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.

Comments

No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

US prisons are a systematic violation of basic human rights. They are barbaric, full of horrific atrocities, and there is no excuse for them.

Re:No surprise

[Iamthecheese]

I would much rather have the convicted criminals under lock and key than roaming the streets.

No one is saying prisoners should be let free but this "hard on crime" insanity is actually just hard on criminals, and raises crime rates by turning a guy that made a mistake into a hardened criminal. If you really, truly want safe streets you're going to have to show some compassion.

Re:No surprise

[ShanghaiBill]

I would much rather have the convicted criminals under lock and key than roaming the streets.

Nearly all prisoners are eventually released. So a prison system that hardens and desocializes them is probably not a good thing.

Family and community contact is one of the best ways to reduce recidivism. It is very short sighted to put up barriers to visitation.

Early in the primaries, prison reform actually looked like it was going to be an election issue. Hillary, Bernie, and John Kasich all spoke out about the problems. Unfortunately, the issue appears to have faded away.

Re:No surprise

[hey!]

Meme parroter.

Who the hell under 70 reaches for a metphor and comes up with ... Club Med?

Re:No surprise

[Kohath]

Being nasty to prisoners doesn't actually achieve anything -- it's simply hurting people because you can't or won't control your emotional reactions, much like many of the criminals themselves have done.

You people should just say you want the death penalty for every crime. Or learn to think and solve problems rather than rage and hate.

Re:No surprise

[amiga3D]

I don't know about nationally but locally the courts are pretty lenient on first time offenders for everything other than murder and rape. Usually it's the ones that just don't get the message and go back two or three times that get the hammer dropped. First offense is almost always probation and often second offenses get very little jail time. I guess they figure if you're not getting the message they have to hit you over the head with it to get your attention. When I see someone that's repeatedly broken the law get shoveled off to a long sentence in a shit hole somewhere it's hard to feel much empathy for them. I've been the victim of theft and I have to say that while I don't agree with cruelty I don't think shutting someone up in a cold hard place is worse than letting them back out to prey on people.

Re:No surprise

[hey!]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Anyone can be a "criminal", if the government decides its advantageous to call you one. Pot smoker? Criminal. Sell your buddy a few of your joints? You're a dealer. Live in the same house as someone who sold a joint to someone? You're an accessory. In fact your the most pitiful kind of accessory there is: somebody with nobody valuable to rat on. Guys who sell marijuana by the bale will get less time than you do.

Texas of course has taken this to a new low.

I did a little Google searching and found out that the Travis County Correctional facility is the largest mental health provider in its region. Why? Because as mental health beds are disappearing the county is shifting those people to its prison. And now they're trying to turn mental patients and recreational pot smokers into a profit center.

Re:No surprise

[AchilleTalon]

I don't believe you can label an addict consuming what he/she is addicted to taking a conscious decision by consuming it. It is a bit more complicated than that.We call that an addiction for a reason.

Re:No surprise

[ShanghaiBill]

I don't think shutting someone up in a cold hard place is worse than letting them back out to prey on people.

Most people in prison did not "prey" on anyone. There are locked up for non-violent, and often victimless, crimes, such as drug offences, immigration violations, etc.

In America, some states lock up way more people than others, yet they don't have less crime. There is little evidence that imprisoning lots of people makes you safer.

Re:No surprise

[angel'o'sphere]

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.

Re:No surprise

[smooth wombat]

here is absolutely no reproducible scientific evidence to back that up.

False. From March of 2016:

New research published on-line in advance of print in the journal Psychological Medicine, concludes that continued use of cannabis causes violent behavior as a direct result of changes in brain function that are caused by smoking weed over many years.

Further on the article states:

What makes this new study more compelling than previous studies is that the researchers followed the same individuals for over 50 years from a young age to adulthood. This is precisely what one needs to solve the chicken or egg riddle with respect to cannabis and violence: just look and see which one happens first.

In other words, they weren't doing random shit. They followed the scientific evidence to back up their findings.

Would you like to troll some more and be like creationists and ignore the facts?

Re:No surprise

[HornWumpus]

So how did this study control for the demographic differences between pot use reporting populations and not?

They didn't? What a surprise. Worthless study. Richer people were much less likely to admit it, especially historically.

You need to double check the definition of 'scientific evidence'. It doesn't mean: 'Things I agree with.'

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Not according to this. Violent felons make up the largest percentage of the prisoners.

http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004339

Re:No surprise

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"...pot makes one more aggressive for a short time immediately after consuming/smoking."

I call bullshit. After consuming pot in multiple ways with hundreds of other people in all kinds of situations for over 40 years, I've never seen this "effect", period.

I no longer smoke or consume pot, but I repeat: I have never, ever seen anyone become more aggressive after using it, immediately or otherwise.

Re:No surprise

[OzPeter]

US prisons are a systematic violation of basic human rights. They are barbaric, full of horrific atrocities, and there is no excuse for them.

You also need to add in the stats that while the US has 4.4% of the worlds population it has 22% of the worlds prisoners

Sure you can say that people shouldn't commit crimes. That's easy to say. The hard question to ask is why people are committing crimes at rate much higher than the rest of the world.

Re:No surprise

[Opportunist]

Of course it's not a daycare. Are you nuts? Running a daycare is WAY less profitable than running a prison!

Re:No surprise

[Opportunist]

But the goal IS to desocialize them. How else do you get repeat offenders and keep the system running? The very LAST thing prisons want is fewer criminals, it cuts into their bottom line.

Re:No surprise

[Opportunist]

That's true. The animators at Club Med... the horrors... I still can't talk about it.

Re:No surprise

[ShanghaiBill]

Not according to this. Violent felons make up the largest percentage of the prisoners.

Your own citation clearly states that violent offenders are a minority of the prison population.

Re:No surprise

[currently_awake]

For profit prisons have a vested interest in not reforming criminals. They have a vested interest in making money. This achieves both goals.

Re:No surprise

[gweihir]

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.

Re: No surprise

[um... Lucas]

After years of hearing about it, I've just gotten into GoT. If the punishment for snagging single episode is hanging, I'd tremble at the thought of what punishment awaits me...

Re:No surprise

[Frosty Piss]

Your own citation clearly states that violent offenders are a minority of the prison population.

Sure, spin those stats.

What they show is that while violent offenders are a "minority" when you combine all other categories into one , as a category violent offenders are by far the largest category.

As well, 47.7% isn't exactly a small "minority.

2012 Stats
Violent - 47.7%
Property - 17.1%
Drug - 20.5%
Public-Order - 13.8% (what is "public-order"?)
Other - 0.7%

And, when you combine violent offender and property crime, that's a majority, unless you want to tell me that burglary and car theft and such things should be punished with a "Oh please don't do that again..."

Re:No surprise

[Megol]

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!

Re:No surprise

[gweihir]

Indeed. "Tough on crime" does not work, or rather it has the opposite of the intended effect. That has been known reliably for a long, long time. Criminals do not expect to be caught, and hence penalties do not figure in their motivation. And then not giving them a good chance to become part of society again after they were caught, just makes the problem much, much worse.

The cave-man reflex of just applying more violence to anything undesirable makes basically every problem worse, but being cave-men, its proponents are not equipped to even grasp simple statistics that say they are doing it wrong. Incidentally, the same effect is at work with the "War on Drugs" that has created huge crime-cartels and a lot of users that suffer entirely preventable damage due to contaminated drugs or that have to do crime due to artificially and massively inflated prices. Or the "War on Terror" that has created a lot of new terrorists by killing inconceivable numbers of innocent bystanders.

Applying violence to a problem is about the most base and most stupid thing you can do. The only thing more stupid is to apply more violence when the approach fails.

Re:No surprise

[gweihir]

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.

