2 Arrested In Plot To Fly Contraband Into Prison With Drone

An anonymous reader writes: Using a drone to get contraband into prison seems to be all the rage lately. Police say two men attempting to fly drugs, tobacco and pornography into a Maryland state prison with a drone were arrested Monday. Stephen T. Moyer, secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services worries that someone will try to use a drone to deliver a gun. "That's my biggest fear," he told a news conference. "The use of these drones to bring this type of contraband into a facility is very, very troubling, and we're going to address it."

Comments

How about if the drone is the gun?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about if the drone is the gun?

Re:How about if the drone is the gun?

[R3d M3rcury]

Or how about an automated tunneling drone?

Nothing to see here

[ihtoit]

More NCIS plot ripoffs.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Joce640k]

Yep. Why would anybody use something so noisy and easy to spot as a drone? It makes no sense.

Hint: Use a big catapult/slingshot to fire stuff over the wall.

I've heard enough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to ban prisons.

Re:I've heard enough!

[Lord Bitman]

Why? Just ban prisoners.

Re:I've heard enough!

[rmdingler]

Why? Just ban prisoners.

Or legalize the porn and tobacco. Prohibition makes it profitable, as always, and the will finds a way.

Re:I've heard enough!

[kamapuaa]

Right, prohibition never works. Prisons just need more porn, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.

Re:I've heard enough!

[rmdingler]

Right, prohibition never works. Prisons just need more porn, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.

Prisons everywhere have alcohol... Apparently, it's quite low tech.

Porn, tobacco, and drugs are made artificially scarce by their prohibition, which, as I understand things,

Leads to a sellers' market.

Re:I've heard enough!

[SuricouRaven]

Porn used to be made artificially scarce, before the internet made prohibition unenforceable.

Now I get it.

[PopeRatzo]

So that's why I didn't get my drugs, tobacco and pornography this month.

Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

Not hard.

No yard. They see the outside through glass or not at all until their term ends.

The threat with the drones is that someone drops something in a fenced off area that prisoners are allowed to walk around in...

Okay... so... don't have those areas.

Another problem solved by answering simple questions with obvious answers.

Accept me as Pope of the solar system and behold my many following decrees!

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Sarten-X]

...until the lack of fresh air and sunlight is deemed cruel and unusual punishment, and the unnatural environment is found to be detrimental to rehabilitation.

The obvious answers to simple questions have usually already been considered, and have already been rejected for reasons obvious to others.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Thud457]

10,000 years of VR rehabilitation until they're ready to become productive members of society. And brain implants.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Or put up a net.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some county prisons that have blocked-off windows in some or all directions (why did they put in windows in the first place?) and extremely limited yard calls. "The Yard" in such places amounts to an open-air pen with a concrete floor and razorwire-topped fences. Guards watch the inmates as they just sort of stand there and look at some grass or clouds. Or maybe a tree or two.

So, they're pretty close already.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

or just put a big net over those areas to catch anything that might get dropped on the prison whether it be from a RC quadcopter or any other aircraft.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Just jamm the frequncies commonly used by cellphones / drones / gps, duh.

Granted, you could make a drone that wouldn't need any of those, but these are harder to get.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

Incorrect. Many prisons are entirely enclosed and are not deemed cruel.

The reason to not impliment it is cost. Many existing prisons have yards and replacing the with large recreation buildings would be expensive. Thus the drone thing will be tolerated at such facilitates.

As to whether obvious answers are considered and rejected... the funny thing is that you're right... but then the other options all fail one after the other until all they have left is the first option. And if the mission is critical... then that's what they go with.

Churchill said "Americans always do the right thing... after trying everything else first"... and that's true of a lot of organizations anywhere in the world.

The obvious and right answer to a problem is often seen immediately but there are costs to that answer that are not appreciated and so people try half assed solutions to avoid it.

Sometimes the half assed solutions work. But more often that not they fail.

And when they fail the question then becomes if you care enough to fix the problem or not?

And there things get split again because a lot of people would prefer to have failing schools or crime ridden inner cities or an exploding prison population or any of a million things that do have obvious solutions but which people don't like because they have price tags associated with them.

But if you actually want whatever it was to actually work... actually... really... then you need to stop half assing the situation and go with something that will ACTUALLY work.

Having prisoners recreate in a large open enclosed recreation building is not cruel. you could give the thing big green house style skylights. Hell, make it a green house. Fill it with plants and grass.

The half assing is how you get these cars that can be hacked wirelessly. Its why stupid websites helping idiots cheat on their spouses get compromised. Its why Hillary is in so much trouble with the FBI etc.

The important thing is to only half ass stuff that isn't important. IF IT IS IMPORTANT... DON"T half ass it. Rocket science? Apparently.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Where there's a will there's a way.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Having prisoners recreate in a large open enclosed recreation building is not cruel. you could give the thing big green house style skylights.

And then they turn it into more bunk space because expanding the prison is to expensive for CCA.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Air drop hundreds of hand cuff keys all over the prison grounds via drone. Sit back and watch riots with amusement. The USA has more people incarcerated per capita than any other country, and these "fot profit" prisons (and legal system) needs to be fixed.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[PraiseBob]

The other obvious answer has been tested in Kentucky. Prison yards already have guards... with shotguns... on towers... watching for anything suspicious... you see where I'm going with this?

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

Have fun getting the FCC to approve that idea.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[metrix007]

Many prisons are entirely enclosed and are not deemed cruel.

Because prisoners still get outside time.

Then the Drones will deliver to where they are outside, instead of the yard.

All you are doing is shifting the problem, not addressing it. Maybe making it ever so slightly more difficult, to a negligible amount that doesn't do the idea justice.

Really, they should just shut down the use of anything electronic within the bounds of the yard. That is much simpler, and far more effective since it also stops a lot of other problems, like cell phone use.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid. Handcuff keys are different. Cops have to buy their own cuffs, could be any brand. Also they use zip ties in riots. No sense putting metal on the hands of rioters. The only time you are cuffed in prison is when a cop is escorting you so the key is useless and will get you shot.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

...until the lack of fresh air and sunlight is deemed cruel and unusual punishment, and the unnatural environment is found to be detrimental to rehabilitation.

"Until"? Isn't it already considered cruel and unusual?

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[jonnythan]

County "prisons" are usually jails and reserved for terms of a year or less, though there are exceptions.

In prisons, where people can spend decades, we owe it to ourselves as a society to have some degree of humanity. There are a lot of people fighting for the cruel and capricious use of solitary confinement.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[kamapuaa]

Are you suggesting they buy magical anti-electronic beams?

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[mysidia]

Okay... so... don't have those areas.

Sure.... but why not just build a fenced in area that drones cannot enter?

Low tech method would be to cover the yard with netting.

High tech method would be to have their own tethered drones or sensing devices conducting a continuous aerial patrol.

If a drone flies over, do an immediate lockdown and scramble guards to secure all the prisoners and take the drone down.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

and if I drop a package full of drugs on the lawn that is literally covered in Sod that was stapled to it so the bag appears to be made of grass and so blends into the lawn... if I do this at 2 AM...

What then? The prisoner then walks over to where ever it is... extracts the drugs or takes whole package or whatever...

Your concept is to have a guard shoot the drone out of the sky.

That works if the drone is active in when the prisoners are there. Wrong. You drop the package off when no one is looking.

Think like an asshole for a minute. Most people I've found are incapable of thinking of security in any fundemental fashion because they just lack the inner asshole to draw upon.

I do not have this deficiency... I am capable of extreme levels of malice.

I'm not trying to sound like an asshole here... its just how I am... Can you reach down inside yourself and find that inner cunt that lives inside us all?

Channel that just to determine how you're going to smuggle a hand grenade into a prison. Its amusing that the Waldon's worst fear was a handgun. Explosives are obviously worse... with a timer or a detonator. Why? Because you could do the killing and get away with it.

See that? I feel like the Emperor telling you about the dark side... LET IT FLOW THROUGH YOU... release your hatred! :D

Seriously though, people are really bad at doing that when estimating how nasty someone can be with this tech. People don't appreciate that someone that is breaking the rules isn't going to follow the rules. They're going to think in terms of what they can get away with. And if the stupid drone is operated beyond the limits of the prison using radio signals or if the damned thing is actually fully automated... the risk to the people putting all this in motion is minimal.

So yeah... explosives is what I'd worry about.

The drone situation is an intolerable risk. The fact that people haven't already exploited this to do really horrible shit is owed more to no one wanting to do it than them not being able to do it. Think of it like the traffic coming at you at 120 miles an hour (60+60) with nothing but a little yellow line separating the two of you. Why don't you collide? Because no one wants to collide. But they can... every time a car passes you someone has a chance to kill you.

Sorry if I've annoyed or offended you or something... I seem to do that constantly... its only intentional when its obvious... otherwise its just what happens. *shrugs*

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

There are some prisons that are literally skyscrappers... there is no outside time.

