Indiana's Inmates Could Soon Have Access To Tablets (abc57.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC57 News in South Bend, Indiana: Indiana is looking to help offenders who are behind bars. Soon, each inmate in the Hoosier state could have their own tablet. The Indiana Department of Correction says the tablet will help inmates stay connected with their families and improve their education. Offenders will be able to use the tablets to access any classwork, self-help materials or entertainment. Officials expect to use entertainment, like music or movies, to reward good behavior. The proposal was first filed in January. Apple iPad's or kindles won't be used. Instead, a company that makes tablets specifically for prisons or jails will be hired. One San Francisco based-company they may consider, Telmate, has a device that is used in more than 20 states, including some jails in Marshall County. INDOC is hoping a vendor will front the costs of the entertainment apps so taxpayers won't have to. INDOC also says it wants to avoid charging inmate fees because charging fees that they can't afford would defeat the purpose of the system. If the company selected pays, the vendor would be reimbursed and still earn a profit.

Comments

Why not?

[Ol Olsoc]

I know the get tough on crime crowd will be throwing a massive shit-fit, but if you can give them something to occupy their time, it might be less shit going down in there.

Re:Why not?

[OzPeter]

How about "occupying their time" with work such as making license plates, breaking big rocks into smaller rocks, digging holes, filling in holes, etc.?

And when they get out their only possible skill set will be "making license plates, breaking big rocks into smaller rocks, digging holes, filling in holes, etc.". At least with a tablet the have the possibility of learning something of value.

Re:Why not?

[BarbaraHudson]

Prison != solitary confinement. That would be far too expensive. You get to see sunrises and sunsets, you get to play sports, you get your 3 square meals a day and all medical expenses covered. And if you think that "joining a motorcycle club" is just about riding motor cycles, you need to talk to a few Satan's Choice or Hells Angels members. The clubs function just fine in prisons, controlling much of the drug trade.

For the homeless, prison looks like a damn fine deal.

Re:Why not?

[stephanruby]

How about "occupying their time" with work such as making license plates, breaking big rocks into smaller rocks, digging holes, filling in holes, etc.?

Making license plates doesn't earn the prison near enough money. And before you tell me about INDOC not wanting to charge the inmate fees, you'd be right of course. INDOC doesn't want to charge the inmates. It wants to charge their families. This is exactly how they used to do it for phone calls.

They used to charge up to $14 per minute for collect phone calls until the FCC recently put a stop to it. Now, they're capped at no more than $1.75 for 15 minutes. Can you believe it? On a 15 min phone call, there is now a shortfall of $208.25

Prisons have come to depend on this extra income for their sludge funds. Now that the FCC took it away from them. They just need to start providing services on cheap devices that the FCC hasn't even thought to regulate for prison yet. This is the real story here.

Re:Why not?

[BarbaraHudson]

Prisons have conjugal visits. They also have all the sex you never wanted. And in the female prisons, a lot of unwanted sex with the guards. If it weren't for the prison rapes and coerced sex, there are plenty of people who would be better off in prison than on the streets or in a shelter (shelters also have lots of unwanted sex for women who don't want to sleep outside - it's so bad in some areas that women are actually safer outside a shelter than in).

Re:Why not?

[pete6677]

Norway consists of a mostly peaceful homogeneous society. Send them a few hundred thousand MS-13s who are from places where human life is very cheap, and see what happens to their society. It will break apart really fast.

Re:Why not?

[Kjella]

Hmmm - prison = food, clothing, shelter, in some cases a good gym membership and now your own tablet with internet and skype and probably easy access to porn. What's the deterrent to crime then?

The conditions in prison are rarely effective as a deterrent anyway, either people think they'll get away with it (typically theft, burglary, mugging, robbery, trafficking illegal goods, fraud, embezzlement and related crimes) or crimes of passion (rage, lust, envy mostly, often combined with being drunk or high - most violent crime, rape and murder) where they're not thinking rationally of consequences. While there are certainly repeat offenders there's also many first-time offenders that have no real concept of what doing time is like or small time criminals that confuse being off the streets for a few weeks on minimum security with being locked up for years.