Re:No surprise

[KGIII]

Having worked in a military detention facility and having interviewed and toured at a civilian facility, I've noticed some odd things.

You go to prison *as* punishment and not *for* punishment.

This is entirely backwards in a civilian facility. Prison should be a place where one still has a modicum of respect and self-determination. No, it needn't be insecure to do so. The greatest thing a government should be able to take is your freedom, your dignity (or lack of it) should be your own.

I've mentioned this before but it's this important and has meant that much to me - for all these years.

From the staff side, entering in through the Sally Port, was an old cross-stitched sign on the wall. It was dull and faded, certainly not regulation, but it had been there for as long as anyone could remember. On that sign was a simple, but important, adage. It said, "There, but by the Grace of God, go I."

I suppose that won't mean anything to you and that you'll be unable (unwilling?) to understand it. So, consider it not writ large on your behalf but for the others who might take your post to heart without having the benefit of an alternative view.

I was a chaser/escort - in civilian terms I was a "Transportation Officer." It ties into my oft-quoted determination/conclusion that people are people, pretty much everywhere you go. Lest you read this and think you're still cognizant, I encourage you to recollect the sign. "There, but by the Grace of God, go I."

It should be /as/ punishment and not /for/ punishment.

Re: No surprise

[KGIII]

I own a portion of a company that makes specialty ropes, you insensitive clod!

Re:No surprise

[OrangeTide]

I would much rather have the convicted criminals under lock and key than roaming the streets.

They are eventually released, incapable of interacting with lawful society because they've become so removed from normal human social behavior that they have adapted to the violent prison life.

Recidivism costs us real money. These for-profit prisons are stealing our tax dollars because they aren't taking care of the long term interests of society keeping the recidivism rate low.

The Free Market fails again.

Re:No surprise

[Greyfox]

A system that hardest and desocializes them increases recidivism, which is freaking awesome if you're a shareholder! You may as well be printing your own money! And no one ever complains because they don't want to be seen as "soft on crime!" Especially in an election year.

Re:No surprise

[MightyMartian]

If a policy leads to more violence and higher recidivism, then how precisely is that helping anyone? Reforming a criminal, which is one key issue to prisons (otherwise, why not just have a big dark hole and throw people in it), is undermined by such measures, and while the operator of that prison makes a few bucks more, it ends up costing taxpayers more in the end.

Re:No surprise

[MightyMartian]

Frankly, I think before the "hard on crime" types talk about addiction issues, they ought to take at least a beginners course on the psychology and neurology of addiction. Or heck, even some basic psychology. This idea that we are completely free agents, that free will is absolute, was debunked decades ago. A lot of our behaviors, even our more cognitively complex ones, happen "under the hood", and to one extent or another our free will is an illusion, decisions like "I need another shot of vodka" or "I need to throw those dice one more time" were actually made prior to the conscious part of the mind even being aware of the urge. There's a growing body of evidence that much of what we think of as "decision making" is really the end of the decision making process, where the conscious mind creates a scenario to explain why other parts of the brain arrived at the decision.

Re:No surprise

[MightyMartian]

Prison is about more than punishment. Or it should be, if you want the people walking out of that prison to reintegrate into society, and not end up back on their pre-prison trajectory.

Re:No surprise

[meerling]

Supposed to, supposed to, supposed to. ..
Well, they are supposed to treat prisoners humanely.
They are supposed to rehabilitate prisoners.
They are not supposed to engage in 'punishment' or otherwise induce unnecessary hardships. (Remember the rehabilitation thing?)
They are not supposed to try to milk money out of a captive audience, that obviously no longer has a paycheck, or their families.
They are not supposed to view prisoners as a profit center.
They are not supposed to take advantage, financial or otherwise, of the friends and family of the incarcerated. After all, who do you think tends to end up having to pay those predatory and outrageous prices and put up with abusive policies like that?

Yes, our country has rules against many things, and are signatory members of multiple treaties and international agreements that ban these types of things.

I guess I really should point out that two wrongs don't make a right.
Just because someone else did something wrong, it doesn't mean you get to be just as vile, it's still wrong.

Besides, a video call isn't a visit, it's a phone call with moving pictures.

Re:No surprise

[drinkypoo]

If you follow the law and fit in like an ordinary human being

then you will die full of regret

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the threshold for a criminal? I live in this area of Texas, and a few years ago, there was an article in a local paper about a guy getting life without parole:

He was smoking a joint at a bus stop. Not the smartest of fellas, obviously. A local popo tackled him, the roach grazed the officer's arm. Now the joint smoker is facing multiple felony counts including:

Assault of a peace officer with a deadly weapon (the joint that flew out of the guy's hand and got some ash on the LEO's sleeve.)
Destruction of evidence (the joint being smoked and not being found at first.)
Smoking marijuana in a "no drug zone" (i.e. within a quarter mile away)
Resisting arrest (of course.)

Because of three felonies, he got the three strikes treatment, and now is a resident of a place like Bartlett (a privately owned prison) for the rest of his life.

Another item of Texas "justice". Some guy at SXSW pissing on a wall in an alley. A school bus goes by. The person taking a whiz now has 24 counts (one per child in the bus) of indecency with a child. Yep, 24 felonies, with the judge making the guy serve the time consecutively, so life in prison with a sex offender rap.

Don't forget the fact that if you own more than four dildos in Texas, that is a state jail felony. Homosexuality is still a crime as well in Texas.

Yes, there are violent felons in prison, but there are also a lot of schmucks who didn't have a good enough lawyer, so they got the book thrown at them.

Don't forget... what happens when these people hit the streets when budget cuts and court orders about overcrowding force releases? People who hate the system, can't find a job, can't find a place to live, and have nowhere to turn to because Texans want to be "tough on crime"? Not looking good.

Re: No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

"In for a penny, in for a pound." There's a real history behind that saying...

Even the Brits eventually saw some form of enlightenment. Unfortunately, expecting the country where all their hardcore hypocrite puritans for which England wasn't pure enough went, might be too much.

Re:No surprise

[Freedom Bug]

On average, American's commit three felonies a day. You're probably one of them, even if you don't smoke pot or live with someone who does.

https://www.amazon.ca/Three-Fe...

Re:No surprise

[F.Ultra]

What fascinates me is the fact the people often treat prison as something that is set in stone and given to us by the gods instead of realizing that it's a man made invention just like everything else around us. AFAIK the origins of prison was Christians in Europe who thought that if they put criminals into the same kind of solitude that monks exhibit in a monestary which then would make the criminals be able to get "closed to god".

Fast forward some thousand years and prison is the lowest denominator. Myself I kind of like the older ways of forcing the criminals to undo the damage that they did, i.e if they vandalized your home then they have to fix it back to the way it was, this might now work in todays society for crimes such as murder and rape (in the old days there was a monetary value for these crimes, and for some murders your punishment could also be exile for a number of years) but then there is really no reason to handle all crimes equally.

Re:No surprise

[Applehu Akbar]

"US prisons are a systematic violation of basic human rights. They are barbaric, full of horrific atrocities,"

That's because of the low quality of people we have in them.

Re: No surprise

[hey!]

Personally, sure. I don't smoke pot, and nobody I associate with uses around me.

But avoiding pot as an entire society? Nope. Can't be done. Such a big fraction of the population has decided pot laws are stupid (which I agree with) and that they'll ignore those laws, it's just spitting into the wind. The futility of of our pot policy is probably biggest single corrupting factor our law enforcement.

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

concludes that continued use of cannabis causes violent behavior

That explains how all the stoners I know are dangerous, unpredictable, and violent.

Oh no. Wait. That's not right, they're actually all productive and gainfully employed members of society. My mistake.

