7 ms·

> This goes against any notion of just punishment. Do you have a good explanation for this? I haven't though about prisoner rights much. The obvious layman vie

> This goes against any notion of just punishment. Do you have a good explanation for this? I haven't though about prisoner rights much. The obvious layman view of this is "the whole prison thing is about restricting access to resources"

skulk 3y ago
Even without thinking too hard about purpose prisons actually serve in society, it's self-evident to me that prisoners and their families should not be thought of as piggybanks from which value should be extracted. This creates a perverse incentive to keep more people in prison, which is exactly the opposite of what we (as a society) ostensibly want.
shagie 3y ago
In many cases, the government is prohibited from providing certain things to people convicted of crimes at tax payer expense. This then means that the government has to go to third parties and contract with them to provide those goods and charge the people using them. For example, an ankle monitor - the state can't provide it and give it to the person for supervision and so the third parties who make them have a captive customer base - both the state and the individual. When looking at items inside prisons, there are special requirements for them. They need to be transparent so that contraband can't be hidden in them. There are a number of other requirements for it too. It must run on batteries that can be purchased. This creases a very small market which in turn results in higher individual prices. It is a complex topic that from one side or the other can appear to be clear cut - but the boundary between those sides is incidentally complex that results in a market that has prices much beyond what would be considered to be reasonable ... but the alternative is even more expensive or restrictive. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-one-of-the-last-american-typewriter-companies-survives https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-one-of-the-l...
- alwaysrunning 3y ago
  > It must run on batteries that can be purchased This is not true, there are electrical outlets in cells and common areas. In cells, it is a requirement for CPAP machines and in common areas there are electrical devices like TV's. The main complaint and cost for prisoners as I understand it is the high cost of calling family members. Where most people might not even remember pay phones, if you do at their peak it was $0.35 to make a call, versus $6-24 for 15 minutes in prison [2]. When you factor in that most prisoners, that can even find a job in prison, make around $0.10/hr and most of their friends and family members are struggling on the outside bc they are just poor or at least one of the bread winners is now making $0.10/hr, that $15/call is very expensive. And even those that run the prison systems will tell you the number one thing to keeping a prisoner calm is regular communication with their family and friends [1]. It also costs $0.35 to send an email, while the two companies that run the telecoms for the prisons in the US raked in $1.4B [3] Sorry my rant wasn't aimed at you, just wanted to clarify the part about batteries. [1] https://www.vera.org/news/prisons-and-jails-keep-making-it-harder-for-incarcerated-people-to-communicate-with-loved-ones https://www.vera.org/news/prisons-and-jails-keep-making-it-h... [2] https://ellabakercenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Who-Pays-FINAL.pdf https://ellabakercenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Who-P... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/high-cost-prison-communications-driving-debt-racial-wealth-gap-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/high-cost-prison-communicati...
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > It must run on batteries Are you allowed batteries in your cell if you're in your cell for battery? (sorry for the potential to polarise the discussion)
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Ah, you humour police are just being negative
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > government is prohibited from providing certain things to people convicted of crimes at tax payer expense By choice. Nothing in our Constitution bans this.
ttymck 3y ago
I think you've described the "punitive" notion of prison. There is, as I understand it, also a "reformative" notion of prison: removing dangerous people from society and attempting to rehabilitate them. In the US, I believe the overwhelming preference of the public (the "obvious layman view") is that prison should be punitive. Other cultures seem to find success with more rehabilitation-focused approaches.
- aaroninsf 3y ago
  And, this success is measureable. Outcomes in terms of overall recidivism, and in total societal cost, just as in the case of universal health care, so great as to make the American disposition appear not just irrational but willfully counterproductive. This country in its current formulation appears incapable of ever escaping the gravity of feverish Christian moralizing and the correlated vicious contempt for objective truth and measurable outcome.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Honestly, approaching problems empirically and routing around moralizing is one of my great hopes for AI. If it's a black box, nobody can fan outrage that it's not doing {insert moral but maladaptive thing}.
    - vincnetas 3y ago
      people do not need a valid or logical reason to be outraged ;)
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        They don't, but it takes a lot of chutzpah to be angry at dice!
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    > feverish Christian moralizing I realise that Christianity in the USA _means_ (to the average American) something almost unrecognisable to me as an Englishman. But if we're talking about punitive prison systems don't you think that's a little harsh considering a central tenet is the forgiveness of sins.
CptFribble 3y ago
It's a hard discussion, because the real issue is whether we as a society want prison to be about punishment or rehabilitation. Like many things, Americans generally seem to be split on the topic: Some want prison to be a hard punishing experience and are fine with low quality of life and forced labor, because they believe that this sort of punishment will make criminals regret doing crime, and discourage future people from doing crime. This is the same logic that leads to supporting the death penalty (deterrence). Others want more of a Nordic model, where prisoners are given essentially a basic but relatively-well-appointed studio apartment, good food, activities, etc - but also with a lot of mandatory therapy and "social rehab" classes and stuff like that, in order to reform prisoners back to model citizens. Really what it comes down to is what we believe is the source of crime. Are criminals regular people who made a bad choice (and thus the source of the decision can be found and rectified)? Or are they a different kind of person more likely to do crimes (and thus must be locked away from society without bothering to try and "rehab" them)? Like anything it is an incredibly complex and nuanced problem. But personally I think we should all agree that if the State is going to maintain the power to lock people up, we shouldn't allow doing so to become a profit center.
