Are you all working with
?
If not, I’m happy to put you in contact.
Do you have any (formerly?) incarcerated members on your leadership team?
Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
51–60 of 98 posts
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#52This is just Zoom. The partners and sponsors almost all conspicuously mention Zoom meetings and Zoom Celebrations on their websites. Especially because of the major WSJ story today on Zoom and the origins of the Coronavirus, it seems very implausible that anyone mentions Zoom anymore overtly without having an agenda.
The co-founders are all from Yale, and have the best of intentions, but don't realize they have to some extent been manipulated.
I think this phrase was a little concerning as well. There is a decent historical record that has been built up over the last 10 years of stuff like this being abused: "We also use machine learning tools to make predictions". What are they trying to forecast? When did talking and letter writing necessarily need machine learning? I'm not at all saying it is dumb...but we should approach all of this with caution and hesitancy.
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you looking for a contributor? I would be happy to volunteer my time. I'm a software developer and am pumped about your mission.
We'd love to have some help with development. Please reach out to us. team@ameelio.org
My college (Macalester) will definitely have some cs majors willing to volunteer. I suppose you can have them work on some minor/nonurgent tasks. Is this something you'd be open to?
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Currently, the situation is that two corporations own communication throughout the prisons and jails in the U.S (JPay and Securus)." Did you experience any issues trying to get into this space? Any push back from the companies mentioned or from any of the state prison systems? What a great idea! That testimonial from the blind person on your home page is very moving.
First I'd like to thank you for the comment. You made me realize a mistake I made in mentioning JPay and Securus when I meant to say Global Tel Link and Securus. As far as pushback from other companies, we haven't received any so far. There's nothing they can really do besides make their services more appealing. Currently, with Letters (our first app), it allows users to sign up, add their contacts (inmates), and the…
You have to give wardens/politicians money to put any kind of technology in their prisons, so free video chat/messaging isn't going to happen unless some benevolent billionaire prince is funding you.
However you could do some kind of distance education via letters, remember math can be learned with just pen and paper and not the kind of shit we learn in highschool but the Terrence Tao Analysis from scratch kind. There's an old book called the Schemer's Guide by Iain Ferguson (spelling?) which is programming with pen and paper. Many opportunities here besides just communications, just an idea, I have no clue how it would work in practice.
Another idea is create social media or pen pal profiles for prisoners where they fill out a template and you just launch it for them, so they can find other people to talk to, many people inside have nobody on the outside, this is why facebook groups like Jail Mail exists and the like. Of course legal problems here, if some maniac uses your service who should be in jail.
Wikipedia search is also something I've always thought should exist via snail mail. 'What is ' should return the entire wikipedia page or other encyclopedia page for convicts.
A marketplace for anonymous convicts would also be interesting that nobody has done, many of these guys/girls are experts in fitness since there's nothing else to do inside, they should be able to make some kind of money (again, depending on societal heinousness of crime) by being a motivational coach or something. I have plenty of other ideas, many of them require money/political connections which I don't have but just things I observed while in lockup wondering why are these petty criminals just rotting away in here when there's so much opportunity not just for them, but people they can personally effect to make amends for whatever they have done. I even met a few hundred song writers inside that wanted to be 'producers' and sell their rhythms or lyrics with no way to do this. Anyway good luck
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#55Lead developer here. Ameelio is a non-profit that's building free technology to transform corrections and criminal justice. We've recently launched Letters, our first application that lets loved-ones of incarcerated individuals send physical mail for free. Currently, the situation is that two corporations own communication throughout the prisons and jails in the U.S (Global Tel Link and Securus). They charge ridiculo…
Thank you people for being human and trying to fight that horrible for profit prison system which I think is a crime on its own.
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Currently, the situation is that two corporations own communication throughout the prisons and jails in the U.S (JPay and Securus)." Did you experience any issues trying to get into this space? Any push back from the companies mentioned or from any of the state prison systems? What a great idea! That testimonial from the blind person on your home page is very moving.
First I'd like to thank you for the comment. You made me realize a mistake I made in mentioning JPay and Securus when I meant to say Global Tel Link and Securus. As far as pushback from other companies, we haven't received any so far. There's nothing they can really do besides make their services more appealing. Currently, with Letters (our first app), it allows users to sign up, add their contacts (inmates), and the…
"One type of pushback we can receive is from facilities themselves. One facility returned one of our letters and said that you can't have anything in the letter that could be some form of encrypted message or symbol. In our case, that happened to be the bar code used by the third party service to manage their letters."
Here is example of bad scenario which I sincerely hope will never happen. Anything containing image (letter itself included) can be considered as encrypted due to a tech like steganography. They can get really creative there.
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you looking for a contributor? I would be happy to volunteer my time. I'm a software developer and am pumped about your mission.
We'd love to have some help with development. Please reach out to us. team@ameelio.org
Actually, if you're open to it, hell yeah... sending an email.
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#58There is already a similar service but it costs (very little) money called jmail.cc that I've been using that prints out letters and photos and mail them for you. As an ex US federal prisoner (long story, teenager, petty financial hacking crime, extradited from a foreign country years ago) I am intimately aware of the terribad state of Jpay and corrlinks and all the other overpriced communciations methods for prisone…
I've seriously enjoyed reading your comments. Would love to get in touch sometime and discuss some ideas. I think the book idea you do is awesome. My email is in my profile. Please reach out if you see this!
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'd love to have some help with development. Please reach out to us. team@ameelio.org
My college (Macalester) will definitely have some cs majors willing to volunteer. I suppose you can have them work on some minor/nonurgent tasks. Is this something you'd be open to?
For sure! Shoot us a message at team@ameelio.org
We really appreciate your help :)
-Gabe
Re: Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform
#60This project makes my heart so full. Thanks for your team‘s hard work, meaningful and necessary work. Y’all need to apply for YC’s non profit program (edit: I see you’re already in Mozilla’s accelerator, equally good!). I hope you can scale up to audio and videoconferencing with more resources and backing (donated compute, open source tooling like Jitsi Meet or similar) and chip away at the for profits in the space t…
Thank you so much for your support! This is totally what we envision the next steps to be. Today we had a meeting with Rep. Josh Elliot who's pushing for the free phone call bill here in CT to talk exactly about that.
And thanks for the advice! We'll try to apply for YC's next batch :)