Re:No surprise

[brantondaveperson]

when you combine all other categories into one

A balanced view might break try this breakdown first:

47.7% - Violent
52.3% - Non violent

And then, it might try to break down both of the two categories further. Violent, for instance, consists of stuff like murder, assault, violent burglaries, home invasions, sexual assault, domestic violence, violence against minors. Etcetera etcetera. Whereas non-violent might have a different breakdown. But to leave violent offences in a category of their own, and then on that basis, suggest they they are the 'largest' category, is straight up dishonest.

Re:No surprise

[brantondaveperson]

Do you have the same advice for people in countries where, for example, permitting your daughter to drive a car would be a criminal offence? How about ones where writing critically about ones government on social media would land you in jail? How about places where you can't grow certain plants in your back garden for you own use without being chained up behind bars for it? Oh no, wait, we already have your position on that last one. It's probably safe to assume you have the same position on the others. Good for you.

Re:No surprise

[brantondaveperson]

You go to prison *as* punishment and not *for* punishment.

This is by far the most insightful comment in this entire thread.

Re:No surprise

[brantondaveperson]

Then you have nothing to compare USA prisons

Apart from all the other countries in the world, that is.

Re:No surprise

[Harlequin80]

I don't know if this is the case of not. But I though prisons receive a bonus for people who don't reoffend in a certain time period?

Re:No surprise

[zippthorne]

We can also reach that stat by having longer sentences than other countries. A related issue, if it exists. Are there stats on the how many prisoners we are adding compared to other countries?

Re:No surprise

[GuB-42]

Public-Order - 13.8% (what is "public-order"?)

State : Includes weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses.
Federal : Includes immigration, weapons, and other public-order offenses.
Just read the linked article.

Re:No surprise

[Your.Master]

I'm predisposed to agree with you, but the study summary says that it controlled for "other putative risk factors for violence", and that they didn't just use self-reports but also criminal records (and yes, I know that criminal records are also biased).

I'm not paying $6 to pass the paywall to get more clarity on their controls though. You could be right but I'm not convinced you are.

You need to double check the definition of 'scientific evidence'. It doesn't mean: 'Things I agree with.'

It honestly sounds like you are calling this evidence unscientific because it isn't in the set of "Things I agree with".

Here's a possible out, though: just because a valid scientific study does find a correlation, doesn't mean that a correlation is there today. Maybe this 50-year study contains a 15-year stretch where there was some strong correlation (made-up example: violent cults that incorporate marijuana use in their nonviolent rituals), but that correlating factor no longer exists. A 50 year study like this one would capture that correlation but modern studies are unlikely to detect the causation. This said I just made that up as an example.

Re:No surprise

[Beeftopia]

Indeed. "Tough on crime" does not work, or rather it has the opposite of the intended effect. That has been known reliably for a long, long time. Criminals do not expect to be caught, and hence penalties do not figure in their motivation.

That's not "settled science":

1) Sentence Enhancements Reduce Crime

2) Longer prison terms really do cut crime, study shows

Here's a simple thought experiment on deterrence. In each of the following scenarios, do we get a) More crime, b) less crime, c) no change?:
1) If we actively rewarded crime?
2) If crime had no state-imposed penalty?
3) If crime had state-imposed minimally inconveniencing penalties?
4) If crime had harsh state-imposed penalties?

You're suggesting deterrence doesn't work because no offender thinks he'll be caught. I don't think that's true. The possibility of capture likely has some place in the offender's risk analysis. Hence many criminals' actions to minimize their possibility of capture.

I admit that deterrence will not deter everyone. But it is safe to say it will deter at least some. And we should take what we can get.

Re:No surprise

[fustakrakich]

2nd reply, sorry:

the same individuals for over 50 years from a young age to adulthood

All from a very singular demographic (urban white working class) and age group... Slashdot moderation notwithstanding, your "case" doesn't hold up, and I doubt the sample rate is large enough to separate out those other factors, which plays very strongly in that particular demographic also. The only common link between violence and pot is prohibition, putting the entire business into the hands of criminals. That is where the example is set.

Re:No surprise

[Khyber]

"Sure, spin those stats.

What they show is that while violent offenders are a "minority" when you combine all other categories into one , as a category violent offenders are by far the largest category."

You fucking disingenuous asshole. There are only two types of crime, violent and non-violent. It doesn't matter how you try grouping shit up, you witless fool.

Re:No surprise

[KGIII]

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

Re:No surprise

[110010001000]

Uh, no. Completely the opposite. Why does this garbage always get modded up +5 insightful? It is clearly wrong: the tougher you are on crime the more crime is reduced. This is well known. I'm not even sure why you are talking about "violence" anyway.

Re:No surprise

[aberglas]

Well, there might not be any evidence to support your "well known" theory. Indeed much research to show the opposite.

But there is plenty of evidence that "Tough on Crime" does work very well ... for the people that make money out of the prison system.

Re:No surprise

[phorm]

It's not necessarily the courts that would do you in though, it's the "do you have a criminal record" checkbox on job applications, etc.

I'm not saying that employers should all hire criminals, but perhaps there should be another way. If you're a daycare concerned that your potential employee may have a record that makes him/her dangerous to children, you should be able to put in query to the local police with indicators that it's a position dealing with minors. If you're the local McDonalds and you're worried that Bob might have a record for theft, same thing but records not related to the position shouldn't show up... and no checkboxes on the application are needed.

Re:No surprise

[dryeo]

It can. Heard an interview a while back with a native woman who'd spent 8 years in prison after stabbing someone to death when she was 15.
As she put it, it wasn't that she made bad choices, but rather that she didn't even know there were choices. She'd spent 20 years after getting out of prison helping young fucked up people to understand that there were actually choices and she felt that she'd made a difference in quite a few lives. If she is correct that she helped at least one person stay away from a live of violence, then yes by being out she made you safer.
This is Canada where at the time the prisons weren't so fucked and the native people have really been fucked by generations getting dragged away from their families and raised and tortured in residential schools run by the nice Christians.

Re: No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

The psychosis people are predisposed regardless. Pot speeds it up so the person gets symptoms sooner.. Pot doesn't CAUSE it.

Tl;dr, brain be fucked in the first place. Pot changes brain functionality.

To the argument above, one said aggression increase right after smoking and then uses years of hardcore smokers correlation to back that up. Correlation is not causation.

To me, as I get older, I have increasing "get off my lawn" aggression and pot chills me out. Anecdotal for sure, but living in BC, I just don't see aggression in pot (only) smokers. It's fucking drinkers and meth/crackheads.

Re:No surprise

[dryeo]

It's amazing how many yards have opium poppies growing in them, or maybe not when you look at the flower seeds at the store and realize how common this plant is and also how easily it self seeds.
Huge chunks of the population are guilty of (unknowingly) growing narcotics and could be sentenced to quite a few years in prison.

Re:No surprise

[bmo]

This is a profit-driven enterprise. Privately run prisons.

They get money per inmate.

Contracts are also written to guarantee a minimum number of inmates, so you pay even if the prison is empty.

It's the most odious scam going.

--
BMO

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Not every addict is taking heroin. Some start Oxy, or Ativan, or (common drug here) because a doctor prescribed it and they became addicted to it without any intent. Did you know there are certain genes that make drugs like Ativan super addictive? Mutations to liver enzyme pathways CYP450 2D6 and 3A4 combined in the right increase/decrease of those enzymes make the drug between 4 and 10 times as powerful as it is expected to be; meaning a doctor who prescribes the medication in a good faith dosage could be starting a person's addiction. And that mutation occurs in between 5% and 10% of people of certain ethnicity. Certain mutations of just the CYP450 2D6 enzyme pathway can make Oxy (or any codeine prodrug) super-effective, causing your body to turn more than the expected 5% of codeine into morphine: imagine the doctor thinking you were taking a pill that was supposed to be 5mg and it was actually 20mg, the effect is the same.

source: self. had to get a gene test when I needed an anti-anxiety but had just barely avoided an ativan habit. can't remember the first test that was done, but the second is Genesight

Re:No surprise

[davester666]

to be fair, there are a number of countries that have a slightly more streamlined appeals process for their death penalty cases...

