Slashdot Mirror
Court Stops FCC's Latest Attempt To Lower Prison Phone Rates (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prison phone companies have convinced a court to halt new rate caps on inmate calling for the second time this month. The first stay was issued March 7 and prevented the FCC from implementing new rate caps of 11 cents to 22 cents per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. But the stay -- which remains in place while the prison phone companies' lawsuit against the FCC is still pending -- did not disturb an earlier "interim" cap of 21 cents to 25 cents per minute that applied only to interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The order also didn't specifically object to the FCC changing its definition of "inmate calling service" to include both interstate and intrastate calls. Seizing on this ambiguity, the FCC decided that it could impose the interim caps on both interstate and intrastate calls. But prison phone companies Securus Technologies, Global Tel Link (GTL), and Telmate all asked the federal appeals court to stop the caps from being applied to intrastate calls. A court order issued Wednesday sided with the prison phone companies, saying that "petitioners have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review." As a result, the interim rate caps will still apply only to interstate calls.
They're allowed access to their finances? Does this create a rift in equality? Why don't they just get an allotment of minutes?
They really hate it when they get regulation on a 'captive' market.
Contact to family is important for prisoners, because reducing contact increases risk of ending up in prison again (this is a well documented fact)
Prison administrators, state governments, all have interest in increasing prisons contact with family, why they allow this is beyond my imagination.
Companies offering phone services really ought to not exploit prisoners who don't have any choices (it's simply plain evil - particularly when considering the risk they put those prisoners at).
Why the FCC needs to be involved is beyond my understanding. Are all the prison administrators really that corrupt?
Magic convenient solution that Liberals think is impossible: STOP COMMITTING CRIMES
The best predictor of whether a child will grow up to be a criminal is blood lead levels. Black children have, on average, more than twice the lead levels as whites. Maybe we should be spending more on clean water and less on building prisons.
That's a pretty strange slander-lation you got there. I went with a translation instead and found:
The context was that they were under attack and being threatened with death.
Don't like it? Well Bernie's promised to put an end to the for-profit prison industry. No one else seems to be campaigning on it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How about: stop making stupid things like drugs illegal? You want to talk conservative policies? Why does BIG GOVERNMENT get to come into my house and tell me what I can and cannot put in my own body?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Because they are literally holding their customers prisoner and give them no choice in using the service.
> Black children have, on average, more than twice the lead levels as whites.
Then stop shooting them! ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Magic convenient solution that Liberals think is impossible: STOP COMMITTING CRIMES
Magic convenient solution that Conservatives think is impossible: STOP DEFINING RELIGIOUS TRANSGRESSIONS AS CRIMES
Not everyone subscribes to your particular religion, and even if they did, making a crime out of drug use is actually making things worse by anyones definition.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
> Prison administrators, state governments, all have interest in increasing prisons contact with family, why they allow this is beyond my imagination.
Two things...
You have a shitty imagination and they're not interested in reducing recidivism. Gotta keep those beds full, it keeps the budget justified and growing. (The whole for-profit thing is an aside and not really important, all told, those are only less than 10% and, while retarded, they're not the driving force.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Huh, wah??? The country was in no way founded on slavery. It may have been a major consumer of slavery, but claiming a foundational need for slavery is a little odd, and pushing an agenda based on the talking points of a few self indulgent fat cats. If anything, you could move the needle closer to reality and consider the country founded on oppression, while not a "foundational" principle, it is how we have become who we are. From the indians, to slaves, to immigrants, the population is quick to take advantage of the weak, poor, and defenseless.
If you want a better description, our country was founded by religious extremists exiled from their host countries. Kinda like ISIL, but with someplace unoccupied to go.
--WooooHoooo--
Not only was his translation slanderous (I found the exact quote from a white supremacist web site), but the the section of the Koran he quotes is from a section that deals with a code of behavior for waging war when war is being waged against you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think if a particular prison's recidivism rates are too high, that they should not be permitted to charge more than 1 cent per minute.
If a prison is successful, then they should be permitted more leeway in how they operate.
Of course allowing prisoners to have more frequent contact with family members, has been shown to improve a convict's chances of staying out of prison when they get out.
(excellent rates for recidivism would be anything under 20%, typical in a US prison is 70%)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No, somebody else is literally holding them prisoner. They're a captive market, but they're not the captives of the market.
Having a monopoly over a market of captives, doesn't make you their captor.
