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$11M Worth of Legally-Purchased Music Will Be Confiscated From Florida's Prisoners (tampabay.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Tampa Bay Times:
In April last year, the Florida Department of Corrections struck a deal with JPay. The private company, spearheading a push to sell profit-driven multimedia tablets to incarcerated people across the country, would be allowed to bring the technology to every facility in the nation's third-largest prison system. But there was a catch. Inmates had already been purchasing electronic entertainment for the last seven years -- an MP3 player program run by a different company: Access Corrections. For around $100, Access sold various models of MP3 players that inmates could then use to download songs for $1.70 each, and keep them in their dorms.... More than 30,299 players were sold, and 6.7 million songs were downloaded over the life of the Access contract, according to the Department of Corrections. That's about $11.3 million worth of music.
Because of the tablets, inmates will have to return the players, and they can't transfer the music they already purchased onto their new devices... The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011... JPay already operates banking accounts and facilitates phone calls at the state-run prisons, charging inmates and their loved ones steep fees for the services. With the introduction of tablets, JPay will add a wide swath of new spending incentives for its incarcerated customers, offering purchases of music, emailing and other virtual fare.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Because of the tablets, inmates will have to return the players, and they can't transfer the music they already purchased onto their new devices... The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011... JPay already operates banking accounts and facilitates phone calls at the state-run prisons, charging inmates and their loved ones steep fees for the services. With the introduction of tablets, JPay will add a wide swath of new spending incentives for its incarcerated customers, offering purchases of music, emailing and other virtual fare.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
the wrong people are in prison.
How is it that being incarcerated time and again turns out to make you a legal target for scamming?
This is stupid on so many levels. The simplest of which is that if you want to correct inmates' behaviour, it does make a difference what sort of example you're setting. Or hire others to set.
maybe it's better to just give them HBO on the tv system and no mp3
The RIAA execs must be masturbating to this
So the lawful purchases they made should be taken away and then they should be charged again to keep it? That's not justice. That's right up there with the RIAA policy/opinion that if I have my house burglarized, I'm legally obligated to delete the legal MP3's I have in my itunes library just because the physical CD's were stolen.
I had a sucky sig.
it's that nobody cares. For one thing politicians are terrified being soft on them will backfire ever since Willie Horton. And to be blunt "tough on crime" plays very well with the dog whistle crowd while disproportionately impacting the poor. As an added bonus incarcerating all those people takes them out of the voter poll (usually permanently, since most states make it really hard to get your rights back). That puts a lot of political pressure on politicians to come down like a ton of bricks.
Me? It's 2018 for God's sake. There is no excuse for punishment anymore. We're adults. Either rehabilitate the person or keep them locked up and in reasonable comfort until they die. Vengeance has no place in a modern society, if for no other reason than it will eventually be turned on us all.
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scams on scams on scams.
Someone has to love it.
The punishment is their immobility, as well as the lifelong criminal record that permanently eliminates most of their job opportunities.
Torture, however, is not part of the punishment. Since we are keeping them prisoner, regardless of what they have done, it is on us to ensure that they are kept healthy, which includes mental health, which includes access to music.
While true, it isn't supposed to be a luxury resort, that is a clear fallacy of excluded middle. The goal isn't to make them suffer as much as we can get away with, that's petty and wrong.
How a society treats its criminals serves as a testament to how morally and culturally advanced that society is.
What is it then? US prisons haven't made sense in ages.
It just teaches these people that right or wrong does not matter, what matters is who has more power. The message does not get more problematic than this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Is Apple as accommodating when you chose to quit using iTunes?
Will your local cable company burn your 'legally purchased' movies to DVD when you switch to Sattelite TV?
Ken
This is the music scam industry's wet dream!
so our music can be free
Just because you are in prison does not mean your technology purchases should be any more fortified against obsolescence than those of us on the outside.
dude takes one rip off a blunt, and starts fantasizing about being a fucking horse!
It's theft too. I hope the bastards get sued.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Since bought tracks on itunes dont have DRM, yes.
Ain't no blacks on the TV screen anyway except for HBO HBO-oh!
Solitary. ... for the rest of their times in the prison.
Zelda.
Crysis.
With the hope of that all this is legal constitutionally.
why think about breaking the law when those in power break the law too? this is theft plain and simple, just because they are in a prison doesn't mean that something lawfully purchased for use should be taken from them. eventually the devices will break and go their own way.
Why not just torture one random inmate a week.
Stop using the toilet. Go poop in the corner like a beast.
It will teach them (a) prison sucks and (b) don't fuck with the man
...it does not even come close to the organized scam that is prison phone calls. It's nothing more than legalized theft and - NO! - just because you are incarcerated does not mean that you should be subjected to this kind of crap.
Too fucking bad. THEY ARE IN PRISON!! Maybe it will give them something to think about with respect to doing wrong to someone else.
They should be kept one to a cell 24 hrs/day with no âoeentertainmentâ anyway.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Is Apple as accommodating when you chose to quit using iTunes?
Will your local cable company burn your 'legally purchased' movies to DVD when you switch to Sattelite TV?
No but normally both of them would be shit out of luck trying to get my government to confiscate my Brand X tablet/smartphone/media-player and forcing me to buy their crap.
And the law won.
Have gnu, will travel.
Is the government going to forcibly make me give up my current cable company?
I understand the sentiment that this is prison and this is a 'first world' sort of prison problem, but it's part of a pattern of private sector exploitation of prisoners. Prisoners should not be seen as a profit engine. There's debate about reform versus punitive, but in either case I don't see it as a good thing for private corps to have financial incentive to wish for more prisoners.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I hope someone files a lawsuit and wins. Florida state government is a continual disgrace under Rick Scott.