- vertis 3y ago
  It's probably some combination of both. There is a subset that can be reformed and made bad decisions, and there is a subset that are beyond help and just need to be kept from further damaging society. (fwiw: I'm very much in the rehabilitation camp)
- slt2021 3y ago
  Nordic model works in Nordic countries because there are Nordic people with a singular race and culture and it works for them. One could argue that deterrence should be a major factor just because of demographics of US prison system. For example look at Singapore/Indonesia/Philippines and how they solved drug trafficking problem. US for sure could learn a lot from Singapore Rehabilitation already exists for minor crimes and first-time offenders, but the people who end up in actually prison are wayyy past any rehabilitation, its not their first rodeo
  - 3y ago
birdofhermes 3y ago
The 5th, 8th and 13th Amendments and their various interpretations in court opinions: this is a good place to start learning about prisoner rights. Some argue that prisoners do not enjoy access to any constitutional rights, or perhaps only a few of them. But if this were true, surely the Constitution would have explicitly established them as a specific underclass, as it did for slaves.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  The constitution does actually explicitly establish convicts as a specific underclass; in fact it literally specifically allows them and only them to be slaves. The 13th amendment reads: > 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.
  - birdofhermes 3y ago
    The 13th Amendment belongs to a different document than the Constitution proper and was ratified about eighty years later. From the standpoint of the dominant school of constitutional interpretation, the distinction matters.
    - ndriscoll 3y ago
      You're going to have to clarify what you mean on that. I'm not aware of any school of thought that thinks amendments to the constitution are somehow distinct or less valid. The original document provided processes for amending (i.e. modifying) it, and amendments were made under those rules. An "amendment" is literally a modification to a document; that's what the word means. In fact, to the extent that there's a distinction, it's that amendments take priority over the previous version of the document. Obviously they'd have to; otherwise that would just mean you can't amend the original document. According to the current version of the US constitution, which is the only one that matters, slavery is legal in exactly that one circumstance.
bastardoperator 3y ago
[flagged]
- r00fus 3y ago
  Maybe we shouldn't be putting them in there then? On the taxpayer dime...
  - bastardoperator 3y ago
    I'm happy to pay for reform, people make mistakes. Our prison system isn't about punishment or reform anymore, and you're right, in prison, you shouldn't have a bunch of this stuff available to you. We should be putting violent criminals in prison, that's certainly better then what we used to do. If you want to have them work to pay for their prison stay, I think that's fine. We literally have homeless people committing crimes to go to jail because it's cleaner, warmer and safer. That how bad it is for some free people, being locked up has upside. Craziness...
aeturnum 3y ago
Sure - prisoners are people who society has determined should have limits on their freedom and maybe this can be understood as a reasonable limit? Different people would draw lines in different places. For me, it seems essential that we preserve access to intellectual and communicative resources for at least two reasons: the post-prison future for correctly convicted people and the wrongly convicted. Prison must, after all, be a thing one is allowed to "move past" in a meaningful way. I think "reasonable"[1] access to communication & informational resources is a sensible bedrock upon which to guarantee that people who've done wrong and completed their proper punishment can spend their time and energy preparing to lead a more productive life after they are free. [1] What this word means always causes a fight but at least we're talking about it.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Profiting off an inmate's desire to communicate with their family seems egregiously "unreasonable", for starters. And to your post-prison future point, maladaptive. Discharging someone at the end of their sentence with (a) family and social connections strained or severed, (b) depleted financial resources, & (c) a barrier to jobs in many states... does not sound like a mix that reduces recidivism. Instead, reasoning backwards from a complete, well-adjusted person at discharge time, and figuring out what the prison needs to provide to an inmate during their incarceration to end up that person, and then funding it as needed without any prisoners-need-to-pay-for-themselves BS, makes more sense. That said, I do think there should very much be tiering of prisons. There are some irredeemably fucked up individuals, who have burned through multiple chances, and one of the worst things we could do to people interested in getting their life back on track is mix them in with those people.
  - aeturnum 3y ago
    I totally agree that it's important (to all of us) that prisoners be able to maintain their most intimate connections. > I do think there should very much be tiering of prisons. There are some irredeemably fucked up individuals, who have burned through multiple chances I both know what you mean and think it's important to consider the current unacceptable state of prisons (which isn't exactly new) when thinking about people using up "multiple" chances. I don't have easy answers at all but part of this is how easy it is to write people off based on an incomplete understanding of their situation.
bsder 3y ago
What is the purpose of "prison"? Sure, you need to keep someone who murders people away from the general population. That purpose of prison is restriction. However, you have way more people in "prison" for things like drug possession. The purpose of prison in that case should be rehabilitation. You can help people kick their drug problem as well as gain education that they likely missed for various reasons. "Restricting" these people's access to resources is counterproductive. The problem is that people in the US have forgotten that the purpose of incarceration should be about "paying your debt to society" and that afterward you should be reintegrated. It's also an issue that people in the US seem to believe that prison has a deterrent effect. By and large, it does not (white collar crime being the exception--but we never hear about increasing the penalties for executives). People who are committing crime are not going to be deterred by small adjustments to prison sentences. They know that going to prison is a risk and are doing it anyway.
DinaCoder99 3y ago
The whole american court system has a pretty twisted conception of justice—it's all based around punishment and "deterrence" despite all evidence that this is a super inefficient way to discourage crime.
vincnetas 3y ago
depends what is your idea of prison. is this a way to punish a person or to rehabilitate him. if it is to punish then then this looks like vicious cycle.

