Prison Isn’t Set Up for Today’s Tech So We Have to Do Legal Work the Old Way
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Prison ReformTechnology AccessCriminal Justice
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Prison Reform
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Criminal Justice
The article discusses how outdated technology in prisons hinders inmates' ability to prepare for their cases, sparking a discussion on the need for prison reform and improved access to technology.
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Was wrong, first burner nick(ed)
Had’a ‘nother one; unsure on vibrate tho
So now my cellie’s shitting bricks
slightly less cavity searches
Good thing he saved the $10.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/instant-ink.html#section=e...
At some point surely everyone involved can see it’s just silly
Put yourself in a prison bureaucrat's shoes. There is no upside to changing the rules, easier legal work or whatever for the inmates doesn't affect them (hell, it might even cause more work). But if they do change the rules and something bad happens (like, shock horror, somebody smuggling in a picture of a naked lady), it's their ass on the line for approving it.
Why does the parent get downvoted?
that would only get ugly.
Thus, fixing this is not a priority to them, if anything they want it to stay this way.
I agree nevertheless that inflicting maximum misery and pain on prisoners is popular with a substantial segment of the US electorate, and thus there are negative incentives discouraging even simple fixes like the technology changes wished for in this article.
It's easy to say someone who stole a loaf of bread should be rehabilitated, but when asked about a one-off rapist people will show their true beliefs.
It’s like conducting a “push poll” using such an emotionally freighted and skewed framing — you’re obviously looking for the answer “nobody supports rehabilitative justice” by emphasizing “BUT WHAT ABOUT RAPISTS”.
This would be an example of not supporting rehabilitative justice, as there's no reason to believe this other than emotional reasoning. As a matter of fact, the evidence suggests the contrary - recitivism rates are _lower_ for rape and sexual assault than most other types of crime, including theft: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorsp9yfu0514.pdf
> you’re obviously looking for the answer “nobody supports rehabilitative justice”
I never said nobody or anything close to it, that's a straw man you've made up in your head. Obviously, some people truly do support rehabilitative justice, but I believe they are in the minority.
Nothing to do with the rehabilitative prison time.
Why don't we just change the rules?
That number sounds scary, but ask yourself: Who is the debt owed to? Is it to Galactus, Eater of Worlds, who will devour our planet if we fail to pay? No, the debt is mostly owed to other people who have their own debts. Follow the flows around--instead of summing every step--and you'll see the cycles cancel out.
Imagine three people marooned on an island: They could find a shiny rock, slap a price on it, and sit down in a circle, lending it around clockwise until the Total Islandwide Debt reaches $300 trillion, where each resident has $100t in debt (to the person on their right) and $100t in credit (to the person on their left.)
Have these three castaways doomed civilization or enslaved the masses? Will countries deliberately not-rescue them to prevent an economic crisis? Nah.
TLDR: "Total" debt is not a very meaningful statistic.
There’s no incentive to fix the broken system(s).
A close friend of mine taught physics and programming in San Quentin and for the most part his students couldn't use even a restricted variant of the internet. He told me guards would complain that he was "making criminals smarter".
He ended up hosting a local copy of Wikipedia for student use, but to make the prison staff happy he had to remove any controversial articles from it, like "lockpicking" and any article with explicit imagery.
[0] https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in...
Actually your comment is probably more correct - adds a whole step to move the wallet. Misaligned incentives and mismanagement are probably more equal across public/private than we like to believe
It's just unfortunate that's how most administrators work. The traditional debate about public vs private usually focuses on different tradeoffs and incentives of the public - but if they are just paying market vendors it's greatly diminished.
And to all the vindictive sociopath losers out there who want prisons to just inflict max pain all the time - do you not realize improving prison quality of life directly benefits you and could even save your life? Brutalizing a man with harsh conditions, treating him like a wild animal for months/years on end, and then releasing him is just going to make him 5x more angry and dangerous upon release and less likely to assimilate, but now here he comes walking down the same street as you and your loved ones
> Brutalizing a man with harsh conditions, treating him like a wild animal for months/years on end, and then releasing him is just going to make him 5x more angry and dangerous upon release and less likely to assimilate, but now here he comes walking down the same street as you and your loved ones
"Maybe he should have made better choices" they say, as they smugly reference an eye for an eye in their text sent from God.
