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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...I guess to any slashdotter, NO Internet access would be cruel and unusual punishment.
just because they can make content for a website doesn't mean that anyones going to go to it. How many of these prisoner websites are only visited by relatives curious about how they are fairing?
Update Watch - Automatic software update notification
Why wasn't this headed "Your Rights Online"?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
All I know is that if i were them I would DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING...
;)
What's the worse the could do to me?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Keith Maydak in for a telephone scam is here.
... thanks, google:)
Juan Melendez is here
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
some people might argue that society is awarding a multi-year all expenses paid vacation to a luxury resort to anyone who breaks the law.
Private room, central air, cable, near perfect security, high speed internet, guaranteed meals (that are nutritious, even), little contact with that annoying Real World (tm)... Geek Heaven?
The last thing we want to is provide geeks with incentive to rob a bank so they can move into something better than the basement.
Shit, who do I have to kill to get that kind of bandwidth in the US?
What's the worst they could do to my neighbor?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
....because this is where we'll all be if RIAA/MPAA and other "associations" for ripping off customers then bringing criminal and civil charges against them have their way
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
A historian named Herodotus tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to surf the internet. The other prisoners watched the thief explaining FireFox to the horse and laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can."
To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to post on Slashdot.
Easy! Just read the back of any 2600 magazine. Half of the classifieds in the back are for lonely inmates...
Yet again, Slashdot gets my hopes up with a headline that looks like it'll be a "how-to" article.
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.
Most slashdotters do this already. Isn't your mother's basement a prison cell enough?
...pack a' smokes for a mod point.
As soon as someone is convicted of a felony, they lose the right to vote, the freedom of speech, the freedom of association, all of them are gone. Jails only have 3 obligations by law. #1, they must feed you. #2, they must house you. #3, they must try and protect you from other inmates.
Sometimes jails have a hard time with #3.
Honestly, do you think an inmate should vote? Hell, they might elect the green party candidate. They have all day to read the papers. They might form an opinion.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
heh, even inmates can get First Post as AC =/
-Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
Criminals of society being allowed to sit in a dark room on the internet all day, 365 days a year, while the rest of the world goes on around them!!!!??!?
Thats not how I'd describe criminals in prison... its how I'd describe Slashdot readers.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Why not restrict AC posts for 2 minutes after the article first becomes public? This would avoid a great deal of the 'Frist Post' syndrome.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Maybe I should get myself arrested so I can blog about prison life.
What do you guys think?
This sig rocks the casbah.
Yeah, I'm sure after spending 5 years in a place like that for illegally downloading some crummy movie like "Alone in the Dark", a person will come out ready to be a sane, well adjusted, and productive member of society.
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.
hah. Is that all?
In the Netherlands you can run your own company from jail.
Inmate 00343: "Can you turn around, HUH?"
Inmate 87632: "It ain't my fault the room is 8 feet by 6 feet"
Inmate 00343: "Just look at the wall, will ya"
Inmate 87632: "Okay"
Inmate 00343: *whispers* "Oh yeah, that's what I was looking for, nice big tits"
Inmate 87632: *peaks over his shoulder at the laptop screen*
Inmate 00343: "HEY, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT WET STUFF ON THE BACK OF MY NECK???"
Inmate 87632: *shrugs shoulders* "I think a bird crapped on you"
Seriously, what do inmates need computers for. You know they are just going to make knives with the RAM DIMMS.
Inmate 00343: *boots the laptop*
Inmate 87632: "You looking for porn again?"
Inmate 00343: "No, just going to read sla... HEY, the BIOS test only shows 128 megs, we had 256 megs"
Inmate 87632: *starts sweating* "What do you mean, it was always 128, you know how slow the laptop is"
Man, I love the adventures of Inmate 00343!!
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Prisoners should be glad they stay alive. They are scum and worthy of a bullet to the back of the head, never mind the pleasantries of prison buggery. And to host a web site? For their own defense? Surely that's constitutional excess.
What I think should be done is that they should be taken out to the desert. Just as you say. Make them exercise, drink water, and eat cold meals. Major felons should be forced to build tent cities, and then tear them down. Then we make them eat a cold meal again! And finally, more buggery.
Harsh? Probably. But when I see common criminals roaming free, I think: Damn, that's a fiiiine suit!!!
About voting and a right to host your own website. If you're convicted of a felony you can't vote ever. But can non felons vote in prision? They probably can't vote in prision. Maybe they should be allowed to e-mail. But then again you can do a lot through mail.
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.
...but why shouldn't they be allowed to have internet access paid by either them or by someone else? besides, in a lot of these cases even the websites are updated and kept by someone else than the prisoner, who just writes to the website keeper in the old fashioned way for example. the point is that... well, how the hell would you ban something like that without appearing like you're some commie motherfucker censorists from china?("think of the children" of course). "no mr, you can't keep a webpage that has a picture of mr. jackson and tells about the good things he's done in life." - seriously.
