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The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
- toomuchtodo 11y agoKudos to the Prison Policy Initiative and Demand Progress for kicking ass on this. This is what progress looks like.
- zem 11y ago> The reform passed 3:2 along partisan lines, with the appointed Democrat commissioners voting in favor, and Republicans against. it's kind of terrifying to think that a single republican in the wrong place could have blocked a measure affecting millions of people.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoWhat are you trying to say? Pretty much every measure affects millions of people. Are you terrified to think that some things --no matter what!-- might get blocked?
- zem 11y agono, my point was more along the lines of there being no reason other than pure obstructionism to block this particular ruling, and that a single person could have effectively killed it.
- jMyles 11y agoIt's just odd on its face that so many of these decisions, which absolutely have an otherwise legislative character, are being made by the executive branch.
- jimrandomh 11y agoThe legislative branch has been derelict in its duties for a decade. Someone has to pick up the slack.
- eli 11y agoThe FCC is an independent agency created by Congress, not part of the executive branch.
- dragonwriter 11y agoThe FCC is an independent executive agency, and is part of the executive branch outside of the scope of the executive departments. It is, to be sure, created by Congress, but that's true of most of the executive branch, including the executive departments.
- eli 11y agoNo. That is simply wrong. The President cannot nominate Commissioners except to fill a vacancy, nor can he order them to take any action. They do not work for him. Congress created the FCC and Congress has oversight of the FCC. https://www.fcc.gov/what-we-do https://www.fcc.gov/what-we-do "An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the commission is the United States' primary authority for communications law, regulation and technological innovation."
- smt88 11y agoAs someone else said, the FCC isn't created or controlled by the executive branch. Many decisions with a "legislative character" are, however, made by the executive branch through executive agencies (Dept of Agriculture, Dept of Homeland Security, etc.) These agencies only exist with the blessing of Congress, though, so they technically derive their power from the legislative branch. If that sounds weird, it is. The legality and limits of executive agencies is still somewhat of an open question, even though they've been around for 150+ years.
- unethical_ban 11y agoIt's frustrating how much Congress has ceded to these agencies. it's a loophole in democracy.
- smt88 11y agoTo me, it's a mixed bag. For example, the EPA is working (though not enough) to prevent the end of human life on earth. That's something I wouldn't trust Congress to do, since they seem to be gridlocked forever on all common sense issues. But then there are agencies like the USDA, which fed "pink slime" to children for years in order to help out the cattle industry[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime
- jessaustin 11y agoThere's nothing wrong with pink slime. If you want to eat cheap nutritious beef, it's a good thing. If you're a meat-packer trying to be less wasteful, it's a good thing. If you think the best pretext on which to wage class war is the content of various school lunches, apparently it's golden. Pink slime is only a marginally-bad thing for cattle ranchers like me. I would benefit if people decided to only eat ribeye, because ribeye is a small portion of the total carcass and that would drive up the price of cattle. Conversely, every beef patty sold that includes 10% pink slime lowers the price of cattle just a little bit.
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- irl_zebra 11y agoUnder that logic, didn't a single Democrat in the right place pass a measure that affects millions of people?
- jMyles 11y agoI know this is controversial, but the humane thing to do is to allow inmates unfettered access to the internet. Contrary to the orthodoxy on the matter, I assert that this will reduce the strength and relevance of 'prison gangs.'
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Someone1234 11y agoExtremely controversial. Stopping prisoners from harassing their victims/witnesses against them/enemies or organising others to do their dirty work externally is already a massive problem. Prisons have the ability to listen to calls and read mail to try and curtail it. Giving them access to the internet makes all of this far easier, and monitoring it far more expensive. Not to mention that now they can use the internet to commit new crimes, and they have nothing better to do for the years or tens of years that they're sitting in a cell. I think giving them access to email is do-able, since that is no different in practice to physical letters. But giving them unrestricted access is a monitoring nightmare.
