Even Silicon Valley's Prison Inmates Have Their Own Startup Incubator 88
pigrabbitbear writes "There's a specific and stereotypical set of activities that spring to mind when you imagine what prison inmates do with their spare time. If there's a yard, they probably hang out, lift weights, get in fights, organize gangs. If there's not a yard, they might read books, write letters, get in fights, organize gangs. They don't write business plans and get giddy over startup ideas. But that's exactly what's happening at San Quentin State Prison, about an hour north of Silicon Valley. For the first time this year, the Last Mile program at the maximum security facility helped five inmates learn the ins and outs of social media and entrepreneurship in an effort to connect those who've been inside for several years with the technological reality of life on the outside. The tricky part about the future forward program is that many of its participants have never used a computer, and, since prison regulations forbid any contact with the outside world, won't be able to use one until they've served their sentences."
CS is not IT and the higer ups are MBA's (Score:3)
CS is not IT and the higer ups are MBA's
Re:CS is not IT and the higer ups are MBA's (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus kid don't you know anything? Get people to put in routine, bogus easy to resolve issues. Make them put in 9 gimmes to get you to look at the 1 real one they entered.
For every stupid metric there is an easy game to play. It's you duty to your employer to game the system.
Social medial consultants (Score:1)
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SEO experts too... don't forget about them.
Local network? (Score:1)
They seriously can't set up a local network so they can skype/email/whatever between stations at at their computer lab? Run blog software that is served locally so they can try creating content and replying? Learn how to use FTP, Gopher, irc, etc.
Maybe they can't do Facebook, but can't they learn everything else this way?
Re:Local network? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, I think most people want to see prisoners rehabilitated, though this is hard to follow through on when they are released into the same economic and cultural mess that got them into trouble in the first place.
What I think people don't want is to see prisoners be provided things like cable TVs with their tax money, when they can't even afford such a luxury themselves.
Then there are private prisons, which don't want to see prisoners rehabilitated at all because that takes away a "resource" from their indus
Re:Local network? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I think people don't want is to see prisoners be provided things like cable TVs with their tax money
Cable TV keeps prisoners docile and distracted. Distracted and docile prisoners are much easier to guard, and cause far less problems.
I would bet that providing them Cable TV actually saves the prison, and therefore the taxpayer, money over the long run (assuming it's not a private prison).
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Learn how to use FTP, Gopher, irc, etc.
Have you just come out of prison after twenty years?
In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Funny)
No problemo (Score:5, Funny)
The tricky part about the future forward program is that many of its participants have never used a computer
This was not a problem in dotcom bubble 1.0, I'm not thinking it'll be a problem in dotcom bubble 2.0.
Should be able to use a offline computer at least (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never understood why prisoners should be forbidden from using an *offline* computer. Okay, so maybe they're blocked from the internet--but couldn't they at least learn the stuff they could do offline? Not even letting older prisoners understand how a modern computer even WORKS puts them so far behind the times that it's pretty unlikely they'll ever catch up.
Re:Should be able to use a offline computer at lea (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that part of the punishment/revenge we want to inflict on those in prison? Never being able to function in society again, so they reoffend and stay the hell out of the way of the good, righteous, god-fearing folk.
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3) Practical Technology Training Provide basic computer training in the critical software tools that are utilized in today’s business sector. Access to the internet is NOT required for this training.
The headline and blog entry are wrong.
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You forgot that the US prison system is privatized with 48 states signing a contract that they will make sure all prisons at at least 90% full.
In the past, penology 101 was about rehabilitating, where the inmate had a chance at a job once out. Then it was the incapacitation aspect, where a crook wasn't on the streets. Finally the deterrence aspect of "oh shit, if I do this, I'll end up behind bars."
Now, the goal is simple: The goal is to warehouse every warm body put in the system for the rest of their l
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48 states signing a contract that they will make sure all prisons at at least 90% full.
Can you cite / link to that contract?
Re:Should be able to use a offline computer at lea (Score:5, Insightful)
This [huffingtonpost.com] is probably among the most reputable links to be found.
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Some company making an offer is not the same as states signing a contract. Typical FUD from HuffPost (and you should never refer to them as "reputable", they're not).
No, only Fox News is reputable. Eveyone else is just left wing propaganda.
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Fail. Epic fail. In the USA, judges don't convict people, juries do. It's prosecutors that have to worry about a conviction rate, not judges. Step away from the keyboard, go back to school and stop cutting your Social Studies classes to post ignorant slop on Slashdot.