I'd rather have them spend their few dollars on net access than on drugs, or on a laptop. anything to keep them out(but.. if it's run as a business.. isn't the aim actually to keep as many as possible inside?? the prisons should be paid by the return rates - the more of the inmates do another crime just after getting out the less the prison should get 'profit').
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
When you get stabbed and killed for $30, you'll wish you had wanted to make it a little easier for ex-cons to find work.
I am sure some prisoners feel they are rewarded. 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.
I'm certainly not a liberal by any means - but the problem is these people have to be reintegrated into society. If someone has to live in horrible conditions for years, that's an aweful lot of time to think about the possibilities for revenge. You build up a critical mass of people who are unable to function in your society, and your society WILL crumble and fall.
You could just shoot them in the head for petty crimes, but we've been there and moved on as a civilization. It doesn't work.
Are you under the conception a vast majority of criminals are in prison for violent crimes?
Just some thoughts.
You might as well start get in a fist fight with a five year old, man.
:)
Should be, "You might as well start get in a fist fight with a five-year-old, man." At least you remembered the comma.
If you do it because you feel like you're doing anyone a service, you must be new here.
Should be, "If you do it because you feel like you're doing anyone a service, then you must be new here."
People have been bitching about editor incompetence for eight years now, and look where it's gotten us.
Should be, "People have been bitching about editor incompetence for eight years now, and look at all it's accomplished." Not sure whether or not "gotten" is a word. Just trying to be on the safe side.
The editors are well aware that their grasp of the English language and keyboard skills are subpar, and they have shown that they have no intention of changing.
Should be, "The editors are well aware that their grasp of the English language and keyboard skills are sub-par, and they have shown that they have no intention of changing."
Give it up already.
Should be, "Give up, already." Note that appending "already" to a sentence isn't necessarily proper, either.
I think the typos, the sixth grade grammar, and the general idiocy around here are so ingrained in slashdot culture that fixing them would in fact be deleterious.
Should be, "I think the typos, the sixth-grade grammar, and the general idiocy around here are so ingrained in slashdot culture that fixing them would, in fact, be deleterious."
Can you imagine a slashdot that didn't suck? It would suck.
Should be, "Can you imagine a Slashdot that didn't suck? It would suck." And add some emphasis to "should." Oh, and this is closer to sixth-grade grammar than your average Slashdot comment.
Overall grammar score: "B" Primary areas needing attention include hyphenation and punctuation.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
*cough*RFC2549*cough*
It seems like an important part of a legal system in a democracy that prisoners can get their side of the story out. That's both to ensure that the prison system itself is run well and to help reverse wrongful convictions.
If and when a prisoner abuses the right in order to commit further crimes, only then should his ability to publish be restricted. But he shouldn't be restricted merely because what he says is uncomfortable for prison authorities. He also shouldn't be restricted merely if he is (thought to be) lying, as long as it doesn't rise to the level of defamation.
These cons are there to serve a debt owed to society, not enjoy a free ride at our expense! no more internet use, spousal vists, gym equipment,tv, etc enough is enough. they should be out to work 8 - 10 hrs daily doing something for the community at large and for no pay ( I think they get a small allowance for prison jobs ). The rest of us work our asses off to obtain these things.
Step out of the box and enjoy life
I am a tax payer and I am tired of my hard earned pay going to taxes which support the lives of society's trash.
Who's to say that prison inmates are societies trash? Personally I think people with your ignorant, sheltered attitude fit the image of "societies trash" better than a prison inmate does. After all, prison inmates (and future prison inmates) generally only effect the lives of other potential prison inmates, while people with your attitude tend to always try to reach out to people of different walks of life and change the way they live.
I spent 2 years in prison for a crime I did not commit, and let me tell you, this farcial idea that prison is some kind of 'vacation' is a crock of garbage. I am a computer guy, one of you, so let me set you guys straight, because I was naive myself too... prison was something I had no clue what it was, except these silly pictures on tv. Prison is a psychological, physical hell on earth.
1. There is no private room ever ~ I was housed with a big black homosexual thug who kept his punk roommate in there all the time. When I begged to be moved, the guards laughed at me. I wrote statement after statement because my life was seriously in danger. I spent six months of shear terror with this psycho. WHen he finally went home after a 20 year sentence, guess what, they moved another black homosexual punk thug into my room, and it was hell all over again. Really thou you are lucky to have a room, more often than not you are packed like racks in a dormitory bed to bed with eighty people who are noisy, nutcases of a sixth grade level and dangerous as all get out.
2. Their is air conditioning in some places, but in others, there is none. In the summer time you are trapped in a steel metal building that reaches 110 degrees. You are forced to stay dressed 'inspection ready', which is absurb, and the humidity is insane. Do you know what its like inside a car when it rains with no airconditioner, int he summer time? Yeah.
3. Near perfect security. No. I saw many people stabbed, I saw guards beat people to death, where do you get this? You are in the most dangerous place on earth.
4. No high speed internet. At all. Some computer access, but only too look up case law, and you only get a marginal crack at that 1 hour a week.