And even if there always were... and there isn't... you could limit the size of that area and remove any grass... so it was a small uniform flat area... and then a guard could inspect it every morning reliably.

As to shutting down anything in the yard that is electrical... how? With magic?

The only thing that makes any sense to me that would work besides enclosing their rec time would be putting out some motion sensing cameras that were very sensitive and would note when where something was dropped in the field prior to the prisoners being released. Then the guards could go out there, pick it up, and let the prisoners out to play.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[mysidia]

Then the Drones will deliver to where they are outside, instead of the yard.

The top of the line consumer drones can only fly for about 10 minutes tops.

So work out the maximum expected travel distance of the drones at full speed that bad guys are likely to have at their disposal, then mark out that radius, add 20% and make that entire area an "Official Drones Only" zone.

Build future prisons with at least twice that radius of buffer zone around them that nobody is allowed to enter.

Any drones found flying in the exclusion zone get shot down.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[mysidia]

Have fun getting the FCC to approve that idea.

The FCC is primarily a regulator over private use of spectrum. The FCC authority over government users is more limited, and is mostly through cooperative agreement, because gov't users should obey the law. In particular: the FCC is more restricted or unable to take any enforcement action against usage within military and executive branches of government that officials within those departments have authorized. If the military chose to jam all frequences for a period of time, the FCC would have no recourse other than to protest.

Private industry and prison officials have already worked with the FCC on ways of getting cell phones blocked, which is technology already being used ----- blocking cell phones through cell tower spoofing is already being done by prisons through a certain company's solution.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

netting is fine. The issue I have with that is that if there are gaps in the net large enough that I could drop something through the net... then why not fly over the yard and drop something through the net?

Imagine a lawn dart full of heroin... or perhaps lots of little golf ball sized bags of drugs that just go right through the netting?

So your netting would have to be really fine. Maybe if you used that netting they use in agriculture to shield some plants from the sun. I think they use it over peppercorn plants in India. The plants naturally live in a jungle so when you cultivate them you need to mimic the canopy. Anyway... if you used that kind of netting... fine. But do keep in mind that anything the contraband could slip through would be ineffective.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of people fighting for the cruel and capricious use of solitary confinement.

There are a lot of people who want more cruel and capricious use of solitary confinement? Yikes.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[jonnythan]

I'm sure there are, but not what I meant!!

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Ichijo]

If rehabilitation were the main goal of imprisonment, then there would be no practical reason to keep people in prison after they are rehabilitated, and knowing that they'll be set free as soon as they are reformed would be a powerful motivator for prisoners to avoid breaking the rules by, for example, accepting contraband by drone.

Amazing things could happen if we were to align the goals of prisoners with the goals of the rest of society.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

can you give me another example of where radio signals are scrambled by the government?

Because people have been getting in trouble for doing that INSIDE buildings. A hotel got in trouble for scrambling some signals inside their hotel. Some resturants have done it... a church was blocking cellphones because they didn't want cell phones ringing in the middle of a church service.

So private groups can't seem to do it INSIDE their building.

give me an example of the FCC being cool with scrambling signals? I've not seen it outside of the Pentagon, war games, or literal war zones.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

and if I drop a package full of drugs on the lawn that is literally covered in Sod that was stapled to it so the bag appears to be made of grass and so blends into the lawn... if I do this at 2 AM...

What then?

Morning grounds patrol spots it, takes the good stuff out, sets a trap.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Harlequin80]

Bird netting would probably also work. Nothing a drone can carry will be that heavy.

Depending on the size of the yard a couple of steel supports and some high tension cables between them as your support web. Then stretch a nylon mesh over them. Cost shouldn't be too high and I would expect it would have a reasonable life span. Your biggest problem will be storm debris with branches and things like that landing on it.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Harlequin80]

Depends on what your concerns as a prison warden are. Small bags of drugs that fit through 1cm2 bird netting are possibly fine from their perspective. Knives, guns, or other armaments not so much. Same with larger bags of drugs that are intended for distribution. These sorts of things cause problems.

The issue is also not new. Most prisons have a double fence setup so that people can't launch contraband over the fence into a prisoner accessed space already. This has seen people build crossbows and catapults to give them a bigger range. Drones just make it easier to coordinate with the person inside so you get your delivery to the right place and the right person.

In the end prisons are fairly porous to drugs and there is a mixed motivator to stop it. Drugs can keep prisoners calm and happy. Cutting off the supply or reducing it dramatically will see you having behaviour problems from withdrawing prisoners. Weapons however can dramatically shift balances of power. A shiv is one thing but if you get a firearm into a prison sooner or later it will get used and the outcome will be bad.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

If the package is literally made of grass... then you might not catch it.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

how about 1 cm packets of C4 that can be mashed together along with a small detonator that slips through inspections in parts?

You're not letting your inner demon out to really see what worst case scenarios look like.

Maybe its just me, but I don't want to shiv a guy if my intention is to kill him. Shiving a guy is dangerous. And getting away with it means some sort of conspiracy. And I'm not going to trust any of these fucking people with a secret like that especially if they can get time off their sentence by ratting on me.

So explosives or poison would be my go to assassination tools. Then when whomever died... I could say "who me?"

with either method, I'd have to worry about residue. Any killing like that is going to have an investigation. You're going to want to know how to avoid having any of it get on you or anything that belongs to you. You might even want to get residue on some other people to muddy the investigation

Put a timed detonator in the thing or a radio detonator... whatever works for you... then when the time is right... bang.

Or poison... that's tricky though... you'd want a contact poison ideally... or maybe an injectable. Tainted drugs perhaps. But unless you have a contact poison... it gets complicated.

The flow of drugs into prisons is not acceptable. That it happens is a fact but that it is tolerated is a disgrace.

Much of it as I understand comes from corrupt prison guards. that means that the criminals are being guarded by criminals. Those guards shouldn't be guarding the prisoners... they should be serving time with them.

As to people jamming stuff up their ass... I can understand that in a jail. I don't understand it in a prison. The distinction being that a jail is where you go when you await sentencing where as a prison is where you go after you've been sentenced. Getting drugs all the way from the street to the prison through some ass based courier system doesn't seem likely. And then what is left... gifts from friends and family? If anything gets through that, then that is just incompetence. X-ray it and dog sniff it. That's really pretty good at spotting stuff.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

I could drop a dart through bird netting... or if you prefer... marble sized heroine packets.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Cramer]

Handcuff keys are actually pretty standard -- otherwise, the cop that cuffed you would be the only one who could open them.

But, yes, the keys would be 99% useless "in the yard" as prisoners are rarely cuffed inside the prison. (various maximum security scenarios aside.) And it has become increasingly common to use zip-ties instead of metal cuffs. (cuffs are expensive, use common keys, and some people can slip out of them.)

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

The net would have to be pretty fine otherwise the drone could drop contraband through it.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[mysidia]

can you give me another example of where radio signals are scrambled by the government?

My understanding is that some US law enforcement SWAT, Bomb Squad teams and, other counter-terrorism forces might employ tactical jamming devices when conducting certain raids in order to suppress targets' access to cellular data networks and other wireless communications, until personal electronics have been secured with targets in custody, this also helps prevent video footage of raids from getting released or saved to the cloud.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really such a big risk for an inmate to get a gun?

Inmates already have shivs. They kill each other sometimes.

They could kill guards, too; the reason they don't is fear of the repercussions, not lack of opportunity.

The real solution here is to not have overcrowded prisons populated with inmates driven half-mad by excessive use of solitary confinement.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

Over crowding is impossible to avoid when you have that prison population. The economics of it don't provide other options.

As to solitary... you need methods to discipline prisoners.

I think one of the better ones is... I forget what its called... but its a mushy gray food they feed you instead of whatever else is being served. Apparently its entirely healthy but it states like nothing. Its like eating gray mush with all the vitamins and minerals you need... sort of like culinary sensory deprivation. Many prisoners have said it is worse than solitary because food is one of the few enjoyable things in their days and when you're on the mush... you don't even have that.

I think another prison punished some people by putting them in pink outfits instead of orange.

Whatever the method, you need means of disciplining the prisoners. Historically that was tying them to a pole and whipping them. That's not acceptable so we're going with other options.

Here you might say "well, if you legalized drugs the prison population would be smaller"... I generally agree. I think the drug war was a mistake. That said, I don't agree that we should turn prisons into country clubs either. Its supposed to suck.

My concept for reform would be to have the prisoners work. there are jobs we can OFFER them. They would not be MADE to do them. They could refuse with no repercussions. I'd even pay them some nominal amount for working and possibly give them certain perks.

We already employ prisoners as axillary firemen in California. They are used to do the hardest work in the big forest fires. They create fire breaks... they're standing 10 feet from 50 foot high walls of fire with chain saws clearing a 12 foot fire break.

