in
| the street and then make you color some pages with crayons
| (really).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Why do we even need so many people in prison?
|
| A question I keep thinking about. My position at this point
| is that prison should be considerably less used than it is
| today. I am certain we can devise non-prison punishments for
| most crimes. I would like to see prison reserved strictly for
| people who need to be separated from society.
|
| Even if we _do_ use prison as punishment, I don 't know that
| there is all that much difference in most cases between a few
| months and a few years. I'd guess it takes less than a day to
| decide this is the worst thing to happen to you, and it
| quickly reaches a point where it can't really get a lot more
| convincing. Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems kinda meaningless
| to differentiate between 1 year, 10 years, 25 years.
|
| We cannot really expect to send someone away for a few years
| and have them just slip back into society and continue to be
| successful. Not with all the non-judicial punishments we
| inflict on convicts. That is another thing I keep thinking we
| need to figure out a better answer for. A criminal record is
| a huge hinderance to gainful employment, maybe we should be a
| lot more circumspect about who is allowed to see it, or
| require it for employment or housing.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Agree with all that.
|
| Prison removes people from society. That should be the only
| time it is needed -- when someone can't be reintegrated.
| And then in that case, we need to try to understand why
| we've made that decision. Is it a mental problem? If so,
| they're not to blame and should be housed at a non-punitive
| facility that can (maybe) make them well enough to be free.
|
| Also agree that we need to rethink criminal records in a
| major way, although the Internet is the arbiter of your
| background now. It doesn't matter if we sealed something up
| legally when it is already out there. "It's like trying to
| take the piss out of a swimming pool."
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| FYI McDonalds uses the Federal slave labor corporation (aka
| UNICOR https://www.unicor.gov/ ) to do the CAD work for
| McDonalds remodels. Now it makes more sense why McDonald's
| all feel miserable now.
| Interesco wrote:
| I had a friend who was incarcerated for a time; he sent me a
| message from the "jail-approved" platform smartjailmail. In order
| to respond I had to purchase credits - each message I sent was 50
| credits and I could include "return postage" (sending them 50
| credits to reply) with a max of 2000 characters per message.
| Pictures cost 100 credits to send. The minimum number of credits
| that I could purchase was 500, and all transactions included a
| payment fee of a few bucks. Glad to see this changing as it
| struck me as a very predatory business model.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yeah, it's still like this at most places. I use this system
| every day to communicate with a lot of inmates in prison,
| trying to get them information from the Internet, mostly legal
| topics, but also MCU news :)
| whoitwas wrote:
| This is excellent. Crush the private prisons to dust.
| currymj wrote:
| I think there is a lot of confusion around private prisons in the
| US. I can't understand why this is such a talking point for
| people who want prison reform.
|
| For-profit companies operating carceral facilities is just not
| the main reason things are so bad.
|
| There is an easy way to see this: lots of public, government run
| jails & prisons are also brutally awful and evil places. For
| example, Rikers Island is not a private prison. On top of this,
| private facilities incarcerate only a small percentage.
|
| You could turn all the private prisons over to be operated by
| government employees and not much would improve.
|
| On the other hand, it is true that many problems in the carceral
| system are created by profit-seeking companies. Mainly they look
| like what we see here: contractors operating a single service
| possibly winning the contract through kickbacks, and then
| providing a bad service. You see this in food and healthcare too
| not just telecom.
|
| I guess it is true that private prison operators will want to do
| the same thing. But it's a problem for all facilities, not just
| the small number of private facilities. And even if you could
| solve these issues via regulation or competition, it wouldn't
| change the many other evils that are inflicted on incarcerated
| people.
|
| So I can't understand why "the US has private prisons" appears to
| be everybody's primary talking point about why the US carceral
| system is so awful.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The uncomfortable resemblance to slavery and other obviously
| problematic aspects
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal) of it
| probably has a lot to do with it getting such disproportionate
| attention. (The vast majority of prisons are still public.)
| That and it offers an easy, feel-good solution that
| unfortunately doesn't address systematic problems: just ban
| private prisons.
| currymj wrote:
| even if one is concerned with remarkable similarity of prison
| labor to slavery, implications of 13th amendment clause,
| etc., most of the prison labor is for wholly-government-owned
| enterprises, frequently manufacturing things for other
| government departments.
|
| As another example, Louisiana is phasing out private prisons.
| That should be great! Meanwhile Angola (state-run) continues
| to have prisoners picking cotton.
|
| I know people know about this because they always bring up
| prisoners picking cotton in these conversations, but then the
| talking point remains "private prisons" somehow. So I still
| don't get why this idea is so sticky.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| It's one of the most egregious vestiges of the patronage system.
| The lack of political accountability has allowed the problem to
| fester.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I have a friend in a local county jail. He pays $0.21/minute for
| calls.
|
| I also communicate with a friend in the state prison system in
| Texas. An "email" (they do have limited use tablets) costs a
| "stamp", and each photo I attach is 1 stamp (limited to 5). (each
| "stamp" costs $0.45)
| notfed wrote:
| > The new order more than halves the per-minute rate caps for all
| prison and jail phone calls across the country
|
| Not good enough. Anyway shouldn't these fees as least go back to
| cover public court fees or something? Why are we allowing cartels
| to leach money from prisoners?
| bjoli wrote:
| Isn't this, together will all other wins in things like
| environment protection, bound to be rolled back in the event of a
| Trump victory?
| ada1981 wrote:
| I thought this had to do with sentencing / prosecution. Doh.
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