Re: No surprise

[cyber-vandal]

Pot makes me horrendously paranoid. I must be unique.

Re:No surprise

[nbauman]

That's not "settled science": 1) Sentence Enhancements Reduce Crime 2) Longer prison terms really do cut crime, study shows

Re:No surprise

[nbauman]

That's not "settled science":

1) Sentence Enhancements Reduce Crime

2) Longer prison terms really do cut crime, study shows

White papers by economists at the NBER are not scientific evidence.

White papers aren't peer-reviewed. That allows authors to get away with any bullshit that the reviewers and editors of a peer-reviewed paper would challenge.

Economists aren't scientists. They find association and accept it as causation, as they do with this study. Scientists find associations all the time, but when they do a controlled study, about half the time the association doesn't hold up and there is no causation.

Steven Levitt is especially a bullshit artist who doesn't know how to deal with numbers (even though he is very skillful at making a name for himself). He once wrote a column in the New York Times claiming that children's seat belts don't save lives. I checked his sources and he got his numbers wrong. For an economist, the inability to count is a serious problem.

Re:No surprise

[stealth_finger]

They're not a daycare! You're not supposed to enjoy your time there. You're supposed to behave legally, so you don't get thrown in prison. I would much rather have the convicted criminals under lock and key than roaming the streets.

Except the american system throws anyone they can in prison, for anything they can because the system is run by private profiteering companies who think they can abuse the shit out of it by charging extortionate rates for thing that are dirt cheap because they're prisoners and fuck em and they've got people like you thinking fuck them all, it's too good for them.

Re:No surprise

[stealth_finger]

Not according to this. Violent felons make up the largest percentage of the prisoners.

http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004339

On 5 out of 7 years in that chart 'violent' felons make up under 50%. Just because they're all lumped into one where the non violent crimes are split up doesn't mean there's more of them. So according to your own information you should have said "Violent felons make up just under half of the prisoners".

Re:No surprise

[jools33]

They are also first and foremost a business, that makes money, human rights come a long way after that. Its no coincidence that well over 1% of the US population resides behind bars.

Re: No surprise

[angel'o'sphere]

Such cases are known from years or decades long "abuse".

Perhaps you should stop using it or not mix it with other shit, probably you have mushroom poison in it?

Re:No surprise

[amiga3D]

I'm glad she got turned around but you know she's by far the exception. Most just go straight back to what they were doing or worse and their skill set is improved from the education they got in prison. Some people are just bad.

Re: No surprise

[amiga3D]

Most of them view human decency as a weakness and have only disdain for those who would be role models.

Re:No surprise

[b0bby]

I was just reading this last night:
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...

The flaws in the US prison system are huge.

Re: No surprise

[easyTree]

US society is a systematic violation of basic human rights. They are barbaric, full of horrific atrocities, and there is no excuse for them.

Re: No surprise

[easyTree]

That's barbaric. The rope chafea the neck of the victim!

My company provides velvet-covered rope under a per-rehabilitation-event charging model.

Re: No surprise

[easyTree]

Chafes*

Re: No surprise

[easyTree]

Actions have consequences inversely-proportional to ones' financial/political ability to avoid consequences and proportional to the ability of those with financial/political power to monetize the actions/consequences of others.

Re:No surprise

[dywolf]

if there is no room in your view of criminals for their rehabilitation, for reentering society, for second chances, for forgiveness and mercy, then why do you support prisons at all? you should support instead summary execution for all crimes. anything else is illogical.

if instead you view prison as a punishment, a debt to society to be paid, a chance to rehabilitee and re-enter society becoming once again a contributing member, then you must support mercy, you must support second chances, you must support ideas that further that goal, and oppose concepts or methods to hinder it. methods like this no-human-contact stupidity.

Re: No surprise

[easyTree]

It's awesome, the way the same model has been successfully (if cynically) applied to multiple domains.

The war on others profiting from drugs.
The war on others committing acts of terror.
The war on non-monetized crime by others.

Re:No surprise

[dywolf]

its not spinning.
its what the words mean.

to be a majority means to be more than 50%.

is 47% > 50%?
No.

It cannot be a majority and be less than 50% at the same time.

the word you want is plurality.

and trying to add in property crime, out of the blue for no logical reason, is just dumb.

Re:No surprise

[dywolf]

seriously?
that comment alone proves you've no connection to reality, and the inverse maxim "reality has a liberal bias".

Re:No surprise

[dywolf]

if they go back, they go back because of people with your worldview who refuse to give them the space and tools to actually change.
its a vicious cycle caused by people like you.

and if you truly believe there I no hope for them, then there is no point in prison, but rather you should support instead summary execution.

Re:No surprise

[dywolf]

this needs modded up

Re:No surprise

[mapkinase]

> US prisons are a systematic violation of basic human rights.

Yep.

> They are barbaric,

Yep.

> full of horrific atrocities,

Yep.

> and there is no excuse for them.

Nope. There is an excuse. It's called "Crime".

Re:No surprise

[Darkinspiration]

Norway would like to dissagree

Re:No surprise

[HornWumpus]

There are million different ways that study could generate the results they wanted.

The default for any work done by sociologists etc is that it's bullshit. This is based on their track record.

Ask yourself, who go busted for pot 50 years ago (race)? What 'putative risk factor for violence' would sociologists ignore because it's so god damn politically incorrect (race)?

By not sticking their neck out and risking being called racists, they get the results they want.

Re:No surprise

[HornWumpus]

You should give up smoking.

Re: No surprise

[HornWumpus]

not mother's milk

I demand satisfaction.

Have you second contact my second to arrange time and select weapons for the duel.

Re: No surprise

[HornWumpus]

I cleaned my garage on Trainwreck.

Which has a lot of Thai genetics. Made a Vietnam vet cry, reminded him of the stuff they smoked there.

Skunk is usually a coma inducing Afghani strain. YMMV.

Re: No surprise

[HornWumpus]

It's usually cutting and collecting raw opium that's a crime.

All poppies have some opium in them. Opium poppies are just the strong ones.

Re:No surprise

[amiga3D]

Yes that's right. I obey the law and pay my taxes like a good little citizen so of course it's all my fault. The poor felons victimized by fuckers like me.

Re: No surprise

[amiga3D]

I've known ex-cons and most of them ended up repeating their crimes or worse. There are certainly exceptions. I worked with one guy who had served 8 years for armed robbery. He went to tech school and got a job working with me, I was his trainer, and he was eager to learn and worked hard. He earned my respect. Unfortunately he started hanging out with former "friends" and wound up getting arrested for drug charges. He managed to hire a lawyer and actually got that one dropped but then failed a drug test 6 months later at work (aircraft avionics) and was put on probation and sent to rehab for 90 days. Two years later he failed another drug test. I actually cried when he told me about it, I felt like he was a son to me. I was so proud of him for what he had achieved after 8 years in prison. I had told him so in the past and I wrote a letter when he failed the first drug test supporting him to our top management official. I told him when he left that if he didn't get rid of the drugs they'd drag him down. Last I heard a couple of years ago he was working for the Saudi Air Force on their F15s. I hope he can keep it up. He was a good kid who never could shake the old neighborhood. I knew several others I went to school with that are lifers now. Some make it but most don't. I don't hate them, it's just the way it is.

Re: No surprise

[KGIII]

Is it women or minority owned? 'Cause I'm a minority. Sucka!

Where do I submit my bid?

