7 ms·

Did a murderer and a sex offender just save Oklahoma $20 million?

39 points by marshc1 13y ago

bcl 13y ago
Where is the source? The taxpayers are paying their room and board, this software should be freely available on github. Might even help with the auditing process.
Shivetya 13y ago
just because they go to prison doesn't mean they have to stop contributing to society. There are probably a good number of such individuals that need the chance and encouragement. Idle minds serve no one
- tux1968 13y ago
  You're right of course, but we have to be careful about unintended(?) side effects. It's a very short road from prisoner development to the state having an unhealthy economic incentive to lock people up.
  - thenerdfiles 13y ago
    Are you talking to the militant hacker crowd? Hey, aren't you? I do believe we call that a "draft". http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/are-mexico-drug-gangs-drafting-hackers http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/are-mexico-drug-ga... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/18/rsa-russian-speaking-hackers-drafting-new-recruits/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/18/rsa-russian-speaking-... OR: An unhealthy economic incentive to release [made-for-prison] software onto the public writ large. (And if the software isn't sufficiently modular, what kind of unwanted surveillance comes "for free" – or "batteries includes"?) A dialogue: A: "What did you do in prison?" B: "Started a hacker school that wrote the surveillance program which monitors this very traffic intersection." A: "What were you in for?" B: "Drunk driving; caused an accident." A: "Does it see my concealed metals?" B: "If you move fast enough. We had to make first launch!" Will this tease out public opinion on "rehabilitation"? Or will it show how we really feel about "bootstrapping"?
holyjaw 13y ago
It all sounds good, until you get to the barcodes: > "Prisoners each have a bar code they can scan, ..." > "When an inmate’s bar code is scanned, prison officials would be alerted that they should receive a diabetic meal, or a Halal or Kosher meal."
- DanBC 13y ago
  I'm not quite sure what your point is?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - downandout 13y ago
      Umm what? It's prison. It is 100% intended to be totalitarian.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - VLM 13y ago
        yeah, you know, to prepare them for the real world upon release.
        derleth 13y ago
        That's what a halfway house is for.
        gknoy 13y ago
        Your comment is sadly-humorous in two different ways. Well played!
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 13y ago
DanBC 13y ago
I'm interested in the 2 different prices. > The software showed that Sysco, which supplies food to the state prison system, was charging the state different prices for the same food item sent to two different facilities, From the linked Oklahomian article: > “In some cases an exact same item might arrive at Lexington (Assessment and Reception Center) and Harp at the same warehouse, and one has a different price than the other,” Murphey said. Was that a deliberate underhand move by Sysco, or is it normal expected part of contracting the job out? Or is it even more mundane, and just a price break for ordering more? It's nice to think that there's a prison where inmates are not just allowed to rot. Here's another story where inmates get to do challenging, rewarding work looking after inmates with dementia. Warning: It contains graphic accounts of horrible violence. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-among-aging-criminals.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all& http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dement...
- kiba 13y ago
  It's nice to think that there's a prison where inmates are not just allowed to rot. That how our prisons should work. It may not satisfy a human being's need for retribution, but when did inflicting harm more than what's necessary to keep humans safe ever did for humanity? Anytime you jail a human being, you're using up resources to feed them, shelter them, and protect them from dangerous human beings. That cost taxpayer money. Why not get something out of the condemned by fixing them and studying them and making them better so that the prison system will collapse because it's so effective at repairing? (Of course, there are human beings that may be unfixable, but the vast majority probably are)
  - cardamomo 13y ago
    > Why not get something out of the condemned by fixing them and studying them and making them better I understand your point--prisons can be rehabilitative or educational institutions rather than fulfilling a purely retributive function--but your language is setting off some alarm bells for me. We ought to shift from using the language of "fixing" people to helping people or, in many cases, fixing the system.
  - 13y ago
balabaster 13y ago
Was this software vetted by security experts to make sure it wasn't being used behind the scenes for anything nefarious? Like say, exploitation of prison computer systems etc.?
billpg 13y ago
An actual sex offender or just someone caught up in some politician's moral panic? At least "murderer" hasn't been hi-jacked. Yet.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  They didn't actually name the person, so that is unknowable. My uninformed impression however is that while many people may unjustly get the "sex offender" label (for example, somebody who got caught pissing in an alley behind a bar), the people who receive a "sex offender" label and jail time skew towards the "did something that actually has a victim" crowd.
  - asmithmd1 13y ago
    Has a victim and doesn't have enough money to buy enough "justice" to keep them out of prison.
    - acjohnson55 13y ago
      ...perhaps be fleeing to Europe and continuing their career in film?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - altero 13y ago
    Perhaps he had anal sex with his wife.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    the people who receive a "sex offender" label and jail time skew towards the "did something that actually has a victim" crowd. To give you an idea of what can also satisfy this group of facts, they could also have been urinating in public, which in many places earns the offender a place on the sex offender list for life, then resist arrest with a conviction for assault on a police officer due to a lack of funds of a lawyer. So, y'know, it's good to keep one's moral panic gauge calibrated according to the current state of the law.
altero 13y ago
I wonder if Oklahoma purchased license to use this software.
- dopamean 13y ago
  Purchased a license? I bet they own it.
  - altero 13y ago
    It is a question how author law is set. But prisoner does not lose rights to own things.
logn 13y ago
There's a fine line between prisoner and slave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOR -> Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job. Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour, and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts. I think work and education/skills are key to being a healthy human. I just worry that prison labor could easily cross over from being rehabilitative to being exploitative.
- mistercow 13y ago
  >I just worry that prison labor could easily cross over from being rehabilitative to being exploitative. I think we've already crossed that line. As far as I know, they don't do it directly, but prison lobbying groups have worked hard to increase the use of mandatory minimum sentences, make sentencing harsher, and keep the war on drugs going. To me the line is where prisons go from making use of a labor pool that already exists, to actively trying to increase the size of that labor pool.
  - csallen 13y ago
    I see where you're coming from, but I disagree that the degree to which prisons campaign to increase the size of the prisoner labor pool is indicative of exploitation. Imagine an hypothetical situation in which a prison teaches its occupants to code, pays them market wages, and turns a profit. If demand for programmers was high, this prison would be heavily incentivized to lobby for more prisoners, but you'd be hard-pressed to call the nature of the work "exploitative".
    - meric 13y ago
      That can only work if, on average, prisoners in prisons are innately better at programming than programmers in offices. Otherwise there may not be a competitive advantage, there may even be a competitive disadvantage.
acjohnson55 13y ago
Interesting story. I say give these people resources to be productive and a certain number of hours a day. Let them own their own IP. The point of prison shouldn't be to punish, but to rehabilitate people, if possible, and if not, to keep other people safe from them. Either way, if people have the capability to contribute to society while behind bars, why not let them? (As other posters have noted, it's important to make sure the prison/industrial complex isn't being incentivized to increase prisoner count in all this, as they are today.)

