Re:Americans Don't Care About Prison Phone Exploitation, Say...
by protomyth on Saturday August 06, 2016 @01:17PM
(#12238895)
> If there's one thing we don't need, it's a fiscal incentive for the government to jail people.
This, public or private, the root of the problem is that private companies and unions financially benefit from a larger prison population and both have money and political power to lobby effectively.
Remove the financial incentive that has bad effects and you get a better system.
Re:Americans Don't Care About Prison Phone Exploitation, Say...
by travmatt on Saturday August 06, 2016 @05:09PM
(#12239950)
Most of the exploitation is aimed at the families of the incarcerated - you already control the prisoners wages and pay them slave wages so you can extract but so much. But the families? If you move the prisoner far enough away you can bet they won't have the means to make visits, and you can charge families exorbitant rates for your captive market.
If there's one thing we don't need, it's a fiscal incentive for the government to jail people.
Prison is meant to be a punishment for crimes and (depending on who you ask) an opportunity for rehabilitation. Without the latter you're going to have way more of the former.
I'm not saying that inmates should have 24/7 free phone calls, free video calls, etc but price gouging a captive (no pun intended) audience isn't right either.