You should go to prison for your opinions.
When nobody in the prison is in trouble, the prison's guards can enjoy with some kind of entertainment, or listening music, or viewing cinema, etc.
I've had the misfortune of experiencing the system and left it a few years ago. Torture is an inevitable part of it. There is no way that I can communicate to you the damaging effects of years of isolation from society, from human contact, and from information. After about 3 years in prison, even if I could have gotten a decent job back after getting out, I could not have recovered from the effects of the isolation and constant threat of violence even though I managed to avoid being beat up at any point. The PTSD that resulted has lessened now, but will always be there.
Occupying a place in society requires skills that don't get practiced in prison. Some of them are even physical. It took years after getting out for my brain to readjust to being able to process the visual and auditory complexity of shopping in a WalMart without suffering a severe panic attack. Years of absolute uniformity in my environment had atrophied my brain's ability to process my environment. After four years, I have regained a functional level of processing, but it is far below the environmental awareness that I had before. I know that I am not as safe a driver and I still get a bit of brain fog due to overload when facing large crowds.
The system could work to minimize this, but they actually work to maximize it. No matter the feelings of those voting for the system, the people who actually choose to work in prisons are usually there with the belief that those in prison are worthless, should never get out, and that their families are better off if they cut all ties.
The result is that visitation has plummeted over the last few decades. Decades ago, people understood that prisoners needed community contact. In the case of the medium security facility I'm familiar with, vocation programs in prison actually went into communities and performed charity work. The prison ball teams often played on community leagues. When prisoners got out, they often had a place to go to. Today, the community interaction has been stopped and prisoners from that institution are often dropped off at the steps of the courthouse they were convicted at with a couple hundred dollars they managed to save while in prison working at less than $1 an hour and a single set of clothes on their backs.
On top of that, yeh, families routinely pay as much as $1 a minute to talk to their loved ones over the phone. The menus of the food in prison are never followed. If a recipe calls for 180 pounds of meat to make the volume required, the cook will typically be handed 50 pounds instead. The items in commissary are routinely over priced. A $0.10 pouch of Ramen noodles sells for $0.50 to inmates who make $25 / month as janitors. Guards will let people steal what little you've acquired if you ever complain. Book donations to the library by the public were stopped years ago. Medical care is often too risky to use. Teeth are routinely pulled instead of filled. Pulling teeth involves simply smashing the tooth with a hammer and chisel and pulling out the pieces. Tylenol is what you get for the pain afterwards. And on and on.
I could go on forever, but I doubt I could get anyone to understand who hasn't been through it. I am a lucky one who had a family that never abandoned me. I survive. I will never again be able to be the productive member of society I was, nobody will give me a chance to actually return to real engineering, even at the bottom, and even though I would gladly work for less than twice minimum wage. Liability insurance doesn't usually allow it. But, I at least survive.
They actually have an option to get their data out. I can't imagine Steam mailing me off-line versions of my games on DVD.
Why not just torture one random inmate a week.
Stop using the toilet. Go poop in the corner like a beast.
that is already happening.
Screw that! It's not a college dorm room. It's a prison!
"Oh, but their rights"...screw that too! Make prisons a place YOU DO NOT want to be,
more like the 60's movie "Cool Hand Luke" and maybe they will think twice about breaking
the law!
Do you want them to re-offend when they get out or become productive law-abiding citizens? Then treat them fairly, harshly if need be, but fairly. That teaches them that being a productive member of a functioning society pays off.
But being arbitrary and capricious just tells them that the rules don't matter, only power. So when they get out they'll go back to breaking the law because you've failed to show them why the law is just.
I stole this Sig
Burglarized by whom?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Teaching inmates how real scams work, and how corruption is easy, doesn't sound to me like the kind of lessons we should give to those who have criminal tendencies already. How is this being tough on crime beats me. Whatever politicians are going along with this deserve a year behind bars with no music at all, or better yet, charge them $100 per download when they are there.
Tough tittie.
Prisoners have very few rights. Who pays for their hotel stay? Monetizing crime is another crime, very little goes back to crime victims.
Now that Republicans are going to prison in record numbers, I assume you'll soon be advocating for prison reform.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Your prison system is fucked. If anyone reads TFS and does not see how broken and inhuman this is, then you are as well. Bye
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
If it's good enough for the White House, it's good enough for prison.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let me guess, buddy holly fan?
No music is all crap; except for my music.
we make the laws. We decide what is legal. When you say that you're just leaning on the authority granted by the word "legal".
As for psychology, in children yes. Because their ability to reason isn't fully developed. But if you're dealing with an entity who's reasoning ability isn't developed then punishing them is obviously morally wrong because they're not in full control of their actions. OTOH if you're dealing with a being who's reasoning ability _is_ fully developed (or very nearly, since the brain develops into you're mid 20s) then there are much, much more effective ways to prevent that entity from doing "bad things". That is what is meant by rehabilitation. And that's before we start talking about prevention. Remember, it's always cheaper to drop food than bombs.
Punishment has two reasons to exist. First, some folks just like people to suffer. And not for the reasons you're thinking. Animals have an innate understanding of 'fairness'. Most people suffer some for their mistakes. When people give into their animal brain and stop reasoning they want others to suffer for their mistakes. I saw this first hand with a buddy of mine who's LGBTQ. She was upset that the young'uns didn't have to suffer like she did (she was bullied by her teachers in addition to students. Pretty f'd up actually).