We pay them 2 dollars a day for that. They sign up for it voluntarily. They get some more freedom in the camp than they get in the prison. They feel safer because the prison politics is gone. No gangs. No racial segregation. The self respect of doing good work for a good cause.

And the state of California saves huge sums of money. I think we have something like 6000 prisoners that will participate in these programs at a time. Think of the annual pay 6000 firefighters would cost... pensions and all. We save all that by using the convicts. And again... its consensual.

I'd expand that radically with the idea of getting as many prisoners as possible doing something productive and the lion's share of that money going back to the prison system with an eye to nullifying the cost of running the system. The true ideal here would be to have the prison system operate at a net zero cost. Maybe that isn't possible... but I'd try to get it as close to that as possible. Not by treating the prisoners like shit but by getting them to do something productive. Factory work. Farm labor. Construction. Land management. Sanitation. Name something unpleasant or backbreaking... something you can't pay people to do unless you pay them a lot or you're using illegal immigrants or something. And again... CONSENSUAL. I'm not talking about forcing anyone to do anything. They'll do it because they want to do it. Rewards, pay, etc will be set according to what it takes to get them to say yes. I suspect in most cases it will be the intangibles that will be the most interesting to them. A bit of freedom. A bit of self respect. That's worth a great deal and the price is cheap on the balance sheet of the prison system.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[FrozenGeek]

Mesh netting over the yard?

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

can you give me any citation on that? My understanding is that FCC basically says no to anyone that asks them. And the pentagon only gets away with it because they don't ask. :D

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Harlequin80]

There will always be vectors that you cannot prevent and any system can be circumvented. It's not so much a case of worst case scenarios that you need to be concerned about though, because the more out there they get the more difficult they are to achieve. You might be able to drop marble size pieces of C4 through, but you add a significantly higher barrier to entry around someone being able to obtain those types of things, make sure the customer gets all of them without being caught, and do it in a way that doesn't leave an easy trail (eg. if a jail cell exploded there would be professionals watching every second of footage for the last year). There would be nothing stopping someone dropping polonium pellets in for sake of argument but the changes of that are incredibly low.

What you really need to stop are the bulk "any idiot can do it" vectors. If I can go and buy a $5000 drone, load it up with a couple of pistols, ammo and a bunch of knives, drop it into a max security prison and start my own version of the hunger games there is a problem. And the barrier to entry to that is currently quite low.

The reason prisons are porous is a mixture of corruption and the fact that the money available to make them super secure isn't there. Prisons are designed to keep people in, not so much to keep stuff out. If you have a prison population of 300, you have 3 meals a day, personal supplies, letters, visitors, cleaning products, donations, and god knows what else that has to move through the prison gates. If you consider the sheer bulk of those items and the limited budget to police it, it is easy to see why stuff can get through.

When you consider the prison price of drugs you have a huge economic incentive to find a way to breach the security and all you need to do is compromise one person in the supply chain somewhere. If you get into the food supply and catering loop you can have drugs sealed inside bulk food items, coffee, sugar etc. 1 vac packed bag of coke inside a sealed bag of slop would be very very very very easy to miss.

My uncle was a max security prison guard for 15 years and I visited him at work a few times (not in the US thankfully). The guards are strung out, stressed and over worked. They are in a hostile environment working 12 hours shifts and what they want to do is get to the end of a shift without a major incident. He was telling me about one vector they struggled to find that was coming through visitation and that was a drug filled condom tied to a piece of dental floss. The dental floss had a loop in it that the visitor put round a tooth and then swallowed the condom. During the visit it was pulled back up and passed to the prisoner who then just swallowed it. Collect your drugs 24hrs later. It was only detected after there was a fight and a prisoner had the condom rupture inside.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

If the package is literally made of grass... then you might not catch it.

And worse yet, what if the yard is bermuda grass, and some a-hole drops tall fescue seed all over the yard?
A nightmare. A living nightmare it would be.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[tlhIngan]

No yard. They see the outside through glass or not at all until their term ends.

The threat with the drones is that someone drops something in a fenced off area that prisoners are allowed to walk around in...

Actually, they start putting netting up over the yard area - any drone or helicopter (full size!) gets caught in the netting. Sure, a full size helicopter will probably destory the netting, but get caught long enough for someone to either note its registration number, or to actually go arrest the pilot (the airspace above prisons is, unsurprisingly, restricted).

In fact, the bold escape of a couple of Quebec prisoners by helicopter happened because the netting wasn't put up yet.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Or put up a transmitter that blocks the most common radio bands for drone control with trash. That makes some other way of smuggling contraband the easiest again. Yes, I'm sure you could reseach which bands are blocked, and then adapt your transmitter and receiver. If you can do that you are most likely smart enough so you can also make plenty of money without doing crimes. Yes, mob bosses could pay for that, but then again they can pay for different things already. And are most likely in prisons where they already don't see the sky much.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

" Drugs can keep prisoners calm and happy."

And then you realease them as addicts? No wonder americas prison system sucks donkey balls and the re-offending numbers are super high.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea you could, but you couldn't drop a gun through it. Not many prisoners are even skilled enough to meddle with high explosives. And even they know it. If you want to blow up a prison nothing prevents you from loading that drone with explosives and crashing it through an office window.

Sun roofing is expensive, but would work. Clearing out a large radius outside the prison is either expensive or not. Then just have guard in tower 24/7. Jamming signals would work with limited efficiency. Limit access to outside of the prison with half mile radius. Makes flying drone inside way harder.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[adolf]

LEO also does lots of things without asking the FCC, but I'm not personally aware of any using any sort of jamming technique, nor have I fielded a request for such a thing. They're much more interested in getting and keeping their own mobile communications working properly than in figuring out how to make someone else's somehow not work. (And yes, bog-standard cell phones are part of their kit, so they're not going to be jamming those.)

Citation: I work with public safety communication systems, including with departments that have SWAT and bomb squads.

Here's what happens in reality whenever something nasty is going down: The cell network collapses under the weight of its subscriber base and becomes unusable. This causes text messages to be delayed by minutes or hours or just fail to send, TCP connections to hang forever, and phone calls to quickly drop or just fail to connect.

This may appear to the less-clued end-user as a DoS attack, ala "jamming," especially after spinning it through the Facebook Stupidity Multiplier in the rundown after a noted event. But it's really just a lack of service, not a denial of it.

Last year I was grocery shopping when the local tornado sirens went off. I pulled out my pocket computer to get a radar map to see what my options were and plainly wasn't the only person trying to do this; despite having awesome 4G capacity just minutes prior, and still having plenty of signal strength during, what normally took seconds took at least 5 minutes. (Thankfully, there was no actual tornado, and my SO was able to successfully send word to the kids at home to stop watching Youtube and get to the basement in fairly short order.)

I could tell from the morbid disdain on the faces of those around me as they stared at their own temporarily-useless phones that I wasn't the only one who was experiencing this issue.

Government conspiracy? Active jamming before rounding up devices to hide The Truth? No. Just an oversubscribed, under-built network performing as best as it can at a time when everyone wants to use it Right Now.

Doesn't matter if it's a bomb threat, a riot, a huge fire, a natural disaster, or any other source of immediate public concern -- the network doesn't care what is happening, it is simply aware that it can't keep up. And it is affected by this of this in far less time it would take for any domestic government agency to start jamming. (What would they jam, anyway, to cause a criminal's 2-way radio to cease functioning? Everything/wholesale broadband RFI? Then their own stuff wouldn't work.)

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[illumnatLA]

Why do people think these things are some kind of 'stealth' devices that can just sneak in and drop off the goods? These type drones are loud as hell and, unless the prison is staffed completely with the deaf, any guard is going to hear the thing coming.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[sjames]

It seems so. After all, we have prosecutors fighting against releasing prisoners even after they are exonerated.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Alioth]

Chicken wire over the yard.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, be on your best behavior so you can get back out into the world... Only to repeat the process repeatedly.

Prison doesn't and can't reform someone. It is really more of a place to put dangerous people so they can't hurt others. Unfortunately many non-dangerous people are put in there with them.

Prison is a very short-sighted answer to people committing crimes, but unfortunately it is the only one we've got. There are no perfect solutions. The closest I can think of is to eliminate (execute) the REALLY dangerous ones that can likely never be let out into public again, and turn what remains into more of an involuntary vocational facility so that they will have skills and an ability to support themselves with legal means on release.

So many people believe they sound enlightened by saying execution is cruel and unusual or that it makes the justice system as bad as the criminals. But the fact is, cruel and unusual is making a bunch of nonviolent criminals share cell blocks with murderers and rapists that you are keeping there indefinitely.

Meanwhile we pay huge $$ in taxes to support them and pretend it is more humane to cage them with each other for life because there is an off chance that we accidentally convicted an innocent person (who will now live with other violent fiends for the rest of their lives anyway).