5. Guranteed meals. These were total puke. I couldn't live off them. If my parents hadn't sent me $100 a month to buy the junk food they sold on the store, I would of starved to death for certain. There is nothing, nothing, nothing nutritious about them. Are you insane?
6. Real world. Let me tell you, we got one hour outside ever day maybe, in a little cage. I would go out there, and stare through the fence and cry, I was so homesick. Every day I would be out there, staring at the pine trees, wishing I could just touch them. Trying to hear myself think again, from the noise. The constant noise. Made you go insane. Free cable tv my butt. That thing drove you mad. And you didn't watch it, because you'd be sitting in a dangerous area.
I made a little harddrive out of paper and placed it on my shelf, to know my webserver was out there still running on a shared server gave me some home. No, it was not serving some scam or trying to get me out. You can't run a scam from inside prison, you are doing everythign you can do to survive. No, my webserve served my poetry, and my graphics, and all my dreams to the world still before the POLICE STATE kidnapped me and threw me into this HELL.
How many of you have seen Star Wars Episode II, where the Genga Fett has given his dna to be used in a clone army on the cloning planet. There is a scene where all these clone Fetts are being raised and trained, elbo to elbo, as far as the eye can see, in some kind of twisted human warehouse where their entire reality is controlled. That is what the cafeteria looked like. The stress of being packed so close together... its not human... its not human. It causes stress, it breeds violence, and ignorance and stupidity.
Get out of America before smash through your door, put you in front of a panel of conservative jurors with a joke for a public defandant who does not care if you win or lose. I had a paid lawyer. What did it matter to him, he got his money up front, they want you to lose, it perpetuates their system... that there are criminals and therefore that justifies prisons, courts, laws, and so on. Its just a way to project power and control your behavior by internalizing thier rules in you.
Read LOCKDOWN AMERICA by Christian Parenti.. or any of his other books
Prisoners supposed to be repaying a debt to society not to be inhumanely tortured. No human interaction? Come on, you and a lot of other people are bordering or crossing the line of human dignity. If you want them to be 'paying the price' why not suggest something more productive than telling them to rot away in a cell, community service is much better. Hell giving them the resources to be productive on their own is probably more useful. Would you still be making that post if a prisoner came up with something that led to better treatment or a cure for cancer and other currently unstoppable ailments?
It's this same stupid attitude that crime should be responded with by more crime that keeps humans at war with each other.
Fine.
Here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pji96.htm, a reference backing up that 15% figure: Note how 11% of american felons are incarcerated for mere drug possession and a few percent for various "public order" offences (page 4) including "obstruction of justice" (i.e. not cooperating with the police state goons), it's safe to say I would probably regard about 15% of the lawful incarcerations in america as unjust because the laws themselves are wrong. Since felons lose voting rights in america, your corporate-socialist government just uses that to make sure those who would vote them the hell out can't vote.
Also, I suspect you're white and upper middle class, if your peers you mention only got probation - relative severity of judgements in drug-related cases in america are notoriously racist. I don't think you have any idea of how evil america has become, so get a clue or go fuck yourself, you protofascist pig.
Society cannot properly function without black vs. white, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc. messages being thrown at it all the time by the people that report these type of things. It has to always be all or nothing so as to whip up the most passionate opinions.
Without these extremes presented daily, society becomes static and boring...sort of like Canada.
10 years for adultery?! In the USA?!!
That's total, absolute fucking bullshit.
Amnesty International has NOT fucking declared US prisons the worst in the world. If you believe that, you're off in some anti-american fairy land.
This jackass is just making up stories, and there's no reason to believe there's any grain of truth in it.
Posession of any amount of Adderall is a felony. I shit you not. I was recently in a felony court in Houston for posession of 7 pills of Adderall. Less than a month after I was charged, a doctor lawfully gave me a perscription for Adderall, in light of my longstanding ADD diagnosis. This DOES NOT result in the felony charges being dropped. I still take Adderall to improve my concentration and actually do as well in school as a person of my intelligence should. I would have gotten it sooner but back when I was in middle school (with horrible grades) my parents thought that putting my on stimulants was a bad idea. The antidepressents I was given instead probably did more harm than good.
Going to felony court was by far the scariest experience of my life. Compared to the fear I felt of the seemingly imminent ruination of my life spending the night with murdurers and rapists in Harris County lockup was a resort vacation. Not sure how long I would have lasted in prison though. I hope nobody else ever has to go through what I went through but I know it happens every day.
Felons don't believe in your right to property/life/free express, etc. why should you agree to theirs?
what?? I believe in the rights to life, liberty, free expression, and the persuit of happiness. It is the people who created these assinine laws we live under who have no respect for the rights of others. I have never stolen from anyone. I have never hurt anyone. My crime had no victim.