Re:No surprise

[JustSomeProgrammer]

Because federal prisoners aren't in prisons?

Re:No surprise

[david_thornley]

Would you like to troll some more and be like creationists and ignore the facts?

Let me sum up the facts as you have stated them. Psychology Today said there was one new 50-year longitudinal study that claims that long-term use of marijuana causes violent behavior. PT said that the reason this study was important because of the long-term follow-up, enabling them to determine what happened in what order.

In my experience, Psychology Today is a somewhat sensationalist magazine popularizing psychology at a simple level, so I don't trust them to get things right. They say things about one study, without giving me enough information to judge the study for myself. It is on line in advance of publication, and you don't say how far in advance. Is it possible, for example, that it's not getting through peer review intact?

If you're going to gloat about knowing the facts, make sure there's enough of them on your side.

Re:No surprise

[Beeftopia]

That's not "settled science":

1) Sentence Enhancements Reduce Crime

2) Longer prison terms really do cut crime, study shows

White papers by economists at the NBER are not scientific evidence.

White papers aren't peer-reviewed. That allows authors to get away with any bullshit that the reviewers and editors of a peer-reviewed paper would challenge.

Economists aren't scientists.

So... the people who created the study(s) to advance that position that harsher sentences do not reduce crime are almost certainly social scientists. Economics is typically seen as the crunchiest (most observational/mathematical) of the social sciences. By casting aspersions at economists, it seems a bit hypocritical to suggest that sociologists and criminologists, the ones behind the evidence you like, somehow are legitimate scientists.

They find association and accept it as causation, as they do with this study. Scientists find associations all the time, but when they do a controlled study, about half the time the association doesn't hold up and there is no causation.

The only way to study impacts of stimuli on populations is to identify correlations and seek to exclude all other possible factors which might be driving the response. You can't put a population in a petri dish or a isolation chamber. That's how social science is supposed to work.

The hard sciences actually seek mechanisms of causation - like why does a material behave as it does, why does a drug behave as it does, etc. They don't need to rely on correlations (which can certainly be useful in some applications, regardless).

Social scientists can seek a mechanism of causation in an individual. But in a population, there are varied individuals which may not respond as the single individual. Thus, the reliance on correlation when studying populations.

Re:No surprise

[nbauman]

There have been randomized, controlled trials in criminology.

For example there were studies in Boston during the heyday of psychoanalysis which divided what were called "juvenile delinquents" into a group that got psychoanalysis and a group that got the usual treatment such as social work counseling. Psychoanalysis was no more effective than usual treatment.

Another study randomized teenagers into a group that received the DARE anti-drug program and a group that did not; the group that received the DARE program did worse than the control group.

What they prove is that the conventional wisdom was wrong.

There have also been studies for example in health care which found that insurance policy holders didn't act according to their financial incentives as economists predicted. For example, when they increased co-payments, policy holders reduced economically efficient preventive care, and cost the insurer more money over a year or two.

I do read studies by criminologists which may not have controlled trials in JAMA and Nature, but those studies are peer-reviewed by experts in the field who understand experimental design and the limitations of statistics. I don't have any confidence in the NBER, Steven Levitt, or Daniel Kessler understanding experimental design.

Re: No surprise

[cyber-vandal]

I was only ever a casual user and stopped after a very bad experience caused severe anxiety attacks for months. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your narrative but that doesn't stop it being true.

Re: No surprise

[easyTree]

I hear that your company sells its employees' organs. Hopefully this doesn't come up when I play golf with the governor next week!

Re: No surprise

[KGIII]

It's in the contract, it's legal. I'm going to make America great again!

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

I would trust the murderers and rapists in the prisons long before I would trust the people running the prisons. They are far better people.

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

I hope you choke to death on the corporate cock you keep sucking.

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

I agree, the people running those prisons are criminals.

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

Sorry, but you are going to have to give better evidence. We don't accept blatantly biased papers written by people who don't even know what the scientific method is, as evidence.

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

I really hope you are just trolling.

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

And I'm calling bullshit on your story.

Re: No surprise

[beastofburdon]

Not unique, just in the minority. Weed isn't for everyone, just like alcohol isn't for everyone.
Personally I love both.

Re:No surprise

[beastofburdon]

Which is why the government was against it in the first place. You can't got to war with a bunch of pot smoking pacifists.

Man's inhumanity to man

[fustakrakich]

These perverts will be happiest when they can keep the prisoners alive forever..

Humane visitation

[rmdingler]

Let's keep it in perspective, shall we? Many of the folks behind bars in the US are young, nonviolent offenders who stand a reasonable chance of rehabilitation.

Contact visits with family and loved ones are a privilege, and give the inmates something to look forward to and stay out of trouble for.

If prisoners wind up with daily lives so poor nothing that can be taken away from them, who's going to want to take care of them?

Re:Humane visitation

[beh]

OK, let's keep it in perspective - a shop owner treats customers well to generate repeat business.

So, why the expectation that privatized prisons won't do everything they can to generate repeat business? Charging for video "visits" makes money - and if on top of that, it has the side effect of increasing recidivism - who ends up making a profit on it?

Re:Humane visitation

[MightyMartian]

Let's not forget the politicians who take advantage of voters' tendencies towards irrational hysteria to pass draconian laws. This whole "eye for an eye" thing causes more misery, and does absolutely nothing to prevent crime.

Re: Humane visitation

[MightyMartian]

So you think we should execute car thieves or credit card scammers, and they should feel lucky that you're not in charge?

Let's not forget that the kind of prison system you seem to approve of only exacerbates the problem. But hey, fuck science. You want revenge, even if it bites you in the ass in more ways than one.

It's not like they can keep cell phones out.

[HornWumpus]

Why would anybody pay to use this service when they can just pay to use/borrow someones cell and Skype? Even better, use a video chat service that works.

Re:It's not like they can keep cell phones out.

[ArmoredDragon]

Just remember to wipe the poo off of the mouthpiece.

Re:It's not like they can keep cell phones out.

[wonkey_monkey]

the mouthpiece.

Worst prison nickname ever.

Corporate political influence

[dbreeze]

We've gotta put some real controls on the power of $ in our government. Please add your name to this effort for a start: http://www.movetoamend.org/

The cost is not the cost of the call

[aepervius]

I was told , and it stands to reason, that the cost of the call , however horrendous we see it, is because all call have to be listened to/looked over, and the additional cost is simply passed over the prisoner.

Re:The cost is not the cost of the call

[Anonymous Coward]

They often charge upwards of $1/minute, there's no way a guard makes that much (or that they have people only looking over one call at a time).

Re:The cost is not the cost of the call

[KGIII]

We have a /. user who works in the industry and has for some time. I imagine they will see this thread but they're on my friend's list so I will put this here and they may notice and respond about the financial aspect. If I get a minute, I'll send them a notice off-site and they may opt to share what they know. (They're helping me out with a project that I am working on.)

Re:Evidence Please?

[Calydor]

Maybe this is not the prison system's first opportunity to see what happens to inmates who never have (in-person) contact with friends and family outside the prison.

Re:News for whom?

[surd1618]

???? Stories about dystopian developments make the feed all of the time. Poorly-implemented tech services are being proffered at an enormous profit margin to a locked-in customer base. Do I have to add a car analogy and a get-off my lawn joke, and a alien overlords joke?

Re:I have an idea

[fustakrakich]

The jails are too full of pot heads. There's no space for robbers, murders, and rapists...

Re: I have an idea

[smooth wombat]

It was a general comment in relation to the OP who said people shouldn't commit a crime so they wouldn't go to jail.

I realize common sense doesn't sit too well on /. but at least make an effort to try.

Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot cheaper

[rsilvergun]

to put a guard in the room with the two? I know we can't do that with a conjugal visit but I'm guessing we're not doing those over the net unless the prisons have invested in teledildonics.

