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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.

1 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No surprise by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1, Troll

    Pot does not make you more aggressive. It calms you down and relaxes mind and body.
    Perhaps you should try it once before spreading your FUD?

    Plenty of 'conscious' decisions are not conscious at all but trained habits. People who pull a gun because you look at their GF do that because they were raised and trained to do that. Absolutely nothing conscious about it.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.