Is it wrong that I find it a terrible thing that people aren't allowed computers with internet or cellphones in prison?

How do we expect people to join back to society when they can't use literally the number one most important thing?

Maybe give them phones with no cameras and monitoring of use, but just nothing seems very inhumane.

I saw a youtube video recently about the extensive use of cell phones to play old school runescape. Like it’s everywhere in every prison in the last couple of years. People not only play it but also use it’s currency for real world trading. Apparently violent behavior is down wherever people are playing.

I’d love to find corroborating evidence for this, because I find it completely facinating.

If I were in jail I'd love to play Runescape. It's pretty much the only time I'd actually enjoy Runescape.

The sad thing about this is that it's still contraband and really bad for the prisoner if they're caught with it.

In the federal system you get automatically moved up one security level. Minimum to low to medium to high. There are very, very few cell phones beyond a lot. There's probably 1 for every 5 people in a minimum.

Sounds like a solid Wired (or whoever) longread!

In the US sometimes the evidence isn't clear that facilitating "join back to society" is an actual goal (it's often a stated goal). It often doesn't seem to be a policy priority.

It most definitely isn't a priority: If it were, the US would look at other countries with lower recidivism rates and spend a bit more on things like mental health care, halfway houses, job placement, and so on.

While I agree that the US prison system has many issues, recidivism rates can't really be compared between countries because of differences in time frames and rearrest vs re-conviction.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4472929/

The issue is not about comparing recidivism rates.

It is whether the US is looking at the results achieved by other countries and whether the US is trying to emulate successful strategies.

As a sweeping generalisation, I see that the US says "that doesn't apply to us", always finding some weird excuse. Your invalid response is kind of an example.

How do you "[look] at the results achieved by other countries" if those results aren't reported?

It's a fairly common sentiment that the U.S. penal system is heavily skewed toward retribution than reformation.[1] But identifying a problem on the one hand, and quantifying and addressing it on the other, are two entirely separate tasks. The latter is typically much more difficult.[2]

[1] Justice Anton Scalia admitted as much in court, "Well, I thought that modern penology has abandoned that rehabilitation thing, and they--they no longer call prisons reformatories or--or whatever, and punishment is the--is the criterion now. Deserved punishment for crime." Oral argument, Miller v. Alabama, 2012.

[2] Thus the quip, "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." A reformulation of a Charles Dudley Warner quote, who, interestingly, also seems to have been an advocate for prison reform in his time, among many other civic and political reforms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner and https://books.google.com/books?id=ktwRAAAAYAAJ&q=+%22little+....

I'm hedging a bit because I don't have a good sense of how things are country wide, but there are some clear cases where it is not.

prison isn't designed for reintegrating back into society!

If you look at this recent paper[1] by the lancet on "The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence" (coincidentally it's about the corona virus) then you might notice that the effects of isolation are exactly what prisons are designed to do[2]. For quarantines it's a huge dilemma ofc.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

So long as there is a permanent criminal record and jobs can not hire people based on that no real change will come.

Why would it be, when your donors are the private prison owners?

There are prisons charging per minute for calls and e-readers. I really doubt they would be humane enough to allow that

I think this is a understatement... Every US prison/jail/detention center has a "pay-to-play" program administered by profit driven private companies who (IMU) overcharge for these basic services. $5.99 a minute is outrageous! I feel like these companies are allowed to prey on the most vulnerable people and no one cares because there not what society considers "good people".

They should definitely not be locked into expensive for profit comms, but they do need to be censored a bit in case they either harass victims or carry on organized crime.

I completely agree and at the same time see the other side: think of the typical drug kingpin or monster still directing 'business' and hits from prison. And you can't give phones to some and not to others because prisoners obviously interact with each other.

> Is it wrong that I find it a terrible thing that people aren't allowed computers with internet or cellphones in prison?

I also think they should be allowed to grow their own weed.

Are you being facetious? If so, letting people access information which could help them establish some grounding in the outside world is not exactly a ridiculous idea.

No, I'm serious. Information wants to be free. So does weed.

Alright, Rick.

I understand wanting to surveil prisoners but denying them access to the outside world completely is wrong and a waste of everyone’s time.

Maybe require only open source software and no crypto except for authentication but confiscating phones is stupid and lazy.

> I understand wanting to surveil prisoners but denying them access to the outside world completely is wrong and a waste of everyone’s time.

Counter-argument: seeing the world pass you by is a good way to become suicidal, and the state (at least here in the US) has an obligation to protect those in their custody.

Receiving broadcasts e.g. radio signals etc. is fairly low risk (exceptions include coded one-way transmissions), but bidirectional communication is a good way to increase the risk that a prison may face a life-critical challenge at some point.

So then the realization that the world passed them by hits them shortly after release, potentially escalating into an existential crisis, and ensuing recidivism.

Do you have any source whatsoever for that claim? Personally, I don't believe for a minute that additional freedom for prisoners would increase suicide, but I'm no expert.

There is such a demand for phones in prisons that there are companies that manufacturer "prison phones" that easily fit into a prison wallet.

Does prison wallet mean what I think it means?

Ugh, I hadn't thought about that, but I'm sure it probably does.

I took one for the team and looked it up to confirm. I can report that yes, it’s exactly what you think it is.

Also, I used DuckDuckGo to look this up, because I do not want targeted ads based on that search.

Where do you find these?

Search for "beat the boss phone".

Reference: https://hackaday.com/2017/05/11/tearing-down-the-boss-phone/

(it is actually "B.O.S.S.")

Shenzen have you covered : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BlfAMitMf4

eBay 'smallest mobile phone'