But no... Let's keep holding on to the fantasy of a Utopia where everyone would be good if just given the chance and no one is damaged beyond repair. All we need to do is suppress the pesky survival instinct that Spurs every organism to fight for resources and pretend the person that murdered their entire family with an axe was a perfectly healthy human being having a bad day.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

My concept for reform would be to have the prisoners work.

Your concept for reform is a practice that dates from the 1930s? UNICOR already exists. So does CALPIA. Several other states probably have their own equivalent.

You'd not offering anything radical, you're just doing what they are already doing. At most, you'd be pursuing more opportunities, but you have to be careful with that, you don't want to incentivize the process of incarceration.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

... haahhahhahahaha... you think explosives are hard to use? Where did you get that idea?

How many f'ing stupid islamists use them all the time? How many soldiers out of basic are handling explosives all the time.

I mean... just wow. An explosive is a firecracker... that has a bigger boom.

Are you smart enough to use a firecracker?

Yes?

Then you're smart enough to use explosives. Safely? Maybe not... but I'm quite certain you could set the fucking thing off if you wanted to.

Oh my god... the people on the internet. *eyes tear up with laughter*

  You guys are hilarious.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

There are certain things I'm sure prisoners deserve to have with few exceptions. Exceptions being related to their behavior involving the following.

1. A guarantee of two hours per day in open air. --> Basic human decency
2. A newspaper five days a week (or one Sunday paper) at no cost to the prisoner. --> Access to information
3. An allowance to purchase hygiene and toiletries each month. I don't know a good amount, but perhaps $20 per month. Inflationary adjustment. --> Hypoallergenic products and basic comfort.
4. No more than 72 hours in solitary confinement per 7 day period. --> I don't know if that's long or short, but I imagine it's a cruel situation that should probably be abolished.
5. A right food diets, such as vegan, vegetarian, Kosher, other religious diets, etc.
6. No cutting hair unless the prisoner has abused the privilege of having long hair. --> They only cut men's hair after conviction, right? Not women's?

There's probably more. The basic of the above is that I feel that the criminal justice system should be more for rehabilitation and not just punishment.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

my point is that a net won't stop me from dropping explosives into the prison and frankly I think those are a bigger problem. A knife... who cares. They already have shivs. A gun? What does that do? Lets them shoot a guard? Why not stab the guard? They're going to get close enough to do it. The only danger with a gun is maybe being able to shoot the warden himself... getting close enough to shiv him would be hard. But why would a prisoner even want to do that?

A net isn't going to stop drugs. It isn't going to stop explosives. I will stop guns ... maybe... and it probably can't stop porn... though I wonder why porn is a problem. I don't understand why prisoners wouldn't be allowed access to all the porn they wanted. Sexually frustrated prisoners is not a good idea. Let them drain their nuts all they want.

As to visitation stuff... we often separate visitors with a pane of glass and they communicate through closed circuit telephones that are often recorded or actively being listened to by someone during the visitation.

So... again... if the contraband is passing at visitation then there is a competence issue.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

the copter doesn't need to touch down. It can drop things THROUGH the net unless the net is too fine for things for fall through. Marble sized pellets of heroine for example... or C4... or botulism toxin.

Re: Nothing open to the sky

[DeputySpade]

Bomb squads use spark gap transmitters to jam radio signals thus preventing remote detonation. I know it's true because I saw it on Burn Notice. :-)

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[metrix007]

There are some prisons that are literally skyscrappers... there is no outside time.

I very much doubt this, and could not find anything supporting that claim.

Can you provide a source of some sort? It should be easy to verify.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Locking them up for petty crimes, or locking up people that refused to testify, who didn't know or want anything to do with av violent act but are considered a conspirator! Does nothing for society, and only drives up tax money to fund people who shouldn't be in prison to begin with.

You get less time for dealing heroin, coke, and other drugs considered to be "dangerous" then you do for slinging pot.

For others if they were not already the "worst of the worst" only become complete barbaric animals. If I go to prison I shouldn't have to fear begin raped, or killed. And yet if they do drugs and have some type of release thru things some take for granted so be it. I love how this is a "concern" but begin raped and killed either by other prisoners or guards (despite a prisoner begin male or female) and or the guards being pay offs to allow it is perfectly legit.

There are others in prison too that maybe don't belong but I will not get into a long debate over that.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There are quite a few such facilities throughout the country. I know one in Los Angeles and there are a couple in Florida that I know of as well.

They're not uncommon.

This notion that it is inhumane if you don't get yard time is odd. It is generally considered inhumane if they don't get recreation time but there is no provision that they need to see the sun at any point.

Yard are provided mostly because it is sufficient and inexpensive. However, there is nothing that says we have to do that to my knowledge. An area where they can recreate? Sure. Does it say anywhere what depth above or below that ground that place is?... not that I've heard. We could put the whole thing a mine shaft if we really wanted.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Harlequin80]

Visitation screens like you describe are only used at max security prisons. Most prisons have a visitation room with normal chairs and a couple of guards standing round the outside. Even in max security prisons most prisoners meet with visitors in an open room. Also there isn't the staffing available for high levels of individual surveillance. In a perfect world visitation would be secure-able but there isn't the budget

Thomson correctional centre visitation room which is Max Security- http://photos.mycapture.com/ST...

It's also not a single prisoner killing a guard that you worry about in a prison. It's a riot that scares you. Guns allow otherwise weak prisoners to kill stronger ones. You are thinking about things in a too methodical / rational way. Instead think about the weak stupid guy whose life is a living hell, gets his hands on a gun and shoots one of the gang leaders with no thought to the consequence. All of a sudden you have a huge power shift that will see more violence in the future if it doesn't blow up into a full blown riot there and then.

There was a riot in San Quentin earlier this month where 70 inmates were involved, 1 died and 11 were hospitalised. If you throw better weapons into the mix it gets much much worse. If it gets worse you see more property damage, and way more costs. Completely ignoring the rising death count.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

I think I'd prefer to handle it this way:
https://youtu.be/OGvIaX2SaB8?t...

if you haven't seen that movie before, watch from the beginning... great action movie. Can't believe the entire thing is just uploaded onto youtube. The anti piracy people are fucking adorable when they talk about ending that... the black knight from the holy grail if ever there was one.

On topic, I'd seriously prefer something like this for the life sentence people. Exile to some bit of land that is effectively impossible to escape. Let them do whatever they want in there. Skin and eat each other for all I care. Or they can build villages and write poetry. Also fine with me.

on the issue of visitation rooms... I have a very strict notion of what is and is not security. I am a security professional... in IT... but the philosophy is is applicable in other places.

In my world... there is ACTUAL security which is fucking anal, by the book, and offers no opportunity for things to get by me... or there is bullshit security theater which is a waste of everyone's time.

I am quite used to bullshit security being the defacto standard. It being common however does not mean it works, is worthy of any kind of respect, or should be emulated in any regard.

I see bullshit... I roll my eyes... and I say to whomever pays me... "you might as well have nothing if you go with that."

My systems don't get hacked. We do not get viruses. We do not get malware. We do not get people stealing. We do not get people getting more access than they're supposed to have.

I know... bold claims. Unbelievable some might say. But that's coming from cultures where people don't prioritize security. If you take it seriously you can stop this stuff. But you can't break the fucking rules.

If they can TOUCH each other... I have a problem. I mean... do I want to do a full fucking anal cavity search every time on every fucking prisoner every single time they get a visitor? I think not. which means you either dont' let them touch or you accept that drugs are going to flow through the god damn visitor room like crazy.

Fuuuuck Thaaat. Because if they can get drugs in, they can get anything DRUG SIZED into the prison.

This notion of "well it hasn't happened before so it won't happen again" is how 9/11 happened. When you think security... real security... you don't think in terms of what people have done... but what they COULD do. And then you're talking about people getting C4 into the prison or some other explosive. Try a riot with hand grenades.

its only never happened because no one has wanted to do it yet.

They can't touch. If they want to pass objects then they can hand it to an officer and the officer can hand it to whomever after it has been inspected, xrayed, and dog sniffed.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Harlequin80]

Understood. The issue in the end is that there is no money in prisons. It is a net cost and that's it. So they make do with the shoe string budget that they have and inevitably it fails.

When you consider that they feed prisoners on under $2.50 a day and they complain about those costs it demonstrates how little money there is available for security and rehabilitation programs.

You would know being in security that there is a price to securing a system. If I said to you I want you to secure my 10,000 seat multi-site windows xp system and you are not allowed to spend any money, can't buy any new equipment and everyone knows your system exists and what amazing things it holds there is very little that you would be able to do to protect it.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

no budget isn't an argument for no security. It is an argument for fewer features or for adjusting the cost structure.

1. Not enough is done to monetize convicts. I AM NOT talking about slave labor. I'm talking consensual voluntary work taken by the free will of the prisoners. Work they take because there are perks to doing so both tangible and intangible. I believe it is possible to get the prisons to operate on a net zero basis at least.