Fortunately my story has a relatively happy ending. Thanks to my ludicrusly expensive lawyer and countless court appearances which caused me to miss alot class (I don't even live in Houston, I was just visiting my parents) I was able to get my charge reduced to a misdemeanor posession of a dangerous drug from felony posession of a controlled substance. At the completion of my year deffered adjudication I should be able to have the record sealed. Once I make sure Choicepoint has up to date information, I'll be able to once again look for a job and earn my keep in this hatefull society. I can't even imagine what it would have been like to look for a job with a felony on my record with people like you making up such a substantial portion of the populace. If I had been convicted of a felony, my plan was to take my life if 5 years after graduation I was still unable to find a job due to my record. I really do feel as though my life has been spared.
I'm so thankful I didn't get convicted of a felony. I was pretty much at the mercy of the district attorney and the skill of my lawyer, but thank God things turned out ok. If I had been convicted of a felony losing the right to vote would have added insult to injury. I relish every opportunity to vote against the hatefilled Nazis who wrote our drug laws.
Facing a felony has really changed me, and as far as I can tell it hasn't been for the better. I became distant, aloof, paranoid, and extremely depressed. My girlfriend left me. Given the condition I was in I can't say I blame her, though it would have really helped if she had stuck by me. They say that whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I don't know about that, but having been to hell and back I do feel like I can deal with anything. Certainly my parents, especially my father deserve alot of the credit for saving my life.
Morals:
If you use Adderall, make sure you have a prescription. They aren't hard to get and you can save you a life ruining experience.
Get a good lawyer. Mine was one of the best in Houston and cost over $10,000. He was worth _every_dime_. He saved my life, and I will never forget it.
Don't judge a person by their record, especially drug related convictions. The only difference between me and the millions of people rotting in prison for similarly pointless drug convictions is that my parents had the money (barely) to pay for a lawyer who could spare me that fate. I'm a gifted programmer, smart and socially conscious, and in general a good person. I'm also
Someone wake me when you can run a women's prison cell from your website. Now that will be interesting...
when you outlaw webcams, only outlaws will have webcams...
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.
Spam from the can
and someone slap the grandparent with a trout. I'm sick of that rhetoric. Yes you're right (some) criminals have ignored the rights of others, and perhaps they don't "deserve" rights. But our society is not based on the notion that rights are something you "deserve." I'm not talking about the right to drive or something (which is a privilege in US law anyway) but the right to vote, which is a fundamental component of participatory democracy. The theory of government that the right to vote is based on falls apart if you assume you can take it away like that (forever). The universal right to vote is not something you "earn" but rather something that legitimizes the very notion of this government as being a government of the people. It is not a question of whether this or that person "deserves" to be considered part of the society; it is a question of what kind of society do we have if we allow the state to usurp the notion of participatory government for those people who broke a rule. It cuts to the legitimacy of the rules themselves.
The Judge: I hereby sentence you Michael Bolton, and you, Samir Na-nadajibar, to a term of no less than 6 months, in a Federal 'Pound-Me-in-the-Ass' prison!
[The Judge looks directly at Peter]
The Judge: Peter Gibbons, you've led a trite and meaningless life. You're a very bad person!
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.
at least it wasn't under "Apache".
You're gonna get that chest caught in something if you don't tuck it in.
No, his link doesn't prove anything he said.
If he did, it wouldn't have just sent me fishing though a link to find his supporting facts.
His claim was that up to 15% of the prison population was incarcerated for breaking laws that weren't just.
Tell me Mr. Post Before You Think, where in that link does it show that?
Should is an interesting word.
People have been proven to be wrongfully convicted. Those responsible MAY have recieved a disapproving note in their personnel file (but probably not even that).
And what restitution is made or attempted to someone found to be wrongfully convicted? *NONE* They are supposed to be sufficiently grateful to have been let out of the slave labor camp after some large number of years not to need recompense. (Slave labor camp you ask? Yes. Corporations routinely hire prison labor via contracts with the prisons, not the prisoners. The prisons contract them out just as the old slave owners frequently did, offering a slight symbolic reward [Is is $0.25 an hour now? Google was quite unhelpful.] for their acquiescence...Of couse that's after they've paid food and housing and forced savings and...)
When prisons are turned into a profit center cum slave labor camp, I requre a lot of proof, rather than mere assertions, before I believe anything said by the prison officials or formal or informal spokesmen. They've got too much financial incentive to trust.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Oh, and btw. That link only dealt with jails. Meaning, county lock up. Where you're likely to find people that have been arrested and can't post bail, and lesser crimes.
:)
Thanks for playing though
Mod this up!
It's the one post that has a thoughtful suggestion, make those in power accountable for their actions. Doctors get sued all the time for mistakes, even when nothing more could be done - the same should apply to anyone that has control over someone's life.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
he didn't mention what state
Yeah, he didn't mention it was Georgia until 7 whole words into the post, but I wouldn't expect you to read that far.
"Eh-Wire" writes of these websites being used to badger witnesses and prosecutors.
Nowhere in the Yahoo article is the word witness even mentioned. Is this a case of the Eh-Wire's imagination running wild while trying to raise a socially important issue?
I don't know what the hell you are talking about, but adultery sure as hell isn't illegal in any of the fifty states. As far as gangs are concerned, I have no idea about Georgia, but there are plenty of gangs in Texas prisons -- the Latin Kings, La Raza (The Race, in reference to Latinos), etc. Gangs are a huge problem in US prisons. Where did you go, white collar "prison"?