As for the second reason, well, punishment is _cheap_. In a society with limited resources we can't afford to lock up the crazies and give them decent food and Playstations. Instead you make chain gains and forced labor camps and feed them the worst food possible. Well, economically we're past that. We could solve these problems anytime we want. Right now we don't.
Oh, and at least for murder fear of consequences doesn't factor into that. It's been shown repeatedly that the death penalty is worse than a non-deterrent. It actively encourages people to kill as they've got nothing left to lose and you might as well get rid of the witnesses. Where I am there was a pizza joint robbed a few decades ago where the employees were shot execution style because the crooks were repeat offenders and they knew if they got caught they'd die in prison. That's what your deterrent gets you..
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I'm in America, and torture most definitely _is_ part of the plan. We use prisoners and overworked and underpaid guards to apply it so we can look the other way while it happens. Just google Prison Rape or look into the lives of prisoners who have mental illnesses (which is a lot of them, funny that how being mentally ill in a country w/o single payer healthcare can land you in jail a lot).
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I'm not trying to bag on your entire post, just wanted to make sure folks understand that in America we absolutely do use prisons for torture.
Also, I think making prisons nicer would be a good idea. I'm in favor of basic income anyway, so it's not like I don't think we can afford it. But think of it this way, you're dealing with somebody who's life is probably shit (there's not a lot of high dollar white collar guys in jail, even most of those guys are just passing bad checks). Imagine if you took somebody like that who's daily life is a living hell and gave them a respite for a few years instead of torture? Wouldn't that go a long way to rehabilitate? Of course you can't just abandon them when they're out like we do too...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Ah, America - where torture is not having your own mp3 device.
Or that the system is rigged against them and that their illegal activities are justified as a means to "right" the wrongs done to them. No doubt prison shouldn't be a club med, but it does need to be a humane and fair environment lest those put into it come out the other end more hardened and adept in crime than when they went in.
Statistically speaking? Probably the police via civil forfeiture.
You realize it's JPay who is monetizing crime here, right?
That is a transparent and deliberate misrepresentation of what the poster said.
You resort to irrational argument techniques when, and only when, you can't justify your position using simple and sound reasoning.
Simply by using such a technique, you have already admitted that you are wrong.
Been there, done that, didn't get the brain fog though.
There's too many people in prison, and too many trying to make money off those inmates. At least you HAD details. Imagine being stuck in your dorm all day long because there's a position on a work detail (unpaid, mind you) for maybe one out of every ten inmates.
The guards where I spent three years were actually pretty good about stopping thievery. Too bad they were selling flip phones to the inmates, constantly. Then they'd get a $100 reward for finding one. They never knew exactly where the phones went after selling them, but they knew how many were in the camp. Catching them on inter-dorm transfers was their favorite hobby.
That would be misdemeanors. Felonies aren't things like stealing an agile pie, they're things like murder and rape.
The whole reason for Cool Hand Luke (well, maybe not the whole reason but one of them) was to expose the intrinsic cruelty and stupidity of prison systems in the United States.
The dude died because he smashed a parking meter.
A parking meter.
Have you ever been in a prison dorm? It is not a college dorm. While it varies from one camp to the next, it's usually a bare concrete edifice with multiple open windows that stay open all year long, with a pair of massive cooling fans somewhere to circulate air. The one I was in had some heaters in the cells (thank goodness) but that's it. We had 120 people in a space designed for 48 men. Guards could hardly control the place. CERT team's entire job was to throw us all in the unairconditioned/unheated gym every month or so to shake down all our property (such as it was) and throw it all on the floor looking for the cell phones that other guards had sold to the inmates previously.
There were so many inmates that they had no meaningful reform programs and maybe one job on an unpaid work detail for every ten inmates.
What they fail to mention is that prisoner employees get payed roughly $0.30/hour for their labor. So, getting that CD made is worth almost 100 labor-hours, whereas for the prison staff it's 1-2 labor-hours, that they spend 5 minutes or less doing. Welcome to the US "justice" system.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/
Don't forget, most of them are in prison for crimes white folk get a slap on the wrist for.
Prison is about teaching and keeping minorities in their place. Not justice, security or peace.
Tough tittie.
Then they get out, apply the lesson learned and say the same thing to you when they clean out your house. Sound good?
Who pays for their hotel stay?
The people who want them to stay there. You can always kick them out if you aren't satisfied with the arrangement.
The Department of Corrections, meanwhile, has collected $1.4 million in commissions on each song downloaded and other related sales since July 2011.
Caesar's Entertainment issued a statement today that they have entered into an agreement with national provider Phuq-Yew to bring additional entertainment to guests at their award winning results. Under the agreement, Caesar's Entertainment "security" will forcibly enter guest rooms, steal electronic equipment, search through luggage, and attempt access to guest computers in rooms.
"This will enhance our guest experience and bring it to a whole new level. For the convenience and safety of our guests, we will now be offering select, pre-approved content from digital content provider Phuq-Yew and will be providing new stores in the Forum to help guests buy massively overpriced and substandard replacements for their confiscated equipment."
Shareholders of Caesar's Entertainment (CZR) reacted positively to the statement with many anticipating that illegal forced entry and theft on a grand scale would likely bolster the group's bottom line. Caesar's Entertainment also stated that, in many cases, guests may recover their stolen items on eBay auctions.
In other news, gun stores in and around Clark County, Nevada have reported a record surge in sales following the announcement.
Yes! Felons who do the worst crimes, like downloading music and movies, should be given life sentences. Driving 75mph on the highway when there is a sudden switch to a 35mph zone is another life sentence worthy offense. And don't get me started on those monsters who use marijuana, or even provide their child a taste of alcohol.
