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Prison Messaging System JPay Withdraws Copyright Claims
Florida-based JPay has a specialized business model and an audience that is at least in part a (literally) captive one: the company specializes in logistics and communications services involving prisons and prisoners, ranging from payment services to logistics to electronic communications with prisoners. Now, via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing comes a report from the EFF that the company has back-pedaled on a particularly strange aspect of the terms under which the company provided messaging services for prisoners: namely, JPay's terms of service made exhaustive copyright claims on messages sent by prisoners, claiming rights to "all content, whether it be text, images, or video" send via the service. That language has now been excised, but not in time to prevent at least one bad outcome; from the EFF's description:
[Valerie] Buford has been running a social media campaign to overturn her [brother, Leon Benson's] murder conviction. However, after Buford published a videogram that her brother recorded via JPay to Facebook, prison administrators cut off her access to the JPay system, sent Benson to solitary confinement, and stripped away some of his earned "good time." To justify the discipline, prison officials said they were enforcing JPay's intellectual property rights and terms of service.
So you want to make sure that they cannot do anything but stay a criminal after their sentence is finished ?
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Oh but what if he is innocent ?
The GP asked you to look at the cost of death row prisoners. I think what he means is paying compensation to relatives for a false conviction is cheaper than keeping them alive until the appeals process is finished, and that he personally feels that this line of logic is acceptible. Personally, I consider this attitude murderous in and of itself. Perhaps the GP will voluntarily submit to the death penalty...?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
most incidents of wrongful imprisonment involve police investigators and prosecutors, both of which are heavily protected against any charges of wrongful imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and the like.
Maybe that's the part that needs to change. Take away some of those protections and then maybe you'll have prosecutors who will place the truth over their own careers.
Overturn murder conviction? :)
Murderers belong to a electric chair. Keeping those morons around is total waste of taxpayers money.
Before you start your hippy bull shit about "what if he is innocent..." find out, how much it cost to keep one of those scumbags in prison for a year.
I bet most of you wish you could spend that much on yourself for the rest of your life
Gas/chair/needle all the violent repeat criminals and be done with those morons.
Hmm let's see... assuming the Seattle Times is not just pushing this because they or the report authors are anti-death penalty...
Seeking death penalty adds $1M to prosecution cost, study says
http://www.seattletimes.com/se...
Or according to the Nevada Legislature, "The Legislative Auditor estimated the cost of a murder trial in which the death penalty was sought cost $1.03 to $1.3 million, whereas cases without the death penalty cost $775,000."
(All the study links I can find for that one are either pdf or paywalled)
Kansas: "Defending a death penalty case costs about four times as much as defending a case where the death penalty is not sought, according to a new study by the Kansas Judicial Council. Examining 34 potential death-penalty cases from 2004-2011, the study found that defense costs for death penalty trials averaged $395,762 per case, compared to $98,963 per case when the death penalty was not sought. "
Idaho: "A new, but limited, study of the costs of the death penalty in Idaho found that capital cases are more costly and take much more time to resolve than non-capital cases. One measure of death-penalty costs was reflected in the time spent by attorneys handling appeals. The State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typical death penalty appeal than on a life sentence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per capital defendant compared to about 180 hours per non-death penalty defendant). Capital cases with trials took 20.5 months to reach a conclusion while non-capital cases with trials took 13.5 months."
California: Assessment of Costs by Judge Arthur Alarcon and Prof. Paula Mitchell (2011, updated 2012)
"The authors concluded that the cost of the death penalty in California has totaled over $4 billion since 1978:
$1.94 billion--Pre-Trial and Trial Costs
$925 million--Automatic Appeals and State Habeas Corpus Petitions
$775 million--Federal Habeas Corpus Appeals
$1 billion--Costs of Incarceration
The authors calculated that, if the Governor commuted the sentences of those remaining on death row to life without parole, it would result in an immediate savings of $170 million per year, with a savings of $5 billion over the next 20 years."