I do acknowledge that you know what it's like in your prison that you went to, as far as torture going on. But to distort things and say someone was in for adultery, I'm sorry, but you lost all your credibility from me at that line.
I apologize -- turns out it is a misdemeanor in Georgia (quick Google). But 10 years for a misdemeanor? Come on.
If you host forums, reply to them on paper and just transcribe when you get computer time.
I've never been imprisoned (but I will get married soon), and I did my stint in High School (and College). Back in '91 I used to write code on paper in my Chemistry class (in all of the years that I [re]took it). When I got home, I'd code it; and far more often than not, it worked beautifully. By having to code the hard way, you learn how to check and re-check your code before compiling it - or in my case, transcribing it and compiling it. In addition, I learned _patience_ and how NOT to click on the compile button just to see how correct my code was/n't. I wrote exclusively using a pencil. I wrote my zero's with a slash through them, and my Chemistry teacher (Mr. Dougherty [Mr. Spock] [a really great guy]) even commented on my Chem. formulas by writing "You are not a computer! Humans don't write 0's that way."
If only he could see me now [uhhh, posting on slashdot about prison and websites].
Damn, maybe I should've listened to him - except for the part about putting a slash through my zeros (and sevens).
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Well when someone drives under the influence of drugs, they are putting other's at risk, and therefore it is arguably legiamate that DUI be illegal. This is not an excuse for the entire drug war though. Whether or not the way people act more generally on drugs is a bad thing is a matter of perspective. It is likely that your perspective does not include drugs and so you are against them, but your opinion on this matter is no more valuable than the acid head.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
On a mostly unrelated note, I was reading the comic strip Boy on a Stick and Slither ... about how people tend to boil things down to black and white issues... I just wanted to say I think both the parent and grandparent posts are right - and all these posts saying "More prisoners should be locked up on an island with moldy bread for food" and "the multi-billion dollar prison industry does more to harm the country than help it" are two ends of a ridiculous extreme.
Can there be a middle ground, where we punish people for their crimes and at the same time respect their rights? Jesus H. Christ, can the guards not be torturers, and the can the prisoners not call them pigs? or is that just too heavy for this planet?
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The acid head does nothing useful for society, therefore his/her opinion is worthless.
Nice stereotyping, jackass. I am curious: what is the minimum level of performing "useful" activities for society that a person must achieve before you feel that their opinion is not worthless? Do the mentally or physically handicapped fall under this category for you as well? What have YOU done lately for society that makes you so much better?
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
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!
It doesn't even require that. Look at the drug laws . Once drugs is found on/in your property, you can lose that property. It doesn't require being accused of a crime and it doesn't require a trial.
There have been cases where people have purchased vehicles, been pulled over, and the cops have found drugs in the vehicle. Law enforcement has then seized the vehicle.
Quick question: Imagine your vehicle right now. Is there a trace of cocaine under the hubcaps? How about an old joint in the crevice of the back seat? Some meth hidden before the air filter?
How these laws ever survived constitutional challenges puzzles me.
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.
Here's a case in point. I've been reading this one for awhile:
Jon's Jail Journal
http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com/
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
No, I don't know that that would be wrong. Jimmy Carter spoke of a 'malaise' infecting our society in the run up to the 1980 election. Think he might have been on to something there?
I do know this: there were people that I knew then who were partaking in drugs all around me. I do know this also: those same people would be under siege by law enforcement today and would have a hard time keeping their jobs due to random piss tests. To that extent, the drug policies have had the requisite effect and kept the use out of certain quarters. The black market in clean urine is pretty demonstrative of the effectiveness.
I can also tell you that my failure to partake in one certain drug with certain ropelike qualities is governed primarily by the effect of a sudden job loss on my children's welfare.
I'm not against drug use on the individual level: it is on the macroscopic level that I understand the current policy.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Not my cup of tea, but hey... better her ass than mine. *shudder*
Still, jail? At the taxpayers' expense?
You could've hired me.
I don't understand why these people even have the right (or privilege) to use a PC in a prison environment. It just amazes me to think that the state & federal governments spend our money on technology for use by people who have violated the law.
Before you (and most of the people who have answered you) started ranting, you should at least have Read Rhe Fabulous Summary.
This article is not about the right to access the Internet from prison. The article is about the right to own a website while being in prison and delivering content to that website - with or without personal access to the Internet.
Horseshit.
Any statistics will tell you the drug problem is as prevalent today as it ever was. Massive failure all down the line. The only time it was a minor problem was back in the 1920's - BEFORE they passed the fucking drug laws intended to be used against minorities.
If you can't comprehend that, you have no fucking ability to comprehend anything.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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.
What never ceases to amaze me is how people don't realize that systems like that would only produce more criminality.
