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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.
Because the for-profit prison industry wouldn't make as much money that way.
They really hate it when they get regulation on a 'captive' market.
They're allowed access to their finances?
They are often able to call collect. When my brother was in prison (for assaulting a police officer) he called me collect several times. Inmates are usually able to work in prison industries for pay. Some prisons do manufacturing. My brother learned how to operate a metal lathe and vertical mill while doing time. Some prisons even run call centers.
Does this create a rift in equality?
Prison is already very unequal.
Why don't they just get an allotment of minutes?
Then the prison has no incentive to keep the phone system operational, and the inmates will have less incentive to work.
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.
The rest are still "for profit" because inmate labor saves the states millions upon millions of dollars in wages every year. Litter cleanup, pothole crews, hospital laundry, furniture construction, all of this is done by prisoners. In some cases it's contracted out to private industry and the state makes good money, there are prison laundries that process hotel linens for example. The inmates are paid pennies per hour, if that, and the state reaps the benefits.
Instead of a minimum wage, they have a maximum wage (around $4/hr average). But the average wage is 93 cents/hr and the lowest is 16 cents.
So a cheap phone call at a discount rate of only $10/minute, they can talk to family for a few minutes a week. And that is only if they're not being extorted by other inmates for the money.
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?
Replying anonymously because I'm modding in this thread.
For my friend behind bars, she relies on friends to add money to her account through JPay, a convenient service that takes another 5-10% or more off the top whenever you deposit into the inmate's account.
Until my friend was imprisoned, I had NO IDEA how pervasive rent-seeking and profiteering was in the prison system. It really is a nightmare.
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.
> Replying anonymously because I'm modding in this thread.
There's a reason why one doesn't post in threads they moderate. They list this reason - as I recall. (I stopped moderating a long time ago. I'd rather speak than decide what others should or should not read.) At any rate, they designed the system that way for a reason - I'd like to think it's a valid reason. Disrupting the game, by changing the rules, just seems low. I lack a better word. Low, lowly, pathetic? They all work.
If you don't like the rules, don't play the game. Don't take it personal, you're not the only "sneaky" person.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
> 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
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.
They get some money from their families. There are limits on what they can give inmates. They can also earn money from working in programs. American Flags are made in women's low security correctional facilities where they are paid $2 an hour.
Prison is the only form of slavery explicitly allowed by the US constitution. But it's not the only form of slavery. The other is a form of voluntary indentured servitude. It's called the military.
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
Then the prison has no incentive to keep the phone system operational, and the inmates will have less incentive to work.
Okay, this is just bullshit. They don't need extra "incentive" to keep the prison operational, that's their job. And dangling basics in front of prisoners and calling it "incentive to work" is just slavery by a different name. It's fine for prisoners to learn a trade, it helps a great deal with recidivism, but it's not something that you can force on a person.
Not to mention that most of those prison industries aren't about teaching a trade at all, they're mostly just about the slave labor.
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!
At least in the state I live, no prisoner is required to work. They choose to. Apparently even prisoners would rather work to keep themselves busy and to earn some luxuries. Seems like a win-win. Besides, it's career training for one of the many jobs for making license plates after they get out. Oh, wait...
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
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.
But odds are, encouraging socialization (such as by giving them free phone service), especially with non-prisoners, and their family and friends, would decrease recidivism. In which case free phone service for prisoners would pay for itself a thousand-fold.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
decrease recidivism. In which case free phone service for prisoners would pay for itself
And where is the incentive for the prison industry to decrease recidivism? I don't refer to the people "in charge". Politically, there are points to be scored by underlining successful reformations; however, there are so many more points to be scored through PROFITS.
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.
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Absolutely, in this day and age of free phone calls via skype over the internet, it would be trivial to allow skype calls for nearly free to home.
$120 a month for a couple internet lines and a couple cheap tablets hard wired to only skype and watched over by guards.
Our prison industry is sick. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the free world (and actually higher than most of the unfree world too).
It's sickening.
The prison industry pays (lots of) money to
a) criminalize activites that were not illegal before.
b) extend prison sentences
c) keep things illegal which should be legal
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.