Truly, these degenerates should be beaten in cages daily, given chronic physical and mental health problems as a result of years of mistreatment. That will surely teach them the error of their ways when let out with absolutely no support system. Ot just deport them to Mexico. I don't care if they are Mexican or black or complain they were born here. You can take their passport away when the go to prison and just burn it. They have no proof and no money with which to fight back against the border patrol who can just toss them over the wall.
#MAGA
... like all the other state prison systems, is responsible for the fucked up legal mess that provides corporate slaves.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So the lawful purchases they made should be taken away and then they should be charged again to keep it?
Yes they forfeited all their rights when they committed a crime.
The provider of the electronics/music is however a private corp.
It just shows that even state run prisons are subject to questionable initiatives by private corporations.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Thanks for taking the time to write this, and all the best to you. The US penal system is inhuman. One of my big worries in life is that a misstep, misjudgment, moment of anger, or wrong place at wrong time lands me in the justice system. The same concern for my child, her children, etc. The US justice/penal system and economic inequality make me think it's time to return to my country of origin. Most western industrialized countries are less cruel to their citizens who make a wrong turn.
Indisputable fact, eh? JPay ARE assholes, no doubt about that. We've they have these contracts with almost every state:
https://www.jpay.com/Pavail.as...
You'll notice the areas they do NOT have these contacts are places like Utah, Arkansas, and Alabama - mostly very Republican states.
Why do you think their families are part of this "united"? They vote. They pay taxes.
and other non-violent drug offenders. Legalize all drugs, treat the hard stuff as a medical condition and bam, problem solved. I live in America, and our Prisons are a money-making operation. You can't make money housing thieves, rapists and murderers with no hope while torturing them. You need a ton of non-violent guys who didn't belong in there in the first place and who are just trying to quietly "do their time".
Again, if we'd switch from a punishment based system to a rehab based one those problems go away. But then so do the profits...
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They invented prison in the 1960s to keep minorities in their place?
There are a lot of comments from a lot of people that have no idea. Yes things cost more prison. You also can not give prisoners the same items you get outside. There are a lot repackaging and safety measures that are involved to bring these luxuries to inmates. And no matter what you think these people have ended up in prison for not obeying the law. Prison is not a vacation it is a punishment and getting things like MP3s is a luxury.
What about victimless crimes like drug use, where there is no victim.
It is not a misrepresentation. They think prisons should be nicer. Reality is people should break less laws.
No, they didn't forfeit all their rights when they committed a crime. I'm absolutely not a leftist twit, but people like you make me realize why people hate my side sometimes. Try using your brain for once.
kenh quoted TFS thusly:
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Then he reacted to it this way:
Is Apple as accommodating when you chose to quit using iTunes?
Will your local cable company burn your 'legally purchased' movies to DVD when you switch to Sattelite TV?
First, Apple is not a cable company. Likewise, cable TV companies, however much they might like to pretend otherwise, are not tech companies, and they are only now beginning to get into content streaming, as their customers become sophisticated enough to realize that "tiered" TV service bundles are simply a pretext to sell them channels they don't and won't watch in order to get the ones they want - and abandon en masse both cable and satellite TV subscriptions in favor of streaming services that actually understand their market. Nor do cable TV companies sell music subscriptions. Two very different business models, two entirely different kinds of product, which you have conflated here.
Having said that, I think it's fair to point out that switching away from Apple and iTunes doesn't mean you have to give up the music you purchased from it. In fact, Apple even offers a tutorial on how convert your iTunes library to MP3s. So, your attempt to further conflate Apple's business model with that of Jpay has no basis in fact. (Full disclosure here: I own an iPad 2 - which I use as an ereader when I'm on the toilet. Otherwise, I'm not at all an Apple customer, nor do I purchase any content whatever from iTunes.)
Your complaint about cable TV companies is, likewise, ungrounded in reality. You do not - indeed, you cannot - "purchase" movies from them. You can, however, opt to pay a premium to watch "pay-per-view" movies in the short time between their theatrical run and their release in DVD/Blueray/digital-download formats - and via HBO and other streaming services. The name of that service should be more than enough clue to the fact that customers who choose that option are not, in any legal sense, purchasing the movies they watch, but instead are merely paying for the privilege of watching them on those services. Give up the services, and you give up the privilege. Likewise, once you watch your pay-per-view movie, if you wish to watch it again, you have the choice of waiting until it's available on the premium channels (which, again, you are paying a monthly fee to watch) or DVD/etc. formats for you to purchase, or paying the pay-per-view fee a second time to do so. Regardless, as long as you're watching them courtesy of a cable/satellite subscription, at no time do you ever actually own them. Period.
Don't mistake this for a defense of Jpay's business model. s entirely based on sweetheart, monopoly deals with state prison systems to exploit a literally-captive audience that could hardly be more corrupt if they were openly run by the Mafia ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
--
Check out my novel ...
Prison is already a place almost everybody doesn't want to be. Being in prision is the punishment.
What things like this teach the prison population is that it's OK to take what belongs to others with impunity so long as you wield the power. Which is exactly what we're supposed to be presenting as the wrong option - you know - the thing that got most of them into prison in the first place.
Whatever drugs you are taking to come up with those analogies, did you bring enough to share?
It's far worse than that.
All it takes is for one person to make a single false allegation against you and you can get stuck in the system for a *long* time.
The average stay in some county jails pending trial is 6-12 months. All it takes is for a big enough liar to get big enough charges levied against you such that you stand no chance of making bail.
Job-gone.
Benefits-gone.
Retirement-gone.
