What they don't mention in the article is that inmates aren't able to call cell phones. Earlier this year I had to bail out a friend arrested from a traffic stop.
He wasn't able to successfully complete a call to my cell. After he said his name and it told me to press 1 to accept the call, it would just disconnect. Frantically trying to figure something out because I know they don't give you many calls. I ended up having to "add money" to my account just so he could call my cell phone and tell me where he was so I can contact a bailsman.
I had to pay money just so he could make his free phone call to retain a lawyer or a bail bondsman.
Not always the case. Connect Network services county jails and I know for a fact they allow calling of cell phones (requires person on other end to set up an account so it takes a couple of minutes to connect) I assume it depends on the area and the contract.
Requiring the called party to set up an account might be easy if she just happens to be sitting at her desk when the call is made, but it could be much more onerous in other situations. Regardless, this breaks the standard expectations that humans have for using a phone.
in the recent story on NPR about a young Mexican guy dying (ruled suicide) in the privately run ICE detention center it was mentioned that the attempts of the relatives to reach him on the phone were unsuccessful as the center's employees were not able, for some unknown reason, to call the guy to the phone, and instead the center's employees suggested to the relatives that the relatives have to put money in the detainee's account first and after that the detainee would be able to call them himself. The motivation here is pretty obvious to anyone who knows about the outgoing rates from the detention center and who profits from it. Practically the definition of extortion.
It is unfortunate that large amounts of money are not made available to reform the prison system. It seems that society is on autopilot, with people being led into a meat-grinder. Moral activation seems necessary.
Most of the most vocal believers of the bible in America are ironically also the same folks pushing for privatization of prisons, harsh sentences for minorities (obviously not for the likes of Rush Limbaugh though), punishment-instead-of-reintegration, etc.
I dont see why the Bible needs to be taken into consideration here. I understand wanting historical perspectives for policy, but religion shouldn't be needlessly shoved down people's throats.
Because the same people who vote for harsher punishments and pushing costs onto the families of detainees are often only reachable by biblical quotations. If you refuse to talk to people, you're not going to get anywhere. Learning their language--in this case, the bible--is often what is required in order to reach them.
There are a lot of ignorant voters out there. If you want to make change you need to learn how to communicate with them, not just look down your nose at them.
Invoking religion in what should be secular discussions regarding public policy can definitely be perceived as pushing religion down people's throats. Imagine the opposite -- if every time a group of people were seen chatting about religion, someone walked up and quoted some famous atheistic reference?
However, I don't see an iterated discussion of this as a useful tangent for the thread to take, so let's discuss instead how religious philosophies of all kinds could or should have informed the believers of those religions in the issue of prisoner treatment. What leads to the dichotomy between religious messages of peace, and the warlike behavior of some adherents to those religions?
The FCC did cap rates. They revised the caps upward after being sued by the two main prison phone service (such as it is) providers. The caps look pretty high but I guess that means rates were really high before they were capped.
But it remains one more of the ghoulish practices that crop up when there is an opportunity to profit from misery.
Textbook case of rent seeking and regulatory capture. Two companies are competing against each other, not on price or service to the consumer, but on which can manipulate the regulator the most effectively.
Americans overall seem to have a hard "punishment" stance towards "criminals". Just look at all the rape jokes regarding prisons. While some might just be for laughs, a lot of it, I think, underlies the idea that prison should be super hard and punishing. People are fine saying "hey you broke the law, I don't care if it's not hard to make phone calls!"
There's a local (to me) Vegas startup trying to help people communicate with prisoners - https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/pigeon-ly/ - they bring up a good point that these people will be asked to reintegrate with society and to best do that we need to help them remain a part of it with regular communication with friends and family. The prison phone system runs entirely counter to this ideal.
The only thing that you have to determine is which political campaigns are these two companies donating the most to. Then you'll know why this isn't being changed.
> By voting against the caps, [Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly] voted against 2.7 million children who are just trying to stay in touch with their incarcerated parents.