I mean, look at it. You're forced to work, you don't get warm food, you don't get medical care (regarding organ transplants, have you ever considered that these aren't done for the fun of it? they're done because people would die otherwise), you don't get any so-called luxuries (try living without all the things you mentioned for a week, then tell me they really are luxuries!), and even for a book, you have to bend over and let the warden fuck your ass because it's their decision whether you'll get it or not.
I don't know about you, but I think I can say that *I* would become quite bitter and hateful really if subjected to that. Hateful towards the wardens, of course, towards the company running the facility and so on; but also hateful towards politicians who allow this, towards people like you who support this, and towards the general public. In other words, I would emerge as an unscrupulous and highly motivated person looking for revenge.
Somehow, I think that's not what a prison is supposed to do. I always thought prisons were about teaching people that crime is wrong/doesn't pay and that you can lead a good life even without resorting to crime, as well as about giving people the skills they need to live a normal life - teaching them skills they need to work in a certain job afterwards, for example, teaching them social competence, and all that. But maybe I'm wrong, and prisons really are just about revenge and a perverse kind of fun that you're having with those people who can't even defend themselves.
Just pray that you never find yourself among them.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Why not make use of the resources that many people with time on their hands provide. Just because they are in prison does not mean that they are stupid.
Like research without reqirements for funding, you never know what they might stumble apon looking at problems from a different perspective. Any revenue from sucessful results could be fed directly back into the system, reducing (maybe) taxpayers expenses.
People who are actively trying to improve should be allowed internet access possibly, but I don't think people who have no intention of reforming their ways should.
Obviously research would be severely limited (for safety reasons) but if an inmate could have the option of benifiting society would that not provide a motivation to return to society as a law abiding citizen? As people have already posted there are inmates who are doing time for crimes of passion and outside of situations of high stress are probably no different than you or I. Would that not be motivation for them?
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
I worked at a prison as a Correctional Office, C.O., screw, whatever for a little over 2 years in Arizona. Some of the things that inmates and convicts get are unbelievable. They have satellite tv, which from what I've been told has been cut down on considerably since I was there. They have access to every law book and case file that they could ever want. They have free medical and dental as long as their on indegent status, which believe me is everyone whether they're broke or not. Having a web site or blog doesn't surprise me. What does suprise me is the complete and utter support some people give these inmates/convicts to be able to do anything they want. It's a prison and they are there for a reason. It's easy for someone to say that they can't be denied theire freedom of speech, etc, etc. But tell the lady that got shot in the face at point blank range by a guy wanting her purse. Tell her family that you think the inmates are being mistreated. And yes, this was an actual case where I worked. Bottom line is that they are there for punishment. They are not there to live better than half of the people outside of prison. And they certainly shouldn't be allowed to communicate to the outside world short of visitation. Work in a prison for awhile or have someone you know or love killed by someone and you won't be calling for inmates to get the things they want.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Selling a Hummer to someone
Why is selling sex illegal anyway? Why can't people sell something that's perfectly legal to give away?
There's an linux/gnu/open source joke in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to find it.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I've never understood the way in which we punish act-of-passion prisoners.
d in exactly the same way. I'd get rid of most of the political-oriented laws and associated prisoners. I'd look to separate sociopaths from the rest of the prisoners so that everybody gets the help they need to reintegrate from society and so that people convicted of shoplifting aren't knifed over some petty prison power demonstration.
For example, take manslaughter. I swerve to miss a schoolbus that drifts into my lane and I hit and kill a pedestrian on the sidewalk. Why should this be considered a crime? Now, driving recklessly should be a crime in itself, but whether or not somebody got killed was just a matter of whether everybody else in the area was lucky. Somebody who accidentally kills somebody is of no danger to society at all most likely - we just throw the book at them to make the victim's family feel nice that they ruined somebody else's life since their lives aren't going well at the moment.
Another example is that attempted murder gets a lighter sentence than homicide. Why should a murderer get lucky just because the victim was lucky? Acting on an intent to kill somebody should be just as much a crime as actually killing them.
Prioson has a couple of really good purposes. It gets bad people off the street, it deters crime by imposing the threat of punishment, and if run correctly it has some potential to rehabilitate those incarcerated within them (not that this actually happens in our current society).
I remember reading a story about some 70 year old getting arressted for a crime he committed 30 years prior. He was a model citizen during those three decades. He is now bound for prison, where he will most likely die. Now, I understand that we can't go around setting an example that you can get away with murder, but on the other hand if somebody wasn't a danger to society for 30 years, and is clearly not one now, then what purpose does tossing them in a cell serve?
The problem is that people use prison for all the wrong reasons. It is approached emotionally (the victims suffered - somebody else should suffer too - who cares if there is only a 51% chance that they are guilty).
Oh well, I'm probably not going to see change in my lifetime.
A final note - don't think I'm soft on crime. If a man commits a homicide and the evidence is clearn, jail him for life, or possibly even execute him. I'm all for serious punishment for serious crime. However, I'd treat otherwise-homicidal-murderers-whose-victimes-live
But hey, what do I know?