skulk 3y ago

Even without thinking too hard about purpose prisons actually serve in society, it's self-evident to me that prisoners and their families should not be thought of as piggybanks from which value should be extracted. This creates a perverse incentive to keep more people in prison, which is exactly the opposite of what we (as a society) ostensibly want.

shagie 3y ago

In many cases, the government is prohibited from providing certain things to people convicted of crimes at tax payer expense. This then means that the government has to go to third parties and contract with them to provide those goods and charge the people using them. For example, an ankle monitor - the state can't provide it and give it to the person for supervision and so the third parties who make them have a captive customer base - both the state and the individual. When looking at items inside prisons, there are special requirements for them. They need to be transparent so that contraband can't be hidden in them. There are a number of other requirements for it too. It must run on batteries that can be purchased. This creases a very small market which in turn results in higher individual prices. It is a complex topic that from one side or the other can appear to be clear cut - but the boundary between those sides is incidentally complex that results in a market that has prices much beyond what would be considered to be reasonable ... but the alternative is even more expensive or restrictive. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-one-of-the-last-american-typewriter-companies-survives https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-one-of-the-l...

alwaysrunning 3y ago
> It must run on batteries that can be purchased This is not true, there are electrical outlets in cells and common areas. In cells, it is a requirement for CPAP machines and in common areas there are electrical devices like TV's. The main complaint and cost for prisoners as I understand it is the high cost of calling family members. Where most people might not even remember pay phones, if you do at their peak it was $0.35 to make a call, versus $6-24 for 15 minutes in prison [2]. When you factor in that most prisoners, that can even find a job in prison, make around $0.10/hr and most of their friends and family members are struggling on the outside bc they are just poor or at least one of the bread winners is now making $0.10/hr, that $15/call is very expensive. And even those that run the prison systems will tell you the number one thing to keeping a prisoner calm is regular communication with their family and friends [1]. It also costs $0.35 to send an email, while the two companies that run the telecoms for the prisons in the US raked in $1.4B [3] Sorry my rant wasn't aimed at you, just wanted to clarify the part about batteries. [1] https://www.vera.org/news/prisons-and-jails-keep-making-it-harder-for-incarcerated-people-to-communicate-with-loved-ones https://www.vera.org/news/prisons-and-jails-keep-making-it-h... [2] https://ellabakercenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Who-Pays-FINAL.pdf https://ellabakercenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Who-P... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/high-cost-prison-communications-driving-debt-racial-wealth-gap-2021-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/high-cost-prison-communicati...
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> It must run on batteries Are you allowed batteries in your cell if you're in your cell for battery? (sorry for the potential to polarise the discussion)
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Ah, you humour police are just being negative
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> government is prohibited from providing certain things to people convicted of crimes at tax payer expense By choice. Nothing in our Constitution bans this.