Both Republicans on the panel.
I included the 'think of the children' bit to illustrate how easy it is to turn a persuasive argument into a blatantly manipulative one.
Hillary has taken $133,246[0] from prison lobbyists. Her husband admitted guilt for the state of the current prison system[1] and famously Hillary publicly supported[2] those very same policies with rather fear mongering speeches. I'd argue the corruption is rather bipartisan.
>Bernie’s goal is to ban private prisons. Hillary has a similar goal, but takes money from prison lobbyists. Does this make sense to you?
Well, considering that private prisons are banned in the state of NY but not VT. Yes.
Also, the 'private prison donations' is very loosely connected.
They were bundlers, who worked for a lobbying firm, a firm that got 0.35% of it's money from private prisons. But, that doesn't matter, as they money they raised came from people outside of the lobbying firm and outside of the private prison industry. As that is what bundlers do. If he called me up, and I sent in a check, how is that "private prison money"? It's not, it'd be tied to my industry/job instead. source: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000032306&...
The only actual money she got from an actual PP lobbyist, was given to a charity, and it totaled something like $8,600.
This is similar to how she was connected to the 'oil and gas' lobbyists. People would say Ben Klein, a bundler, represented "oxbow" an oil company, therefor hillary gets money from oil. What they don't tell you is his firm only did 60k worth of business with oxbow (<0.8% of their revenue). But their #2 business was Brookfield Power, aka Brookfield Renewable Energy Parters. Who do Hydro. Yet, Mr Klein, is an "oil lobbyist". Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000034396&...
That 1994 crime bill your second and third links are talking about was widely supported by black leaders at the time. In fact, the bill was going to fail after an unexpected loss in a procedural vote, until the Congressional Black Caucus put their weight behind getting it passed.
At the time, black communities were being decimated by crack cocaine and by the violence associated with its trafficking, and getting tough on crime was seen as a way to save black lives. (This is also why the majority of the Black Congressional Caucus had voted a few years earlier for making the sentences for crack cocaine much longer than those for powder cocaine).
Did the crime bill work out as hoped? Perhaps not. But its passage had nothing to do with corruption.
Donation does not immediately imply corruption (on either side of the political spectrum). Especially one as small as this one.
It does bring moral questions, and it is worthwhile to think about limiting the power of "donations" in politics, but people can hold an opinion that we dislike even before receiving a donation. The question is whether they will change their opinion when confronted with data.
What does corporate donation to political parties imply?
No, fuck that. Corporations should be banned from giving money to political parties. Our politicians are supposed to represent our interests as citizens, not our interests as corporations and their employees.
I'm open to changing my mind on this matter if anyone can provide many strong examples of where corporate donation to political parties has lead to demonstrably better outcomes for people at citizens.
> Corporations should be banned from giving money to political parties.
Corporations are banned from donating to either candidates or national party committees (DNC/RNC).
What they're not banned from doing is spending money independently to promote political causes. And I can give you a good example of why that's not a bad thing: had Citizens United gone the other way, the government could have banned the tech company protests against SOPA/PIPA.
Serious question: let's say they DID ban corporations from protesting against particular proposed laws. Would the outcome necessarily be worse for the people of the US overall?
Yes. Corporations are a bulwark against oppressive government. The rise of the commercial class led to the downfall of feudalism and the rise of democracy.
I think the central argument is: corporations must make money to donate, and generally make money by providing a service that people want or need. In that way, corporate interests may be tied to a population's interests. Obviously this could be flawed (to the point of exclusion) in many ways, and I'd enjoy discussion around it.
> many strong examples of where corporate donation to political parties has lead to demonstrably better outcomes for people at citizens.
I'd bet you could find many strong examples in both directions. I think we'd need either evidence that its systematically one way or the other, or strong logical arguments as to why it would be inevitable (i.e. evidence lacking).
Corporations are just groups of citizens, all of whom have every right to donate money to anyone they want. Why would it be that groups cannot donate when the individuals making up the group can?