I mean, if you were in prison and had access to Wikipedia, I could edit, or put something on the talk page, that was a message to you.
You would look up the specific page, and get the message.
Life is really tough on the outside for a lot of prisoners. I’m extremely in favor of helping them lead successful and productive lives on the outside that don’t need to rely on crime.
Why is this an acceptable form of punishment?
How much less are they able to make positive choices for remote 'others', especially people they consider bad?
Laughable: maybe it's the prison food. But perhaps to be cautious we should increase the gruel and reduce the use of red meat *a la'" Oliver Twist?
The Federal system is more-or-less standardized and many have access to many things either on campus or remotely.
The State system is a hodge-podge of nonsense and most States are ran like trash for money reasons.
But I can imagine a prison allowing people to learn computer skills while also having very limited access to computers. They could have a computer lab that has locked down computers and no Internet access and is accessed with supervision for use only for classes and class assignments.
https://www.idoc.idaho.gov/content/prisons/resident-client-s...
Some of his blog posts in the past several months also highlight the dismal state of prison tech, which I suppose is on-point for this thread:
https://www.sevarg.net/
> I think the probability of the average hner ending up in that situation is basically zero.
You were proven incorrect. There’s no need to move goal posts, it’s not that serious, just accept it and move on.
From the post I was replying to: “and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong”
“IF YOU DON’T EVER DO ANYTHING WRONG”
But you are right, interacting with this sort of person on the internet is probably a waste of my own time.
Whether you believe it's morally right or wrong, that doesn't matter - he did violate several high profile laws.
Now, that's not to say I wouldn't welcome with open arms the "errors" of the legal system (or tax system, or municipal code enforcement, or pretty much anything else where government really screws people by messing up) being concentrated upon the demographics that make up places like HN. After all, the ignorance of said demographics do the bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to providing the political will to perpetuate unjust systems, for they themselves rarely find themselves targeted by them and when they do they can usually pay the problem away. But I do agree with the person you're replying to, the demographics that make up HN find themselves subject to the kind of law enforcement scrutiny that puts you in prison less than the population average.
https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/nampa-church-volunte...
The police arrested me, and charge stacked me with multiple felony charges. The case was dropped a year and a half later, mere days before my jury trial was set to begin. My public defender tried to get me to take their deal: 20 years suspended sentence, 10 years time served. I dodged a bullet.
I made a bad call by dating this person, and I had no idea how bad it was until that day. I'm sure I was culpable by being there and allowing this to happen. I could have walked away. I didn't mean to be party to this situation, and I don't like violence or conflict, but it has been normalized in my life due to circumstances prior to the relationship, so I didn't see the warning signs beforehand. I am single now, and am working on myself. I have been given a second chance, and wish my ex well. I don't hold any ill will. It's just not worth it.
I think that these cases are common, or at least ones like it are more common than you think. The authorities have to deal with the situation in front of them, and I don't think folks understand how charge stacking works, or the plea bargain system. I had to tell my lawyer to do their job because I wasn't taking a deal, and that is only because I know enough to know better. Most folks aren't as blameless as I was, and I know I wasn't entirely so, but I did know I didn't break the law in any way, even if I would have done things differently.
This is not to say other folks don't deserve punishment, or leniency. I can only speak for myself. I made a mistake, but I didn't deserve to be a felon over it. I didn't even break the law, though I didn't handle the situation well at all. It was a learning experience, to be sure. Until you've had to try to bond out on felony charges, I think you should not assume how probable these things are. It could happen to anyone.
Be good to each other.
