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Prisons Moving To All-Video Visitation (mic.com)
"A new system called 'video visitation' is replacing in-person jail visits with glitchy, expensive Skype-like video calls," reports Tech.Mic. "It's inhumane, dystopian and actually increases in-prison violence -- but god, it makes money."
Slashdot reader gurps_npc writes: In-person costs a lot to administer, while you can charge people to 'visit' via video conferencing. (Charge as in overcharge -- just like they charge up to $14 a minute for normal, audio only telephone calls). This is new, and the few studies that have been done show that doing this increases violence in the prison -- and it's believed to also increase recidivism. But the companies making a ton on it like that -- repeat customers and all. Of course, the service is horrible, often being full of static and dropped calls -- and the company doesn't help you fix the problem.
Meanwhile, the EFF reports that last year Facebook disabled 53 U.S prisoner and 74 U.K. prisoner accounts at the request of the government, and is urging people to report takedown requests for inmate social media to OnlineCensorship.org.
Slashdot reader gurps_npc writes: In-person costs a lot to administer, while you can charge people to 'visit' via video conferencing. (Charge as in overcharge -- just like they charge up to $14 a minute for normal, audio only telephone calls). This is new, and the few studies that have been done show that doing this increases violence in the prison -- and it's believed to also increase recidivism. But the companies making a ton on it like that -- repeat customers and all. Of course, the service is horrible, often being full of static and dropped calls -- and the company doesn't help you fix the problem.
Meanwhile, the EFF reports that last year Facebook disabled 53 U.S prisoner and 74 U.K. prisoner accounts at the request of the government, and is urging people to report takedown requests for inmate social media to OnlineCensorship.org.
Not according to this. Violent felons make up the largest percentage of the prisoners.
http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004339
Well, the US is at hart a fundamentalist religious nation. These like to condemn and torture anybody that missteps forever, no mercy to be had. (What, say, the core of the Christian faith says about people that do this to others is not pretty.) Hence adding the maximum level of exploitation on top is no surprise. Kind of reminds me of what was going on in Nazi Concentration Camps and USSR Gulags, or today in similar installations in North Korea. The next step will be involuntary medical experiments. Josef Mengele would be so proud.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
How about just looking at the science? Marijuana _is_ linked to psychosis whether you like it or not, studies that properly compensates for the self-medication effect (where people with preexisting mental problems use alcohol, marijuana or other drugs to feel better) still shows that use of the drug can trigger psychosis of different kinds - in some cases permanent. This isn't too strange given what we know of the workings of the brain and the effects of drugs.
Claiming there isn't a problem is the common excuse used by the pothead fanatics. Other claims is that marijuana never caused any deaths (easily disproved) or that marijuana use isn't linked to violent behavior (easily disproved).
If you'd instead point out that alcohol can also trigger psychosis in certain individuals (very unusual) or that most marijuana users have no problems caused of the drug use then we could have a honest discussion. But posting pro-drug propaganda? Fuck off!
The thing is, the US prison industry _wants_ repeat customers. There is a lot of money in it. Hence anything even remotely targeted at reintegrating former criminals gets squashed, to extreme overall costs for society.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
An associate got jailed and I "visited" him twice in Glynn county jail in Georgia.
That was the only quick way I could initiate contact from outside. Other ways include sending postcards by mail... The system uses low-end webcams and offers no privacy to the inmate. They don't use a handset, which means audio gets overheard by other inmates. Camera was aimed too high. I could see other inmates. "Visits" at that facility need to be done at specific times and are limited to 15 minutes. I gave him some vital information and setup schedule for for when I would be available to accept his calls.
By contrast, inmates can make a phone call that gets billed to the person outside seemingly at any time. They can make repeated phone calls and the amount of contact seems to be limited mostly by the wallet of the person outside. They use a phone handset, which offers improved audio quality and privacy with regards to other inmates.
My phone bill from PayTel was allegedly 21 cents per minute, but the actual blended rate once you incorporate all the fees is 36.6 cents.
Leonid S. Knyshov
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A friend of mine was in prison because federal prosecutors don't have any ethics that they have to follow. The prosecutor lied so blatantly that their own expert witness sued them. Still, the jury ate it up because the lies fit their preconceived notions.
Inside prison, everything is run by gangs. Intimidation is constant, violence is common, maiming and murder is not uncommon, and people only survive by becoming a hardened criminal.
They come out much worse - for them and for society.
I have no problem with harsh punishment. I do demand good results, and our current system is not producing them.
Not many people even understand it. *sighs* Look at all the comments you see in the threads where someone they loathe is probably going to prison. There are people actively expressing their hope that the person be given "prison justice" in the form of rape, beatings, and even death. There are some horrible people out there and no, I'm not actually talking about the people who are incarcerated.
An interesting aside, seeing as I'm already typing, is that just prior to the cessation of the Korean War's military actions if a Marine Escort/Chaser lost their detainee then they were obligated to serve that person's time up until the escaped prisoner had been returned to custody. I believe this part remains true to this day: If you escape, or try to escape, from a custodial sentence in a military facility there is no time added to your sentence nor is it a crime in and of itself. The natural state of a human is to be free of restraint. To try to escape is natural and thus not considered a criminal offense in the UCMJ.
However, I never had anyone attempt to escape or even appear to be considering it. We were trained, more or less, to treat the prisoners with respect. In fact, the prisoner may outrank you and still retain their rank until such time as they are officially dismissed from service. (No, they can not order you to let them go - such would be an unlawful order.) There are some strange protocols that might sound odd to a civilian but it's essential to keep in mind that our wards were trained to kill. There are no firearms inside the secure zone and more of them than there are of you - and they've already been acclimated to CS gas. Even if it weren't the humane thing to do, it would still be *very* wise to treat the prisoners with respect.
I didn't spend much time inside the secure zone. I was not on guard duty, patrol, rover, or anything like that. I'd been trained (we all were) to fill those roles but my specific duty was transport/escort. I took them to court, medical, escorted to funerals, and sometimes flew with them to a detention center that was closer to their home. I drove everything from a bus to what is pretty much just your standard police cruiser.
One of the more memorable episodes was when a civilian court officer tried to disarm me. No, not violently or with force or anything but vocally asserting that I was not authorized to carry a firearm or bring any weapons into the court. We got a call on the radio telling me that it had been resolved and that I was to bring the accused back to the court. I'd simply turned around and taken my prisoner back out to the cruiser and was driving back to base. My job was not just to stop my prisoner from escaping but it was also to prevent them from coming to harm. I was not going to allow my prisoner to be cuffed and shackled (defenseless, pretty much) in a group of angry civilians and not retain my service weapons.
Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, or anything like that. I'm not going to leave my prisoner undefended. There's more to detention than just keeping them detained. There's an obligation to keep them from harm. That and there were a lot of really angry people in the courtroom. My prisoner had beaten the shit out of some well-liked civilian. If you're curious, he was acquitted in the civilian court but was still went through the court martial and was convicted there and ousted from the Marines. It turns out that not only had he not swung first but the civilian was drunk (as was the young Marine) and was insulting him with racist slurs before he hit him. Once he hit him, things got a bit out of hand and much damage was done and that resulted in permanent brain injury to the civilian. I'm not sure what the end result was as I wasn't the one to transport him at the end and I've no idea what happened in the civil trial that followed. He was already bucked out of the service by then.
I dunno, this is already long enough but it's about humane treatment and respect. It's not hard to treat humans like untam
"So long and thanks for all the fish."