Your comment, and the other replies, all raise very good points.
My initial reaction to corporate lobbying was probably too knee-jerk. I suppose what gets in the way (or in my way, at least) is ideology. If a corporation (or any group of people) lobbys for something I'm in favour of then I'll cheer them, if they lobby for something I'm against I'll yell boo.
Can you give me an example where Hillary Clinton has recused herself from a political process due to a conflict of interest with one of her donors? If not, isn't that worrying? Shouldn't the appearance of impropriety be enough?
I don't have any examples as there is a cult of corruption in Washington. I can report that Bernie Sanders simply refused to take the money of prison corporations, and in my state senate it happens all the time[0]. Am I unreasonable to not vote or advocate for anyone who is apparently corrupted by corporate money?
I wouldn't mind if the state was collecting the money. Prison is a punishment and you shouldn't be able to just chit chat all day. However, letting two private companies cash in is corruption.
> I wouldn't mind if the state was collecting the money. Prison is a punishment and you shouldn't be able to just chit chat all day.
If there's one thing we don't need, it's a fiscal incentive for the government to jail people.
Prison is meant to be a punishment for crimes and (depending on who you ask) an opportunity for rehabilitation. Without the latter you're going to have way more of the former.
I'm not saying that inmates should have 24/7 free phone calls, free video calls, etc but price gouging a captive (no pun intended) audience isn't right either.
> If there's one thing we don't need, it's a fiscal incentive for the government to jail people.
This, public or private, the root of the problem is that private companies and unions financially benefit from a larger prison population and both have money and political power to lobby effectively.
Remove the financial incentive that has bad effects and you get a better system.
Most of the exploitation is aimed at the families of the incarcerated - you already control the prisoners wages and pay them slave wages so you can extract but so much. But the families? If you move the prisoner far enough away you can bet they won't have the means to make visits, and you can charge families exorbitant rates for your captive market.
Beside the points others made here that it isn't, and it shouldn't be, I'd like to invite you to think about the ethical and practical implications of punishing someone over, and over, and over again for years or even decades, for an action that usually took only a very, very small fraction of time compared to the length of "punishment". The very idea flies in the face of... well any kind of experience with people and how they learn.
Personally, I think we've gone too far down the 'retributive' route without corresponding investments in rehabilitation, but a lot of Americans prefer to lock the door and throw away the key.
Well, comparing criminal justice models is by definition difficult since it's deeply embedded in the society.
You can look at other societies where they spend more time rehabilitating offenders (e.g. Norway), and Norway does have lower crime rates, but which way does causation run? You can argue that rehabilitation lowers crime rates, or you can argue that low crime rates makes the society tolerant of relatively lenient punishment.
And if it turns out that retributive punishment does work effectively, are you willing to pay for increased crime rates just to find out that our current system is alright?
And if it turns out that retributive punishment does work effectively, are you willing to pay for increased crime rates just to find out that our current system is alright?
This type of what-if paralysis isn't rationally supportable. Some similar examples to show where the logic fails:
And if particle accelerators do produce black holes, are you willing to destroy the planet just to prove it?
And if it turns out Cthulhu does live on the moon, are you willing to unleash its wrath by visiting?
Instead of paranoid fear of worst-case hypotheticals, we should be using empirical evidence to guide decisions. We can look at other countries. We can look at differences between states and counties. We can conduct experiments in smaller areas and roll them out over time if they work. Or we can just have some basic human empathy.
It did for me. My second conviction sent me down for 7.5 years and it was only about 5 years into that bit that I said, "okay, I quit. I'll be good now."
I believe it is subjective to the individual. If a person doesn't have any ties (relatives or friends on the outside) they might never get to that point. What was key for me was that before I went first went down, I was a hobbyist programmer and had an independent, many-years long MMO game project under way. Being in prison chafed at me horrible because every day I felt like nothing was being accomplished towards it! I knew I was loosing time from completing that goal.
Its funny how the goal that I wanted to work towards changed from that game to a successful life.