And most criminals don't return or not return to prison because of how the conditions are on the inside. They return because they don't really see any alternatives to the life they have on the outside. No money, no job, no CV or work history, so it's back to stealing or peddling drugs on the street corner. Or they have impulse control or substance abuse issues that don't just disappear with time. And if prison is some horrible hellhole then you have these "nothing to lose", "never going back" people who will do anything to get away with it and fight the police until they die in a rain of bullets from a SWAT team. They need to see that there is another way, in prison and after prison. Not everyone will want to change, but you can't whip them into changing.

Getting proper apples-to-apples numbers on the effect of treating prisoners humanely is very difficult, but it generally varies from "it helps" to "it doesn't hurt", there's really very little to suggest it makes things worse. It's mostly a matter of whether it's money worth spending. Here in Norway we created what the international press called "the world's most humane maximum security prison" but mainly it's that it is built like a normal living quarters like a dorm room or hotel room. No escapes, very low tension even though it's murderers and rapists. Even gangs keep the peace inside the prison, it's like everybody is on time-out. And quite many find they like it better than the life they had.

Re: Why not?

[geoskd]

Not true, menial labor serves to convince people they don't want to do menial labor and strive for something better. It's up to the individual to find their motivation. Would tablet permissions as a reward work for good behavior?

Most people who end up in jail are there for one of two reasons: Drug crimes or property crimes. The ones who are there for drug crimes, didn't commit the crimes because that is the life they wanted, its the life they got stuck with, and they would gladly trade it in for something better. The same is true for property crimes. The thing that has been lacking from their lives that got them into prison in the first place wasn't motivation to be better, it was opportunity. Society failed them, and failed them hard. Now that they have been to prison, there is no road back for most of them. What few opportunities they may have had evaporated the moment they were convicted. What this country needs to fight the "crime epidemic" is not more prisons and more guards, but better education for all, and a system that guarantees that everyone who wants opportunities can find them. Stop punishing people for never having had the chance to do better, and start giving them those chances.

Put in another context, what percentage of the prison population in this country would have made excellent programmers with a lifetime of quality education instead of the shit show they actually got? Even if its just 2% of the population that is currently incarcerated or on parole, that would exceed 100,000 people, and would be plenty to make up for the shortage of tech workers that we insist on importing from other countries by way the H1B visa program. The only reason we have a problem with a shortage of smart people in this country is that we insist on putting as many hurdles in front of the masses as possible.

Its high time the people in this country start looking on education and health care as a fundamental human right. Not because of any kind of altruistic belief, but because it is cheaper than paying for a huge prison system, an unbelievably large police force, and the cost of unemployable citizens.

Re: Why not?

[hackwrench]

Menial labor serves to convince me that if all you ever do is menial labor, you won't ever have experience of anything different to find that anything has value, so my reaction to people expressing some notion on the value of menial labor is to ridicule the notion.

For profit prison industry ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Remember we are talking about "innovation" coming from for-profit prisons.

They operate on cost plus contracts, with practically unlimited access to tax payer funds. If some court somewhere rules "inmates must have access to gym equipment", they could build a 2 million dollar gym in the prison and mop up 20% of it or build 20K gym and get 20% of that. Which one would they choose?

These prison companies charge 2 $ a minute for a phone call. Yes, in this day and age of unlimited voice and data, voice calls out of prison costs the inmates or their families 2$ a minute. Do you think this new fangled tablets are going to provided to them at reasonable costs you and I pay outside the prisons? You have not seen the twinkling dollar signs in the eyes of prison management executives.

The prison companies pressure judges to use harsh prison sentences using social media and slanted local news coverage. Lobby the legislators for minimum sentencing guidelines. Encourage law suites that will increase the cost of incarceration. More it costs, more is their margin! They also actually bribe judges to be harsh. Only a few judges like the one in Wilkes-Barry PA got caught, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

We have to outlaw private sector prisons. It is a crying shame USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world and adding insult to injury we are paying through our noses for it.