Slashdot Mirror
Running a Website from Your Prison Cell
Eh-Wire writes "Although prisoners Internet access is highly restricted, this hasn't prevented many inmates from getting around the restrictions with the judicious use of phone and snail-mail privileges to network with friends, relatives, activists, and associates to provide content to their websites. Some use their websites to badger witnesses and prosecuters, while others plead their case or phish for pen-pals. Some have successfully challenged their convictions through their websites, which complicates efforts by authorities to silence them. Websites domiciled outside of the respective jurisdictions further complicate the issue. Yahoo News has additional commentary on this controversial subject."
Why shouldn't they be allowed ot have their websites maintained in some fasion? They should be allowed to vote as citizens of a free country, so why can't they let their freedom of speech ring on the Internet, given the assumption that this would not comprimise safety or order?
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Why wasn't this headed "Your Rights Online"?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
How does one "what they should be allowed to do" support another "what they should also be allowed to do"? Your logic is not circular, but non-existent. Support your propositions with reasons, not other propositions.
I have more than a passing famaliarity with the Michael Ross case. I waited up during January with the Rev Kobutsu Malone of the Engaged Zen Foundation (www.engaged-zen.org) waiting for the State of Connecticut to assist Mr Ross in suicide. Perhaps the death penalty may benifit someone, but in the case of Michael Ross the only person benifitting from his death is Michael Ross. Execution does not deterrance make, every criminal when they commit a crime believe they will get away with it, the punishment is no deterrant, that is why we have a criminal corrections system not a criminal punishment system. How do we treat this system? Very few believe in active correction, and the private companies running the prisons profit from keeping people in jail. Due to the nature of the system Michael Ross has decided it is better to die than to continue in this system. Perhaps considering this system it would be better that Mr Ross stuck around for awhile to share it.
Heh.
That someone modded you funny for this shows that people are rather ignorant of what goes on in this country.
I say lets bake the fuckers. Lets set up tents in the hot Arizona sun, lets put up tents, lets make the inmates wear pink uniforms, and lets feed them hotdogs made with green dye. Lets stick black gang members with white supremasists in the same tent.
When I see people propose stuff like this, I'm just so glad that we have DNA testing that works every time and we have District Attorneys in charge that are always quick to make sure justice is served.
At least our country still has a few good citizens that still care and want to keep our justice system honest.
When you suggest torturing inmates remember that in a year it could be you standing there in those tents. It may be "good enough for our troops in Iraq", but every single person there made the choice to join the army.
Can you say the same for our justice system?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Consider for a moment what a prison system does:
Brings criminals together
Forces criminals to learn discipline, but particularly respect for more powerful criminals. By the time most inmates get out of prison, they will be affiliated with one or more criminal organizations mostly due to the fact that such affiliations are more or less required in prison to guarantee survival.
What do you think the ciminals talk about in a prison? How to evade the law, get out of trouble, do bigger jobs and scams, etc.. etc.. These topics are raised to an artform in such an environment
by virtue of the fact that so many criminals have been brought together, the best methods for breaking and evading the law for profit are naturally present in the minds of those that share a single location. Over time, the best methods are distilled into the common knowledge-pool inside the walls of the institution. In effect, this makes a prison much like a University, where the best ideas naturally distill out of the population of students and researchers. Only, in this case, we are dealing with socially destructive concepts.
So consider what we are doing when we put a convict into a prison:
We are paying tax dollars to educate the convict on sophisticated, state-of-the-art means to evade and break the law
We are hardening the criminal, training him and toughening him up
We are putting the criminal in a place where he can be recruited by crime syndicates and organizations
A prison is a quite ridiculous way to punish, because it punishes the system exponentially more than it punishes the criminal.
Modern prison systems are directly responsible for the nature and degree of organized crime and as an indirect result, corruption in the modern world (because the power that organize crime wields is generally directed towards the foundations of the system).
Now you want to give them websites? Hmph!
Seriously, though, the system needs to change. Putting criminals together is the worst possible thing for society. It would be much, much better to keep them in strict isolation or have some means of making sure that the influences around them are positive rather than negative.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
It's also funny how this reasoning causes people to lose ALL compassion, even with the very real possibility that someone is wrongfully convicted and thereby stripped of his rights.
Just as you have one extreme that says "prisoners should not be treated even the least bit bad", you have the other extreme that says "prisoners are all scum, and should live in the shittiest possible conditions". When, in reality, the correct idea is closer to the middle, moderate position.
(Not original poster)
Yes, the system doesn't work, but that doesn't mean we should treat them like animals - not everyone in prison is a rapist or murderer. The purpose of prison is to punish people for what they have done and integrate them back into society. The fact that hard-working people pay for it seriously sucks, but the alternative to that is to kill them all, which isn't exactly a brilliant solution either.
Personally, I think that community service is one of the better options, and should be used as often as possible.