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the vast majority of cases never make it to jury, so there. =P
citation please. and all of them at least have the option to have trial. maybe the ones that plea out do so because they commit the crime but they don't want as serve as long of a term as they would probably get if they go to trial.
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Actually, the cut off is imprisonment of 6 months or more or a fine of $1000 or more (both in consideration with outside penalties like loss of a license and requirements to seek treatments like drug and alcohol counseling and so on) which makes misdemeanors fall within that scope.
This right to jury trial changes from state to state also in which some state Constitutions or laws lower the threshold in which someone is guaranteed a right to jury trial Vermont and Virginia, if memory serves me correct, even a
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As for being tough on crime, you do realize that whoever violated the law knew there were penalties before they violated it and somewhat agreed to be punished according to the strictest penalty when deciding to do so. I don't think the tough on crime stick adds anything as none of the penalties are created after the fact unless it is a matter of someone unjustly being convicted which can hurt the elected Judge and Prosecutor just the same.
The way you are "tough on crime" is to convict everybody who comes before you, as long as there is a vaguely coherent prosecution case, and sentence them to the maximum allowed by law. You don't take any extenuating circumstances into account, you don't apply any relativity or equity, and you make sure that as many people as possible are bullied into confessing due to the threat of a longer sentence.
All this you do legally.
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I agree with everything except the bullying confessions and convicting everyone.
First the bullying. If someone commits a crime, they are looking at the max sentence regardless of the judge being tough on crime. The do not make sentence guidelines up on the spot and they are available to being known well in advance of the crime. I find complaint about getting the max sentence for a crime someone is convicted of to be a non sequitur. It is like complaining that you purchased a 12 pack of beers and there was o
Re:Should be able to use a offline computer at lea (Score:5, Informative)
I have never understood why prisoners should be forbidden from using an *offline* computer.
Actually, they're not, at least in California. I personally know several inmates who are taking college courses "behind bars." The computers aren't Internet-connected, and the instructor collects the flash drives they store their work on between classes, but they have access to computers for educational purposes. Some inmate clerks also have access to computers (non-networked) for typing and other clerical tasks.
In the federal system, they're even experimenting with the very limited and locked down TRULINCS [bop.gov] email system for inmates...
What's not accurate is the summary's claim that "prison regulations forbid any contact with the outside world." Inmates routinely contact the outside world through telephone calls, letters, and contact and/or non-contact (and in California and New York, for most inmates, the possibility of "family" a/k/a "trailer" a/k/a/ "conjugal") visits...
On a related topic, anyone remember the Wired article on Roy Wahlberg [wired.com]? "Roy Wahlberg hacked a man to death, then hacked his way into a million-dollar software business behind bars."
So, 4 of them have never used a computer. (Score:4, Insightful)
helped five inmates learn
5. Five. 1 2 3 4 5. That would be "five". Given any arbitrary selection criteria, the membership count of the set of prisoners X in that selection criteria set are the natural numbers from 0 to 5 inclusive. Come on /. after you add UTF-8 how about MathML?
many of its participants have never used a computer
Why the vagueness? OK we're operating from five. Remember paper logic puzzles? I used to turn them into prolog statements and let the solver solve them. This was back when a XT with turbo prolog was cutting edge. But I digress. OK its /. logic puzzle time. Rule out 0 because they would have skipped this topic. Rule out 1 because they would have wrote "a" and rule out 5 because they would have written "all". We can rule out 2 because they would have written "a couple" unless they avoided that phrase WRT prison sex and so forth. Which is more, "many" or "several". I believe the informal ranking order is "many" is greater than "several" so of the remaining options 3 or 4, we can circle "4" as the answer.
Thats how I figured out exactly 4 inmates have never used a computer.
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Let me add that "many" simply means the greater part of, so 3 or 4 could be the answer. If they had said "some" I could believe that to have been 2 or 3. But since the point was to emphasize how little the group knew, If the number was 4 I think they would have preferred to say "most".
So, my take is the actual number is 3.
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Let me add that "many" simply means the greater part of...
It does not mean any such thing, except possibly in your imagination. "Many" means:
1: consisting of or amounting to a large but indefinite number
2: being one of a large but indefinite number
So I'm inclined to judge the rest of your post as being of equally dubious value.
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Hmm so did he have "many" or "several" dubious statements in his post. I'm thinking exactly three, which would imply the word "several" ...
... hang out, get in fights, organize gangs ... (Score:4, Funny)
That pretty much describes behavior on the Internet to me.
Those folks should have no problems on the outside.