ttymck 3y ago

I think you've described the "punitive" notion of prison. There is, as I understand it, also a "reformative" notion of prison: removing dangerous people from society and attempting to rehabilitate them. In the US, I believe the overwhelming preference of the public (the "obvious layman view") is that prison should be punitive. Other cultures seem to find success with more rehabilitation-focused approaches.

aaroninsf 3y ago
And, this success is measureable. Outcomes in terms of overall recidivism, and in total societal cost, just as in the case of universal health care, so great as to make the American disposition appear not just irrational but willfully counterproductive. This country in its current formulation appears incapable of ever escaping the gravity of feverish Christian moralizing and the correlated vicious contempt for objective truth and measurable outcome.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Honestly, approaching problems empirically and routing around moralizing is one of my great hopes for AI. If it's a black box, nobody can fan outrage that it's not doing {insert moral but maladaptive thing}.
  - vincnetas 3y ago
    people do not need a valid or logical reason to be outraged ;)
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      They don't, but it takes a lot of chutzpah to be angry at dice!
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > feverish Christian moralizing I realise that Christianity in the USA _means_ (to the average American) something almost unrecognisable to me as an Englishman. But if we're talking about punitive prison systems don't you think that's a little harsh considering a central tenet is the forgiveness of sins.

CptFribble 3y ago

It's a hard discussion, because the real issue is whether we as a society want prison to be about punishment or rehabilitation. Like many things, Americans generally seem to be split on the topic: Some want prison to be a hard punishing experience and are fine with low quality of life and forced labor, because they believe that this sort of punishment will make criminals regret doing crime, and discourage future people from doing crime. This is the same logic that leads to supporting the death penalty (deterrence). Others want more of a Nordic model, where prisoners are given essentially a basic but relatively-well-appointed studio apartment, good food, activities, etc - but also with a lot of mandatory therapy and "social rehab" classes and stuff like that, in order to reform prisoners back to model citizens. Really what it comes down to is what we believe is the source of crime. Are criminals regular people who made a bad choice (and thus the source of the decision can be found and rectified)? Or are they a different kind of person more likely to do crimes (and thus must be locked away from society without bothering to try and "rehab" them)? Like anything it is an incredibly complex and nuanced problem. But personally I think we should all agree that if the State is going to maintain the power to lock people up, we shouldn't allow doing so to become a profit center.

vertis 3y ago
It's probably some combination of both. There is a subset that can be reformed and made bad decisions, and there is a subset that are beyond help and just need to be kept from further damaging society. (fwiw: I'm very much in the rehabilitation camp)
slt2021 3y ago
Nordic model works in Nordic countries because there are Nordic people with a singular race and culture and it works for them. One could argue that deterrence should be a major factor just because of demographics of US prison system. For example look at Singapore/Indonesia/Philippines and how they solved drug trafficking problem. US for sure could learn a lot from Singapore Rehabilitation already exists for minor crimes and first-time offenders, but the people who end up in actually prison are wayyy past any rehabilitation, its not their first rodeo
- 3y ago

birdofhermes 3y ago

The 5th, 8th and 13th Amendments and their various interpretations in court opinions: this is a good place to start learning about prisoner rights. Some argue that prisoners do not enjoy access to any constitutional rights, or perhaps only a few of them. But if this were true, surely the Constitution would have explicitly established them as a specific underclass, as it did for slaves.

