Working on databases from prison

Re:Working on databases from prison by franga2000 on Monday June 16, 2025 @02:28PM (#44292111)

Fuck no! Lowering the cost of keeping people in prison would make it even easier for the government to lock people up for smaller crimes and with bigger sentences. It's even worse with the privatised prison system that the US has. They already know the "market price" (what the government is willing to spend) so adding "free money" into the equation just makes it easier for them to raise prices and end up pocketing even more money than they already do.

Framing it as offsetting the cost would also make it very easy to increase the cut, bit by bit, until it gets to a truly unreasonable level. And since the person is already in prison and we have to pay for them no matter what, why would they choose to work if the deal is so bad?

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Re:Working on databases from prison by dfxm12 on Monday June 16, 2025 @03:43PM (#44292766)

It's even worse with the privatised prison system that the US has.

This is a state by state thing. FWIW in this case, ME doesn't have private prisons. I don't bring this up to imply everything related to this cut is on the up and up, however, I believe Maine is very much incentivized to make this a useful program in terms of keeping people from returning to jail (as opposed to squeezing every dollar from the prisoners).

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Re:Working on databases from prison by conductr on Monday June 16, 2025 @04:46PM (#44293241)

Fix the problem then, don't perpetuate it. If you think the problem is corrupt and profiteering prisons that will turn to this type of shenanigans, there's a bigger problem to fix.

[ Parent | on HN ]