Why rehabilitation is so neglected (Score:3, Insightful)
The incentives of the system reward high occupancy. If there were more funding for wardens and prisons who had lower recidivism rates then there'd be less of a clamour for tougher sentencing laws funded by the prison industrial complex, America wouldn't have such an obscenely high incarceration rate, and there'd be a lot less crime committed by inmates after release since there would have been more investment in rehabilitation.
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That and the fact that it rarely works, unless by "rehabilitation" you mean "execution" which is 100% effective and which I would recommend for all armed robbers, con men and wealthy people who double-park.
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That and the fact that it rarely works, unless by "rehabilitation" you mean "execution" which is 100% effective and which I would recommend for all armed robbers, con men and wealthy people who double-park.
Oh really? And how, pray tell, does executing predominantly black people, many of whom may be innocent, prevent crime?
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A man threatens a convenience store owner with a gun. Tell me again how it matters what "race" he is? He is of the "race" of people who will threaten to kill you with weapons for whatever reason. That's really enough for me.
I'm going to explain this nice and slowly because it's clear that you're a simpleton.
A white guy threatens a convenience store owner with a gun, and kills him. He gets life.
A black guy threatens a convenience store owner with a gun, and kills him. He gets death.
See the difference?
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Yeah, it's really unfair for the white guy who will do absolutely nothing at all for the rest of his life, but be forced to live it anyway.
Most peoplel would see life in prison as a preferable option to execution.
If you really have convinced yourself that the system is biased against white people because it doesn't execute the same proportion of them as black people, I worry for your sanity.
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Sure. Life is crueler, but more expensive to the taxpayer. Death is kinder and cheaper. In either case, the problem is solved regardless of jury biases.
You can't turn off the justice system because juries are bigots.
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You can't turn off the justice system because juries are bigots.
Judges decide sentences, not juries.
Well, they do here in the UK. I suppose the assumption that the US legal system is no more stupid than the UK one is a bit of a dangerous one..
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Well, if we are limiting the conversations explicitly to the recidivism rates, it appears to be about 60% in the US and 50% in the UK. Let's assume it is 50%.on average for the whole. Wikipedia lists the recidivism rates for burglary to be about 70% which would include armed robbery and 74% for larcenist which would include con men but lets drop the number for argument's sake.
From that, we can assume that about 50 out of every 100 people imprisoned for armed robbery and or larceny, regardless of being black
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So on the face alone, executing people convicted of armed robbery would reduce armed robbery crime rates about 25% without regard to race that you injected.
Once you start executing people for armed robbery, you end up doing it for stealing a loaf of bread too. As a result, the murder rate goes up, as people adopt the "might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb" attitude, and don't have any scruples about killing bystanders, witnesses, etc.
The race point is that if you have a disproportionate number of black men in prison, you will end up with a disproportionate number of black men being executed, regardless of whether they are sentenced equally.
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I'm not advocating killing people for armed robbery. I'm just showing it is only a matter of math because there are repeat offenders who offend after being released.
The race issue might very well reflect a problem with enforcement of laws and sentencing bias, but it really isn't an issue in this hypothetical situation. The disproportionate amount of blacks or minorities populating the prisons does not necessarily reflect the conviction rates of non blacks who might get off with lesser sentences. Remember. t
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course a high percentage of this problem is in for a petty crime involving a plant.
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Which is just stupid. Plain and simple.
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Conjugal visits APP? Find local girls who really want to show a man behind bars a good time
You'll need agile Cloud synergistic hosting to leverage the monetization of that paradigm.
eShank (Score:3, Funny)
Disclaimer: you probably really won't love eShank
San Quentin (Score:1)
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People just are clueless about high tech. High tech is not rampant with entrepreneurs. The vast majority of high tech people are workers, not the people who bet their life savings and family on a high risk roll of dice. Entrepreneurs are not everywhere you look here, despite a recent radio call in show that seemed to imply that was the "culture" here. Startups are a moronic thing to expect freed convicts to be involved with, they don't have any equity to put on the craps table to start anything, and whe
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Entrepreneurs are not everywhere you look here, despite a recent radio call in show that seemed to imply that was the "culture" here.
An entrepreneur is just a normal person without the imagination to see beyond making money.
Making money is not that difficult if you don't do anything else in your life except work.
Yesssss! (Score:2)
This is what we were missing -- violent criminals in position of control over other people!
Can we, please, have LESS "entrepreneurs"?
Hello, I'm Johnny Cash (Score:4, Funny)
Let me guess... (Score:2)
Let me guess: They're in for computer crimes?