$11M Worth of Legally-Purchased Music Will Be Confiscated From Florida's Prisoners (tampabay.com) 309
An anonymous reader quotes the Tampa Bay Times:
In April last year, the Florida Department of Corrections struck a deal with JPay. The private company, spearheading a push to sell profit-driven multimedia tablets to incarcerated people across the country, would be allowed to bring the technology to every facility in the nation's third-largest prison system. But there was a catch. Inmates had already been purchasing electronic entertainment for the last seven years -- an MP3 player program run by a different company: Access Corrections. For around $100, Access sold various models of MP3 players that inmates could then use to download songs for $1.70 each, and keep them in their dorms.... More than 30,299 players were sold, and 6.7 million songs were downloaded over the life of the Access contract, according to the Department of Corrections. That's about $11.3 million worth of music.
Because of the tablets, inmates will have to return the players, and they can't transfer the music they already purchased onto their new devices... The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011... JPay already operates banking accounts and facilitates phone calls at the state-run prisons, charging inmates and their loved ones steep fees for the services. With the introduction of tablets, JPay will add a wide swath of new spending incentives for its incarcerated customers, offering purchases of music, emailing and other virtual fare.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Because of the tablets, inmates will have to return the players, and they can't transfer the music they already purchased onto their new devices... The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011... JPay already operates banking accounts and facilitates phone calls at the state-run prisons, charging inmates and their loved ones steep fees for the services. With the introduction of tablets, JPay will add a wide swath of new spending incentives for its incarcerated customers, offering purchases of music, emailing and other virtual fare.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
the wrong people are in prison.
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Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but this is one of those issues on which the parties are united. There's no point trying to win the support of prisoners - they can't vote, they generally don't have any great wealth to donate to a party, and they aren't socially influential. Plus the public has little to no sympathy for them. Indeed, many have the opposite of sympathy - people actually enjoy hearing that the lives of prisoners have been made a bit more miserable, and get angry upon learning that any sort of action has been taken which might make their lives more tolerable. So it does not matter if Republicans or Democrats are in charge: They'll both screw over prisoners. The only difference I can think of is that Republicans are more likely to grant Christian minsters free access to prisoners in the belief that finding Jesus will heal them of their criminal tendencies.
Re:Sounds like (Score:4, Informative)
There's no point trying to win the support of prisoners - they can't vote,.
They're trying to change that here in California.
https://ballotpedia.org/Califo... [ballotpedia.org]
No. I do not agree with this and plan on voting against it.
Re: Sounds like (Score:2, Insightful)
And why is that? Why can't a debt to society be paid and rights restored?
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This is about convicted criminals who are still paying their debt. Giving back their voting rights AFTER they are released is a different matter entirely.
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Why? These are still human beings and are still members of society.
There seems to be far too much emphasis on simply taking revenge on people by locking them up instead of solving the social issues which put them on the wrong side of the law. In fact apart from crimes of violence and dealing particularly nasty drugs, a large number of those people probably shouldn't even be in prison. It's about time society learnt to deal with the problem of crime in a new way, help and guide people to a better path in
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Interesting)
So, simple logic... if the number of prisoners is reasonable, allowing them to vote makes no difference on election outcomes. And if the number of prisoners is unreasonable, holy shit, we're disenfranchising a big set of society-- not letting them have any influence on the laws that have been used against them.
IMO "not letting prisoners/felons/etc" vote is a huge fuck-up/back door to democracy. All you need to do to erode the political influence of a class is criminalize things associated with that class.
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By their own actions, convicted felons doing time are not part of regular society, so they don't get a say in how it should operate. There are consequences to engaging in criminal activity.
Re: Sounds like (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, 95% of inmates in the federal Gulag were coerced into making a false confession ("plea bargain"). They were NOT convicted by a jury of their peers. Their convictions are ipso facto illegitimate, and the kangaroo courts that sentenced them are contemptible.
