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NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

theintercept.com

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Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#81

Post by mabbo »

I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse incentives.

The goal given to them is "house this person securely for a specific length of time at the lowest cost possible". They are rewarded for cutting costs.

But the total cost we pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It's the policing costs when they're homeless because they can't find housing or get a job. It's the health care costs they can never pay for when all of the above inevitably leads to further problems.

To reduce the lifetime cost of this person on society (financially and otherwise) we should be incentivising prisons to actually rehabilitate.

But we won't, because our society is largely based on Calvinist nonsense that says there are "bad people" and we should celebrate those people having bad things happen to them.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#82

Post by fallingknife »

warning26 wrote: post #40
jkingsman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel sad after reading this comment. People in prison are still people. Many of them have committed crimes against society; some are imprisoned unjustly; all are deserving of human dignity and love. People in prison have families, children, loved ones, and it's an undeniable fact that strong social support networks reduce recidivism. People in prison are not monsters. They're people. I won't deny that illicit subst…

> Many of them have committed crimes against society […] all are deserving of human dignity and love If someone deprived another of dignity via a crime (say, via sexual assault or murder), why should that person be deserving of any dignity themselves?

The criminal justice system does not punish for the benefit of the victim by retribution, but rather for the benefit of the state. Criminal cases in court are the state vs the defendant. The victim is not a party.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#83

Post by alistairSH »

D13Fd wrote: post #70
i80and wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty directly relevant to the article.

How so? The article is about prison mail. It doesn't even mention police officers and police officers have nothing to do with prison mail.

The article stated most contraband in the jail is passed via the guards, not through the mail. Prison guards are LEOs, just part of a different agency than the police most of us see in town.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#84

Post by shever73 »

In Ireland, physical mail in some prisons was stopped during the pandemic. People were soaking the paper in "spice", sending the letter in, and then the prisoners smoking it to get high. As a result, the censors started just giving photocopies of the letters to the prisoner.

Unfortunately, this meant that letters I had sent in took over 8 months to get to the recipient.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#85

Post by mschuster91 »

last_responder wrote: post #73
kneebonian wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people consider porn fundamentally immoral, not to mention most porn has connection to sex trafficking.

>not to mention most porn has connection to sex trafficking. Citation needed

They are probably referring to cases like the Pornhub scandal, GirlsDoPorn or recently arrested Andrew Tate who is alleged to have lured and exploited young women for camgirl work.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#86

Post by valine »

mc32 wrote: post #48

I can see why on the surface this may seem like a good idea: reduce contraband. On the other hand it may just increase the take of corrupt prison officials.

But why privatize it? If the goal is to reduce contraband digitizing makes sense.

This just seems like a new way to for prisons to make money. Digitizing is cheap, certainly no more expensive than hand delivering mail.

Privatized prisons should be arguably be abolished. Granting them new sources of revenue is appalling.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#87

Post by burkaman »

CerieXerox wrote: post #34

Picking Rikers as an example is low-hanging fruit. Even by the (very-low) American jail standards it's one of the worst. > Violence and drug use among the inmate population has been a problem at Rikers for decades https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-rikers-vio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikers_Island#Abuse_and_neglec...

It's also the largest or second largest jail in the country depending on how you count, and close to the largest in the world. It makes sense to go for the largest and lowest-hanging fruit if it somehow remains uneaten even after many decades of reporting and investigations.

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#88

Post by TAKEMYMONEY »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #68
kneebonian wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people consider porn fundamentally immoral, not to mention most porn has connection to sex trafficking.

I understand the first part of the claim - many people indeed do consider porn immoral, for whatever personal reasons they have. I may disagree with them, but your statement is still valid, and more power to them as long as they keep it to themselves. I do not understand the second part of the claim, that "most porn has connection to sex trafficking". This seems a fairly strong statement (there's a huge amount of por…

Agreed we shouldn't speak so broadly, but let's not be naive here. Part of the reason California legalized adult filmmaking was to reduce trafficking.

In California they have agents, everywhere else they have pimps.

Just one example: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/adult-film-performer-pl...

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#89

Post by scifibestfi »

richbell wrote: post #66
flerchin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing really wrong with working on a porn site, but I might hesitate to bring it up with my family members.

"I'm a Software Developer at MindGeek, a prestigious global industry-leading information technology firm."

"I work on a video site that you've used"

Re: NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions

#90

Post by lesuorac »

warning26 wrote: post #40
jkingsman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel sad after reading this comment. People in prison are still people. Many of them have committed crimes against society; some are imprisoned unjustly; all are deserving of human dignity and love. People in prison have families, children, loved ones, and it's an undeniable fact that strong social support networks reduce recidivism. People in prison are not monsters. They're people. I won't deny that illicit subst…

> Many of them have committed crimes against society […] all are deserving of human dignity and love If someone deprived another of dignity via a crime (say, via sexual assault or murder), why should that person be deserving of any dignity themselves?

There's many more crimes then sexual assault and murder that can land you in prison.

How many soap bottles would I have to steal before you think I don't deserve any dignity?

And then there's also not everybody convicted of a crime actually did the crime [1].

[1]: https://innocenceproject.org/national-academy-of-sciences-re....

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