Yet DWI has a very high rate of recidivism, and DWI deaths are on par with murder victims. Murder has a very low rate of recidivism (most people don't realize everyone doesn't get a life sentence) Which group is really beyond redemption?
Exactly. It should be this way in USA as well. It sickens me how people shrug off any problems at correctional facilities as "it's punishment". We're only creating more problems for society with that thought process.
Nothing is ever that simple as the people of Norway are finding with Anders Behring Breivik who as far as I can tell has converted to Nazism and is getting a bachelor's degree in political science from University of Oslo after murdering 70 people.
As I recall a couple years ago he made public complaints that the prison had not yet given him a PlayStation 3 to replace his current PlayStation 2, because it offers more suitable games to his playing style. Probably has it now.
Punishment should fit the crime is the model in the US but since the 90s ever since sentencing became a political football that model has broken down.
I find that rehabilitation is a word that comes easy to people who have never been victims of an actual crime. Prison time should never be population control/engineering but it should be a deterrent.
I believe that no one is beyond rehabilitation, with the right conditions. Further, I believe this belief to be fundamental to any functionally human rights-oriented, pan-state democracy.
Some people believe they help people imagine creative solutions.
I find counterfactuals, especially in history, to be devoid of any meaning and used by pseudo-intellectuals who don't really want to pursue the hard work of finding actual causality.
Huh? Actual causality is meaningless without counterfactuals. "Hitler caused Holocaust" means that if Hitler wasn't there, Holocaust wouldn't have happened.
Not really but sort of. Counterfactual historiography at best represents a sort of "reproducibility" for historians. They can't conduct experiments on the past.
So, when someone asserts "Hitler caused Holocaust" some enterprising graduate student comes along and writes a thesis on Hitler's willing executioners and argues counterfactually that if Hitler wasn't there, Holocaust still happens.
That doesn't mean at all that Hitler did not cause Holocaust or that the "eliminationist antisemitism" German culture caused Holocaust. I wish you had chose a less value-laden example.
I don't know much about Breivik, but would venture to guess that killing 70 people is a result of severe mental illness.
Using prisons as a warehouse for the mentally ill is another problem. These people should be handled differently than general population in a prison.
IMO, you go to prison to reflect on your choices, work on underlying issues and come out a stronger person. It's _very_ hard to do so with mentally ill roommates, rape, gangs, etc all around you.
I am a "victim" of an actual crime. My younger brother was hit by a car crossing the street. The driver was distracted and going >10 mph over the limit in a residential area. This individual had no insurance. No lawsuit was ever filed.
Honestly why should it bother anyone if prisoners are treated well? A video game costs nothing compared to other costs of incarceration. The only thing that matters is that people can be rehabilitated if possible, and isolated if not.
And the last people who should define punishments are victims of crimes, because our own instincts for revenge are wholly miscalibrated for modern society. I've had thousands of dollars of irreplaceable equipment stolen from me, some of which I designed myself, and yet I rationally accept that the perpetrators (never caught) shouldn't be strung up in the proverbial town square for all to see.
I think prison should be for rehabilitation, but I think it's a bigger departure from how we do things than you appreciate. For example, should a woman who kills her abusive husband be imprisoned? From a purely rehabilitative point of view, the answer is no. There is zero risk of recidivism there. But even most people who think prison should be about rehabilitation probably have trouble with the idea that someone should simply go free under those circumstances. I.e. they believe that prison should be at least a little bit about punishment.
It's interesting to put this in historical context.
Until about two centuries ago, it was not all that common to imprison people as a punishment. It was mainly used to confine those awaiting trial, and to induce compliance (contempt of court, debtor prisons etc). Being convicted of an actual crime generally warranted some form or combination of fines, public shaming, corporal punishment, banishment, or execution.
Then, during the 17th century, the society had started to increasingly reject torture in general, and death penalty for relatively minor crimes (theft etc). Conveniently, that's also when European countries acquired sparsely populated lands that they wanted to settle ASAP, and so penal colonies were born, and replaced a significant chunk of previous death penalty convictions. That system eventually inspired the creation of proper prisons as we know them today.