2. If you can't afford to give the prisoners feature X on budget Y... then you can't afford feature X. The security should be an imperative. That is in fact the whole fucking point of the prison in the first place. Its a meat locker for criminals. If you don't have security... you have nothing. Nada. So if you can't afford to have security with those visitations... then you either need to scale back the number of visitations or do something so that you can have them WHILE maintaining security.

Here is one thing I could do in a DAY at a cost of ZERO dollars. Separate tables. Some kind of separation. I don't need any kind of equipment. I just need them to not touch each other. Might they throw drugs or whatever at each other? Sure. I honestly still don't like it. But it is something I could on DAY ONE for zero dollars. Would people piss and moan about it? Tough and shit. It's prison.

3. As to the price of securing a system... actually the cost of it is mostly a question of discipline. Not money. Aka... you do things THIS way or I will shiv you myself. And if everyone follows the protocol... life is peachy. And what I do... is I make the computers incapable of doing things any other way. People will say "hey how do I install itunes on this"... and patiently explain that I would sooner dump napalm on the machine and set it on fire than I would install itunes on it. Or any other stupid bit of software that doesn't need to be on it and I have neither the resources nor inclination to make secure. The machines will not permit any program to run on them that I have no installed myself. I operate a WHITElist system for all executable code. If the code is not on my whitelist... it will not run.

Black lists are for posers.

4. as to your example of some idiot network that is administered by idiots... I grant that there is no way to fix the problem if the people in charge order things to remain stupid. However, in practice what tends to happen is that those systems tend to burn down on their own. At least in IT. If you have a 10,000 seat system in 2015 and you're not doing anything to manage the security in a really systematic way... the entire thing is going to turn into a viral petri dish in about 5 4 3 2 1... And everyone's infected... yay. And once the whole thing has gone properly to shit, you can generally get whomever to sign off on something to deal with it. The money is really not the issue. I can build a firewall out of an old crap PC and a couple spare nic cards. I can build a router that way too. After that you just need cheap switches... and you've got the BEGINNINGS of some kind of security. I generally don't like full windows workstations just sitting there. I prefer terminals and virtual machines. And before you say "oh that's expensive"... you can run that on shitty workstations. Just install the software on that instead. All the shitty machines limit you to is fewer instances per machine. Fine. Have more of them. what is more the cost of maintaining terminals is LESS than maintaining traditional workstations. And once you have a proper router, proper firewall(S), the operating systems are all physically segrigated in the server room beyond the greasy fingers of the users... you can seriously lock the network down. And then I go farther than that because I like to disable the windows explorer executable for most users. This strikes some people as insane but I replace it with alternative programs that do the same thing only have largely unknown vulnerabilities to the casual user. Users often know things... key combinations... settings windows. T

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[metrix007]

Humans tend to suffer from poor health when prevented from having access to natural light.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

No. You just need to have vitamin D in the food.

Just giving the prisoners dairy products fortified with vitamin D will probably be all you need to do.

What is more, I'm not saying no light... I'm saying nothing open to the sky. You can have sky lights or even build your rec center like a giant green house. Fucking fill the thing with plants if that makes you happy.

Ultimately, the prisons will probably have anti drone defenses installed. Basically stationary drones that have motion tracking and if they see some thing moving around the yard they can train on it, alert guards, and if desired possibly shoot the drone down.

But just being aware that the drone was there and where it was is probably all that is needed. If the guards know a drone was dropping stuff in the yard and where it was dropped then they should be able to remove whatever it was before prisoners can pick it up.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[metrix007]

No. You're wrong. Vitamin D is not a substitute for natural light.

There are numerous studies on this. Look it up instead of just assuming your idea has merit.

Re:Nothing open to the sky

[Karmashock]

Can you cite something for me? Because I'm pretty sure it is all vitamin D.

Idiots ruining it for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

I love my RC drones i fly FPV all the time but all these people attaching weapons spying or smuggeling with their drones are going to ruin the fun for everybody

Re:Idiots ruining it for everybody

[Jesrad]

Or maybe you're the one missing out on all the fun to be had ?

Re:Idiots ruining it for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were me, I would find a hobby that was not associated with spying, criminal activity, and people generally seen as obnoxious and entitled snot-nosers and poopy-butts.

"Under the dome"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sayin'...

Re: "Under the dome"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's cruel and unusual, and you're sick for even mentioning it. No one should be reminded of that show.

Nothing new, really

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a drone just cuts out the middleman . . . which is usually one or more underpaid guards that can be bribed by prison gangs into permitting limited influx of tobacco, marijuana, and cheap cell phones. In some prison systems, harder drugs are permitted to enter.

There was also a prison in Brasil where inmates were attempting to smuggle things in and out of prison using pigeons. They got caught since the larger packages of contraband were weighing down the birds.

Re:Nothing new, really

[Scarletdown]

Sounds like they should have been using swallows instead of pigeons.

Re:Nothing new, really

[jittles]

Sounds like they should have been using swallows instead of pigeons.

African or European?

Re: Nothing new, really

[jsh1972]

European or African?

you don't want our drones....

[Anonymous Coward]

flying over your space....

guess what?

we don't want YOURS flying over us, either!

"Someone will try to use a drone to deliver a gun"

[MinamataHG]

Solution 1: RC frequency jamming.
Solution 2: Nets
Solution 3: Drone fight!

Now these two guys....

[Anonymous Coward]

can take it in the old fashion way.

Re:"Someone will try to use a drone to deliver a g

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution 1: RC frequency jamming.
Solution 2: Nets
Solution 3: Drone fight!

Counter solution 1) fast frequency hopping
Counter solution 2) CO2 Laser cutter and a bigger drone with some extra processing power and peripherals
Counter solution 3) see solution 2)

They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[swb]

They should allow drugs that mellow prisoners out and use access to them as a behavioral control mechanism.

Would you rather run a prison where men are in cages with no outlets for the boredom, rage and hostility, or run a prison where men can smoke marijuana and mellow out?

Prison supplied pot would greatly undermine the drug trade which would have all kind of ancillary benefits itself in terms of limiting gang influence, as well as providing an extremely attractive reward economy for good behavior.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

I don't mind drugs for life sentence prisoners. Give them whatever they want. Heroine... PCP... Crocodile... whatever.

The general population doesn't work for that because there is a belief they'll be rehabilitated and can be reintroduced into society after their sentence. If you've drugged them then you're just releasing drug addicts.

As to outlets and boredom... something I'm always a little baffled with from the people that say we shouldn't have a punishment system is that the deterrence wanes if you don't have punishment.

Lets say the prison is a country club where you family can live with you in prison in a suite somewhere. there are prisons that work that way.

Where is the deterrence?

I'm sorry, prison has to suck.

Now that said, we should consider alternative programs. Work programs for example. We use prisoners as axillary fire fighters sometimes for example. Big blaze hits California burning down the forest... and we deploy thousands of immates to fire camps and they cut fire breaks and basically do the worst most back breaking jobs that the professional fire fighters don't want to do. I believe we pay the prisoners 2 dollars a day for their efforts.

THAT is what I would do. More of that. And while you might call it slave labor... these are convicts... not slaves... tried in court. And beyond that, if you actually interview the prisoners they LIKE it better than prison. They are given more freedom, they feel safer, they get a sense of accomplishment, they get some respect from someone besides each other, and they get away from prison politics.... the gangs don't exist in the fire camps... there is no racial segregation.

What would I have prisoners do? Anything anyone would want them to do and the prisoners will consent to do. That's another thing... the work I'm talking about is consensual. No one is forced to do it. You can go back to the prison at any time. So what would I have them do... anything they could do... they could answer phones... do paper work... harvest crops (I'm aware of the optics of having fellows in orange harvesting cotton), possibly doing some factory work... anything at all. Just get them jobs... RIGHT NOW... we could have whole industries pop up around these prisons. And the labor could well off set most of the cost of imprisoning them in the first place thus balancing the scales closer to equal.

As it is, every person we send to prison costs the state which means on top of whatever crime they committed they're wasting our money. If we could get them to do something productive while in prison then our costs would be lower. And for those that care only for the prisoner's well being... this would be consensual and most prisoners seem to prefer having something to do when in prison rather than just be stuck in the toxic zoo that is the prison culture.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[jittles]

Now that said, we should consider alternative programs. Work programs for example. We use prisoners as axillary fire fighters sometimes for example. Big blaze hits California burning down the forest... and we deploy thousands of immates to fire camps and they cut fire breaks and basically do the worst most back breaking jobs that the professional fire fighters don't want to do. I believe we pay the prisoners 2 dollars a day for their efforts.

What would I have prisoners do? Anything anyone would want them to do and the prisoners will consent to do. That's another thing... the work I'm talking about is consensual. No one is forced to do it. You can go back to the prison at any time. So what would I have them do... anything they could do... they could answer phones... do paper work... harvest crops (I'm aware of the optics of having fellows in orange harvesting cotton), possibly doing some factory work... anything at all. Just get them jobs... RIGHT NOW... we could have whole industries pop up around these prisons.