I spent 2 years in a Georgia Prison for a crime I didn't commit, and let me tell you, everything that corrections employee says above is BULLSHIT. These people are liars, they are criminals themselves, and we are living in the bigest POLICE STATE the world has ever known. You scratch the surface of America and it has nothing to do about justice, its all about projecting power on a fine grain level. Don't believe me? Watch COPS. Amnesty International has declared American Prisons the worst in the world, and there is a reason... its a massive sprawling complex hidden out of site of the American Public while you watch pablum on tv.
I'm a computer programmer and graphic artist myself, and live a quiet life and don't bother anybody. I ran a charity that recycled comptuers and gave them to the poor.
All it took was some piece of white trash to denounce me, and lickity split I was thrown into prison without any evidence in a sham of a trial. I fought back, which is why I can post this today. It destroyed my life, and in the end these !@#$%^ SOBs cost me some $100,000. Yeah, I won my appeal. One person out of 50,000 for my state. Once they get their hands on you, they don't want to let go of you, even if you prove your innocent, because these grafters make $35,000 a year off of every body they house. Its an expense account scam.
You don't believe these people can snatch you and do what they did to me to you? Wake up! Four cells down from me was an RFDI engineer! What was he in for? A ten year sentence for adultery. Yeah, I'm not joking.
There are no gangs in prison. What a load of crap. Yes, people would pop the sockets with led pencils to smoke cigarettes. That was no crime. The crime was we were locked in sensory deprivation chambers for years on end, in heat and cold, with humidity and noise off the chain, and fed slop that I wouldn't even feed pigs.
I was a quiet comptuer guy like everyone reading this forum is, I tweaked my boxes, installed linux and reinstalled windows when it crashed, configed my webservers and basically did the computer guy thing. Now, everytime I see a pig car, I just want to take a brick and smash it! What a farce, what a lie this country is...
Its a scam game, a witchhunt they denigrate you, put a label on you, call you a criminal, and once they do that, they can get away with torture and abuse behind close doors. That Abu Gahrib thing was no fluke. Torture goes on right here in America every hour of the day...
There's about 3 types of prisoners.
"Act of passion" prisoners, people who comitted a basically one-time act that happened to be illegal. Usually includes murder and assault, but might also include rape (but very few), and many other types of crimes. Mose of these prisoners aren't all that dangerous because they're not generally sociopathic personality types, but people exposed to very stressful situations who overreacted. You can argue the fact that they did whatever it is they did makes them more dangerous than other people, but generally outside of their stress situation, they're not anymore dangerous than you or I.
"Political" prisoners. People in jail for a range of crimes that generally center around drugs, prostitution and gambling. Generally speaking these people aren't either dangerous or sociopathic, they just got involved with an activity that's banned by our politicians.
"Sociopathic" prisoners. These are the people that most people think about when they think about prisoners; dangerous, sociopathic (sometimes even psychopathic) personality types that are largely immune from the kinds of right/wrong calculations you and I make. They're not afraid to hurt other people to get what they want, they will almost always take advantage of any one or any situation.
Most people assume everyone in prison is a dangerous sociopath, which is why they have so little sympathy for them. It's possible to make an argument that "act of passion" prisoners are inherently dangerous because of what they've demonstrated they're capable of, but it assumes an awful lot. The rest are in jail largely on morals grounds or because they're mentally ill.
That wouldn't qualify US prisons as the worst in the world. It does sound like exaggeration, though. But he didn't mention what state, so I can't say he's wrong. There are a lot of strange laws on the books, and I know for (fairly) certain that if you don't have enough money to defend yourself, you can get railroaded on next to no evidence. And if you do have money, they'll never pay you back for the damages that they did in prosecuting you.
I know of two cases that are nearly as bad. In one case the guy ended up dead shortly after he went to prison (no funds). In the other the guy's career was destroyed, his possessions and funds were seized (so that he couldn't afford a lawyer) and his parents house ended up on the block to pay for his lawyer. It's still being prosecuted. (Or it was a year ago. The prosecution tactic has been to postpone hearing at the last minute, trying to run the defense out of money without ever letting the case come to trial. JUSTICE! HAH!)
The US *IS* a police state. It's operating under disguise, but don't be fooled. I can say this because they don't care. If they did...
1) They don't need evidence to bankrupt you. All it takes is an accusation, and they can steal all your property and all your money. They commonly do this to prevent you from hiring a lawyer. (It's called RICO. What it's called and how they use it are two different things.)
2) If you don't have enough money to defend yourself, you can't defend yourself. The public defenders are essentially a joke. They need the cooperation of the police, so they don't do anything that might offend them, unless a news reporter is watching and interested.
We still have the shell of a democracy, and many of the outer forms. And that's *IT*. Perhaps some of the other states are better off, but a lot of this corruption stems from the top. And has for several decades.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Your post is so full of lies it's hard to tell where to start.
