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Some 12 years ago a buddy of mine got himself locked up for a stint, and I was appalled at both the process and the cost involved for contact. Phone contact re

Some 12 years ago a buddy of mine got himself locked up for a stint, and I was appalled at both the process and the cost involved for contact. Phone contact required sign up at a web page, which was some web service that to sign up looked like it had been written in 1995 for aol by a 12 year old, and even attempting to sign up didn't work on any browser I tried (I'm pretty sure Internet Explorer 6 might have worked though). The site was almost laughably bad to the point I couldn't imagine any actual security involved in them taking any payment information. I sent him some books, and told him I'd tried, but I wasn't dealing with some insecure amateur web service that was certainly created by the nephew of whoever runs his prison. I know that prison is meant to be punishment, but the industry that has sprung up around it is so exploitative and pitifully gross toward both the prisoners and any family/friends they might have it only left me even more disenfranchised with the state of the US. I feel for anyone that has or had to deal with someone in prison. I'm glad for someone with decency in the FCC to finally agree to fix the prison phone cost exploitation.

voisin 2y ago
> I know that prison is meant to be punishment That’s one purpose, but for the many people not in for life, rehabilitation (or the less controversial: prepare for re-entry into society) has to be at least some component of their purpose, and on this metric the things they do seem to be massively counterproductive.
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  I read an interview with a prison warden. When asked what he wished the public knew better he said he wished people understood that almost all of his prisoners were going to be released at some point. Ex-gf of mine was a clinical psychologist who deal with marginal people including prisoners. She said a lot of people in jail and prison have mental health problems. And jail and prison makes those worse.
  - roughly 2y ago
    A running problem for our society is that our individual temporal planning horizons are too friggin short. On average, any one of us will live at least 75 years, and most of us will live at least a decade longer. The older we get, the more we’re reliant on institutions and other people to take care of us. Given that, things like school lunches, after-school programs, and anti-pollution measures are shockingly cheap - you’ll live your twilight years in better health and in the care of better adjusted, smarter people who don’t have a cultural memory of your generation fucking their generation. Same with prisons, mental health resources, and programs for the homeless: we live in the societies that the people affected by these programs (or their lack thereof) will return to and we suffer the effects of defunding these programs in our daily lives. That’s not the debate we have about these, though - our discourse on almost any major policy considers an effect 20 years in the future to effectively be happening to someone else, and when we inevitably arrive at the can we kicked down the road, we treat it like god left it there by mistake and we just have to deal with it now. There are things that convince me that whatever species eventually leaves earth to colonize the stars won’t be Homo sapiens in a meaningful sense, and this tendency is one of them.

voisin 2y ago

> I know that prison is meant to be punishment That’s one purpose, but for the many people not in for life, rehabilitation (or the less controversial: prepare for re-entry into society) has to be at least some component of their purpose, and on this metric the things they do seem to be massively counterproductive.

Gibbon1 2y ago
I read an interview with a prison warden. When asked what he wished the public knew better he said he wished people understood that almost all of his prisoners were going to be released at some point. Ex-gf of mine was a clinical psychologist who deal with marginal people including prisoners. She said a lot of people in jail and prison have mental health problems. And jail and prison makes those worse.
- roughly 2y ago
  A running problem for our society is that our individual temporal planning horizons are too friggin short. On average, any one of us will live at least 75 years, and most of us will live at least a decade longer. The older we get, the more we’re reliant on institutions and other people to take care of us. Given that, things like school lunches, after-school programs, and anti-pollution measures are shockingly cheap - you’ll live your twilight years in better health and in the care of better adjusted, smarter people who don’t have a cultural memory of your generation fucking their generation. Same with prisons, mental health resources, and programs for the homeless: we live in the societies that the people affected by these programs (or their lack thereof) will return to and we suffer the effects of defunding these programs in our daily lives. That’s not the debate we have about these, though - our discourse on almost any major policy considers an effect 20 years in the future to effectively be happening to someone else, and when we inevitably arrive at the can we kicked down the road, we treat it like god left it there by mistake and we just have to deal with it now. There are things that convince me that whatever species eventually leaves earth to colonize the stars won’t be Homo sapiens in a meaningful sense, and this tendency is one of them.