Re: Sounds like (Score:5, Informative)
It would stop the DA from throwing every charge at you hoping something sticks. When I was arrested for my crimes one of the charged was 'kidnapping' it was added to try to scare me, and to make sure bail was higher than any normal person could ever afford. That should be illegal.
Re: Sounds like (Score:4, Informative)
Wouldn't this end up with MORE time stacked onto the these prisoner's sentence? Wouldn't this end up with MORE cost to the U.S. taxpayers for court time and incarceration time?
No. Instead you'd see people getting a sensible tariff for their crimes, including freedom for those that committed none.
"80 years if you fight or 8 years if you plea guilty to this lesser crime" isn't justice. Either they committed crimes society deemed worthy of an 80 year jail term or they did not. The one thing that's pretty fucking certain is that they didn't commit a crime worth an 8 year punishment.
So try them for the crimes they're alleged to have committed. If you only want them in prison for 8 years, change the tariffs for those crimes so that a judge can give them 8 years.
Right now people plead guilty because of coercion, fear and the cost of fighting to prove their innocence. That's not justice, and "justice is too expensive" is if anything worse.
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Here in Nevada, once you have served your sentence complete(expiration) All of your human rights with the exception of ownership of a firearm are reinstated. Including voting. Sure I committed a crime, I also did my time. Why can I not be treated fairly like every American again? Or do you like the fact that once you are a felon, its very hard to get a job and get a head in life which means most people resort back to the same things that landed them in prison in the first place. Prison is supposed to be to
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Why do you hate democracy?
Why do you support slavery?
Re: Sounds like (Score:3)
The public might have very little sympathy for prisoners but even people I know who have little sympathy for criminals don't like seeing them taken advantage of. Most people aren't going to shed a tear about a prisoner not having access to a cell phone, hbo, or conjugal visits but most people are still sympathetic to prisoners as captive audiences being screwed by outrageously priced long distance or having something stolen from them that they legally purchased.
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The real fucked up thing about this is, its the prisoners family and friends that send them the money to get these items, so not only does shit like this hurt the inmates, it does the same to their family members.
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Yep, it's indirectly charging the family members for the prisoner's care. Everything should be sold at cost. If they really want to charge the prisoner or the prisoner's family for their care then they should bill them directly. They shouldn't be trying to make a profit off of them. At least with most captive audiences like six flags or movie theatres you still have options to not participate. Prisoners don't generally have that as a realistic option especially when it comes to stuff like long distance
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10 seconds proves otherwise (Score:2, Insightful)
Indisputable fact, eh? JPay ARE assholes, no doubt about that. We've they have these contracts with almost every state:
https://www.jpay.com/Pavail.as... [jpay.com]
You'll notice the areas they do NOT have these contacts are places like Utah, Arkansas, and Alabama - mostly very Republican states.
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Looking at that map, it seems instead that some poor states don't have it, and some states with very very low population don't have it. I certainly wouldn't think that Alabama and Arkansas are "very Republican," but that Texas, Idaho, and Mississippi are not.
Nice scam, again (Score:5, Insightful)
How is it that being incarcerated time and again turns out to make you a legal target for scamming?
This is stupid on so many levels. The simplest of which is that if you want to correct inmates' behaviour, it does make a difference what sort of example you're setting. Or hire others to set.
Re:Nice scam, again (Score:5, Insightful)
People want revenge. They want to see the inmates suffer. It is petty and wrong, and speaks worlds about the kind of people we are.
But that inclination is what allows this sort of thing to happen.
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Wasn't it Gandhi who said something like "I like your Christ but not his followers"
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Re:Nice scam, again (Score:5, Interesting)
Americans are horrible. Iraqis are horrible. Prisoners are horrible. The public are horrible. Because at the end, *people* are horrible. It's their instinctual nature: Care for your family, care for your friends, and everyone else is either an enemy or doesn't exist. Everything we have built and call society over ten thousand years of civilisation is devoted to managing this fundamental problem.
