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364 Idaho Inmates Hacked Their Prison Tablets For Free Credits (bleepingcomputer.com)
According to local Idaho media, 364 inmates across at least five institutions exploited a vulnerability in their prison-issued tablets to assign nearly $225,000 worth of digital credits to their accounts. They were then able to use these credits to buy music and games. Bleeping Computer reports: The hacked tablets have been used at low-security level prisons across the U.S. for a few years now. They've been offered through a partnership between CenturyLink and JPay. Spokespersons for both companies said the vulnerability inmates exploited was identified and fixed. Officials from the Idaho Department of Correction (IDC) said there was no loss of state funds as a result of the hack, as inmates transferred only JPay-managed (fictitious) digital credits to their accounts. Most inmates transferred small amounts of credits to their tablet accounts. JPay said it recovered more than $65,000 worth of digital credits from the 364 inmate accounts. The company has suspended the ability to buy games and music via digital credits on the tablets of offending inmates. Email functionality was left intact, and the company plans to recover the incurred losses.
> ...fictitious digital credits...
> ...company plans to recover the losses...
Yes, that should take about a minute since $0 = $0.
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Tablets in prisons make correctional officers and managers happy. Inmates maintain community ties, they have something to do with their time, and like any privilege that can be taken away it's a tool the administration can use to control behavior.
the whole thing makes it seem like they did something horrible, when all they did was game the system to get some more games and music to pass the time with. I'm not opposed to that either. Prison shouldn't be about punishment, it should either be about containment (e.g. folks so dangerous we can't have them running the streets) or reform. Anything else is just sadism.
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"Allowing internet access to convicted criminals is NEVER a good idea!"
A felony DUI (for example, injuring a passenger while drunk driving, or prior DUI convictions, or their being kids in the car) will easily get you jail time, and deservedly so.
But there is no threat to society in him having access to the internet while serving time.
Since these are low security prisons, prisoners should be allowed to watch TV in several lounges, listen to an AM/FM radio in their cells, and use a land-line phone for a few minutes a day. Other than that, they should have access to carefully selected books, and newspapers. No internet access at all, not even email.
Allowing internet access to convicted criminals is NEVER a good idea!
Email is the modern replacement for snail mail so prisoners should have some access to it. However all their emails, except to and from their lawyers, should be monitored.
For maximum security prisons, prisoners should get a few minutes a week on a land-line phone.
Also you seem to have missed all the exploitative practices regarding prison supplied phone services
$17 for a 15-minute local phone call it about time for rates to come down.
You're advocating all these reform and rehabilitation classes, but fail to realize how less likely to succeed at them inmates are when you crack down so hard on entertainment and communication. You want to confine them to educational/rehabilitative material every waking hour? And take away incentives to behave? Maintaining strong ties with family and partners has been shown to be more effective at reducing recidivism and disciplinary issues, limiting that is both sadistic and directly contravenes the goal of rehabilitation.
Honestly it sounds like you're trying to reconcile an intellectual desire to rehabilitate with an emotional desire to inflict punishment. Everything you suggested depriving inmates of makes rehab much less possible, as does that being the only content available. Not to mention the soul crushing level of supervision and restriction that would be required to have a go at your 'zero crime' fantasy that seems to include the trivial like this story. The prison system you're advocating will leave people so dehumanized and demoralized that all the rehabilitation programs in the world won't prevent the sky high recidivism when they get out and act like the animals you treated them like.
Have a look at the statistics, at what types of prisons result in the lowest recidivism: it's the ones that treat inmates like humans, and offer priveleges like entertainment access, computer/internet access, and keep them integrated with their families and community. Taking all that away and replacing it with nothing but edu/rehab games/movies/programs around the clock is sadistic and trying to call it a 'reform school' is an ironic joke.