It's pretty hard to get info on the industry as well.

Jpay, for example, is a subsidiary of a private company, and does the "fund a prisoners commissary account" as well as "send a prisoner a email" type services.

Here's their fees for money transfers for the Texas Prisoners:

$ 0.00 - 9.99 $2.45

$ 10.00 - 19.99 $3.45

$ 20.00 - 49.99 $6.45

$ 50.00 - 99.99 $8.45

$ 100.00 - 199.99 $10.45

$ 200.00 - 300.00 $12.45

They also charge it as a cash advance, which can result in additional charges from your bank.

Ouch.

Let's start with the prisons about to be built, of which there are still many. A campaign to convince the Travis County (Austin) commissioners not to fund a new $80M women's prison succeeded this week. Next step is to get them to instead fund diversion and mental health programs.

You may find similar movements that you can join in pressuring local officials. The fun thing is that at this level of government, commissioners will often respond themselves, so you know even relatively few emails are making an impact.

While a good thing, a losing battle in my opinion. You can perhaps convince your local authorities to not build another prison here this year, but somewhere else another prison still got built. There isn't enough people who give a shit, and an alarming amount of people who are rock hard for cruel punishment as a good thing.

Unbuild the existing prisons.

John Brown didn't write letters, he burned down plantations.

Are you advocating for the violent destruction of government property? Is that allowed on hacker news?

it doesn't have to be violent. structures feel nothing.

So destroying public property is not violence now? Okay... thanks I guess.

I think destroying something like water treatment plants, or gas pipelines could be constituted as violence, but not prisons, not in a country with the highest prison population per capita in the world. i refuse to believe that the people here are inherently more criminal and dangerous than anywhere else in the world, and if that belief is correct then our over-packed prisons are a sign of a legal system that got way out of control, but due to the size of the system and it's inertia, it will continue to self perpetuate unless challenged. Due to just how many peoples lives are intertwined with this machine, i don't see a civil path forward to a solution. It was the same case with slavery in this nation, we all knew it was a problem, but because too much money was tied in the economy supporting it...nothing changed until people took to civil disobedience.

if you don't want bulldozers, perhaps write to your representatives, and urge them to do something before the modern day John Browns start doing it for them.

The US prison system is an ongoing act of violence. Destroying and replacing them with humane systems should reduce violence.

What sort of weird strawman are you trying to build here? Or did GP edit their comment in a way that made your's nonsensical?

GP said

> John Brown didn't write letters, he burned down plantations.

That's a clear call to violence imo.

Part of the reason why jails are overrun in recent years is that we've closed a large number of asylums who would have housed and treated these people. Sure, that sort of thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but psychological care has certainly advanced leaps and bounds past 1950s standards for mental illness and addiction treatment. There's no reason why we couldn't have effective asylums today like they have in Europe for their mentally ill and addicted.

And so many episodes of Brooklyn Nine-nine

Copaganda was very funny. I laughed and related to our heroes in blue.

Funny they don't seem to shoot unarmed kids in the show at all, wish our cops took inspiration.

killdozer style?

Yes, and soon before all the heavy machinery has kill switches mandated in them. xD I suspect that weakness will be shored up as we internet of things every car truck and pogo stick.

But all that's just what those machines are waiting for. Did we learn nothing from Maximum Overdrive?

> Created a lot of jobs in the industry of arresting and detaining humans.

What portion of those arrested + detained are the type of people we want in society/civilization?

>What portion of those arrested + detained are the type of people we want in society/civilization?

Check a list of countries by rate of incarceration[1]. Then ask yourself if it's likely that the US, El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Palau and Rwanda are the grouping that have it right. That's the top 5, in order, all at 511+ per 100k.

For comparison, Australia is 160, England is 130, Canada is 104, France is at 93, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

Edit: Generally, I read all that as "probably 3 or 4 of every 5 US prisoners don't need to be in prison".

Part of that is a side effect of poor public health policy in the U.S., where mentally ill and addicted either end up in jail or in a tent on the street instead of in a treatment center or an asylum like these other first world countries.

Probably a sizable number of them. Because the people in prison are still people, and there's no good reason to keep most of them locked in a cage if they're not posing a risk to other people.

A large portion, in my opinion. You can disagree.

A huge portion of them, considering just how much of our prison system is filled with first-time non-violent offenders. Also considering the socioeconomic effects of even a misdemeanor drug conviction at a young age, a lot more career criminals could've been prevented by not sending them to prison in the first place.

What portion of those who benefit from this system and who run our country’s legal system do we want in civilization? Betting the portion in the slammer is higher.

Quite a lot of them are young people whose ""type"" is not yet fixed. To believe that America's high prison population all deserve to be there is to believe that America is a place full of uniquely bad people, which is quite the .. unpatriotic? take.