Home-gone (unless you have no mortgage, or deep, deep savings)
Friends-gone, because you will not be able to have any private conversation with visitors to explain your side of what happened--thus they will read only the liar's allegations in the news from the police reports (which come straight from the accuser or detective's *guesses* based on preliminary info which all comes from the accuser)
Then, if you're *very* lucky, the prosecution will not be corrupt or motivated by number of convictions and will look for the truth in your case and actually drop charges. Hahaha. But this is 'merica now. *Even if your accuser recants and admits that they lied and that you are innocent*, once you are in the system the best you can hope for now is a plea deal that merely offers accepting a conviction on reduced charges (regardless of the truth of the accusations), which avoids you facing a jury of biased dumb asses determining your entire life's fate, but also yields you with a record, probation, huge fines, reduced freedoms and citizenship rights (possibly for life), and exactly zero possible recourse to redress the injustice by suing for wrongful incarceration or suing the accuser for bearing false witness and defamation, and the huge monetary loss. Good luck finding housing and employment from now on. You probably just went from comfortable middle class to hand-to-mouth barely-above-homeless.
These "lucky" good results are only possible to occur if you can afford a good private attorney that will cost you $30-100k. Public defender? You're going to prison regardless of innocence. They don't have time to actually gather real, compelling evidence to exonerate you. They may find a character witness or two to put in a good word, and argue logically against the material evidence demonstrating reasonable doubt, but juries are not rational executive board members. They are dumb asses that merely registered to vote or managed to get a driver license, and could care less about you. The jury has all seen enough NCIS and Matlock to expect either some piece of evidence that 100% completely proves your innocence, or else they deem you guilty.
Speedy trial? That's a joke. You *have* to waive your right to a speedy trial. Why? Because if you don't you'll go to trial before your defense has even been able to complete discovery to have any evidence to defend you with--and you are guaranteed to lose and be convicted. The prosecution is always super slow to provide their evidence. So you waive it, and then every single little court date for every little bureaucratic fart puts you waiting for the next court date which is always at least another 4 weeks away.
There can be no public taking without compensation. The prisoners paid for the players, and paid for .the digital rights. They can perhaps confiscate and store them, but not steal them from the prisoners. And the value, well the prison contracts set that. $100 for the player and $1.70 for each song purchased. The songs don’t depreciate. Bits are bits. The state legislature should get involved, as should the prisoner advocate organization. This is purely profit motivated move on the prisons part.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Depending on where you are, discovery can't begin until you've been formally indicted. So the prosecution will wait until X-1 months to schedule arraignment, where X is the number of months they can wait until they no longer legally have the right to prosecute you for the alleged infraction.
Then the trial date is set one month after the arraignment.
You get maybe one month to complete discovery and build a case, and it's probably been almost 2 years since the crime occurred.
They will also play charges like poker chips. They will withhold a few charges and dare you to post bail. Upon which they will simply levy another one from their back pocket, forfeiting your bail (absconding with it) and putting you back under lock and key--all without a conviction yet. If you had used a bond to get out, now you're out 110% of the bail amount (assuming a 10% bond--which is the minimum allowed in many jurisdictions).
It just teaches these people that right or wrong does not matter, what matters is who has more power. The message does not get more problematic than this.
Sometimes the truth hurts
There should be less laws to break and those at the top of the ladder should face the steepest penalties.
Give us a break culture warriors. It's prison. Some of us don't like the idea of prisoners living better than some of the people on the outside and getting better benefits. I won't lose any sleep over this. The new program should definitely insert moral object lessons ala Schoolhouse Rock between each and every song. I could go along with that.
nobody will give me a chance to actually return to real engineering, even at the bottom, and even though I would gladly work for less than twice minimum wage.
You shouldn't sell yourself short. There is perhaps one advantage you have that others do not. The opportunity cost of becoming an entrepreneur is much lower for you than it is for other people because the value of your next best alternative is much lower than it is for others with similar skills. This means that starting a company holds out the same potential rewards to you as anyone else but with lower cost of failure. Have you considered starting your own company? If you know how to code, it's one of the few businesses that you can start with almost no upfront costs other than your time and effort. Moreover, computers have no emotions and do not judge. What matters in coding is your ability and results. Finally, prison taught you how to live cheaply and survive by your wits, right? So what do you have to lose? It's what I would do if I were in your shoes.
You probably just went from comfortable middle class to hand-to-mouth barely-above-homeless.
You don't even need to do time for that to happen in America today. The middle class is shrinking every year now. In another few decades a few thousand families will have 99% of the wealth in this country and the rest of us will be little more than modern day serfs.
There are some criminals ('hardened' criminals) that will never choose to live a straight life and will always commit crimes. Some are even naturally violent and won't change, either. Some of these are just born broken, some of them are irrevocably damaged and can't be fixed. But many (I won't say 'most' because I have no statistics to back anything up) can change, can live a lawful, productive life, if you give them the opportunity. Hanging a lodestone around their necks for life (or, if that metaphor doesn't scan for you, how about this: marking them for life, like a tattoo, that they can never erase) is not an incentive to change the way someone lives their life, it's continuing to punish them for things they ostensibly have paid the price for by serving time in prison. Similarly, treating felons like less than human the entire time they're in prison isn't helping them reform or giving them incentive to reform, all it's doing is damaging them, making it harder for them to change anything about themselves. Seriously, if we were just going to pound on felons continually until they die, then we should dispense with prisons entirely except for the most minor offenses, and just execute felons immediately, putting them out of their misery, and saving ourselves the taxpayer money to contain them. Of course that would mean our entire legal system is invalidated, because some wrongly convicted people would die, which is why we have to have prisons -- therefore prison reform is ESSENTIAL; felons need to be treated like human beings, not a receptacle for all the worst tendencies that humans have, which is what happens to them now. No more 'prisons for profit', no more cruel and unusual treatment by guards and staff, and find new, more effective ways to encourage them and help them to change who they are and what they're about so recitivism is no longer a problem.