ndriscoll 3y ago
The constitution does actually explicitly establish convicts as a specific underclass; in fact it literally specifically allows them and only them to be slaves. The 13th amendment reads: > 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.
- birdofhermes 3y ago
  The 13th Amendment belongs to a different document than the Constitution proper and was ratified about eighty years later. From the standpoint of the dominant school of constitutional interpretation, the distinction matters.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    You're going to have to clarify what you mean on that. I'm not aware of any school of thought that thinks amendments to the constitution are somehow distinct or less valid. The original document provided processes for amending (i.e. modifying) it, and amendments were made under those rules. An "amendment" is literally a modification to a document; that's what the word means. In fact, to the extent that there's a distinction, it's that amendments take priority over the previous version of the document. Obviously they'd have to; otherwise that would just mean you can't amend the original document. According to the current version of the US constitution, which is the only one that matters, slavery is legal in exactly that one circumstance.

bastardoperator 3y ago

[flagged]

r00fus 3y ago
Maybe we shouldn't be putting them in there then? On the taxpayer dime...
- bastardoperator 3y ago
  I'm happy to pay for reform, people make mistakes. Our prison system isn't about punishment or reform anymore, and you're right, in prison, you shouldn't have a bunch of this stuff available to you. We should be putting violent criminals in prison, that's certainly better then what we used to do. If you want to have them work to pay for their prison stay, I think that's fine. We literally have homeless people committing crimes to go to jail because it's cleaner, warmer and safer. That how bad it is for some free people, being locked up has upside. Craziness...

aeturnum 3y ago

Sure - prisoners are people who society has determined should have limits on their freedom and maybe this can be understood as a reasonable limit? Different people would draw lines in different places. For me, it seems essential that we preserve access to intellectual and communicative resources for at least two reasons: the post-prison future for correctly convicted people and the wrongly convicted. Prison must, after all, be a thing one is allowed to "move past" in a meaningful way. I think "reasonable"[1] access to communication & informational resources is a sensible bedrock upon which to guarantee that people who've done wrong and completed their proper punishment can spend their time and energy preparing to lead a more productive life after they are free. [1] What this word means always causes a fight but at least we're talking about it.

ethbr1 3y ago
Profiting off an inmate's desire to communicate with their family seems egregiously "unreasonable", for starters. And to your post-prison future point, maladaptive. Discharging someone at the end of their sentence with (a) family and social connections strained or severed, (b) depleted financial resources, & (c) a barrier to jobs in many states... does not sound like a mix that reduces recidivism. Instead, reasoning backwards from a complete, well-adjusted person at discharge time, and figuring out what the prison needs to provide to an inmate during their incarceration to end up that person, and then funding it as needed without any prisoners-need-to-pay-for-themselves BS, makes more sense. That said, I do think there should very much be tiering of prisons. There are some irredeemably fucked up individuals, who have burned through multiple chances, and one of the worst things we could do to people interested in getting their life back on track is mix them in with those people.
- aeturnum 3y ago
  I totally agree that it's important (to all of us) that prisoners be able to maintain their most intimate connections. > I do think there should very much be tiering of prisons. There are some irredeemably fucked up individuals, who have burned through multiple chances I both know what you mean and think it's important to consider the current unacceptable state of prisons (which isn't exactly new) when thinking about people using up "multiple" chances. I don't have easy answers at all but part of this is how easy it is to write people off based on an incomplete understanding of their situation.

bsder 3y ago

What is the purpose of "prison"? Sure, you need to keep someone who murders people away from the general population. That purpose of prison is restriction. However, you have way more people in "prison" for things like drug possession. The purpose of prison in that case should be rehabilitation. You can help people kick their drug problem as well as gain education that they likely missed for various reasons. "Restricting" these people's access to resources is counterproductive. The problem is that people in the US have forgotten that the purpose of incarceration should be about "paying your debt to society" and that afterward you should be reintegrated. It's also an issue that people in the US seem to believe that prison has a deterrent effect. By and large, it does not (white collar crime being the exception--but we never hear about increasing the penalties for executives). People who are committing crime are not going to be deterred by small adjustments to prison sentences. They know that going to prison is a risk and are doing it anyway.

DinaCoder99 3y ago

The whole american court system has a pretty twisted conception of justice—it's all based around punishment and "deterrence" despite all evidence that this is a super inefficient way to discourage crime.

vincnetas 3y ago

depends what is your idea of prison. is this a way to punish a person or to rehabilitate him. if it is to punish then then this looks like vicious cycle.