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Nope, the majority of people have just made one particular mistake, they let psychopaths run everything. The discussion leans heavily one way and yet the actions are opposite. Why, because we let psychopaths run the system and they do not give one fuck about what they are doing beyond it enriching and empowering them, the harm they cause, completely indifferent to it, beyond getting a perverse kick from the suffering they are causing.
It is just a minority, that a really horrible, 1% of the general populat
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I completely agree with the above statement. Psychopathy, narcissism, and machiavellianism comprise a "dark triad" of personality disorders in the DSM, and the callous lack of empathy they engender, the shameless harm done to others, is frightful. The problem is that these people tend to be compulsive social climbers, and will claw their way to the top and then try to remake society in their image. And they have. Thing is, they are a minority, and we have the science to keep extremely toxic people from
If it's one thing I've learned about prisoners (Score:5, Insightful)
Me? It's 2018 for God's sake. There is no excuse for punishment anymore. We're adults. Either rehabilitate the person or keep them locked up and in reasonable comfort until they die. Vengeance has no place in a modern society, if for no other reason than it will eventually be turned on us all.
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Well said. Unfortunately a lot of people are not even a bit enlightened and are deeply stuck in the dark ages of violence.
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We pretend to be a modern society, but we hardly have an enlightened population. Most of us are still shallow puppets easily manipulated by our primal urges.
Ask any marketing group. Ask the music industry about their focus on "image". Consider the other fears/desires exploited in political campaigns. Consider the long-standing patterns (and the narrower short-term trends) you can observe in our countless hookup apps, without even being on the other side of the server. Consider that, not long ago, capital pu
Re:If it's one thing I've learned about prisoners (Score:4, Insightful)
> There is no excuse for punishment anymore.
I'm afraid there is an enormous number of excuses for punishment. There are also some psychologically and legally supported reasons for it. The fear of consequences is a very real deterrent to many types of crime and abuse, even though it is not completely effective.
There is no legally supported reason (Score:5, Insightful)
As for psychology, in children yes. Because their ability to reason isn't fully developed. But if you're dealing with an entity who's reasoning ability isn't developed then punishing them is obviously morally wrong because they're not in full control of their actions. OTOH if you're dealing with a being who's reasoning ability _is_ fully developed (or very nearly, since the brain develops into you're mid 20s) then there are much, much more effective ways to prevent that entity from doing "bad things". That is what is meant by rehabilitation. And that's before we start talking about prevention. Remember, it's always cheaper to drop food than bombs.
Punishment has two reasons to exist. First, some folks just like people to suffer. And not for the reasons you're thinking. Animals have an innate understanding of 'fairness'. Most people suffer some for their mistakes. When people give into their animal brain and stop reasoning they want others to suffer for their mistakes. I saw this first hand with a buddy of mine who's LGBTQ. She was upset that the young'uns didn't have to suffer like she did (she was bullied by her teachers in addition to students. Pretty f'd up actually).
As for the second reason, well, punishment is _cheap_. In a society with limited resources we can't afford to lock up the crazies and give them decent food and Playstations. Instead you make chain gains and forced labor camps and feed them the worst food possible. Well, economically we're past that. We could solve these problems anytime we want. Right now we don't.
Oh, and at least for murder fear of consequences doesn't factor into that. It's been shown repeatedly that the death penalty is worse than a non-deterrent. It actively encourages people to kill as they've got nothing left to lose and you might as well get rid of the witnesses. Where I am there was a pizza joint robbed a few decades ago where the employees were shot execution style because the crooks were repeat offenders and they knew if they got caught they'd die in prison. That's what your deterrent gets you..
Most of those inmates are pot users (Score:2)
Again, if we'd switch from a punishment based system to a rehab based one those problems
I never said we should eliminate prison (Score:3)
We do not 'give up' on them. We rehabilitate every one we can. But I'm not so naive that I think we can reach a 100% rate. I'm saying a few criminally insane will exist. People who have demonstrated they are a danger to the community and who we lack the to
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Isn't being locked up until you're cured deterrent enough?