American voters like punishment

[rsilvergun]

I'm not going to generalize about Americans, but I will about the voting public. And the ones who vote make the decisions. Fear of scary gang bangers (read: black people) gets folks to the polls. Fear _always_ gets people to the polls. Concern for human decency otoh does not. To fix this we'd need to make prisons public again. So long as there's a profit motive prisons will be horrifying places (they're not gonna be sunshine and rainbows w/o profit, but it'll help).

The point my rambling is trying to make is that a sizable portion of the population wants to see people suffer for their mistakes. My theory is they've screwed up their lives in one way or another (it's hard not to what with all the competing pressures in day to day life) and if they have to pay for their mistakes why the hell shouldn't everybody else? Regardless if we ever want to fix things we need to take care of that sentiment, switch to a parliamentary system that marginalizes the fear and frustration vote or Mandate voting so everybody goes to the polls. I don't think we'll do the latter two, any ideas on the last?

Yeah, this system is evil.

[RyanFenton]

Our prison system seems to be turning increasingly evil - as in, willfully and casually harming others on a consistent basis well beyond their charter of stopping harm to others, for their own benefit.

They're increasingly subverting our political process, in order to take what should arguably be a time of reformation and a path back to society (and improvement of the general welfare), and using is to transform every human into a maximum income machine, including transforming laws to make the process worse. There's occasional noises towards public good in the letter of the rules of these places, but they're getting increasingly privatized and 'efficient' at gathering money.

I understand the ideal - this is where we throw folks who won't follow the rules, who won't respond to fines, a place where we repay unfairness with unfairness, so that we can remain productive. Which would be a fine ideal too, if it didn't cost taxpayers $60,000-$130,000 a year per person for land,buildings, employees,healthcare, goods, administration, etc.. We're basically paying for a rather large professional army, complete with all the logistics, in order to make a large portion of our population feel bad for the rest of their lives, for the most part.

It's part of why I've never understood the common Christian conception of Hell - a place of eternal pain, complete with the equivalent of angels who spend their existences making people feel bad for something they can no longer do anything about.

If the point of this horrible song and dance was to reduce motivation to break rules - then there should be a television in every public space, if not in every home, to show the suffering of rule breakers, to at least justify the lesson that we should be learning from all this suffering. If all these people were paying the cost, for our benefit, then all our children should see their suffering, so all this suffering wouldn't be a waste of both their lives and the time of all the people spending their lives imprisoning them.

Perhaps we don't because we really are all rule breakers. Most traffic studies I've seen find that the average driver breaks around 4,000 traffic laws every year. Proportionally the same with bike riders and pedestrians. And that's just the easily observable stuff. But we don't really enforce our rules, instead we pay people to selectively enforce them, and prosecute infractions in some of the oddest ways possible. Things like 'discovery processes', armies of paid lawyers, laws changing at the request of lobbyists, special courts, judges owning stakes in other parts of the process, and very strange politics and biases everywhere.

If the point of the whole game is to pay the least amount of resources, in order to keep the maximum number of people cooperative and productive, then I think everyone would judge that we're doing this the wrong way. There's a LOT of nations to compare against, and we're having worse results than almost all of them.

The prisons we have now are doing horrible jobs in all regards, and are actively engaged in a process of making things worse. If we're spending all these resources, the cheapest thing to do is to take this large army, and reconcile it with better, more productive, and cheaper goals. It's never going to be cheap or easy, but almost anything is going to be cheaper and easier than the road we're going down now.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Yeah, this system is evil.

[gweihir]

Perhaps we don't because we really are all rule breakers.

Or at least anybody with any worth to society is. If you follow all the rules, you will not be doing anything else with your life, never even take the risk to think something not approved. A society that limits all rule-breaking too strictly stagnates pretty fast and eventually fails.

Re:Yeah, this system is evil.

[kheldan]

In a world where we have 'for profit' prisons, I kind of start to wonder if the incarcerated are actually becoming the new 'slave' class. Dehumanizing them even further than they already are is just another step in that direction; slaves don't get 'visitors', not any more than food animals on a farm do. There should be more resources and effort put into rehabilitating criminals, but that costs money. Better to put them to work, and do fuck all to make them part of society ever again, eh? It's bullshit. If this is the direction they're taking this, then they may as well just shoot them in the head rather than put them in a cell.. oh, but I forgot for a moment: you can't get your free slave laborers that way! Silly me..

Friend, I'm just into the downhill side of 100, and I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth sticking around. People, in general in the world right now, treat each other like dogshit, and I'm damned sick and tired of seeing it.

Dehumanization Complete

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

This is just another way to isolate inmates and dehumanize them so they have fewer resources and less meaningful, human contact. This is how they strip a person of every last vestige of their humanity.

I understand that for long-distance scenarios this video-visitation could be a good thing, but to prevent people from meeting in person is wrong and abusive.

Welcome to the Prison Industrial Complex, where you're not an inmate, you're a profit-center. Heaven forbid they use Skype, which actually works- no, lets use our proprietary "solution" that's not worth a shit and doesn't actually work. Because if we used Skype we couldn't charge an arm and a leg for our "service".

Some things should not be run for profit, including schools, police services, hospitals, and prisons.

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[Ichijo]

Some things should not be run for profit, including schools, police services, hospitals, and prisons.

Why shouldn't prisons be paid by how well they rehabilitate their clients?

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Why shouldn't prisons be paid by how well they rehabilitate their clients?

1) They aren't "clients". They're inmates. A client is someone who pays a professional for a service. An inmate is someone we pay to have incarcerated. They use two different words because those are two different things.

2) The other reason is because prisons aren't for rehabilitating people anymore, no matter what the "Welcome To Prison" brochure says.

Seriously, they don't give a shit about rehabilitating anyone, they just want to warehouse people and keep them off the streets. Anyone that tells you different is simply bullshitting you. Yes, there are exceptions, but that's what they are: exceptions.

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[Ichijo]

A client is someone who pays a professional for a service.

Then let's call them "patients." This should help change prisons from places of incarceration to places of healing.

"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." --George Orwell

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Then let's call them "patients." This should help change prisons from places of incarceration to places of healing.

Then let's call slaves "involuntarily-sourced happy helpers". This should help make the idea of slavery more acceptable to the masses.

Seriously, inmates are not "patients". Patients undergo a course of therapy, which is not at all what happens in prison. I'd be happy if prisons would institute some serious rehabilitation protocols or programs designed to help inmates instead of just warehousing them, but until they do then the inmates are just that, inmates.

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[Ichijo]

Patients undergo a course of therapy, which is not at all what happens in prison.

Yes, but if we only focus on what prisons are and not on what we want them to be, there's never going to be any progress.

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Yes, but if we only focus on what prisons are and not on what we want them to be, there's never going to be any progress.

I agree. What's your point?

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[dywolf]

I understand that for long-distance scenarios this video-visitation could be a good thing, but to prevent people from meeting in person is wrong and abusive.

Exactly.
They took something that was supposed to be a tool for those who for whatever reason cant visit in person (say, family outside can't get to the prison for whatever reason), something that was supposed to be a good and useful tool for those persons.... ...and turned it into a profit machine that now every prisoner/family is forced to use, regardless of their personal feasibility of in person visitation.

and in so doing are making the prisoners worse off and less likely to rehabilitate.

It's absolutely disgusting.

Re:Dehumanization Complete

[dywolf]

because the profit motive itself is antithetical to their purpose.

Re:I have an idea

[slarabee]

The jails are too full of pot heads. There's no space for robbers, murders, and rapists...

Would this false meme go away?

At the height of the War on Drugs hysteria, combined state and federal prisoners in for drug offenses (all, not just pot) topped out a little over 25%.

http://felonvoting.procon.org/...