Texas: "Each death penalty case in Texas costs taxpayers about $2.3 million. That is about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. ("Executions Cost Texas Millions," Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992)." Granted, the Texas study is probably too old for immediate relevance. ...and so on...
Going purely from memory for this next little item, so I cannot provide any citation for it, I seem to recall that the cost of keeping a prisoner on Death Row is about $90,000 to $100,000 higher than keeping a prisoner in the general population.
Sounds to me like the Death Penalty is a ridiculously expensive option, considering that it is primarily there as a deterrent. Given the crime rates in the US, I would have to question whether the deterrent is working. So if it is not working, and it costs a butt-ton of money, why bother with it?
No. We are in a first world country where assholes in charge lie about what they are doing.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Our prisons aren't prisons. They are money making slave holes. Yet another reason why our country simply stinks.
There. I'm FROM here and I said it.
YOU NEED TO REALLY THINK ABOUT THE WORDS AND NOT JUST REFLEXIVELY SNIPE AT THE POSTER.
THINK.
What you cannot see, is that prisoners are bad because they murder/brutalize innocent people,
You have erroneously conflated "prisoners" with "violent offenders". The vast majority of people convicted to custodial sentences are convicted of non-violent crimes, such as possession of illicit substances or petty theft. Even car-jacking is usually carried out in the absence of the owner and with no threat of physical harm.
It is not only the violent criminals that are alienated and disenfranchised by the "ex-con" label, but anyone serving a custodial sentence.
And even violent offenders may be victims of circumstance. Drug addiction doesn't come without the addict choosing to take drugs, but the consequences of drug addiction can include violent tendencies that are cured if the addict cleans up. But what's the point coming off your escape from reality when reality is that no-one will give you a second chance?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
More concerning is why the US Prison system is worried about a private corporation's intellectual rights and safeguarding them? Prisons are supposed to listen only to the courts. Did JPay have a judge-signed court order to send this person to solitary?
You Americans should be very disturbed.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
I live right here, in the US. And, I agree with AC's post. There is no justifiable reason that the prison system should charge as much as $75 for a short conversation with a prisoner. None. That "service" only helps to justify the statement that the prison systems are run for profit.
The United States cannot justify it's huge prison population. The US cannot justify privatized prisons. The US cannot justify locking people away for decades for crimes in which no person was hurt. ESPECIALLY since murderers often walk free after 5 to 10 years.
Face it - our system is fucked. Money making slave holes sums it up nicely.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. Communications can be controlled, regardless of the pricing. The phone call can be totally free, and be monitored. Or, it can cost ten thousand dollars, and be monitored as well.
A dangerous person who is incarcerated should be strictly controlled. No access to telephones, or limited and closely monitored access is fine with me. Charging exorbitant prices is NOT alright. Someone is exploiting the prisoners and their families for profit, and THAT is exactly what I am talking about. The whole prison industry is exploiting the prisoners and their families.
Prisoners have less voice than any other group in America. No senator gives a damn about them, no congressman, no governor. Those prisoners with any voice at all are beholden to lawyers or to activists. They have few legal means of communication, and they are charged fees that are outrageous when they use them.
Your concerns about scams would be better addressed by getting control of all the cell phones smuggled into the prisons, oftentimes smuggled by the guards who are supposed to enforce the prison rules.
It would be virtually impossible for me to sneak a telephone into a prison, without being detected. But, I can offer a guard a hundred dollars to openly carry that telephone in to work with him, and he will readily give it to the individual I've specified. Some guards may hold out for more than a hundred dollars, some will simply refuse. Some few of them might go to the law, and report that I've attempted to bribe them. But, by and large, the guards are the major suppliers of cell phones within the prisons. And, THAT is where most of the scams come from.
In some cases, trustees may compromise the prison's own telephone system, but as nearly as I can tell, that is usually discovered in relatively short order, and corrected.
And, none of that justifies the flagrant exploitation of the people who are put in the care of the prison system.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br