In fact, isn't it more of a deterrent than being released when your time is up even if you haven't reformed?
Re: If it's one thing I've learned about prisoners (Score:5, Insightful)
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Prisons have no incentive to rehabilitate and release, only to keep people locked up and collect the rent.
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Certainly, rehabilitation is not their _only_ mandate. But they are certainly judged and fiscally rewarded for it. And prison staff often, even normally, develop some emotional relationships with their inmates. It can be abusive, but these relationships can also be therapeutic, even becoming a sense of community or a sense of family.
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How do you prove that?
Do we still have one foot firmly planted in the (inaptly named) wives' tale era? Or is this merely a handy tautology from the "starvation leads to reliable weight loss" school of inapplicable insight?
I agree that most people don't wish to have an orange jumpsuit in their employment history. Beyond that, the dose-response relationship to incarceration is anyone's guess. Sure, you can produce a short-t
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> argues layer after layer after layer that humanity has systematically overvalued the punitive signal for behaviour modification
There is a significant behavior between this and idea that punishment does not work. That punishment can be, and has been, overused in some circumstances is not in question. There are numerous papers, such as this one from the American Psychiatric Association, http://www.apa.org/news/press/... [apa.org]. There is also this publication from the National Institute of Justice on the effecti
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And to be blunt "tough on crime" plays very well with the dog whistle crowd while disproportionately impacting the poor.
If you've ever been mugged or had your residence broken into you might feel differently, regardless of your income.
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You mean you're willing to judge a whole race by the actions of a single person committing a B&E? How very non-tiki-torch burning of you.
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You mean you're willing to judge a whole race by the actions of a single person committing a B&E? How very non-tiki-torch burning of you.
You mean you're willing to make everything about race, when I was talking about criminals? Do you think only blacks are criminals? Why are you so racist? I guess that explains why you see racism everywhere.
Re:If it's one thing I've learned about prisoners (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the new/old plan. Some people want to take the USA back to the days before 1863, but with some improvements. Here is the gameplan:
1. Pass laws to make several harmless activities illegal.
2. Incarcerate people under the above laws (bonus if the implementation of those laws tends to disproportionately incarcerate darker-skinned people)
3. Obtain the benefits of slavery of the incarcerated people.
4. Get the middle class to pay for the housing costs that in pre-1863 days the slave owner would have to pay.
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It's not clear that "rehabilitation" is possible. I don't think it's ever really been studied.
OTOH, it's also not clear that if people have a chance, rehabilitation is necessary. Most people really don't want to be outcasts. Some people just don't see that they have any choice in the matter. Often their perceptions seem to be correct.
OTOH, when hiring someone for a position of trust, I'd almost always prefer people who didn't have a valid reason to not trust them.
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No taxation without representation, along with plenty of other reasons. Or states being happy to count ex-cons when it comes to the census and having the number of congressional seats allocated, same as when slaves couldn't vote but counted as 3/5 of a person for congress.
So you can fuck off right there. Besides, what the hell do you think ex-cons are going to do - get a supervillian elected as presi
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There's lots of that. I can vote where my residence is, but own some land elsewhere where we plan to eventually build and retire. I can't vote there, yet have to pay taxes.
I'm not saying I should be able to vote in "overlapping" areas (e.g. federal or state), but I should certainly be able to vote on local municipal stuff, including property millages, where I'm paying tax without representation or vote.
Well... (Score:2)
Maybe if it was the right supervillain...
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When you steal money from inmates (Score:5, Insightful)
It's theft too. I hope the bastards get sued.
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While pretty bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
I fought the law (Score:2)
And the law won.
This is BS (Score:2)
I hope someone files a lawsuit and wins. Florida state government is a continual disgrace under Rick Scott.
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I hope someone files a lawsuit and wins. Florida state government is a continual disgrace under Rick Scott.