For-profit prison system

[QuietLagoon]

The prison system is being run by for-profit companies. Those companies actually want the prison population to increase and for prisoners to continually return to prison after their release. It makes the shareholders happy and wealthy.

Re:For-profit prison system

[Anonymous Coward]

This.
Instead of paying the prisons per prisoner, the government should pay less for repeat offenders.
This will give those companies a reason to rehabilitate people.
Better yet, don't try to shoehorn something that is clearly a government concern into the private sector.
Otherwise, why pay for the prisoners at all?
Surely the free market can take care of itself without government handouts?

Re:News for whom?

[slarabee]

???? Stories about dystopian developments make the feed all of the time. Poorly-implemented tech services are being proffered at an enormous profit margin to a locked-in customer base. Do I have to add a car analogy and a get-off my lawn joke, and a alien overlords joke?

Poorly-implemented? Two anecdotes about poor video quality. An author with an agenda to push and we get two anecdotes?

Enormous profit margin? Two times numbers ever given. One was $10 for a 20 minute call and the other was $0 for twice weekly calls from the designated call center. Outrageous sums.

Article was light on data and heavily shaded what was presented.

Re:I have an idea

[Opportunist]

Can I spend a day with you and note down the crimes you commit during it?

If we make it a week, I'll quite likely find something you could do time for.

Our legal system is so out of whack that it is near impossible not to break the law anymore.

Re:I have an idea

[fustakrakich]

Yes, well, Let's take a slightly more inclusive view, no?

Re:I have an idea

[slarabee]

Yes, well, Let's take a slightly more inclusive view, no?

Inclusive? Those are federal only statistics. A subset of overall prisoners. Not inclusive. Federal crimes. You know, heavily weighted to drug offenses.

Re:I have an idea

[fustakrakich]

Sorry, took the word "felons" at face value.

So, let's get really all inclusive and call it what it is, Correctional population, which, at a mere 6.85 mil, is at its "lowest rate since 1996", putting only 2.8% of the adult population through the system... But it doesn't show the breakdown.

I used this system recently

[Wiseleo]

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.

Re:I used this system recently

[Wiseleo]

By the way, the video call was free as of February 2016.

prisons are run to hurt society

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:prisons are run to hurt society

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not that people are sent to prison. The problem is how the prisons are.

Why should gangs even be able to have any power inside prisons? There is no need for that. Make a prison where prisoners have less contact with other prisoners - mostly contact with guards. Get rid of prison rape, gange rule etc.

Prison should still be where you don't want to be. Because of the BOREDOM of years inside. Being locked up and going nowhere. Not "fear of other prisoners"

Re:prisons are run to hurt society

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison should still be where you don't want to be. Because of the BOREDOM of years inside. Being locked up and going nowhere. Not "fear of other prisoners"

The type of incarceration that you describe does in fact exist, it's called "supermax". However, because it's insanely expensive on a per prisoner basis it's not practical to subject every prisoner to it. Generally it's reserved for the worst of the worst. The United States locks up millions of people, but our lone supermax prison has capacity for less than 500 prisoners in full confinement at that ultra strict level.

Re:prisons are run to hurt society

[JustSomeProgrammer]

You probably don't realize you're advocating for literally making people insane. Humans are social animals and need stimulation or our brains will make stimulation for us. Some of those ways it creates stimulation would make it impossible to reenter society. What would you prefer jails to be? Punishment centers that breed insanity or reform centers that correct aberrant behavior? Studies point to punishment centers not actually helping reduce crime, but in my opinion they probably are cathartic to the victims of crimes.

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I actually know a felon

[Beeftopia]

So, I know a felon, a guy who incarcerated for felony theft. He was a real treacherous shitbag before he went in, but now, he's quite polite (I'm sure he's still quite treacherous but I have no interest in finding out). No more late night parties, his house (yes, there is money in his family, so he has a house) is lights out relatively early in the evening. I think prison had quite the correct effect on this guy. It seems to have deterred him from future criminality.

Prison should deter people, both those who have committed crimes so they don't want to return, and those who don't with to have a stay in the first place.

This nonsense about 'everyone is a criminal - you're committing crimes right now' - is nonsense. I haven't seen a shred of evidence to support such a thing (which I how I make decisions on the accuracy of claims).

If you have a panic attack whenever you see a cop, that would seem to warrant an examination of your own life. Don't ride dirty. Don't have guns, drugs or drug paraphernalia on you or in your car.

Are there bad cops? Of course. Do they make up more than a tiny minority of cops? No. I haven't seen a lick of evidence to suggest otherwise.

Lionizing criminals, which I remember in the 70s and 80s only leads to a lot of innocent people suffering. Criminals should be held to account for their actions.

Re:I actually know a felon

[imidan]

If you have a panic attack whenever you see a cop, that would seem to warrant an examination of your own life. Don't ride dirty. Don't have guns, drugs or drug paraphernalia on you or in your car.

I don't have a panic attack when I see a cop, but I *am* acutely aware that the cops are not my friend. I don't really know what constitutes 'riding dirty'. I don't have guns, drugs, or drug paraphernalia in my car. But if a cop has a notion to fuck up my day and my car because I'm driving through his shitty little town and they make their revenues by making bullshit traffic stops and ginning up cause to search my car and stealing any cash I have through civil forfeiture, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I'm completely powerless in that situation, and a lot of the creepy fucks who are attracted to police work get their jollies by taking advantage of that power imbalance. Or maybe they're just corrupt and greedy. Their motivation doesn't matter that much.

There are plenty of examples of this behavior in news reports. There is no reason to believe it can't happen to me. I mean, here's one from just a few days ago, where the only reason the victims had their money (~$50,000) returned is that they were a Christian band who had raised the money for an orphanage, and that kind of thing makes bad headlines. http://dailysignal.com/2016/04...?

Re:I actually know a felon

[Nunya666]

If you have a panic attack whenever you see a cop, that would seem to warrant an examination of your own life. Don't ride dirty. Don't have guns, drugs or drug paraphernalia on you or in your car.

If the legal system was fair and just, then you would be correct. Unfortunately, that utopia does not exist. Thanks to 9/11 and paranoia, you can get put in jail for 48 hours without being charged with anything. And if you do get unjustly charged, you could still be stuck in jail until your day in court, which could be months away. Does that sound like "innocent until proven guilty?" Not to me, it doesn't. It sounds more like "guilty until proven innocent."

Here's another example: a relative of mine is a fireman. He's worked with cops for his entire career. He's been a 911 dispatcher, an ambulance driver, and a fireman. Even he doesn't trust cops. Why? Because if they want to pull you over, then can and they will. And if they want to fuck up your day, perhaps your life, they can and they will.

Re:I have an idea

[brantondaveperson]

putting only 2.8% of the adult population

Forgive me, but almost three percent seems incredibly high. Three out of every hundred people actually going to jail?

Immigration offences are NOT a victimless crime

[Bruce66423]

The victims of the crime are hard working citizens who earn less than they would because their value in the labour market is undermined.

The victims are the citizens whose house is repossessed because their employer has gone bankrupt because another firm has competed it into bankruptcy because it employed illegal immigrants at below the minimum wage.

And of course the most visible victims are the 'dream children' whose illegal immigrant parents selfishly bought them along when the started their criminality, and so deprived them of legal status, instead condemning them to a life of uncertainty.

Illegal immigration; a crime with real victims...

Re:Immigration offences are NOT a victimless crime

[dywolf]

So much ignorance and bigotry in one post.
Begone pest.

Re:I have an idea

[fustakrakich]

"correctional supervision", not necessarily jail.