If you read between the lines here, you will realize that the person she was cheating on me with was also there, and was in their bedroom. That other person was plying her with narcotics, just like they had with the last person they were with before they were with my ex. Their ex had died of an overdose, and they didn’t call 911 because they had supplied the fatal dose. I knew that they were also a felon, but my ex had assured me that they weren’t together anymore when it originally came up. All I knew for sure was the other person was capricious with human life and suffering, and they were already a felon for dealing.
When I got hit with the dog bowl, the other person came out of the back room, so I couldn’t even bring up that I needed to get my legal firearm, because I didn’t want them to know it was in the house, and I didn’t want to get the business end of my own implement. I was further assaulted by the other person. The entire time I was just asking for them to stop and for everyone to calm down and to stop hitting me. I now realize that my ex didn’t want me to call the authorities because the other person had active warrants, and they were strung out and didn’t want to lose their supplier.
I had no idea they were seeing the other person behind my back the whole time until later, but I knew enough to know that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. I called 911 as I tried to keep the other person from literally slapping my dangling tooth out of my mouth, as they grabbed my hair. I did attempt to restrain them from hurting me with one hand while holding my phone with the other while on a speakerphone call with a 911 dispatcher.
The police didn’t let me press charges. I was determined to be the aggressor due to being concussed when I was interrogated and being careless with my speech. They interpreted my words as a confession of wrongdoing, and I was never Mirandized/read my rights, then or at any time. I was taken to jail and photographed and fingerprinted.
If I didn’t have cash in my wallet, I wouldn’t have been able to pay to use the phone or the internet tablet to call or email my family, so that they could bond me out. My folks had to put a $5K bond down just to get me out, and that was after a day and a half sleeping on the floor in an overcrowded pod with pre-trial detention folks and those already convicted pooled together in one big room.
Everyone in jail was chill, ironically. I found some books in the hallway and moved them along with me to the pod. I traded some books with another inmate who had a small stack of them. Another guy gave me some instant coffee, which you had to pay for from your commissary fund. I was lucky to bond out. If I hadn’t, I would have had to stay in jail for the entire ~1.5 years pre-trial, even though I was never found guilty; I never went to court at all after entering my plea, as the case was dropped before trial. My public defender didn’t even call to tell me; I had to email them to confirm. The entire process left me feeling like mere grist for the mills of justice.
Always get a lawyer. Ask to be read your rights, then ask for a lawyer. Don’t say anything else, because it will be misconstrued if there is any possibility of fault. The authorities are there to bring charges and convict folks. Justice is a heading, but not a goal. Closing cases and getting convictions is their job. This is true even of public defenders, as they get paid by the same government that pays the prosecutor to convict you.
Never go to trial without a lawyer, as anyone who represents themselves has a fool for a client. On that point, get a private attorney if you can at all. Public defenders who don’t try to make you take a deal are few and far between, and my charges would likely have not been dropped if not for my ex’s mom calling the prosecutor and my lawyer and telling them to drop it or she would embarrass everyone in open court for making a mountain out of a molehill. My ex and their mom never even knew that the case was coming up. My public defender didn’t even reach out to them.
The entire system looks functional on the surface, but it’s so broken it’s nearly unbelievable if I didn’t experience it for myself.
That's what I got from watching Deviant Ollam and a couple of the popular YouTube lawyers.
The justice system mostly serves those with money, and if you're working class the biggest predictor of whether you'll go to jail is how much time you spend in the radiation of this broken system. Don't stay close, don't stay long. Always have a lawyer ahead of time, don't talk to cops.
Ollam has a friend in prison now and she got beat very badly when she first went in. For a non violent crime of basically security research
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m becoming radicalized by the idea of becoming a lawyer myself. The only way forward is through.
Most people’s experience of the law is through television/movies and its just so inaccurate.
I could have found another better way. I was a fool and I was not found guilty, but I was surely tested in the moment, and I am not satisfied with the outcome or my contribution to the interaction. These charges are a millstone on my record all the same. I can only be a warning to others:
I was right to care about the cat and my legally owned firearm, because I needed to remove it from the premises, and I did so later with assistance from law enforcement when picking up my vehicle from their place. At least they didn’t tow my car. Everything else was optional, as the relationship was essentially over at that point. I was not able to communicate freely due to the unknown unknown that I was being cheated on in that very moment, and I should have deferred to law enforcement sooner than when I was assaulted.