I don't know anything about Florida's government, but this sounds like a case tailor-made for a class action lawsuit. The fact that the Dept. of Corrections made money off of the song sales makes it a slam dunk, regardless of what unenforceable language was in the original user/inmate agreement. I don't think they can arbitrarily cancel previously purchased licenses like this, in favor of some new for-profit scheme. I hope someone pursues this, and I hope they win, because the concept and existence of incar
Messate to the Unites States (Score:2)
Your prison system is fucked. If anyone reads TFS and does not see how broken and inhuman this is, then you are as well. Bye
Florida's prison system ... (Score:2)
... like all the other state prison systems, is responsible for the fucked up legal mess that provides corporate slaves.
It’s unconstitutional (Score:2)
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They can't confiscate them because confiscation is for contraband. This is theft.
Intentionally not permitted - so as to profit JPay (Score:2)
Fucking White People! (Score:2)
Seriously, Florida is the shithole of the world. A bunch of cracker ass morons voting for cracker ass morons to treat black people and other minorities like shit. Hey kids, wanna go to Disney World? Then I'm disowning your stupid asses. Go get eating by a fucking alligator. No wonder Trump loves that place so much. It must feel like how his brain works, like a steaming pile of shit mixed in with grinding gears and Yoko Ono music.
There is a way to do this right (Score:2)
There is no excuse for this because there is a way to do it right. The state is not properly representing the prisoners in this negotiation and really has nothing to lose in doing so unless they are getting a kickback.
If jpay wants the contract, they should be agreeable to a limited period of exchange of existing licenses for new licenses on their system. It's a reasonable cost of doing business. The state should just write that into the contract, along with making the contract long to help make the cost wo
Just a more direct form of DRM (Score:2)
This represents a more fundamental problem with society. We're getting used to the idea that intellectual property is licensed and sold as a service, and that license can be revoked at any time without legal consequence. Almost all digital products are "sold" under the EULA terms that you have a right to use it until you don't, and the license is perpetual until it's not. It's madness.
The real issue here is not that prisoners are being treated unfairly. It's that, in most cases of licensed properly, it'
Do as I say, not as I do (Score:2)
It's important to teach prisoners that property rights are bullshit and that fraud is perfectly acceptable. Glad they're on top of that. There's nothing like making people work for something then taking it away to ensure they don't bother trying to do things right in the future.
If our corrections/rehabilitation system can't follow the basic rules of ethics, why would they expect anyone else to?
The spectre of 13th Amendment keeps haunting us... (Score:2)
Section 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.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
As one can see the the exact same sentence which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, which are held to be interchangeable terms, legalizes slavery and involuntary servitude for those parties duly convicted- ie. prisoners of the state.
The primary economic justification for slavery in modern times boils down to this: where labor is free, ie. unpaid for due to being forced involuntary servitude, the only capital cost involved in production cost is w
Re:It's prison, not a spa (Score:5, Insightful)
So the lawful purchases they made should be taken away and then they should be charged again to keep it? That's not justice. That's right up there with the RIAA policy/opinion that if I have my house burglarized, I'm legally obligated to delete the legal MP3's I have in my itunes library just because the physical CD's were stolen.
Re:It's prison, not a spa (Score:5, Insightful)
It just teaches these people that right or wrong does not matter, what matters is who has more power. The message does not get more problematic than this.
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Tough tittie.
Then they get out, apply the lesson learned and say the same thing to you when they clean out your house. Sound good?
Who pays for their hotel stay?
The people who want them to stay there. You can always kick them out if you aren't satisfied with the arrangement.
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WHAT??!?! I thought you knew the Offender is the Victim in drug crime! So we have to lock them up doubly long!!
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You just stated that the US is a failed state. Are you sure that is what you want to say?
Re: It's prison, not a spa (Score:3, Interesting)
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Is Apple as accommodating when you chose to quit using iTunes?
Will your local cable company burn your 'legally purchased' movies to DVD when you switch to Sattelite TV?