Furthermore, it is the prison administrators who restrict their choice to the one company, not the company. The company just won the bid, they don't have the authority to decide if there will be a bid that goes to only one company.
In fact, while the main thrust of the statement is correct, each part of the statement is literally incorrect.
Can anyone think of a reason calls shouldn't be FREE?
Think about their poor relatives who would be under pressure to spend all their time talking to them. Some family contact is good, but a needy excess would push people away and lead longterm to abandonment.
It might not be the best metering system, but it isn't hard to come up with a mediocre reason why it might be good; and that's a much higher bar than you asked for!
And... you think they give prisoners bleach for cleaning the floors?! LOL yeah they probably get razors to shave with, too, and a healthy balanced diet. Sorry, gotta go, it is almost time for me to wake up from my nap...
Whoosh.
The OP pointed out that the Qur'an has passages that call for a violent response to non-believers. The GP was pointing out that the Old Testament/Torah have passages that call for the same thing.
There are billions of followers of the three major Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam.) Only a tiny (and IMHO, deluded) fraction of them subscribe to violence as a way to advance their cause.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I see nobody has any actual experience dealing with prison calls. It's all the usual claptrap that people have heard somewhere online and are repeating. Long ago I used to work for a company that collected past-due phone bills. It was mundane work, just call them and remind them they're overdue, will be cut off from the carrier if they don't pay by a certain date, etc. Nothing threatening or weird. Once in a while we would get a batch of jail calls, all made collect from the jailhouse phones. The reaction on these was different. Usually the person who answered was a woman, and more than once she was relieved that we would be cutting her off from these calls.
She couldn't pay for them anyway, and the man inside didn't give a shit. He was bored, or controlling, and would call again and again. I had the call records and the guy would call for 15 minutes, get automatically cut off, call again, and again, and again. Day after day after day. Something the "they neeeed to talk to their faaaamilies!!!" crowd apparently has totally failed to consider. Maybe their families don't want to talk to them because they're horrible manipulative evil people who belong in prison.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Grow the fuck up.
That's Quran 8:59-60. (and a very 'opportunisitic' transalation too,
Quran 8:61 (ie... the VERY next sentence)
"And if they incline to peace, then you (also) incline to it, and put (your) trust in Allah".
Talk about twisting a passage to suit your bullshit.
It essentially says "if you are attacked muster all your forces to defend yourselves, but make peace with those that come in peace".
Seriously... that's about as American as apple pie.
I think a lot of what Leftists hate, they are just inventing themselves.
Hyperbole, perhaps. However, the US has the higest prison polulation in the entire world by absolute numbers and the highest per capita at 700 per 100,000, i.e. 0.7%. If you compare to European countries you'll see rates clustered around 0.1%.
Something is deeply rotten in a country calling itself "land of the free" that incarcerates very substantially more of its population than China.
Make no mistake: the USAlike all other countries isn't perfect and this is one of it's most glaring flaws.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
According to prosecutors, yes apparently Obama is lax on drugs. He's also interfered a lot less in state-level legalizations of certain drugs than previous administrations.
This space intentionally left blank
seems if family went to next state and got a burner phone with an out of state number, then inmate could call that line and save $$. At the jacked up rates for in-state calls, it would probably pay for itself in 5 minutes.
American drug laws are not religion based, they are based on persecuting minorities by criminalizing their drug of choice. Alcohol and Heroin are comparable hard core drugs, but the drug commonly used by white skinned European ancestry Americans is legal.
That's because they're all doing their religions wrong. The fundamentalists have it right, because they actually read their holy texts and do what they say.
If you're non-violent and follow one of these religions, maybe you should try reading that book that you claim to believe in. Then decide for yourself, "do I really want to promote this? Do I want to be part of a belief system that advocates violence this way?"
There's nothing "deluded" about that fraction of believers subscribing to violence. What's deluded is trying to claim that a religion based on violence, and which explicitly endorses and calls for violence in its holy texts, is somehow peaceful. Pointing this out with the 3 major religions is a great example of the emperor having no clothes.
Religious practices define what deity is worshipped? Compare Pentecostal snake handlers to Egyption Copts - both Christian, same god, same basic religious texts, but extremely different religious practices. Islam includes much of the new testament of the Bible as holy scriptures, they refer to the God of Abraham as their own, they accept Jesus as a major prophet who just doesn't happen to be the last prophet. They're really not much further away from Judaism and Christianity as Mormonism is.