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."

Comments

Prisoners

[schnits0r]

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?

Re:Prisoners

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were in there for possession, I've no problem.

If they were in there for 9 years for fraudulently forging return headers for your spam empire, on the other hand...

Re:Prisoners

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in prison, you've been convicted of a felony. Felons have no right to vote. Once you've been convicted of a felony, you're stripped of many of your rights for the rest of your life.

Re:Prisoners

[Anonymous Coward]

Have to post AC because I actually work for a Corrections Department in IT and I don't think it would be proper to do otherwise.

Your assumptions are poor.

They shouldn't be allowed access because they are criminals.

I'm a very liberal fellow. But after working at a state correction department for several years now my few on inmate is anything but liberal.

You give these people gum and they'll short a circuit with the wraper. You give them a floppy disk and they'll open a master lock (that's not a joke, the metalic part can very easily be made to open locks).

When they are in prison they shouldn't be allowed access to the internet because they are criminals and they would abuse it. It's all nice to be Mr. Compasion until you realize that the reality is that anything you give them is abused. Over and over.

Safety? How about inmates looking up how to break the system? Cheat the system. Hacks. What is going on in other prisons. You know how quickly disorder can occur. Imagine an inmate looking at a gang site. Gangs are *huge* issues in prisons. Gagns are all over prisons.

Order? How about inmates googling information on other inmates. Really, safety and order are basically the same thing to a prison. Not sure why you listed them seperately.

Hell, it's bad enough keeping them off our networks. They aren't allowed. But you would be *shocked* to see what inmates can think of. Not everyone in jail is an idiot, and they have a lot of times on their hand. I've seen work MaCgyver would be proud of getting stolen parts onto the network.

Re:Prisoners

[caino59]

sorry - wrong.

you only lose your right to vote while you serve your sentence.

right to own a gun - that varies by crime.

non-violent crime, people normally can own arms after serving out their sentence.

violent crime? no way, bub.

Re:Prisoners

[zippthorne]

No in many states you lose your right to vote forever. In either case, by commiting a felony, you are essencially excluding yourself from the social contract by which you are afforded any rights at all (by ignoring the rights of others). Felons don't believe in your right to property/life/free express, etc. why should you agree to theirs? Certainly there may be some examples of felons who are reformed, but their restoration of rights is and should be at the largess of society at large.

Re:Prisoners

[Anonymous Coward]

who would have guessed... You take away most the freedoms of a person and they rebel and try to make the job of their opressors as difficult as possible.

Re:Prisoners

[mthreat]

I have to post as a non-Anonymous Coward because I was in prison for several years and I think it would be cowardly to do otherwise.

You say these inmates could look up how to break the system, cheat the system, find out what is going on in other prisons, read about gangs, get information on other inmates using Google, etc.

I hate to break it to you, but they can do all this without using the Internet. How? Have people on the outside access the information (on the Internet or other places), print it out, and mail it in. And yes, I know, the geniuses in the prison mail room check incoming mail for "inappropriate" material. There are ways around this too. So then what, cut off their mail and contact with society?

Don't be so judgemental on people in prison. Bertrand Russell was in prison.

On the other hand, I think it was Winston Churchill who said if you want to see the scum of the earth, go to any prison and watch shift change.

Re:Prisoners

[number11]

How exactly would selling drugs to willing buyers (a felony in some circumstances) be ignoring the rights of others..
When one of those buyers is a mothers who then gives birth to a malformed crack-baby.
When one of those buyers gets so addicted to meth that his teeth fall out.
When one of those buyers looses the will to live and dies in a dim corner. alone, in desperation.

Oh. Like:
Selling alcohol to a mother who then gives birth to a fetal-alcohol syndrome baby.
Selling tobacco to someone who smokes indoors exposing others to the toxic fumes.
Selling Cheetos to a lardbutt who ends up needing a quadruple bypass.
Selling a cellphone to someone who talks while driving and kills a family in the process.
Selling weapons to a government that uses them to attack third-world countries and kill tens of thousands of people.
Selling a TV to somebody who doesn't get enough exercise.
Selling a Hummer to someone who pisses away our oil and pollutes our air with it.

I guess I understand.

Re:Prisoners

[coopex]

No, you're wrong.

From here: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/ulk/amlock.html Percent of federal prisoner population incarcerated for nonviolent crimes: 89
Percent of new admissions to federal prisons that are for nonviolent crimes: 94
Percent of state prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1979: 6
Percent of state prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1991: 21
Percent of Federal prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1979: 25
Percent of Federal prisoner population convicted on drug charges, 1991: 58

And on drug incarcerations: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/prison.htm
Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constituted the largest group of Federal inmates (55%) in 2001, down from 60% in 1995

And finally, on how Amsterdam has largely eliminated its drug problems through decriminalization http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/reinarman.califano.ht ml

Go check some facts before you spout off your opinion as gospel.

Cruel and unusual....