First of all, you didn't denounce a single thing I said above. You went off on some hyperbolic rant on your own experience. Sorry. If you were convicted though innocent that sucks to the extreme. Nothing could make up for that to you personally IMHO.
I assume though, that next you'll claim everyone else was innocent, right? Just like you made up American prisons being the worst in the world.
Then you made the ficticious claim of people making 35K a year off of each prisoner.
Then you claimed there were no gangs in prison.
Then you made up the 10 years for adultery crap. Either you are the most guillable person ever, and believed that. Or you're a liar. I already know you're a liar so I'll assume you're making that up as well.
Then you dragged Abu Gahrib into it, as if the military and the US prison system are similar. You might as well be comparing Mexixo and the US with that one.
Sorry you got a raw deal buddy (if that part wasn't a lie too). But don't lie just to try and make a point.
Arguing over whether supplying drugs (tobacco, anyone?) should be a felony may be academic to whether or not prisoners should be prevented from voting. It depends what you think the purpose of prison is for. As a deterrant, I think it's largely useless (see below), and presumably deterrence is the purpose of punishment. Even if you do regard the purpose of prison as deterrence, denial of voting rights isn't going to scare anyone. Which leaves the purposes of re-habilitation and protection of society. I would think that for the first, encouraging prisoners to participate in a democratic process for their country is engaging them in a useful way; and for the second, given who the remaining non-felons of the US voted in last year, I can't imagine you need protecting from prisoner's voting preferances.
* I don't believe prisons work as a deterrant because (a) real violent crime usually operates on a seperate level to the "if I do X --> Y consequence" and (b) if it were really such a deterrant, would there be such a high re-offending rate. Higher-end white collar crime might be more deterred by the risk of prison, but these criminals are less likely to be sent there. The really powerful shape the laws to make what they want to do legal and what they don't want other people doing, illegal.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Lets see as little as 2 years ago we had the highest incarceration rate in the world, we have put to death innocent people, and if you look you can find more ugly stories about the failed war on drugs than you can shake a stick at.
And after all this I'm supposed to care about a few prisoners who make websites? Ooookkkk.
Oh, and all you right wing guys feel free to start flaming me............now.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Look, you make it illegal to operate a motor vehicle under the influence (already a law), you make it illegal to do it on public property (already a law), and tax the hell out of it. Win/Win. Pull the false economy away from the drugs you've created and drug-related crime will drop like a rock. Some people will do it more, some will do it less, some will do it the same. Oh well.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
The big problem with taking away anyone's right to vote is that you essentially deprive them of their only means to make themselves heard, influence the system and fight for what they think needs to be changed. The ability to put pressure on politicians by voting for or against them is what makes a democracy work, and it's more or less the only thing that makes sure that certain groups are not treated overly unfairly. For example, if a law was passed that allowed only people with a yearly income of at least - say - $100,000 to vote, don't you think that politicians would start caring less and less about the wants/needs of those with a lower income? If only white people were allowed to vote, don't you think that everyone who happened to have a different skin colour would suffer? The same thing is true with prisoners - if you don't allow them to vote, then you essentially say "we're going to do whatever we want with you and you can't do anything about it", which is fundamentally undemocratic, and what's worse, it opens the door to just about anything - after all, no matter what you do with prisoners, you can always justify it by saying "but they are only criminals, they don't deserve $fundamental_human_right".
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Let them sit in a small cell, and never leave, with no human interaction and nothing to do for the entriety of their stay and see how they feel about being a repeat offender when they are released.
...society's trash...
You'll be paying the price in the extra staffing it takes to keep the prisoners inside the jail and not killing the guards. Not to mention that after that kind of treatment they won't go back into society too well...meaning that all they *CAN* do is go to crime.
Make them pay for their own meals, if they don't have the money, they don't eat. If they die of starvation or commit suicide, then society doesn't need more trash anyway.
That's right...take away all their money when they try to defend themselves, and then deny them food because they aren't millionares. Just fucking great. You realise that your country's constitution says that you can't torture prisoners? Or kill them without due process? What a fucking retard, even I (Australian) know your country's laws better than you. Not to mention the innocent people who you're going to kill. Doesn't that worry you at all?
Society's trash? Yeah sure...I deserve those kind of living conditions, and possible death if i'm not rich enough, all because I downloaded some movies from bittorrent. Maybe you think all prisoners are sick maniacs, but I you seem to forget that a significant proportion of them are in there for drug offences. In other words, doing things to their own body that the government seems to think is wrong. If my country had a law that said I had to kill all Aboriginal people on sight, do you think that it is reasonable to send people to the jail you describe because I don't kill people?
I'll respond to this even though it's an obvious troll...
So if alcohol was declared an illegal substance tomorrow (it has happened before), then you would root for those of us who choose to have a beer to go to jail with a felony for illegal possession? Even though this was perfectly fine yesterday?
You sir, are an idiot.
Laws are created for the safety of society, but in this case, what he has done has affected NO ONE therefore any punishment should be minimum/nothing.