- mtrpcic 11y agoIt's a lot easier to curtail things like this on the internet. It would be dirt easy to set it up to only allow certain content (let's call it "constructive" content, like Wikipedia, various news sources, etc.), while blocking content with specific keywords. Prisons have a finite amount of traffic, it's not like we're setting up the GFC. It's dirt simple and dirt cheap to set iptables up to handle this with the limited traffic coming out of a single prison. I could probably do it for less than $400 on some budget hardware, and have it be pretty solid/reliable. We should be allowing these people access to the information and knowledge so they can better themselves and broaden their horizons. We can do that while simultaneously blocking their ability to "contribute" to the global discussion if we need/want to.
- bzbarsky 11y ago
- Someone1234 11y agoI don't understand why the Republicans voted against. Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since hopefully competition will provide the market price. Essentially they have lost the forest for the trees. Yes government weighing into capitalism is "bad" but government already allowed that by removing competition, so this is a correction of that existing issue. The article touched on the whole video conferencing thing... It is absolutely criminal that jails restrict actual visitation for the purposes of then charging prisoners to use their video conferencing system (sometimes which requires the family to physically visit the prison, thus making it even more farcical). The whole private prison thing makes me want to vomit.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> The whole private prison thing makes me want to vomit. Muckrock (shoutout to @morisey) is doing an investigative piece on private prisons. If possible, please think about contributing $10-20 on it. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-sells-whos-buying/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-s...
- thatswrong0 11y agoI'm going to keep reiterating this: private prisons are not the problem. They are a problem, and a relatively small one at that compared to other systemic abuses. > Far more influential are political benefits that elected officials of both political parties harvested over the decades by being tough on crime as well as the billions of dollars earned by government-run prisons’ employees and private contractors and vendors. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/10/07/private_prisons_parasite/ http://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/10/07/private_prisons_...
- TerryADavis 11y agoGet the God phone, nigger. Fuck mortals. Swiss cheese phone? God says... Helen's inhale cautiousness wanna handcuffed dibbling sunscreen bustle unclasping dab's reappointed overburden intellectualize Allegra's circlet inertness goatherd sought cupcake correcter Blondel obituary dossier rasping shrugs feelingly illumination Bob's disallows bar's drive's holdup's scumbags swagger's bushwhackers constitute regally obscenity blacker tire's attack initiate belittled hotheaded mintier chubby Superglue's fluorite perusal's flatfoot's boudoir rosemary whitefish Sappho Caterpillar promontories Olmsted's devilled shushed typographers Mesopotamia rigged acrostic Stark blotched trickle's eddying holdings France chock's insurrection's prefix's relishing Astana's McGuire's soundtrack chef sirs Ayyubid corruptness electioneer provenance remunerated diagnosing paramedicals cupboards artsy baobab's Ismail convinced conspicuous Pugh mopped rappers accuser's colliers facings Akhmatova quantum phonetics
- TimMeade 11y agoNot to be the naysayer on this but it is a very serious incursion on states rights. The legal consensus i'm hearing is that it will be overturned by the judicial system. Does the FCC have the right to tell a state or town what to do with local calls? That is the root of this. It's a given that they can regulate interstate, but historically intrastate has been the rights of the states.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoIn the event this is overturned judicially, I intend to incorporate a 501c3 non-profit (or B Corp, depending on the legalities) to provide these services at-cost to deep six Securus Technologies' profiting off of this.
- vonmoltke 11y agoWhy do you think that will work? If it was that easy, Securus would already have competitors.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoI intend to use lobbying efforts in concert with a technical solution, even if I have to go state by state. Everyone here hustles for something different; I hustle for a better (imho) world. I cannot sit back and watch shitty people be shitty. Each personal project I work on is technical primarily, but each requires me to involve myself more in the political process by design. Technology alone will not change things, so I must get better at the people part of the process to enact the change I wish to see.
