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Court To Prisoner: No Xbox 360 For You
jonklinger writes "An Israeli Court rejected the appeal of a prisoner who requested to have an Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 because there is no possibility to remove the internet connectivity apparatus from the device without harming its functionality. Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
I have some fun but irrelevant news for you: "an" is older than "a"; the word is ultimately cognate with "one". If you go back far enough, it's the only indefinite article used. Wikipedia also talks about an hilarious process called 'juncture loss'.
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If prisoners get to sit around playing games, the punishment of prison could easily be less than their punishment outside of prison?
Prisoners should be making big rocks into little rocks.
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Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence.
It would be nice if the slashdot editors would resort to other kinds of editing.
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The old adage of 'they need to get it out of their system' - this is a falsehood: prisoners do not have to "result to other kinds of violence" in the absence of a substitute. If you are prone to violent acts, with all other variables being equal, you'll commit violent acts even after having already committed violent acts. Even with a violence simulator, you're still going to perform the other violence outside it that you were supposed to be suppressing.
Mike Tyson was a good example; all day long he's sparring with partners, hitting punching bags, shadowboxing. Then he beats and rapes a woman, and later looses his temper and bites an opponent's ear. Despite having 'worked it out of his system' hundreds of times more than a normal person, he's still violent.
People don't have violence meters that you can fill up. Stop perpetuating this invalid belief like it was common sense.
The court has an issue with the fact that they have WiFi built into them. I don't know why they can't simply let him disable the WiFi since it should be pretty easy to do so (on the original PS3 60GB "Fat" models, you can remove the wifi/bluetooth board/card and that would disable it. The only downside is that you need to connect your controllers via USB cable as they used the bluetooth connection for their signals).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Because busy prisoners are peaceful prisoners. If they are gaming then they aren't planning riots, organising gangs or maintaining their drug-smuggling networks.
Yes, of course they can. They (prisons) get custom built machines. A mate of mine worked on a project to supply just these machines to prisons. Among the other special requirements was a case made entirely of clear acrylic so there would be nowhere to hide contraband.
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Then give them a useful task like building roads... Let them read a book or go to school. I don't have a PS3. Why should gang-banger joe in prison have better stuff than me?
why not increase the punishment, so as to act as a deterrent? We can keep it completely harmless. How about Waterboarding?
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Then give them a useful task like building roads... Let them read a book or go to school. I don't have a PS3. Why should gang-banger joe in prison have better stuff than me?
I'm sure that you don't have a PS3 because you put no value in owning one. You put much higher value in reading books for example.
So by your standard, playing a PS3 is less valuable than reading a book, and so they would have *less* value than you, not more.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Or, don't leave unsecured wifi running in your prison?
which is totally what she said
"Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
Can you explain that one away? You may be technically correct in your arguments, but there is essentially zero chance that the author is well versed in the historic etymology of English. Even a broken clock et cetera, et cetera...
What a noff-topic point.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
And how exactly will turning the prison system into an adult daycare promote rehabilitation? IMO, this is why the number of repeat offenders is so high. Give them high school and college courses, or let them otherwise learn a useful life skill; do anything but make prison an extended vacation for them.
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
How do you plan to use that to fill up 100% of their time? Idle hands and all that jazz.
Harsher prisons only mean harsher people when they are finally let out.
What does that have to do with it?
They are still people and we would prefer they come out better than they went in. These sorts of things are hugely useful in that respect, they also allow for a simple level of punishment and reward inside prison. Prisoners who misbehave can have their video games taken away.
Fear and punishment might give you a stiffy but they don't work. What we want is rehabilitated prisoners not people more angry and violent than when they went in.
state-rub hell-holes
Go on...
That would give a lot of bad press due to high suicide rates. Additionally the prison's coffee machine would break down within a week.
An adult daycare you can't leave, that locks you in a barred room for 12+ hours a day, that totally limits everyday activities, where gainful employment is either free or at vastly reduced wages (in the US typically $.70 cents an hour, where the prison vastly inflates the prices of items sold to the prisoners (are bar of soap can exceed $5 and a pack of cigarettes $10), where you are under threat of violence and where drug use is so high because there is nothing to do.
I'll never understand the American prison view that derives from Ben Franklin's writings that everyone should be in solitary confinement with nothing to do. Isn't it bad enough that you are locked in a place that you can't leave? Do you really need to throw in rape and abuse along with no entertainment?
Or, easier still, tell them they can't have a gaming machine because they simply don't deserve one instead of coming up with an easily overcome technical reason.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
So you think killing innocent people is just?
I base this on the following:
1. humans are fallible
2. humans form juries, judges, prosecutors and police
3. thus any use of capital punishment will invariably kill innocent people
4. to skill believe in the use of capital punishment you must be ok with some innocent people being killed by the state.
This has been proven time and time again with people released from death row by DNA evidence. It is also used disproportionately on the poor and minorities, even when all other factors are taken into account.
Rehabilitation works, it only works if the system is designed for it. Your kind make sure the US system is not.
I never suggested it did—note the "irrelevant"—I was just being a purveyor of useless trivia.
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One problem with that scheme -- How do you think they'll react to blue shells?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
IIRC, there's a prison in Tennessee that lets prisoners farm their own food. Farming is a useful skill, reduces the cost of imprisonment, exercises the prisoners, teaches responsibility, and it can take well over 100 hours a week (unless it's industrial). It's also hard work, such that people gladly chose to work in a factory for pennies a day rather than be a farmer in most of the world.
This is in contrast to prisons where farming is one occupational training option for inmates, rather than a full-time, "if you don't work, you don't eat" type arrangement. OTOH, I'd imagine people would complain that living like most rural people did 50+ years ago is cruel and unusual.
Prison should keep people from re-offending - separation from the society works fine this way, and rehabilitation helps to keep that effect post-prison.
Judging from statistics, it does look an awful lot like severity of punishment does not serve as a significant deterrent to other people - therefore, any aim to punish offenders instead of rehabilitating them is unnecessary brutality.