We already have a prison industry. There are plenty of private prisons and we've already seen judges who are more than willing to throw the book at people to earn those prisons extra profit. Can you imagine the motivation to imprison people if you could get employees at $2 a day? You could just move all those factory jobs from China to the US with those labor rates. We probably have almost as many convicts as China has factory workers already. No, if you want prisoners to clean up after a nature disaster, or help to save lives during one, then fine. If you want them to pick up trash off the freeway, go back to school, learn trade skills, I'm all for it. But anything that encourages judges and other politicians (yes judges are politicians!) to sell other people off to a private prison industry is a no go in my book. It would be worse than selling your soul to the company store at a coal mine.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

I'm not talking about the prisons making money off the government by warehousing people. I'm talking about the prison industry itself being cost neutral if it can figure out how to monetize prisoners BESIDES tax revenue.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Anonymous Coward]

Already happened...to the point where incomes were often 4 times costs.

It's a dangerous path to walk.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

The US prison system operates at a huge loss for the US government at the state and federal levels.

To my knowledge the only people that make money on it are companies that are paid by the US government to warehouse people and that money comes from tax revenue. And the prison staff... also paid ultimately with tax dollars.

You say prisons have operated at a net positive... can you show me where that has happened? Because while you say its dangerous... everything effective is dangerous.

First person to discover fire said "ouch"... that doesn't mean you never have anything to do with fire there after. It means you respect the dangers, harness the power, and accept that every so often you're going to get burned because its worth it.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Anonymous Coward]

The US prison system operates at a huge loss for the US government at the state and federal levels.

Now, perhaps, but then there have been significant levels of reform due to recognition of the extent of the exploitation of prison laborers to try to keep the abuses in check.

But still, the programs exist. Lots of prisoners are laboring away.

To my knowledge the only people that make money on it are companies that are paid by the US government to warehouse people and that money comes from tax revenue. And the prison staff... also paid ultimately with tax dollars.

Does your knowledge include awareness of UNICOR? They have existed since the 1930s and been making various items for the government, often through subcontractors in the military business, and some of that is even exported to foreign partners.

There are also many prisoners hired by private companies under PIE that contract for services like call centers, recycling programs, and farms in a few cases. Not to mention all of the road crews and other maintenance requirements for state and local facilities.

How that balances out, well, it's quite complicated. The official hope, though, is that the employment training is the real gain.

You say prisons have operated at a net positive... can you show me where that has happened?

I didn't say that, what I said was a response to your part about figuring out how to monetize prisoners. And yes, it happened.

In the US, you'd want to look for the term convict leasing, it was popular after the Civil War until the early 1900s.

https://books.google.com/books?id=pFYy5fcvfMoC&dq

There are other books you can look up if you want, it's not news.

They found ways to put prisoners to labor. Which in turn lead to problems. Which fortunately lead to reform. Including sometimes, keeping people from getting the state government to "lease" prisoners at low rates.

There were also plantations, mines, and other means for revenue generation.

If you want to look in other countries, I can give other examples, the history of Australia alone is sufficient, but the infamous Devil's Island adds to it, not to mention various practices throughout history, including the galley slave.

Because while you say its dangerous... everything effective is dangerous.

Yes, putting somebody to labor for you in terms they have a limited capacity to disagree is quite effective. Because that leads to an the incentive to put people in prison.

That's the danger to worry about.

First person to discover fire said "ouch"... that doesn't mean you never have anything to do with fire there after. It means you respect the dangers, harness the power, and accept that every so often you're going to get burned because its worth it.

Oh, it's one thing if YOU'RE going to get burned. It's another when SOMEBODY ELSE gets burned.

Which is...the problem with prisons in many cases.

Hence the reason to be careful with it. As I said, we've walked down this path before. Just like with fire.

And of course, there's plenty of private businesses who don't like the unfair competition as they see it.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

As to abuses, I don't see how abuses relates to revenue. If abuses led to revenue then slave labor would still be economical.

The two don't relate anymore.

You want voluntary workers. they're more productive.

As to unicor:
""
UNICOR is economically self-sustaining and is scheduled to receive over $2.7 Million in government funding for FY14, which is $51,000 over FY13.[7] In fiscal year 1996, UNICOR had net sales of $459 million.[8] In fiscal year 2008, UNICOR employed 21,836 inmates: 17% of eligible inmates held in federal prisons. Prisoners make between .23 and $1.15 per hour. The company generated US$765 million in sales. Of these revenues, 74% went toward the purchase of raw material and equipment; 20% went to staff salaries; 6% went to inmate salaries.[7]

UNICOR has 109 factories in federal prisons, producing about 175 different types of products and services, including clothing and textiles, electronics, fleet management and vehicular components, industrial products, office furniture, recycling activities; and services including data entry and encoding.
""

I'm not seeing that pay for the prison system.

""
Overall, the prison system in the United States costs American taxpayers nearly $39 billion.
""

THAT is the hole I'm looking to fill. You're showing what with UNICOR? Half a billion? I need roughly 40 billion annually to fill that hole. UNICOR also has a stated goal of vocational training etc. My goal is revenue. I want the prisoners to not compound their damage to society by inflicting these fees upon our budget.

Now you might say "you can't make 40 billion using the US prison population"... I state that no one has ever tried. I think if I did, I'd get bombarded by morons saying "its slave labor" even when every person working would be doing so consensually.

We'd solve the prison politics issue. A lot of that is because the prisoners are bored. They have nothing to do... so they create bullshit to entertain themselves. I say work them... intensively... consensually... for their entire term. Have the prisons be basic. Boring. The food "okay"... They work, they get better everything. But the price is that they work.

As to convict leasing, this is a baby and bath water situation. Problems with a system do not mean you need to terminate it in general. Just fix the flaws in it.

The first obvious flaw is that the prisoners need to give consent to do it. So the work and work conditions needs to be something they're comfortable with and the rewards for doing... tangible and intangible need to be sufficient to get the body count up.

A chain gang picking cotton is not what I'm looking for here. The is a real hunger in the US for cheap labor. By all means. Lease them out. Deploy them with guards. And let them quit any job whenever they want.

Everyone that finds the prison culture to be toxic can opt out of it by simply spending their time working. We could even have companies subsidize the prison system further by providing block houses for prisoners to bunk in instead of the prison. Thus the prisons themselves could operate more like banks do... very little of the money deposited in a bank is in the bank... its all lent out. The bank retains only a fraction of the total. You could take the existing prison population and lend most of it out. Sure. Anything to lower the costs without breaching ethics.

Note... Without. Breaching. Ethics. In issues like this there is always that insinuation no matter what happens. Its specious. There is either an ethical breach or there isn't. And if there is one... cite it. In concept, I don't see how this leads to an ethical problem.

As to incentives to put people in prison. You're suggesting that the justice system will wrongfully convict someone just to get another body in the system? If there is that problem in the justice system then it has much bigger problems. That is an unacceptable ethical flaw. Anyone that would do such a thing shouldn't be a judge in the fir

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Anonymous Coward]

As to abuses, I don't see how abuses relates to revenue.

Unfortunately, your inability to see something doesn't make it less real.

If abuses led to revenue then slave labor would still be economical.

Yes, it is, unless you make it more costly to pursue. Or unless technology makes human labor uneconomical, but that's a separate issue.

The two don't relate anymore.

You want voluntary workers. they're more productive.

That's a very nice ideal. The thing is, prisoners being voluntary workers is a very serious question. You can say that's how it SHOULD be. But keeping it that way is hard, especially when you very much have control over people's lives to the degree that comes with incarceration.

Overall, the prison system in the United States costs American taxpayers nearly $39 billion.

""

THAT is the hole I'm looking to fill.

Actually, I believe you're off by half. It's closer to 80 billion, your number would be only the Feds, or out of date by a couple of years.

But then you're only looking at one employment program, not even the stats for the others in the Federal system, let alone the various state programs. How much revenue do they offer? PIE covers a lot of others besides UNICOR. And the profits from that? May go to the contractors who hire the prisoners, rather than into the prison system itself. Because, of course, they need the incentive to hire those prisoners.

I also don't see you looking at the value of using prison labors for maintenance of prison and other government facilities. Or even road crews.

And then there's the benefit of training prisoners to pursue productive jobs. How does that score? What is that worth?

Getting a solid picture of the balance sheets would be quite complicated.

I only offered UNICOR as one example that you should know about. It'd have been one thing if you were talking about expanding programs like UNICOR, but your representation seemed more like ignorance of their very existence. Now you're talking about UNICOR, but acting like it's the whole picture. It's not.

UNICOR also has a stated goal of vocational training etc. My goal is revenue.