- smt88 11y agoCheck out https://pigeon.ly https://pigeon.ly
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- revscat 11y ago> The reform passed 3:2 along partisan lines, with the appointed Democrat commissioners voting in favor, and Republicans against. While there has been far too much cross-party desire to be "tough on crime", this is yet another example where the GOP seems to be stuck in the past, unwilling to recognize the failure and brutality of that stance. And while this is absolutely a positive step, meaningful reforms will not transpire to any significant degree so long as state governments are dominated by conservatives. They may occasionally voice social justice concerns, but want to comes time to vote on those issues the result is what you see here, almost without exception.
- ars 11y agoIt's not that. They felt they did not have the legal authority to do this, and that it would be struck down by the courts.
- smt88 11y agoWhat would be the harm in doing it and then seeing if the courts struck it down? That's done in politics all the time. Their explanation was just a smokescreen. It's politically dangerous as a Republican to look like you have compassion for convicted criminals.
- ars 11y ago> What would be the harm in doing it and then seeing if the courts struck it down? That's a pretty terrible way to run a government. When you elect someone you expect them to follow the law and do their job. Not just do anything they want and say "it's fine, if we are wrong the court will fix it".
- smt88 11y ago> That's a pretty terrible way to run a government. When you elect someone you expect them to follow the law and do their job. Whether or not it's terrible, it's the system of checks and balances that was envisioned by the founders of the United States. It's exactly how our government has (and does) run for its entire history. The courts exist for this purpose. "Follow the law" is not cut-and-dried. Statutes can be interpreted any number of ways, and very little common law is set in stone. Even common law created by the Supreme Court (e.g. Roe v Wade) it incredibly controversial and could be challenged again.
- icodestuff 11y agoHas the FCC had price-setting power since the Bell days? Particularly when it comes to surcharges, and as applied to state prisons, I imagine this is going to be overturned judicially.
- rgovind 11y agoGreat move. But What does this mean for Pigeon.ly?
- rootedbox 11y agoProbably not much.. From what I can tell they are only at 8 facilities.
- smt88 11y agoThey do a lot more than just voice calls.
- SnowCrash2829 11y agoI thought they just do voice calls and mail pictures right now.
- smt88 11y agoBasically, yeah: voice, photos by mail, text by mail, and then some kind of support group/social network for wives and girlfriends of prisoners[1]. What an unfortunate name for that service, though... 1. https://pigeon.ly/prisonwives https://pigeon.ly/prisonwives
- ctdonath 11y agoFor a while I worked on a 3rd-party/collect-call billing system for a major telecom company. For several days after starting, technical discussions mentioned "inmate" every few minutes. Still getting my bearings, I finally piped up in a meeting with "surely it doesn't mean what I think it means, what is this 'inmate' you keep referring to?" Indeed it meant "prison resident". The problem was that inmates very often abused the phones, rattling thru call menus until they could get a live operator - then proceed to berate/insult/degrade/abuse/etc the person. Result was that our call processing had to ensure that, at every juncture, prison inmates were NEVER able to reach a live operator - and a bunch of money got sunk into this system JUST to mitigate the rampant abuse by prison inmates.
- plonh 11y agoWas this because the phone system had the only people the prisoner could talk to about their problems?
- ctdonath 11y agoOnly if an unrelenting stream of verbal abuse & degrading profanity constitutes "talking about their problems".
- vectorjohn 11y agoAfter rattling thru call menus trying to get a live operator, I'd be pissed off enough to berate the person too.
- revscat 11y agoThat may have been their stated objection, but the broader pattern belies this. The broader pattern is "make life as difficult for the poor, middle class, and the minorities as possible."
- nickff 11y agoWhy must you accuse your intellectual opponents of being mean and evil? Why would they be so cruel and irrational? Do you have any real reason to believe you are any better than them?
- anon432 11y agoLook into the research of Jonathan Haidt.
- nickff 11y agoYes, I am aware of the psychological reasons why people hold themselves in high esteem while accusing their opponents of moral corruption; my rhetorical questions were meant to highlight the absurdity of the accusations.