I'm saying we should change it's purpose to remove the punishment aspect and be either completely rehabilitative or a place to store individuals who are broken in ways we don't yet know how to fix and who would be a danger to the community if let lose.
We do not 'give up' on them. We rehabilitate every one we can. But I'm not so naive that I think we can reach a 100% rate. I'm saying a few criminally insane will exist. People who have demonstrated they are a danger to the community and who we lack the tools to rehabilitate. Those people need to be locked up, but at the same time it should be done humanely. We should recognize the fact that we're locking them up isn't a failure on their part, it's a failure on ours for being unable to fix what's broken in them.
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I do not doubt for a moment your story, and I'll have you know that the facts you've presented here make me sick to my stomach. Shit needs to change. Our entire species needs to evolve past treating our own like this, crime or no crime. Best of luck to you.
I forgot all about how that first Walmart trip was after I got out. I just stood there against the front wall staring at the shelves. I couldn't make out individual items, it was like there was static in my head. Completely overwhelmed. F'ing ridiculous.
It's been two years, I'm good at stores now, though I still get a little freaked by crowds. I have a real problem dealing with change, now, too, and that sucks.
I also have a super-hard time talking to women, but, hey, don't rob banks, right?
Actually, they can't really keep it. They can send it home, but it is useless to them there. Nothing from home can be sent into the prison. The only good it does is to allow the family to keep some of the benefit.
The saying that puts it in a few words is "You're here _as_ punishment, not _for_ punishment".
Many, many inmates make plans to start businesses when they get out. Unfortunately, they mostly have very poor educational backgrounds and there is a ton of basic stuff they don't understand.
I spent my entire sentence teaching anybody who was interested the basics of business. It ranged from the definition of "profit", to benefits of differentiation strategies vs cost leadership strategies.
Heartbreaking, frustrating, and very fulfilling.
State run prisons are big business. The kickbacks to prison officials from private companies that provide services like these can be huge. Check into the history of Aramark and the prisons if you want to get some real insight. They have been known to make over 50% profit on contracts that pay only a little more than $1 per meal. You can imagine the garbage served (literally in some cases).
Maybe if it was the right supervillain...
Nice
Ah, America, where people look at a prison system which acts like this
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-reports/florida-prisons/article102773597.html
and pretend it's about mp3 players.
For 20 years of my career, I signed a time card every week that had a note at the bottom warning that a mischarge of more than 10 minutes was punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Since intent doesn't matter in any criminal law anymore, that mischarge could be an accident.
In West Virginia, the date rape drug law states that someone cannot give lawful consent for sex if you have given them an "intoxicating substance" and does not define intoxicating substance. I know of a man that was convicted and given 17 years for having bought drinks for a woman and taken her home. She never complained and had enjoyed the evening. The guy though was from the wrong side of the tracks. Her Dad was a local surgeon and found out. He approached the prosecutor who was a good friend and demanded charges. When this man was approached by officers in his driveway, they asked if he had bought drinks for the woman, then they asked if he had had sex with her afterwards. Not knowing that anything was wrong, he said yes on both accounts. That was all that was needed for conviction. No witness needed to testify. The victim did not have to file a complaint. The jury was instructed by the judge that if they believed the man had purchased the drinks and that the woman was intoxicated (above 0.08) at the time of the sex, they must convict.
Given the complex and comprehensive nature of today's laws, it is doubtful that anyone over 20ish has not committed a felony in their lives.
All it takes is for some prosecutor to decide you need to be put away. They will always be able to find something, especially if you don't have ample money to defend yourself.
I don't think this was an isolated incident.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-reports/florida-prisons/article27738046.html
I know right they deserve to be raped and boiled alive duh.
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-wont-charge-prison-guards-who-boiled-schizophrenic-black-man-darren-rainey-to-death-9213190
Not an uncommon attitude.
If you're OK with prisons being run like this
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida-prison-deaths-probe-request-20151016-story.html
we will not be friends.
It's the families that take it in the neck. The "la mordida" in the prison system grabs money that loved ones send in.
FL prison jobs pay at most 32 cents per hour, at worst nothing. Inmates don't make enough to rip off profitably. The system has to line its pockets with what goes into the inmate's account from their family. It's their relatives who are getting ripped off.
Whatever anyone's position about how punitive to get, there's no excuse for punishing the people who didn't commit a crime.
You just stated that the US is a failed state. Are you sure that is what you want to say?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Any person or company/corporation that makes a profit off of the misery of others...such as prisons and healthcare... is a fucking scumbag...and always will be. Period.
We have the state paying 100 percent of these peoples room and board. They also get free medical. They live in a gun free zone. The sexes are separate so there can be no males harassing females, and as a bonus the music industry (which is liberal) get a 100 percent guaranteed copyright enforcement.
It is the democrats wet dream. Haha
On a serious note this is something liberals and conservatives should agree on even if they come at it from different angles. Republicans should support prison reform purly from the freedom aspect of it. It is a shame that the USA, land of the free is the most heavily incarcerated nation on the planet. Democrats can get on board with prison reform by telling themselves they need to help disadvantaged African Americans
Correctamundo.
Prisoners or no, thus is a pretty clear violation of the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Seriously, Florida is the shithole of the world. A bunch of cracker ass morons voting for cracker ass morons to treat black people and other minorities like shit. Hey kids, wanna go to Disney World? Then I'm disowning your stupid asses. Go get eating by a fucking alligator. No wonder Trump loves that place so much. It must feel like how his brain works, like a steaming pile of shit mixed in with grinding gears and Yoko Ono music.