Ironically, if you read about the prominent people behind the movement that made it happen, most of them subscribed to "prison as repentance" theory, rather than punishment. It's why it was seen as so progressive and radical for its day.
> But even most people who think prison should be about rehabilitation probably have trouble with the idea that someone should simply go free under those circumstances.
Not in my experience. But that's just an anecdote and no doubt there is a lot of data backing your assertion. I also suspect that this is different for different countries.
From the article: “Personal visits and telephone calls reduce recidivism." If "chit chatting" all day means they don't come back why would anyone be against it?
The companies and people that run the prisons and the prison phone systems are both very happy with a system where a) people spend a lot of time in jail and go back frequently and b) spend a lot of money on hyper-expensive phone calls since both of those things earn them very significant money.
The question should probably be: Why should any sane person in the prison industry be for it?
This is a much better article, thank you. Essentially this is the same as hotel phone rates, they also used to be very high by adding margin to the carrier services, but were part of the profitability of running a hotel. Mobile phones disrupted that source of income for hospitality, but with a captive customer the real issue is this commission now that telco rates have collapsed. As it is a fee for accessing telecommunication services, it sounds reasonable that the FCC should be able to regulate the commission, but the jail telcos have existing contracts in place under existing rules with the prisons and the FCC failed to address this.
You do know the point of a prison is in fact not to punish. It is to rehabilitate and a sentence is supposed to be a reflection on how much rehabilitation is necessary. It's sad, prisons should have the same rights as eeryone else lest we create a caste of population unable to reintegrate and move beyond what is often a single poor decision.
What about ( sometimes multiple ) lifetime sentences without release? Sure they try to rehab* the inmate but not to the point of releasing them.back out to the public. Granted this is just one scenario..
Countries that have a very high focus on the 'rehab' part of prison usually don't issue lifetime and certainly not multiple-lifetime sentences. Instead they tend to send people into mandated psychiatric care (in practice often life-long) or, if a person is 'sane' yet still very likely to cause damage to others than they are placed in 'preventive detention' which is still just 'being in prison' but does not carry any punitive notions and needs to be actively renewed every few years.
I suspect a lot of folks would say skip rehabbing that person and try to deal effectively with a person who is getting out. There isn't an infinite amount of money and the extra little bit spent properly might make the difference between productive citizen and career criminal.
Being in prison is a punishment. what goes on in prison should be designed at keeping the incarcerated in and meet their civil rights; the idea that active punishment is justified speaks to a different mentality.
This mentality is the outgrowth of "us-vs-them", but most people are closer to being "them" than they really know. If you've gotten behind the wheel of a car over the limit 3 or more times, in most states, you deserve to be prisoner.
I don't think most people are as close to being "them" as you think. We're not teetering on a society about to collapse into sending a meaningful amount of people into prison.
Are you aware of the fact that we (US) are _already_ a society that sends more people into prison, both per capita and in absolute numbers, than any other country on earth?
I've done time in county jails, state and federal prisons. On average, the phone call length you can make is 15 minutes max. You can make them 15 minutes apart. In the Alaskan state prison system, a 15 minute phone call from me cost my dad $33. How is that punishing me?
I've done time in county jails, state and federal prisons. On average, the phone call length you can make is 15 minutes max. You can make them 15 minutes apart. In the Alaskan state prison system, a 15 minute phone call from me cost my dad $33. How is that punishing me?
He wasn't able to successfully complete a call to my cell. After he said his name and it told me to press 1 to accept the call, it would just disconnect. Frantically trying to figure something out because I know they don't give you many calls. I ended up having to "add money" to my account just so he could call my cell phone and tell me where he was so I can contact a bailsman.
I had to pay money just so he could make his free phone call to retain a lawyer or a bail bondsman.
EDIT: This is the company I had to pay https://web.connectnetwork.com/