39 points by marshc1 13y ago

bcl 13y ago

Where is the source? The taxpayers are paying their room and board, this software should be freely available on github. Might even help with the auditing process.

Shivetya 13y ago

just because they go to prison doesn't mean they have to stop contributing to society. There are probably a good number of such individuals that need the chance and encouragement. Idle minds serve no one

tux1968 13y ago
You're right of course, but we have to be careful about unintended(?) side effects. It's a very short road from prisoner development to the state having an unhealthy economic incentive to lock people up.
- thenerdfiles 13y ago
  Are you talking to the militant hacker crowd? Hey, aren't you? I do believe we call that a "draft". http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/are-mexico-drug-gangs-drafting-hackers http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/are-mexico-drug-ga... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/18/rsa-russian-speaking-hackers-drafting-new-recruits/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/18/rsa-russian-speaking-... OR: An unhealthy economic incentive to release [made-for-prison] software onto the public writ large. (And if the software isn't sufficiently modular, what kind of unwanted surveillance comes "for free" – or "batteries includes"?) A dialogue: A: "What did you do in prison?" B: "Started a hacker school that wrote the surveillance program which monitors this very traffic intersection." A: "What were you in for?" B: "Drunk driving; caused an accident." A: "Does it see my concealed metals?" B: "If you move fast enough. We had to make first launch!" Will this tease out public opinion on "rehabilitation"? Or will it show how we really feel about "bootstrapping"?

holyjaw 13y ago

It all sounds good, until you get to the barcodes: > "Prisoners each have a bar code they can scan, ..." > "When an inmate’s bar code is scanned, prison officials would be alerted that they should receive a diabetic meal, or a Halal or Kosher meal."