Ironically, I was just getting over Covid and didn’t feel 100%, and that was the stated reason for my ex isolating at their mom’s place to begin with.
I think my ex just was not happy in the relationship because they had not had great relationships generally, but quite the opposite.
They had dated a member of the Suicide Boys in Atlanta, made beats for them, was denied credit on them upon publication, violating her rights as an artist, and they got her hooked on Xanax by controlling her access to her own legitimate prescription she had a legitimate need for. Then they just showed her the door when she tried to protest. A different man had tried to SA her, and she had to literally stab that guy in the thigh. She had baggage, and she isn’t wrong for not wanting to be with me, just for lying about going behind my back. Her trust issues were not my fault, but I wasn’t able to be what she needed or wanted, and I couldn’t be what I needed or wanted either, because I was forced into a position of authority over her medications due to her history of issues with meds that were not of her own design. I was trying to have a relationship with someone who had no business being in one, but I did genuinely care for them.
Manipulative men broke her down long before I met her. By staying when I should have gone, I was unequally yoked to someone who depended on me, and I was not able to be the man she needed me to be, because I am not a mental health and substance abuse professional. I did what I could, but I’m not trained for this shit. She needed a doctor or a psychiatrist, or both.
She didn’t need me, but we were people who saw the best in each other. Her actions were not kind, but I don’t blame her, because she didn’t choose to be abused by others. It’s different for women, and I didn’t know that in until I saw how folks treated her. She brought out the best in me, but it wasn’t enough. Love isn’t enough.
She was a victim in all of this as surely as the cat. I was not a victim of anything but circumstance.
I thought I was doing my ex a kindness by not asking for help from authorities, but I actually did myself a disservice.
I can only learn from the experience, as some things you don’t know til you go. I was right, but I was nearly dead right.
Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
I know several HNers who went through the same situation. By my calculations, the risk is about 1 in 3,000 among young parents.
tl;dr: I'll NEVER be alone with a baby under 12 months. Everyone I know who learns about this issue ends up thinking the same.
Prisons should have strong incentives to reduce recidivism. I.e. 50% of the payment private prisons get per person being held back under a "no reoffense" clause. Which would encourage prisons to treat their inmates better, among other things.
A large proportion of people in prison are there because of mental issues and there was nowhere else to put them since nobody can navigate that mess and there is little to no funding for it.
Particularly since (public) mental health institutionalization was deemed to infringe on “freedom” (and also not profitable) the only options today are prison or running around the streets until inevitably they do something that warrants imprisonment.
There are some things that markets can invigorate through innovation. But public health and safety certainly isn’t one of those things.
How many laptops will you remove from schools to provide to prisons? How many people should lose Medicare coverage to pay to have someone manually check the gbs of material a flash drive sent to or from a prisoner contains?
And all this because lawyers don’t want to just hit print?
This is going to become a bigger issue as more and more people think and understand the world through Google searches and LLMs. One reason people who post bail end up with vastly better outcomes in court is because they can prepare for their cases so much better than those stuck in jail waiting for trial.
Another option would be to mitm all web requests from a custom web-browser (install a root cert on all devices) and drop all POST, PUT, and DELETE requests. Prohibit the browser from storing cookies or localStorage, and perhaps maintain an allow-list of sites which can be accessed.
This is obviously not foolproof, but it'd certainly make real-world "request smuggling" much more difficult.
Of course, a better question is if there's really even value to providing read-only internet access in the first place? I understand that for some inmates there might be concerns of them contributing to illicit operations in the outside world, but the rationale I usually hear for why inmates are prevented from computer/internet access has more to do with the "dangerous" information they might access (how to commit crimes in the future, avoid getting caught, etc). And I think both of these arguments are worth our skepticism.
[1]: https://kiwix.org/en/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
Killings of rival gangs in prisons for rewards etc