Re: It's prison, not a spa (Score:2, Informative)
Since bought tracks on itunes dont have DRM, yes.
Re: It's prison, not a spa (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the government going to forcibly make me give up my current cable company?
I understand the sentiment that this is prison and this is a 'first world' sort of prison problem, but it's part of a pattern of private sector exploitation of prisoners. Prisoners should not be seen as a profit engine. There's debate about reform versus punitive, but in either case I don't see it as a good thing for private corps to have financial incentive to wish for more prisoners.
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The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011.
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The provider of the electronics/music is however a private corp.
It just shows that even state run prisons are subject to questionable initiatives by private corporations.
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Whatever drugs you are taking to come up with those analogies, did you bring enough to share?
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Burglarized by whom?..
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Statistically speaking? Probably the police via civil forfeiture.
Re:It's prison, not a spa (Score:5, Insightful)
The punishment is their immobility, as well as the lifelong criminal record that permanently eliminates most of their job opportunities.
Torture, however, is not part of the punishment. Since we are keeping them prisoner, regardless of what they have done, it is on us to ensure that they are kept healthy, which includes mental health, which includes access to music.
While true, it isn't supposed to be a luxury resort, that is a clear fallacy of excluded middle. The goal isn't to make them suffer as much as we can get away with, that's petty and wrong.
How a society treats its criminals serves as a testament to how morally and culturally advanced that society is.
Re:It's prison, not a spa (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had the misfortune of experiencing the system and left it a few years ago. Torture is an inevitable part of it. There is no way that I can communicate to you the damaging effects of years of isolation from society, from human contact, and from information. After about 3 years in prison, even if I could have gotten a decent job back after getting out, I could not have recovered from the effects of the isolation and constant threat of violence even though I managed to avoid being beat up at any point. The PTSD that resulted has lessened now, but will always be there.
Occupying a place in society requires skills that don't get practiced in prison. Some of them are even physical. It took years after getting out for my brain to readjust to being able to process the visual and auditory complexity of shopping in a WalMart without suffering a severe panic attack. Years of absolute uniformity in my environment had atrophied my brain's ability to process my environment. After four years, I have regained a functional level of processing, but it is far below the environmental awareness that I had before. I know that I am not as safe a driver and I still get a bit of brain fog due to overload when facing large crowds.
The system could work to minimize this, but they actually work to maximize it. No matter the feelings of those voting for the system, the people who actually choose to work in prisons are usually there with the belief that those in prison are worthless, should never get out, and that their families are better off if they cut all ties.
The result is that visitation has plummeted over the last few decades. Decades ago, people understood that prisoners needed community contact. In the case of the medium security facility I'm familiar with, vocation programs in prison actually went into communities and performed charity work. The prison ball teams often played on community leagues. When prisoners got out, they often had a place to go to. Today, the community interaction has been stopped and prisoners from that institution are often dropped off at the steps of the courthouse they were convicted at with a couple hundred dollars they managed to save while in prison working at less than $1 an hour and a single set of clothes on their backs.
On top of that, yeh, families routinely pay as much as $1 a minute to talk to their loved ones over the phone. The menus of the food in prison are never followed. If a recipe calls for 180 pounds of meat to make the volume required, the cook will typically be handed 50 pounds instead. The items in commissary are routinely over priced. A $0.10 pouch of Ramen noodles sells for $0.50 to inmates who make $25 / month as janitors. Guards will let people steal what little you've acquired if you ever complain. Book donations to the library by the public were stopped years ago. Medical care is often too risky to use. Teeth are routinely pulled instead of filled. Pulling teeth involves simply smashing the tooth with a hammer and chisel and pulling out the pieces. Tylenol is what you get for the pain afterwards. And on and on.
