Improving society in a way that helps anyone who hasn’t earned it is contrary to the goals way too many voters.
Kant:
> [Punishment] can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. It must always be inflicted upon him only because he has committed a crime. For a human being can never be treated merely as a means to the purposes of another or be put among the objects of rights to things
The basic point is simple. If a person commits a crime, they should be punished in proportion to the crime. Full stop. Within that simple framework, efficiency is fine, but it shouldn't be the goal.
Make take a reflecting break.
Easy mistake to make, I know.
The fact that A does not imply B, and A often implies not B does not mean that you cannot find an example that show both A and B. But it is sufficient to weaken the argument to support B using A.
> In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them.
Which is equivalent to "if it is good for them it should likely cost prisoners something" i.e. "if it is good for them it likely should not be free for prisoners".
I'm aware that the hnarn's comment said "you" instead of "prisoners", but the principle of charity leads me to assume that hnarn meant specifically a prisoner rather than any person. And regardless, the answer to the question "Can you find a “shouldn’t“ part in my response?" is yes.
You will have the same conclusion if there is no “likely” in the sentence, so you are obviously trying to pretend it is not there or you likely need basic logic course. (Don’t ignore likely here again, though)
hnarn:
>> “If it’s good for you, it shouldn’t be free” is a very strange hill to die on, even if we weren’t even specifically talking about attempting to rehabilitate criminals.
up2isomorphism:
> Can you find a “shouldn’t“ part in my response?
In your case, you said "should likely cost". You took issue with the "shouldn't be free" part in hnarn's comment, so in the context of hnarn's comment, your first comment in the thread can be expressed as "should likely not be free". To me, there is a "should not" part in "should likely not be free", and I am not claiming that the "should not" part is the whole.
There's more to it though. Here's what you, up2isomorphism, wrote in full:
> There is no logic that a good thing should be free. In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them. Just like breakfast is good for you but it is not free.
My natural interpretation is going to be one of the following:
1. up2isomorphism wants calls to cost something for prisoners (should not be free for prisoners)
2. up2isomorphism thinks that calls should cost something for prisoners regardless of which outcome up2isomorphism personally wants (should not be free for prisoners)
3. up2isomorphism is not sure about what they want or what should be the case regarding whether calls should cost something for prisoners, but they are leaning toward "should cost something" (should not be free for prisoners)
If all three of those interpretations are wrong then I'm just wrong about what you said. If so, sorry.
Offering prisoners free phone access is very likely to save non-prisoners shittons of money, so we should do it.
Again, none of you guys seems to care about the reason and just want the conclusion.
You're right, but in the wrong place.
You're paying for another big expense when the person commits another offense and ends up with another round of prison. BIG bucks. If you'd just paid for their phone calls when they were in the last time, you'd have had a much better chance of not needing to spend that additional money.
Think of it like health insurance. Everyone pays, it's a service available to all of us, but not everyone uses it.
Don't believe me? Look at industrial cities like Cleveland where the poor areas are concentrated phyiscally downwind of the factories, and the wealthy areas are either upstream on the West side or further away on the East side, where they built a private train for themselves that allowed them to be further from the city while keeping commuting distance. This line is now the RTA Blue/Green line, and if you do a street view of the line in Shaker Heights you'll see that it runs straight down a boulevard of period mansions.
The wealthy can avoid almost every negative externality they create:
Underfunded public transit in NYC? Just take a helicopter to work.
Too many people are poor and crime is high? Hire private security and live in a gated community.
The poor are mad at you every time you go out in public and have their pitchforks at the ready? Fly private, have your assistant pick up your coffee, dine out in a private room, spend time in places the poor can't afford to go like your yacht or Monaco.
In Science Fiction, they go as far as moving off-planet, like in Elysium.
If things that were good for society were profitable we'd be living in a Star Trek utopia by now.
On the topic of meal timing, I recommend anything by Salk Institute researcher Dr. Satchin Panda.
Sounds like something bad for business when you run for-profit prisons.
Not only has this logic severely damaged public trust in police, but it's been incrementally extended to seize money and property from many innocent and/or uninvolved people.
I'm not saying it will never happen, but we should not be punishing everyone for the misdeeds of the few. We should not be attributing anything to criminal activity that has not yet been proven to be criminal activity.
That is do everything possible to prevent smuggled non monitored devices so that the only communication is through sanctioned monitored devices.
Obviously the right to privacy (4th amendment) is lost in prison among other rights so there shouldn't be any issue with the surveillance.
The conviction already happened. Continuing to gathering evidence (for any purpose other than exoneration in cases of suspected wrongful convictions) - and without new warrants - violates the spirit of double jeopardy (Fifth Amendment).
> Obviously the right to privacy (4th amendment) is lost in prison among other rights so there shouldn't be any issue with the surveillance.
When you say "Obviously" do you mean what things are like, or do you mean what things should be like? If you mean the latter only, then I would agree with you. (Although, I'm not sure whether the US constitution implicitly supports a right to privacy.) The chilling effect means that both the convict and the loved one on the other end can't freely express themselves in a private conversation with each other. If your family member gets prison for life then should you lose your First Amendment rights whenever you want to talk with the convicted family member? By default, criminals shouldn't have zero speech rights and zero privacy either. Whether someone is dangerous or has done immoral things is on its own not enough reason to take away constitutional rights. One possible reading of the 13th Amendment allows slavery and involuntary servitude "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" [1], but the same doesn't apply to other rights.
In the context of prison, freedom of expression and privacy are about as important to me as voting, and I'm not a fan of felony disenfranchisement [1]. In my opinion, US citizens in prison shouldn't lose their voting rights for any period of time, especially considering that vote by mail exists.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_t...
I mean thats what things are like based on previous Supreme Court rulings [1].
You have no privacy or expectation of privacy in prison, this includes communication with the outside world.
There as with all things of this nature some nuance to this, but bottom line telephone communications are allowed to be tapped without a warrant so long as the phone isn't given under false pretense of being unmonitored, which leads to expectation of privacy [2].
Its seems odd to be debating this since at it base prison is an act of depriving rights. You cannot have a private conversation with your family nor can you have dinner with them or go anywhere because you are in prison...
It basically in the 5th amendment: "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".
You have been deprived of liberty through due process of law...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_v._Palmer
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United...
Those are the odd cases, yes, maybe you should be able to make exceptions.
But the vast majority of inmates are not kingpins.
Prisons themselves can be a profitable business, which (if you own a for-profit prison) provides strong incentive for reducing rehabilitation and increasing recidivism.
A large number of contraband mobile phones had been confiscated, and a team performed some data analysis to see what they'd been used for.
The overwhelming conclusion was that the phones had been primarily used to keen in touch with family.
There's also a whole bunch of research that showed that maintaining ties with the outside world while incarcerated led to reduced rates of reoffending (and the inverse was also true - isolation led to increased rates).
Allowing free phone calls in and out of prisons makes a lot of sense both socially and economically.