[Rick Zeman]

...I guess to any slashdotter, NO Internet access would be cruel and unusual punishment.

So what...

[BlacBaron]

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?

YRO?

[TFGeditor]

Why wasn't this headed "Your Rights Online"?

Re:YRO?

[justforaday]

Seriously, the one time they could've used that category in a way that makes sense and they didn't...

re

[computerme]

All I know is that if i were them I would DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING...

What's the worse the could do to me? ;)

link to prisoner's site

[Prodigy Savant]

Keith Maydak in for a telephone scam is here.

Juan Melendez is here

... thanks, google:)

Herodotus

[TheOtherChimeraTwin]

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.

Sigh.

[Solder Fumes]

Yet again, Slashdot gets my hopes up with a headline that looks like it'll be a "how-to" article.

Hey man...

[AliasMoze]

...pack a' smokes for a mod point.

They have no right to speech

[John Seminal]

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?

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.

this is an OUTRAGE

[deft]

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.

Off-topic

[MyLongNickName]

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.

Michael Ross

[trelanexiph]

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.

What sucks about this

[John Seminal]

How can you surf porn on the internet with your roomate 2 feet behind you? What would suck even worse is if he squirted you before you were done.

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!!

Re:What are we paying for?

[Qzukk]

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?

Prison = Crime University

[Corpus_Callosum]

Modern correctional intutitions are quite possibly the most culturally destructive institutions on the planet.

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.

Re:Prison = Crime University

[Corpus_Callosum]

I think the real solutions are to deal with societal issues that leads to so many people being in jail. Nip the problem in the bud so to speak. If you don't have inmates you don't have a problem dealing with inmates.

My real point here is that almost *anything* would be better for society than locking these people up together where they can learn from each other, become hardened, recruited by criminal organizations and *connected* - released back to the innocent world as predators working on their predatory doctoral dissertations.

A guy steals a car and runs from the police. When caught, he fights and because of all of this he goes to prison. When he comes out he is now part of a crime syndicate, knows everything there is to know about not getting caught, where to fence goods, who to call in case of problems, who the corrupt lawyers are that can make problems go away, etc.. etc.. etc.. He spends the rest of his life sucking blood from society.

Are we better off for having put him in prison? Perhaps a better conviction would be loosing his driving priveleges for the rest of his life. At least that way, we haven't created a more dangerous type of criminal.

That is the point. We react to crimes by training the criminal to be a more dangerous type of criminal. Isn't that madness?

Re:Prison = Crime University

[HiThere]

I would agree to keeping them in strict isolation, but strict isolation would mean protecting them from the guards as well as from other prisoners.

I agree that prisons have all of the defects you list, and I could extend the list. And some people do need to be punished.

My solution would be STRICT isolation...as in, sensory deprivation. If that's your goal, then the obvious technique is total isolation. And cut the sentences by a factor of 10 (or more...some experimentation would necessarily be needed).

But strict isolation also means NO ADVERTISEMENTS, NO MORALITY LECTURES, NO BEATINGS. Probably it would be a good idea to provide each prisoner with a good tough book on hatha yoga. One that provided instruction in the traditional poses and warnings, if needed, on dangers of any particular position. And a good set of isometric limbering up exercises. Figure out how tall the prisoner is, and stick him in a concrete cube 5 inches larger in every direction than his height. Feed him through a bellamy tube (compressed air delivery). Weld the door shut. Make everything sturdy as a first consideration, and without dangerous corners or edges for another, because if he gets hurt, nobody's going to know. (I warned that it would be necessary to cut the sentence length.) Pad the walls and floor thickly (but not so that he can't tell that it's cement underneath). This improves sound isolation...but there are sound baffles within the cement anyway, so that aspect isn't very important. There is no bed. The floor padding is thick enough that he doesn't need one. Filter the air on the way into the cell to remove not only all pollen, etc., but also to remove all scents of any sort, except, perhaps the merest trace of ozone. I'm not sure how he should clean himself, though provisions need to be made so that he can do so as he sees fit. The temperature should be controlled to an unvarying 80 Farhenheit (is 80 right? Perhaps slightly higher, and the light should be controlled by a dimmer knob to whatever he sets it at. (LEDs, probably, but full spectrum, and only if they fix that flicker problem. We don't want any changes that aren't initiated by the inmate.)

Alternatively, one could go for a more complete sensory deprivation experience, and reduce the sentences even further (by at least another factor of 10). But I'm not certain that wouldn't do most people more harm than good.

In any case, a part of the purpose of this scenario is to protect the prisoner from both the guards and other prisoners as well as to give him a chance to decide that he doesn't want to end up here again, and hopefully understand what his mistake was. (And to break the circle of prison gangs.)

Re:you suck

[chachob]

If you do it because you feel like you're doing anyone a service, you must be new here.

Psst...his UID is 73503. Yours is 555410.

Example of a Felony

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Interesting? Try troll bullshit.

[HiThere]

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.