There is no excuse for this because there is a way to do it right. The state is not properly representing the prisoners in this negotiation and really has nothing to lose in doing so unless they are getting a kickback.
If jpay wants the contract, they should be agreeable to a limited period of exchange of existing licenses for new licenses on their system. It's a reasonable cost of doing business. The state should just write that into the contract, along with making the contract long to help make the cost worthwhile, and be done with it. If jpay doesn't like it, someone else will.
It is unlikely to be near as much music as claimed. Most of the devices have likely died by now (inmates don't get quality devices) and many if not most of those who purchased music are probably out of prison.
It is quite likely that the 'system' is what caused those people to see a world consisting of two sides and made them feel that they would always be on a particular side.
Society lets some of it's members down badly by letting them grow up in an environment which lets them go the wrong way. If they are identified early on doing something stupid, they should be guided to a better way, given better role models and a place they can feel they belong. Give people a sense of personal dignity and the knowledge that others respect them, then they will maybe not want to risk losing that respect.
I believe there are too many divisions and exclusions, too many ways for people to feel like outsiders or less valued members of the world they live in. This is not a failing of the individual, it is a failing of the community.
This represents a more fundamental problem with society. We're getting used to the idea that intellectual property is licensed and sold as a service, and that license can be revoked at any time without legal consequence. Almost all digital products are "sold" under the EULA terms that you have a right to use it until you don't, and the license is perpetual until it's not. It's madness.
The real issue here is not that prisoners are being treated unfairly. It's that, in most cases of licensed properly, it's perfectly legal for stuff like this to happen.
It's important to teach prisoners that property rights are bullshit and that fraud is perfectly acceptable. Glad they're on top of that. There's nothing like making people work for something then taking it away to ensure they don't bother trying to do things right in the future.
If our corrections/rehabilitation system can't follow the basic rules of ethics, why would they expect anyone else to?
Keeping minorities in place was invented in the 60s?
He's been drinking the brainstem juice of imprisoned immigrant kids.
And the RIAA is wrong!
You're welcome.
There are things I wish I could say about what put me in prison, but can't. Naming or even describing the acts of some monsters is a dangerous thing.
It was interesting to me to recognize that some of the mantras I'd learned in school had some pretty bad flip sides. I do believe I would have rather been in a guilty until proven innocent system. In those systems, the judges and police are more likely to perform a full investigation instead of simply putting together and finding "evidence" to support a conviction story. They are more interested in truth. In ours, they would not help at all in obtaining evidence to prove innocence and, in fact, denied others the right to investigate innocence. Our innocent until proven guilty mantra sounds good, but its reality has some flaws.
If I could leave the country legally and without having to leave family, I would. I'd probably choose some place like Costa Rica where I could retire in comfort on money that just barely lets me survive here. Family is everything though.
I have tried and may yet succeed. Though I have done both hardware and software in my time, software is where my real talents were.
Sadly, one of the things I was robbed of is the ability to concentrate for long periods of time.
I had hoped to get a job at the bottom on a team that could help me stay focused until I could regain confidence and absorb changes in tools. But I found that insurance restrictions made that impossible.
I tried to do things on my own, but the concentration issues kept me from succeeding with any of my big ideas and small jobs compete with third world countries in this changed environment.
I hope to try again soon. I can easily handle the full stack from a knowledge point of view. If I can regain enough focus, I can succeed.
What a truly shithole country you live in.
any one complaining about the mp3 get's a night in the box
This is what freedom looks like for all of us in the near future. This prisoner experiment function as the test market: find the rioting threshold by testing the abuse flexibility of the market. They are trailblazers of whom we all should be proud of!!!
#MAGA = My Attorney Got Arrested!!
Careful, your bias is showing.
On that basis a $1.70 MP3 is worth over 5 hours of labour. On the outside, minimum wage, that would mean an MP3 cost about $40. This assumes that prisoners do not have access gifts from family to purchase them.
Your story reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Maybe you can find a job or a few months of occupation outside the US (Canada, Australia, EU). Good luck to you and your family.
1860s actually, with regards to how american prisons operate
WHAT??!?! I thought you knew the Offender is the Victim in drug crime! So we have to lock them up doubly long!!
Oh look our tolerant liberal cunt is here being a cunt. I hope your house gets broken into and you get raped in front of your family.
This comment highlights why rigged democracy is the most successful form of authoritarian dictatorship.
The punishment is their immobility, as well as the lifelong criminal record that permanently eliminates most of their job opportunities.
Torture, however, is not part of the punishment.
And here I thought to have finally found a market for Microsoft Zune.
WHat corruption and what a shakedown on the prisoners.
It's extortion, we'll let you have your music but only on cd and you have to buy this all over again.
And you have to pay us to keep what is yours already.
Isn't that the definition of extortion?
Statistically? Like you have data on that? Wait no donâ(TM)t. Cute.
You used to be so insightful, now youâ(TM)re just bitter. What happened?
SO brave. Very light on the hill.
Well they were ripped off for an hour of work for 32c.
Nullius in verba
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
As one can see the the exact same sentence which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, which are held to be interchangeable terms, legalizes slavery and involuntary servitude for those parties duly convicted- ie. prisoners of the state.
The primary economic justification for slavery in modern times boils down to this: where labor is free, ie. unpaid for due to being forced involuntary servitude, the only capital cost involved in production cost is what is spent on raw resources, equipment and property, which translates directly to increased profit, and given free labor, slaves, a form of property, enable the purest form of producing profits, for none of the profits need be given back to pay for labor.
