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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.
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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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.
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
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.
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.
Obsolescence?
The MP3 players are effectively being taken away from the inmates at gunpoint; this isn't about your Zune's battery dying and no new Zunes being available to purchase nor the Zune Store (or whatever it was called) being around anymore.
It's theft.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
...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.
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'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.
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
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
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).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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...
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Statistically speaking? Probably the police via civil forfeiture.
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.
Looking at that map, it seems instead that some poor states don't have it, and some states with very very low population don't have it. I certainly wouldn't think that Alabama and Arkansas are "very Republican," but that Texas, Idaho, and Mississippi are not.
What about victimless crimes like drug use, where there is no victim.
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.
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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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.