I could go on forever, but I doubt I could get anyone to understand who hasn't been through it. I am a lucky one who had a family that never abandoned me. I survive. I will never again be able to be the productive member of society I was, nobody will give me a chance to actually return to real engineering, even at the bottom, and even though I would gladly work for less than twice minimum wage. Liability insurance doesn't usually allow it. But, I at least survive.
Haha (Score:2)
I forgot all about how that first Walmart trip was after I got out. I just stood there against the front wall staring at the shelves. I couldn't make out individual items, it was like there was static in my head. Completely overwhelmed. F'ing ridiculous.
It's been two years, I'm good at stores now, though I still get a little freaked by crowds. I have a real problem dealing with change, now, too, and that sucks.
I also have a super-hard time talking to women, but, hey, don't rob banks, right?
Entrepreneurship (Score:3)
Many, many inmates make plans to start businesses when they get out. Unfortunately, they mostly have very poor educational backgrounds and there is a ton of basic stuff they don't understand.
I spent my entire sentence teaching anybody who was interested the basics of business. It ranged from the definition of "profit", to benefits of differentiation strategies vs cost leadership strategies.
Heartbreaking, frustrating, and very fulfilling.
What country do you live in? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, one more thing (Score:3)
Also, I think making prisons nicer would be a good idea. I'm in favor of basic income anyway, so it's not like I don't think we can afford it. But think of it this way, you're dealing with somebody who's life is probably shit (there's not a lot of high dollar white collar guys in jail, even most of those guys are just passing bad checks). Imagine if you took someb
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Canadian prisons are full of mentally ill people too. Single payer health care only goes so far and there is very little money for mental illness. While someone with a broken leg has an obvious problem, someone who was born to an alcoholic mother and has fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) looks healthy and is expected to be as fully functional as everyone else.
Then there are all the people that want to torture the mentally ill to teach them a lesson or such, as if that is going to cure them, especially problems l
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why think about breaking the law when those in power break the law too? this is theft plain and simple, just because they are in a prison doesn't mean that something lawfully purchased for use should be taken from them. eventually the devices will break and go their own way.
Re:prisons? dorms? mp3 players (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw that! It's not a college dorm room. It's a prison!
"Oh, but their rights"...screw that too! Make prisons a place YOU DO NOT want to be,
more like the 60's movie "Cool Hand Luke" and maybe they will think twice about breaking
the law!
Do you want them to re-offend when they get out or become productive law-abiding citizens? Then treat them fairly, harshly if need be, but fairly. That teaches them that being a productive member of a functioning society pays off.
But being arbitrary and capricious just tells them that the rules don't matter, only power. So when they get out they'll go back to breaking the law because you've failed to show them why the law is just.
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Now that Republicans are going to prison in record numbers, I assume you'll soon be advocating for prison reform.
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Nice
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Prison is already a place almost everybody doesn't want to be. Being in prision is the punishment.
What things like this teach the prison population is that it's OK to take what belongs to others with impunity so long as you wield the power. Which is exactly what we're supposed to be presenting as the wrong option - you know - the thing that got most of them into prison in the first place.
any one complaining about the mp3 get's a night in (Score:2)
any one complaining about the mp3 get's a night in the box
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If it's good enough for the White House, it's good enough for prison.
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Obsolescence?
The MP3 players are effectively being taken away from the inmates at gunpoint; this isn't about your Zune's battery dying and no new Zunes being available to purchase nor the Zune Store (or whatever it was called) being around anymore.
It's theft.
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You might find that the Constitution [wikipedia.org] disagrees with you.
Somebody should put the fear of God (literally, not just a turn of phrase) into everyone involved in this. They will all be judged for the people they oppressed when they meet their Maker (eventually, after suffering long and hard in their mortal coil).
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If your position is that we should ignore the laws, well, why have prisons at all?
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If your goal is damaging them to be unsalvageable, ensuring they're more of a danger when released -- or perhaps keeping them locked up forever and thus costing far more in prison than they ever cost in crime -- then sure... your plan sound great.
However to anyone that's not an ignorant idiot on the topic, your plan sounds shit.