Indeed, your goal is not entirely congruent with theirs. They are limited in their focus, and guided by specifically chosen principles. That's why they only sell to government entities and don't seek to maximize revenue. Similar restrictions apply to many state programs.

This was a deliberately chosen reform. They didn't arrive at it by accident. It was implemented AFTER they had problems.

Now you might say "you can't make 40 billion using the US prison population"... I state that no one has ever tried.

Not that specific figure, no, since due to inflation, that figure would have been inconceivable back before the reforms were put in place. Really, we're talking about times when you could get change from a nickel.

But the more generic "Let's make these prisoners a net gain for the state" was pursued, and quite successful in many cases. But also quite prone to abuse. That was the period of Convict Leasing that I already mentioned.

Revenues in excess of costs? Yes. But also many abuses.

So reforms. The goal now is more carefully managed. And even then, it's not perfect.

As to convict leasing, this is a baby and bath water situation. Problems with a system do not mean you need to terminate it in general. Just fix the flaws in it.

Fortunately for you, they didn't completely throw it out. They just put a lid on a lot of it.

But prisoners still perform many labors, are still working under contract, and so forth.

You just seemed to be utterly ignorant of it. Really, even now, it's like you don't realize this has been an ongoing discussion for decades anyway.

In concept, I don

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

As to abuses versus revenue... you're not answering the question. You're just being peevish now.

As to it being hard to make the labor voluntary. No it isn't. Define the difficulty. It seems very easy to do.

I have it be law that the prisoners can refuse any work for any reason at any time. And that any one that attempts to force a prisoner to do any work they don't want to do is themselves violating the law. Punishment for that would vary as reason dictates. But I don't really see what you want me to do about that?

What are you saying? That the prison officials will violate the law and force prisoners to do things they don't want to do for monetary gain? I can set up enforcement and monitoring for this issue and do it under a independent organization that would have no conflict of interest and would therefore have no reason not to monitor accurately.

Is that enough for you?

I'm quite sincere here. I want that 40 billion nullified on the budget. Gone.

And the only way that is going to happen is if the prisoners work.

We can lower that number by reducing the number of prisoners but the only way to make it VANISH entirely is to get the prisoners working.

As to getting prisoners to do maintenance at prisons... The problem I have there is that I wouldn't want them to maintain their own prison because they could intentionally do a shitty job to facilitate an escape. Its a security issue.

As to maintenance of other things... Sure. Roads... whatever. The only issue I see there is that the transit unions are going to throw a shit fit over that and I'd rather not waste political capital fighting them when it is a hard sell issue in the first place. I'd like to avoid making the implementation more complicated than it already is. So I'd like to not poach the labor of civic unions because they have enough political clout to frustrate the whole thing.

I'd want to work with them and make sure that anything we did was with their approval.... hand in glove. I don't want to fight the unions unless I need to fight them.

As to your repeated refrain that "it was done badly in the past so it can only be done badly in the future"...

Then airplanes wouldn't work... democracy wouldn't work... basically anything we've ever done had many failures as we learned what had to be managed to keep the system working properly or out to optimize it so that it worked better.

I categorically reject the notion that because something was badly implemented in the past that it cannot be properly implemented in the future. That is a very odd position to take that is entirely contrary to our understanding of how anything else works.

How many houses did we build before we learned how to build them properly? You're the guy sitting there going "well the last house sucked so we should go back to the cave"...

I know you don't like that argument... but that is my impression of your position. Your prisoner lease concept that you don't like is mired in issues of southern racial discrimination. You're talking about people that didn't recognize the humanity of the prisoners. I do. Your leasing program also didn't give prisoners choices or otherwise extorted them to do the work. I would definitely ENCOURAGE them to do the work but it would be an all carrots approach... no stick.

If the prisoner wants to stay in prison all day... eating sloppy joes... working out in the yard... shivving each other over bullshit... that's fine. He can do that if he wants. You like the status quo? Fine. You can have it if you want it.

But if a prisoner WANTS to work... then why not give him that freedom TO work? And of course, I will offer reasonable rewards for that work.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Anonymous Coward]

As to abuses versus revenue... you're not answering the question.

Did you ask a specific question? Reviewing your posts, I still don't see it. Can you repeat it for me? I can't even find any question marks in your posts that relate to this issue.

I have it be law that the prisoners can refuse any work for any reason at any time. And that any one that attempts to force a prisoner to do any work they don't want to do is themselves violating the law.

I'm not sure why you're suggesting laws we already have.

Are you not aware that laws like those are already on the books? Are you not aware that the systems we have in place for the current prison labor are meant to take those issues into account?

But I don't really see what you want me to do about that?

You personally? I don't know that I want you to do anything yourself. Are you in the corrections industry? Are you the head of a state department of corrections? Are you in any way involved in labor protections? What exactly would be your position, so I could have some desire for you to do something?

All I'm hoping is for from you is to increase your awareness so you can recognize you're not talking anything new.

That's my goal. A little acknowledgement of the historical perspective.

What are you saying? That the prison officials will violate the law and force prisoners to do things they don't want to do for monetary gain?

Well, that has certainly happened. In fact, two prisoners in Tennessee made that accusation quite recently.

Larry Stephney and Charles Brew if you want to look them up. Minor, perhaps, but a still a thing to worry about.

I can set up enforcement and monitoring for this issue and do it under a independent organization that would have no conflict of interest and would therefore have no reason not to monitor accurately.

You mean you want to set up another organization like NCIA and PIECP?

Is that enough for you?

It seems a bit redundant to me. Why don't you just travel back in time and help write the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979? Or any of the other laws that already exist?

I'm quite sincere here. I want that 40 billion nullified on the budget. Gone.

And the only way that is going to happen is if the prisoners work. We can lower that number by reducing the number of prisoners but the only way to make it VANISH entirely is to get the prisoners working

But they already DO work. You're still dithering around saying that they should work, blah-blah-blah, when FPI, PIECP, CALPIA and more already exist, and prisoners are already working.

You may want more working, you may want more revenue, but you'll need to start on the basis that they are, in fact, working.

As to getting prisoners to do maintenance at prisons... The problem I have there is that I wouldn't want them to maintain their own prison because they could intentionally do a shitty job to facilitate an escape. Its a security issue.

Sorry, but they already worry about that too, including construction of the actual prisons. I'd say you could ask Jeffrey Dahmer, but he died on a work detail. Mopping, as I recall, but prisoners help build the prisons in many other cases.

As to maintenance of other things... Sure. Roads... whatever. The only issue I see there is that the transit unions are going to throw a shit fit over that and I'd rather not waste political capital fighting them when it is a hard sell issue in the first place.

You probably don't want to know that they're already on the roads, then. Road crews using prisoners are used in dozens of states, sometimes even at the county jail level.

I'd like to avoid making the implementation more complicated than it alread

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

The question was quite clear:
""
As to abuses, I don't see how abuses relates to revenue.
""

Explain why abuse is unavoidable. That it CAN happen is not an argument against it. You CAN get water in a submarine... however the design of the submarine mitigates the situation.

That something CAN happen does not mean that it WILL happen.

As to citing laws already on the books, then don't hand wring to me about things that are already illegal.

As to your increasingly tiresome attempts to win an argument by alluding to your greater knowledge... which mostly boils down to the common knowledge that there were problems with past programs. I generally take your knowledge lightly because it isn't anything I'm unaware of or anything that hasn't been addressed already in general. The specifics are furthermore not relevant since they add no new depth to the situation.

As to them already working... This is a statement from you so obtuse that i don't need to craft any reply beyond simply shaking my head at its citation.

As to your saying that you want to build on the experience of the past... you have offered no constructive input in this entire discussion. None.

You've just said over and over again that we can't build houses and have to live in caves. Over and over and over again.

here is how you be constructive... how do we get to a net ZERO cost structure? You say you have knowledge on the issue? here is your chance to show it. How do we mitigate the problems of the past while obtaining the stated goal.

If you say we can't... then you're saying we can't build houses and my analogy stands.

As to freedom to work = parole. No. that is release from prison. Rejected.

You're not being constructive and this wisdom you keep alluding to... we've gone over it and there's quite a bit less there than you'd need to sustain your position.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Anonymous Coward]

The question was quite clear:

No, it's not a clear question, sorry.

As to abuses, I don't see how abuses relates to revenue.

Again, not a question, it's a statement of your inability to see something. Which as I said doesn't make it less real.

But what question are you asking?

Explain why abuse is unavoidable.

As to citing laws already on the books, then don't hand wring to me about things that are already illegal.

Have you noticed that you're the one wringing your hands about prisoners being put to work, when they're already being put to work?

Can you refrain from doing that? If we're going to have expectations of each other, that's mine from you.

As to your increasingly tiresome attempts to win an argument by alluding to your greater knowledge... which mostly boils down to the common knowledge that there were problems with past programs.