- anon432 11y agoHaidt's research actually suggests this behavior is more common amongst progressives because they subscribe to a narrower moral framework based on fairness and harm-reduction while conservatives incorporate other elements such as loyalty, respect for authority, and purity. Thus, when the two disagree, conservatives, being concerned with fairness and harm reduction but not exclusively so, are able to understand the progressive position and understand why progressives disagree with them, but progressives are unable to likewise understand the conservative position and why conservatives disagree with them, so they assume wickedness instead.
- wfo 11y agoBecause it takes a whole lot of energy to constantly invent imaginary earnest justification after imaginary earnest justification for a group of people who consistently come out against making life better for the less fortunate at every turn. No matter the cost or savings or lack of either, no matter the circumstance -- it's always vote against the interests of the disadvantaged. And it doesn't help when it's literally the focus of their stated ideology. Or when the leaders of their party say things to the effect of "Our goal is to destroy this president at all costs no matter what it does to the country or the american people" I get that it's easy to say it's always a mistake or oversimplification to call a group of people evil, but what if they actually are?
- devit 11y agoWhy not $0? The marginal cost of the bandwidth required to make the phone calls is negligible, so there is no reason it should cost anything to the inmates. A simple solution to achieve such a result is to buy a cell phone plan with unlimited minutes and route calls through it.
- comrh 11y ago> Prisons like the Maryland facility featured in the hit podcast “Serial” sign exclusive contracts with companies like Global Tel-Link, and receive a cut of the proceeds from each call, creating an incentive to raise rates as much as possible. Cause the prison makes $$$.
- nedwin 11y agoAlso because, they say, there are costs to the prison in having phones including monitoring to make sure prisoners aren't breaking any laws. I think these costs should be a cost of doing business as a prison, whereas they consider it should be "user pays".
- nickalewis 11y agoWe need to eliminate or limit kickbacks next. This is a monumental decision for inmates & their families, but long-term progress can be made by getting rid of commissions, particularly at the state & local level. The FCC chose not to make a decision on commissions (citing the lack of legal authority) however it's eliminating or limiting these kickbacks thats needed to really re-align the market. Currently commissions are negotiated on a percentage basis, so facilities have an incentive to favor high customer costs since they get a chunk. This could be improved by legislation limiting commissions to a per-minute basis, so facilities have incentive to favor lower cost & higher-volume. That way rates continue to move downward. Think about it like this... With the FCC's decision today rates are limited to a max of 0.14 cent a minute. Since commissions are percentage based a facility could demand 13.99999 cent commissions. Theres no incentive for them not to! If states were to set a maximum per-minute commissions at say, .05 cent a minute, it would encourage facilities to push the rates down in order to increase usage. Rates would never fall below .05 cent, but facilities would have incentive to push the rates down as close to the maximum as they could. It would also help cut down on the extra fees vendor's charge. Since extra fees eat into the money that families can spend on actual calls, facilities would have financial incentive to favor lower fees that would increase the number of minutes used. We've seen nationwide[1] that lowering the total price to families increases call volume. Also increasing phone calls fights recidivism and heals family units. It's something I've been reading and personally care alot about with my work with Penmate[2]. Today's victory was landmark, but there's certainly more progress ahead. [1] 2014 FCC Report on ICS (search 'call volumes') http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000975214 http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000975214 [2] http://penmateapp.com http://penmateapp.com
- giancarlostoro 11y agoWow what a racket! For Less than $3 a month you could call the US / Canada with Skype, I don't imagine Skype does anything special that makes it more affordable to do the same things the prison system more or less end up doing, but that's horrible $1 a minute...
- rw2 11y agoDoesn't kill the YC startup that works to lower prison call rates if it goes through? http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/pigeon-ly/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/pigeon-ly/
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- emmab 11y agoHow can anything this horrible exist ;_;