With this economic rational, which is as valid today as it was when it was widely practiced, the economic exploitation of prisoners, by and for for-profit corporations is fundamentally pre-programmed.
In essence this has said to capitalist, if you want free labor, find reasons to lock 'em up and wage campaigns to convince the public of this necessity and pass laws imprisoning those who violate the new laws. And remember the next best thing the free labor is dirt cheap labor and even if you don't end up capitalizing on the while their in prison, you'll get cheap labor out of them for the rest of their lives cause they will no longer be eligible for high paid employment, plus they won't be able to vote against the laws which made involuntary servants out of them.
With the passage of the 13th Amendment the penitentiary system of the United States, which we had pioneered, which focused on redemption and rehabilitation, suffered a fatal blow, from which it has never recovered. Our once proud, enlightenment inspired, alternative to the brutal dungeons and prisons of yore, was systematically converted into slave factories, hence the real origin of the prison industrial complex, which now pervades American society.
The apparent intentions behind the passage of the 13th Amendment, the ostensible ones, was the abolition of slavery. But there is something genuinely warped, codified in the text, about how they, that generation, went about abolishing slavery. It's almost as if they needed to concede to those slave holders, that slave holders were not morally bankrupt for desiring and having slaves, but rather that if they wished to continue having slaves they would have to come up with new ways of justifying/legitimizing it. So paradoxically it ends up giving the slave holders right in their aspiration to hold other human beings as slaves, just changing who the subjects of slavery would be.
Sure human beings were no longer being bought and sold as property in broad day light on Market Str. in Louisiville, Ky, the largest open-air slave market in America in the lead-up to the civil war. And certainly the color of your skin was no longer the exclusive characteristic which defined whether you could be owned or not by another human being. But did we not take at least one solid step backwards in the two steps forward of the progress of human emancipation?
FTFY.
Can't wait to see that one brought up during trade negotiations...."Hey, the prison system already does it. We just want to *smrk* harmonize the laws."
Criminals, all of them. That is all.
Right, all of the inmates will just hand in their MP3 players and say "Here you go, sir" with a smile. This is the type of enviroment where people would beat eachother up over a 35 CENT debt, imagine how they would react giving up both a player and the content they paid good money for. Inmates tend to get screwed/overcharged for what is really cheap junk from commissary, and whatever jobs they get tend to pay far below minimum wage (think cents/hr)
Expect the immates to stash their devices, force the cell block bitch to hide it from them, and do whatever else they can to protect their investment.
Die in a fire you fascist shitbird.
That is all they need, no more, no less. Get rid of the parole board as well, a sentence of 20 years means you stay in for 20 years, none of this "we are overcrowded shit" so let them out after two weeks. Prisons are not sanctuary cities, the inmates have restricted rights, unlike the CA illegals that get paid to be illegal.
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Let's see, Bought star wars on VHS. Then Laser disk. Then they had an anniversary edition, then the one of DVD and now I can buy it again via netflix or something. Then we had casettes, MP3 players, CDs, etc.
For the prisoners, I'm surprised they get anything. Especially a tablet. Maybe we don't have to worry about prisoners with tablets? What could go wrong? Sounds like a really bad idea to me. They can break the glass, etc. Unless maybe they have a tablet designed for a pre-schooler or something that you can't break (somehow).
all year, "Practice how to be happy doing good".
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The families are buying the stuff for them and suffering, This kinda scam makes me sad
Trump must be behind the prison music scam. Iâ(TM)m surprised he didn ât have his name all over it! What a creep!
It's not right to extort money from prisoners in this way. If I was inside prison and this was going on, I'd flat refuse to have a new device, and form a prisoner's choir.
Everything you say... True.. Same boat here. Society in general is bitter, trite, hateful and fully prejudiced against any formerly incarcerated felon; and society actually enjoys it.
How I lived in there, it messed me up more than I was to begin with. Then it's back out into society. Everything is different, difficult, and discouraging. All I want to do is live humbly and give back as best I can.
Must be shit hot music!
Well, sort of. How many others are there for you to select from?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As a compromise, prison officials offered to download the already-purchased music to a CD, and then mail that CD to someone outside the prison. For a $25 fee.
Is Apple as accommodating when you chose to quit using iTunes?
Will your local cable company burn your 'legally purchased' movies to DVD when you switch to Sattelite TV?
Will either of those forcibly stop their service to sign you up to a new you that you have to pay for all over again?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I know exactly what you mean.
If I had been capable of posting bail, I would have been able to go out and gather the evidence needed to exonerate myself rather quickly, and likely gotten my entire case thrown out.
Instead, trapped inside along with other people pending trial and others actually convicted and serving sentences--all with the same "rights" refused regardless, I was completely helpless to do anything to help my lawyers defend my case. No matter that they were private and paid well for their work, no one is more motivated to gather and analyze evidence on your own behalf than yourself--which you cannot do inside.
IMO, the concept of bail is itself a form of obstruction of justice.
How many movies and shows have they made over the years of a person on the run collecting the evidence to clear their name? We *know* that if they were caught and arrested no one would be motivated or willing to do the same for them and they would be wrongly convicted and lose everything. Those plots are absolutely true to life still today in our present system.
You don't even need to do time for that to happen in America today. The middle class is shrinking every year now. In another few decades a few thousand families will have 99% of the wealth in this country and the rest of us will be little more than modern day serfs.
But that's what the people voted for.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
If it's good enough for the White House, it's good enough for prison.
This whole presidency is a dirty protest. They will be hosing down the walls for months afterwards. America may never recover.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..