I don't consider this to be an argument. I consider this to be an attempt at providing you with information that you seemingly don't have, as your expressions don't demonstrate that you do possess it.

Achieving that would seem to be a mutually beneficial goal. You get more informed, I get the benefit of you being more informed.

Is there some reason you take offense at that? Is there some reason you consider it an argument?

I don't.

I generally take your knowledge lightly because it isn't anything I'm unaware of or anything that hasn't been addressed already in general.

Really? I take your knowledge lightly, because it hasn't demonstrated any awareness of the history of prison labor, or even the details of its implementation today.

The specifics are furthermore not relevant since they add no new depth to the situation.

The current situation today doesn't add new depth to the situation? How so? Don't you want to solve things the way they are today?

As to them already working... This is a statement from you so obtuse that i don't need to craft any reply beyond simply shaking my head at its citation.

Is that how you show your chagrin over how you thought you were saying something should be done, but it turns out it was already being done?

As to your saying that you want to build on the experience of the past... you have offered no constructive input in this entire discussion. None.

You've just said over and over again that we can't build houses and have to live in caves.

No, I haven't said that. See, this is the whole problem, you're utterly confused about what I've been saying. As I said, it gets tedious.

Disabuse yourself of your mistaken notions. And if I'm mistaken, and you are informed of the actual current state of prison labor, as well as the history of it, then you can disabuse me of that, all you have to do is say that you are aware.

Of course, you could have done that simply by saying that you were aware of UNICOR and wanted to expand it.

Over and over and over again.

here is how you be constructive... how do we get to a net ZERO cost structure?

Now see that's a question to ask. Ok, first we take our costs. You have cited 40 billion in your previous replies, right? So how many prisoners are there? 2.2 million is the number I get in the US. Well, that means ~18,000$ in labor for each prisoner, as attainable sum, the Average American works ~1800 hours a year, so wages of 10 dollars an hour would be reasonable to approach...but that assumes your costs are accurate, and that all prisoners are available for working. I know the latter isn't true (many prisoners are going to be mentally ill, physically disabled, or just elderly, leaving aside those too dangerous for other reasons), and I'm doubtful over the former. I've seen costs of 60-80 billion. Both of

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Karmashock]

I want people with life sentences to work too. your parole concept isn't prison. Its parole.

Rejected.

Going through your brief attempt to be constructive... you said I need to hit 10 dollars per hour in productivity to break even in the system.

Totally obtainable. Here you say "but people are sick or old"... I'm not asking for brain surgery here and I'm not asking for 100 percent participation.

Let us say we need to hit 15 or 20 dollars an hour. Still obtainable... that would presume a certain portion of the population not participating.

We can still hit 15 to 20 dollars of productivity especially if you consider that a lot of costs for workers are things that might not need to be offered to convicts... healthcare is not something the company will have to offer that will come from the prison system. That sort of thing.

As to the rest... you basically got gun shy of the issue when you saw the numbers were obtainable.

I'm going to call that a win and move on.

I'll give you the last word.

Re:They should allow drugs that mellow them out

[Anonymous Coward]

I want people with life sentences to work too. your parole concept isn't prison. Its parole.

Rejected.

I don't follow. How does having a parole-to-work program lead to having no work-for-paroled prisoners?

Is believing that silly idea the reason why are you rejecting a viable and functional option? Man, talk about assumptions. You need to get past that, it seems to be a tendency of yours.

Because you're rejecting a very financially desirable option based on an invalid presumption. It cuts costs of prison operations, it increases revenues, and puts people to work. In no way does it preclude any other options.

Going through your brief attempt to be constructive... you said I need to hit 10 dollars per hour in productivity to break even in the system.

Totally obtainable. Here you say "but people are sick or old"... I'm not asking for brain surgery here and I'm not asking for 100 percent participation.

But my rough figure of 10 dollars an hour IS based on that 100% participation. Total budget (and that number I'm worried is too low) divided by total number of prisoners. Since we can't expect 100% employment, you have to consider the numbers a bit more tightly. And it's also based on assuming that there is no prison labor providing any contribution to the budgeting now. But as the existences of UNICOR, PIE, of CALPIA, of other state programs, and who knows how many existing maintenance processes done by prisoners show, that can't be assumed either.

As I said, you have to figure out your current prison labor force participation rate, it's not as easy as saying "Oh it only costs 80 dollars a day for a federal prisoner, we just need 10 dollars an hour of labor from them at an 8 hours a day!" and being done with it.

Let us say we need to hit 15 or 20 dollars an hour. Still obtainable... that would presume a certain portion of the population not participating.

Now also presume that the current expenses are with a certain portion of the prisoners now participating in labor, and that is offsetting the current budget. In that case, perhaps you might have to achieve 40 or 50 dollars worth of productivity from whatever hypothetical labor pool you have available. Or more. How far can you be confident in going?

I know that I would be looking for some real numbers myself.

If I were serious about making a proposal. But I know you won't even fire off an e-mail to your local legislator, let alone try to do anything.

We can still hit 15 to 20 dollars of productivity especially if you consider that a lot of costs for workers are things that might not need to be offered to convicts... healthcare is not something the company will have to offer that will come from the prison system. That sort of thing.

Did you forget who is paying for that healthcare? That's actually part of the existing prison budget through taxes you're trying to offset. Your consideration is backwards.

Sorry, but while a contractor through PIE may get out of some of that(not all, at the least, they should be expected to pay for any worker injuries that come about from employing prisoners), your plan is not geared in that direction.

You're trying to eliminate the burden on the taxpayers. That includes the healthcare funding of the corrections system. And you have to pay for the prison staff too.

Unless you're going on a roundabout way of saying that you're not going to offer them healthcare, is that what you're trying to do?

If so, that's hilarious. You'd really have to embrace the parole option then. I do believe I heard somebody that got paroled just so the prison wouldn't have to pay for their surgery. Organ transplant I think it was.

Otherwise, no, you won't get an elimination of health care for prisoners. It'll still be an expense that you'll have to offset.

As to the rest... you basically got gun

Give the inmates guns

[tompaulco]

Give the inmates guns and let them shoot down the drones.

Re:Give the inmates guns

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that kinda be like biting the hand that feeds you?

A gun? Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all things you're worried about, you're worried if someone will fly a gun in to the prison? This despite the fact that inmates find ways to kill each other every single fucking day? Lolmoron

This competely bypasses prison Guards

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison Guards make good money safeguarding the drugs getting into prison. If you just fly a drone over the walls there is no profit to be made. If you don't follow the rules and give the man his cut, you can expect some serious law enforcement scrutiny.

Flying monkeys?

[clovis]

We just patrol the skies over the prisons with trained flying monkeys.
With lasers on their heads.

Truthy vs truthful

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is more truthy?

"The use of these drones to bring this type of contraband into a facility is very, very troubling, and we're going to address it."

OR

"The use of these drones to bring this type of contraband into a facility without the usual bribery fees being paid is very, very troubling, and we're going to address it."

Internet Finds A Way

[Anonymous Coward]

fly drugs, tobacco and pornography

See, the resistance is futile. Internet finds a way.

Re:"Someone will try to use a drone to deliver a g

[Anonymous Coward]

Toy drones are just that, low height, visible and predictable RF on the ground.
Not that the screws would have direction finding gear connected to a frequency counter or software defined radio/spectrum analysis.
You gotta think like Walter White, except in drone mode.

You need a high flying drone transmitting down to a cruising drone with the payload on some 'off' frequency, micro powered at that, only listening up and shielded from ground level on a fixed GPS path. Drone bombing, even in Stuka like vertical diving is still rather inaccurate.

What you need is plenty of decoys on a timer transmitting replay signals. Optionally put some harm around the decoys, such as a beartrap covered in meth residue. and a false fingerprint or three, and a brochure with the state governor on it & a used beer can/cigarette butt for someone who is likely to get seriously questioned.

Overall these fancy concepts are well beyond the means of the average crim. But it would make a great follow up Breaking Bad sequel.
Walter would obviously load the drone up with bird shit and practice shitting on the governors car, before adding something extra to the payload.

Was it a bird or a drone. By god there is a Hollywood sequel in this. Vote 1 Walter White.

Easy solution

[xenotransplant]

Put a damned fence OVER the yard. Drone can't drop shit through a fence.

Simple solution: remote, underground

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a pretty simple solution to this. Since your weakness is the sky, move your prison's underground, and don't allow the inmates access to the open sky.

Until we build full underground facilities, you could retrofit existing facilities with a net or bubble ceiling to cover the yard and prevent open-sky intrusion.

Then, since you are now incurring the additional costs of building underground, why not take advantage of it and move the facilities to very remote locations (antartica anyone?) or to locations that can help with resource extraction (coal, diamonds, gold, etc). Prisoners could work off their debt to society by helping extract raw resources. This would also give us the benefit of doing long term studies on both how remote/enclose environs affect a close society, as well as platforms for testing suitable habitats for Mars.