You might as well start get in a fist fight with a five year old, man. You missed that it should be either, "You might as well start a fist fight," or, "you may as well get in a fist fight." To the antigrammarians, I say this: if someone had posted a snippet of Perl or C++ with misplaced, absent or redundant punctuation marks, then you'd be all over it like beagles on a fox. No grammar for you!
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
The site WeSupportPam.org is a good example of someone looking for help from others. I can see trying to get help when you you are powerless to do anything else on your own. This should be something than anyone can do.
People in jail are, by and large, fucking criminals. They are not "oppressed" or any other politically correct term.
It's not as simple as that, and in most cases, it's not true at all. Here's some interesting info that might change your assumptions about how the USA works:
For Americans, imprisonment is a normal part of life. Probably every American family has several members who have been imprisoned. How many people in the population are criminally insane, versus how many people have been in a cage?
What we're dealing with isn't sudden genetic mutation that causes vast swaths of the population to be born criminally insane, we're dealing with wholesale oppression.
I wonder if you're aware of the experiments that were done, wherein people where randomly divided into guards and prisoners, to see what would happen? What did happen is that a system of them-vs-us developed, and the two groups became hostile to one another, even though there was no actual distinction between them.
This experiment is well known, but we do not seem to be learning from it. My take on it is that we should not talk of how "prisoners" behave, but rather treat them as individuals. We should not hoard them together into cells with other "prisoners" and expect them to stand out as examples of worthwhile "outside"ers.
Instead, I think we must give them the opportunities to be upstanding citizens by treating them AS citizens, with simply more strict monitoring and enforcement of existing laws for citizens.
Of course, there is the matter of what they have done, and how to compensate victims and wider society, but experiments and actual programmes around the world seem to show that the best approach there is to again treat them as a member of society, putting them into a situation where they feel true peer pressure and responsibility to the people they hurt etc. From this, a natural apology and a need to make amends often comes over time.
As far as internet access goes, I see every reason to provide prisoners with internet access. As the largest and fastest library in existence, the Internet gives prisoners the possibility of learning that they may have grown up without. It is one very real option to undo what has made them criminals to begin with, if used wisely. Again, they should have the same options as other citizens, but simply with stricter monitoring.
After all, prison is about keeping criminals off the streets and reforming them, isn't it? The purpose of prison should not be to punish, imho.
Pure science fiction, but maybe possible in a decade or so:
If convicted of a felony, you are chipped. The biochip is implanted directly into your cerebellum (perhaps around your language centers) in such a way that you could not think (in words) or speak without the chip transcribing the thought or communication. The encrypted stream of mental babble is flushed to government hotspots whenever you are near them (read: all the time). Goverment computers sort through the babble and do a first-pass, flagging anything considered *unsatisfactory* for further analysis.
The chip can signal the language centers of your brain as well as intercept, allowing you to be talked to. So if you are thinking alot about committing a crime, the chip can talk you out of it, for example.
The chip can also act to temporarily paralyze you. For instance, if there are restrictions placed on your travel, attempts to bypass those restrictions results in temporary paralysis.
Your location is known to some precision for the rest of your life and your thoughts are no longer private. Your prison becomes life itself, no need for a jail (except in cases of violent behavior).
If you behave yourself, you are left alone and not bothered, paralyzed or talked to by the voice in your head. You will not have the terrible burden of prison on your record (perhaps even the conviction itself could be made private as we are into corrective territory rather than punishment territory and do not want to make life impossible to lead, but rather make it impossible to lead a criminal life).
But misbehave and things get weird: Your chip starts talking to you, you may become temporarily paralyzed and you will probably have MIB showing up and discussing your troubling behaviors with you.
This would make a good sci-fi book, methinks...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
You're joking, I assume, but this is an important point, actually. Many of us find the internet invaluable to our personal development, education, education of others, and our participation in the global society. These are exactly the things we should be encouraging prisoners to consider, as opposed to a limited, dysfunctional life of crime in a ghetto etc.
People are still partaking in drugs all around you. People are getting better at hiding it, and better at handling it, possibly because of the quality or perhaps because of the repercussions of being caught. Who knows, but thinking the current "war on drugs" is doing anything more than making drug production more streamlined and more prevalent is a folly.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
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?
here here.
all it takes is a very quick Google search
Harry Anslinger
or for Canadians
Emily Murphy
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Drug Prohibition does at least a few more things.
3. Makes drug suppliers rich as hell. Artificial controls on supply drive prices up while demand stays steady.
4. Makes millions of "sensible law" abiding citizens into criminals (driving the oh so wonderful prison boom)
5. Creates a society of snitches (DARE to turn your parent in)
6. Keeps people from using bulky (but safer) drugs (ie cannabis) and turns them to smaller easily concealed hidden drugs (crack meth pills)
7. power/money corrupts. Witness the legions of corrupt police (almost always drug squad members)
Anyone who is FOR the drug war can only be severely deluded, or taking profits from it.
Which are you?
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
One of the criticisms frequently leveled against proponents of O'Neil-style can-city space colonies is that they irrationally assume that life will be better and that somehow many problems (such as crime) will be left behind on Earth.