Re:I have an idea

[slarabee]

For the love of all that is holy. 46.4% is a quick and dirty google hit but it is from the FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS. Instead of googling for answers to support your already held beliefs, slow up and think a minute. Federal. Not all prisoners. Federal. You know, the feds who have a disproportionate percentage of drug offenders in the system since the feds don't prosecute a whole ton of armed robbers, rapists and car thieves.

Re: I have an idea

[jsh1972]

Yeah, and a lot of the rest committed burgularies (to buy drugs), or robbed someone (to buy drugs), or even killed someone (that ripped them off or stole their drugs). Buy those don't count as "drug crimes".

Prisons in the U.S.A.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read a lot of chatter, on here about criminals, prisons, and the problem with criminals, re-offenders, etc, here is some 'food for thought' to ponder on.

I can't say for the rest of the world, but the 'prisons' in the U.S.A. started out being called Penitentiaries, and ran by monks, because when a 'criminal' was incarcerated, they were to be kept, until they were repentant for their sins, and then they were rehabilitated body and soul so they did not commit more sins. The Penitentiaries, was broken down into cells, for each criminal. each cell was approx. 8x10, with 1 foot think walls, and doors made of solid 1ft thick wood, with a 'food slot', and a single 6" wide 'window' in the ceiling, running the length of the cell, so that the criminal could only look upto the heavens and pray for forgiveness. And the monks wore soundless slippers. there was NO SOUND what so ever. all the 'inmates' were totally isolated from contact with anyone, including conversations with their 'keepers.'

This was deemed inhumane in the early to mid 1800's and the style/design of prisons has evolved into what we see today.

And I can tell you, from first hand experience in today's prisons, being 'convicted' for a 'class-c felony misdemeanor' and sentenced to 15 months in a state 'institution.' There is no such thing as punishment and 'rehabilitation' that most people seem to think or perceive that our modern day prisons are there for.

Once you are 'convicted' of a crime, be it either from a 'trial', (we have all heard/seen the problems with trials, biased judges, Prosecutors 'doctoring' evidence, crime-labs, with falsified/contaminated evidence, police officers falsifying/planting evidence, not allowing defense attorneys see the evidence, etc) or thru a plea bargain (which is no real bargain, as you are rail-roaded into a 'lesser charge(s)' by the Prosecutor's filing more and more charge upon you when ever you try to take your case to a jury-trial, to defense attorneys who either have no idea how to 'defend' against to the charges, to cow-towing to everything the Prosecutor wants, thus putting up NO DEFENSE what so ever.), as well as the assumption of guilty till proven innocent(I have even seen cases where L.E. has used 'civil asset-forfeiture, to 'seize your ill-gotten gains' and your 'assetes are then charged with a crime, instead of you.) you go to a state prison. As well as the BIGGEST 'issue' of 'justice' is from SOCIETY general, where its commonly stated, 'well if he wasnt guilty, he would not have been charged.' The Idea of a 'fair trial' is for the state to PROVE to jury, that you are guilty of commiting said crime.
Instead now, YOU have to PROVE that you DID not commit the crime. And with courts passing 'secret laws' to 'secret evidence' to 'secret verdicts' to 'secret sentences' to secret prisons, it's a wonder there is even a "court system'

Once you are in prison, all your 'inalienable' rights are stripped from you. Your are then 'processed' and classified. You are classified into one of several categories, from Highest Security Risk, to Minimal Security Risk, either for 'escape potential' or risk to other in-mates or prison personal. Then you are sent of to a Prison SOMEWHERE else in the state, on the 'chain-bus.'

Once at your 'Parent Facility,' you are further processed, for any mental of physical issues. You are then sent to your 'Unit.'
Each Unit, is further broken down into 'Pods.' Each Pod is broken down into two 'tiers', an Upper Tier, and A Lower Tier. Each Tier is broken down into 'cells'. And Finally each cell is broken down into an Upper and Lower Bunk.

Depending on your Classification your 'cell' can be an 'Open Bar' cell, or a 'Semi-closed' Cell(a solid door with a see thru window for the guards to due their 'bed-checks'). As well as, in a max-security cell, (where the guards control your movements in and out of your cell(s) i.e. for meals, showers, open toilets in your cell, etc.) and there is no privacy what so ever, to the Minimum-Security, with stalled toilet

Welcome to Cell Block Tango, America

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Replacing reliable analog audio systems with crappy choppy voice-mangling digital platforms... overloaded data streams destroying voice conversations... subjecting families to an organized $calp-you monopoly of a few companies... massive up-front charges and 'contracts' that actually deliver a small amount of 'product'...

It's an abomination I tell you!

[holds up cellphone]

And I'm not talking about prison.

Cannabis

[Tenebrousedge]

It's not that marijuana has never been linked to any deaths, it's that there has never been a lethal marijuana overdose, and estimates of the LD50 are 20,000 to 40,000 times the normal dose. I have no doubt that marijuana in combination with other drugs or other health conditions could be fatal, but [a] the difference between the effective dose and the lethal dose is one of the greatest of all psychoactive substances, and [b] consuming a lethal dose is more than a little impractical. It is completely impossible to consume a lethal dose of marijuana cigarettes. Even taking low estimates for the LD50, it would require smoking more than one cigarette per second for a sustained period of time.

As you no doubt know, the role of cannabis in producing psychosis is debated, and odds are there are genetic factors there as well. I believe it is more fair to say that drug use can produce psychosis in susceptible individuals, without needing to be more specific. Similarly, there are studies on both sides of the violence issue, and using the word "linked" is somewhat disingenuous. I believe further study is necessary to be able to firmly establish either position.

Cannabis has been established as one of the safest recreational drugs. One can even make favorable comparisons to caffeine. As one of the >40% of the US who has tried marijuana, I would say you're being alarmist, and I don't think that balances out the "pro-drug propaganda". Telling people to "Fuck off!" is also not indicative of a desire for honest discussion.

Most creative

[easyTree]

Which other basic human needs can be monetized?

Perhaps we could charge people to see if they can throw politicians* into space, either by hand or using all manner of home-made trebuchets / rockets?

(*) and those politicians collude with against the general population

Re:Talk about "Dehumanization"...

[dywolf]

my concern for the victims or their families ends when the due process ends and the person is convicted of the crime and sentenced to prison.
ie, the point in time when we the people determine that a) he's guilty and b) this is what his debt to society is going to be.
at that point, the victims and their families cease to be relevant.

we are, or try to be, a just society.
and a just society doesn't use eternal punishment.

you commit a crime, you earn a debt to society.
once that debt is paid, you earn the right to re-enter society.

if you want eternal punishment, I suggest you abandon prisons altogether and advocate for summary execution.

Re:Talk about "Dehumanization"...

[dywolf]

also, actually, the vast majority of people in prison were never convicted in the first place.
rather, they are the result of the abominable plea bargain system, which is another part of our injustice system that needs to go away.

Please explain

[Bruce66423]

As an economist the logic of what I have said is irreproachable. The fact that you appear unwilling to bother to explain why you regard it as 'bigoted' renders you guilty of wasting my time. We are here to learn from each other, not to indulge name calling...

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Re:um

[toddestan]

There's a pretty big difference between privacy with respect to other inmates (what the parent was talking about), and privacy with respect to the officers/guards/etc. I would expect that the authorities can and would listen to conversations the prisoner has with outsiders, though I would expect some exceptions for things like legal counsel. I would expect some privacy from fellow prisoners, especially if you're worried about abuse and intimidation.

Re:No, they are not

[beastofburdon]

I truly hope that you end up in the kind of prison which you describe. Preferably, I hope that you are framed for a crime you didn't commit by corrupt cops and corrupt prosecution, maybe then you might realize how terrible of a person you really are.

virtual visitors

[peawormsworth]

Perhaps they should just virtualize the visitors as well. In that way no one would ever need to visit them in jail any more. But the charge can remain. Win win.