DanBC 13y ago
I'm not quite sure what your point is?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - downandout 13y ago
    Umm what? It's prison. It is 100% intended to be totalitarian.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - VLM 13y ago
      yeah, you know, to prepare them for the real world upon release.
      - derleth 13y ago
        That's what a halfway house is for.
      - gknoy 13y ago
        Your comment is sadly-humorous in two different ways. Well played!
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

I'm interested in the 2 different prices. > The software showed that Sysco, which supplies food to the state prison system, was charging the state different prices for the same food item sent to two different facilities, From the linked Oklahomian article: > “In some cases an exact same item might arrive at Lexington (Assessment and Reception Center) and Harp at the same warehouse, and one has a different price than the other,” Murphey said. Was that a deliberate underhand move by Sysco, or is it normal expected part of contracting the job out? Or is it even more mundane, and just a price break for ordering more? It's nice to think that there's a prison where inmates are not just allowed to rot. Here's another story where inmates get to do challenging, rewarding work looking after inmates with dementia. Warning: It contains graphic accounts of horrible violence. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-among-aging-criminals.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all& http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dement...

kiba 13y ago
It's nice to think that there's a prison where inmates are not just allowed to rot. That how our prisons should work. It may not satisfy a human being's need for retribution, but when did inflicting harm more than what's necessary to keep humans safe ever did for humanity? Anytime you jail a human being, you're using up resources to feed them, shelter them, and protect them from dangerous human beings. That cost taxpayer money. Why not get something out of the condemned by fixing them and studying them and making them better so that the prison system will collapse because it's so effective at repairing? (Of course, there are human beings that may be unfixable, but the vast majority probably are)
- cardamomo 13y ago
  > Why not get something out of the condemned by fixing them and studying them and making them better I understand your point--prisons can be rehabilitative or educational institutions rather than fulfilling a purely retributive function--but your language is setting off some alarm bells for me. We ought to shift from using the language of "fixing" people to helping people or, in many cases, fixing the system.
- 13y ago

balabaster 13y ago

Was this software vetted by security experts to make sure it wasn't being used behind the scenes for anything nefarious? Like say, exploitation of prison computer systems etc.?

billpg 13y ago

An actual sex offender or just someone caught up in some politician's moral panic? At least "murderer" hasn't been hi-jacked. Yet.

jlgreco 13y ago
They didn't actually name the person, so that is unknowable. My uninformed impression however is that while many people may unjustly get the "sex offender" label (for example, somebody who got caught pissing in an alley behind a bar), the people who receive a "sex offender" label and jail time skew towards the "did something that actually has a victim" crowd.
- asmithmd1 13y ago
  Has a victim and doesn't have enough money to buy enough "justice" to keep them out of prison.
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    ...perhaps be fleeing to Europe and continuing their career in film?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- altero 13y ago
  Perhaps he had anal sex with his wife.
- rhizome 13y ago
  the people who receive a "sex offender" label and jail time skew towards the "did something that actually has a victim" crowd. To give you an idea of what can also satisfy this group of facts, they could also have been urinating in public, which in many places earns the offender a place on the sex offender list for life, then resist arrest with a conviction for assault on a police officer due to a lack of funds of a lawyer. So, y'know, it's good to keep one's moral panic gauge calibrated according to the current state of the law.

altero 13y ago

I wonder if Oklahoma purchased license to use this software.

dopamean 13y ago
Purchased a license? I bet they own it.
- altero 13y ago
  It is a question how author law is set. But prisoner does not lose rights to own things.

logn 13y ago

There's a fine line between prisoner and slave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOR -> Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job. Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour, and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts. I think work and education/skills are key to being a healthy human. I just worry that prison labor could easily cross over from being rehabilitative to being exploitative.

mistercow 13y ago
>I just worry that prison labor could easily cross over from being rehabilitative to being exploitative. I think we've already crossed that line. As far as I know, they don't do it directly, but prison lobbying groups have worked hard to increase the use of mandatory minimum sentences, make sentencing harsher, and keep the war on drugs going. To me the line is where prisons go from making use of a labor pool that already exists, to actively trying to increase the size of that labor pool.
- csallen 13y ago
  I see where you're coming from, but I disagree that the degree to which prisons campaign to increase the size of the prisoner labor pool is indicative of exploitation. Imagine an hypothetical situation in which a prison teaches its occupants to code, pays them market wages, and turns a profit. If demand for programmers was high, this prison would be heavily incentivized to lobby for more prisoners, but you'd be hard-pressed to call the nature of the work "exploitative".
  - meric 13y ago
    That can only work if, on average, prisoners in prisons are innately better at programming than programmers in offices. Otherwise there may not be a competitive advantage, there may even be a competitive disadvantage.

acjohnson55 13y ago

Interesting story. I say give these people resources to be productive and a certain number of hours a day. Let them own their own IP. The point of prison shouldn't be to punish, but to rehabilitate people, if possible, and if not, to keep other people safe from them. Either way, if people have the capability to contribute to society while behind bars, why not let them? (As other posters have noted, it's important to make sure the prison/industrial complex isn't being incentivized to increase prisoner count in all this, as they are today.)