But it may well be that they aren't being as idealistic as the cynics claim. Not only will the a-priori odds of a there being a sociopath in any given 100,000-person colony be rather low, they may be even lower because people with "sociopathic tendancies" will be discouraged from developing them by the sort of social pressures you describe. It may be that people intuitively sense that "crime doesn't pay" is much more true in small communities.
--MarkusQ
Show it to me then Mr. Can't Show the Facts From The Link.
All you had to do was post the part that proved it. Instead, all you did was claim it was in the link again. If it is in there, why didn't you quote the part from link?
In any event, you will always lose in the court of public opinion, which was my point.
Correct. Everything else in your post was ignorant crap. Masturbating? Socialism? Analogies? Where did that crap come from?
The only remnant of our civilization would be a syringe.
FYI, the "acid head" you were describing doesn't use a syringe, moron.
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
Prison will be my replacement for Social Security since there will be nothing left when I become old enough to start drawing from my Social Security fund. Back in the 80s, I heard people from the government saying what a waste it was to have all that Social Security money sitting there doing nothing. It would be better to let the government spend it now and replace it later. They gave all sorts of good reasons why this should be, but I, as a young child, knew exactly what would happen... and it has. So do not make prisons too horrible. They are how I (and many other poor people) plan to retire.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
or "imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!"
Bottom line is that they are there for punishment.
I would very much disagree with this. Prisons (and the justice system as a whole) aren't for punishment, they're for reducing crime. Punishment is a means to that end and, as such, should be applied as necessary.
I'm reasonably sure that punishment applied to excess is counterproductive (iirc, a test on monkeys showed that an environment of randomised punishment just makes people more dysfunctional - I can look it up if anyone would like). Hence, alternative methods of preventing re-offending need to be applied. Education is an important example - if someone leaves prison with no more chance of a decent job than they had when they went in, they're not likely to spontaneously become a model citizen. They'll just make sure they're harder to catch next time, which, depending on the type of crime, could mean slaughtering the witnesses.
Prisons when viewed in this light are basically a type of school where you're allowed to assume that the kids are brats (rather than having to wait til they prove it to you). As someone whose one period of high school teaching assistance culminated in the attempted stabbing of myself with a chair, I can confirm that this analogy is not entirely invalid. The ideal prison would be one that punks who wanted to reform would volunteer for, as a chance to get a decent education and add value back to society.
Certainly punishment alone won't do anything more than keep the cycle going.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Yes well, your definition of useful is determined in part by whether or not you use drugs. Your reasoning is circular.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Good thing you're not qualified to come up with one, then.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
How on earth is this a troll? Just because my personal experience differs than the intuition of someone who seems to know nothing about the penal system? Lame.
For example, take manslaughter. I swerve to miss a schoolbus that drifts into my lane and I hit and kill a pedestrian on the sidewalk. Why should this be considered a crime?
It probably wouldn't be. There's a legal principal that holds that the party responsible for the initial event holds responsibility for events occuring as a direct result of their first action.
The problem is that people use prison for all the wrong reasons. It is approached emotionally (the victims suffered - somebody else should suffer too - who cares if there is only a 51% chance that they are guilty).
Crime and punishment are inextricably linked to ethics and morality. While it seems unlikely that the penal system would ever be run as a completely rationalized system (ie, one where the sentence was solely dependent on the perpetrators's danger to society), it's probably more like that than you think. In many states sentence lengths are often set based on projected crime rates and prison capacity, although within the ranges established by the legislature.
As populations increase, the number of things we're willing to throw people in jail for increases, and the perpetual lack of money in legislatures, I expect we'll be seeing MORE "formula" based sentencing and less "morality" based sentencing.
Overall, I think it's good and bad. If I was the victim of any crime, I'd expect punishment, particularly for more serious crimes towards my family members.
And where did you get amphetamines without a prescription?
Look, I sympathize with you for what you had to go through. It's obvious that you need the meds since you eventually got a script. I'm glad you were able to get things more-or-less worked out with the legal system, but what you did was extremely stupid. Taking a amphetamines without the advice and supervision of a doctor was dangerous to your health and, as I'm sure you know, highly illegal.
As a rental property owner, I have a particular problem with amphetamines because I've seen what someone on meth can do to a property. I've seen what is involved in the extremely costly cleanup from a meth lab (I realize you weren't cooking, but I just wanted to help you understand where I'm coming from). Fortunately for you not all landlords will do a criminal background check. But given how much damage a meth addict can do, you can guess what an amphetamine conviction on your record will do to your application if the LL runs a criminal report.
Anyhow, I just want to say that I fully support drug-control after seeing firsthand what drug addicts can do. I'm sorry you got caught up in it for (mostly) innocent reasons, but drug abuse is NOT a victimless crime.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
> I don't know about you but I'm for keeping drugs out of the hands of my children, at ANY cost.
Obviously, that cost includes "a million people in jail for the controlled burning of a plant." Since you said "ANY," keeping your kids away from getting high is more important than keeping them alive?
You really need to think about what you say before saying it.