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What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

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Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#61

Post by hackinthebochs »

Spooky23 wrote: post #51
nnq wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard it would be to develop a patched browser (on a secured os, plus a firewall of course) that would only allow "read only web access" (not form submitting, no way to manually go to an url by entering it) to a limited number of domains? I guess the number of dangerous inmates with advanced tech skills or outside resources is very low, so you could separate these high risk guys from the rest of the pack. There's…

Very hard in a general sense. Many prisons are giving people walled garden access to legal libraries and video conferencing, but nothing else. I've done some peripheral work for corrections type people -- they don't adopt paranoid thought processes for nothing. The average drug convict is not a criminal mastermind, but he is a cog in a criminal enterprise that is controlled by smart people. Drug and gang enterprises…

This level of paranoia is just insane. Let's not legitimize the war on drugs by elevating any sort of communication with the outside world into some sort of existential threat to civilized society.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#62

Post by hackinthebochs »

salgernon wrote: post #49
jtheory wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you never tried teaching yourself a new skill using online resources? Assuming you have (hasn't everyone, nowadays? Even just looking up recipes counts...) -- now think about how you'd pick up the same info, without the internet. While in prison. Obviously there are technical hurdles, but damn -- I really want motivated, supervised prisoners to be able to learn new skills while they're behind bars. Because I rea…

Books. They are not backlit, and they get great battery life. Often, they have been localised.

Who is going to pay for books that are up-to-date enough to be useful as a teaching tool for modern life skills?

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#63

Post by Lifescape »

raldi wrote: post #44

Why did you post a link to a site which stole the content, stripped the author's name, mangled the text by repeating some of it twice, and omitted an extremely interesting video? Moderators, please update the link so it points to the original source: http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/santos-getting-online-after-...

Thank you, came here to ask who the author was and why their name wasn't included.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#64

Post by obviouslygreen »

davidw wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25 years is an enormous amount of time. Think of the cost to society to lock up people for the bigger part of their productive life.

As a purely hypothetical argument, there's a net benefit to society if someone's productive efforts go into stealing from or otherwise harming other people. How many people fall into that category versus how many can be reformed or otherwise kept from causing harm is something I don't have facts about and is probably another debate for another site.

Whether there is a "net benefit" depends on how much time they're in prison for, how much harm they caused before going in, and what kind of good they do/value they contribute once they're out. Even after the time it would take to establish an effective metric, that's something that would vary very widely by individual.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#66

Post by untog »

ffffruit wrote: post #16
MichaelApproved wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ridiculous how some dangerous inmates manage to communicate with the outside world and continue to commit crimes through their network. By allowing them to use Wikipedia, they can leave coded messages as orders for fellow gang members. This happens with traditional mail and you can bet it'll be more wide spread with Internet access. I believe prisoners need the ability to learn and improve themselves while in p…

Give them access to a static, read-only dump of Wikipedia hosted on an internal prison server. Update said dump once every month.

What about the articles that teach you how to make moonshine? Or a shiv?

I'm only half-joking, I'm sure the prison authorities would be very concerned with this stuff.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#67

Post by handelaar »

carlyle4545 wrote: post #53
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Presumably the reason why inmates don't have unfettered access to the internet is to make sure they're not running some empire from behind bars but at the same time in this day and age this sounds like exceptionally cruel punishment. If there is one thing that would help an ex-convict to re-integrate into society it would be to be able to read about what is going on in the outside world and to be able to self-educate…

My first startup actually landed me in CA state prison. (Read about my prison sentence and my new project here: http://comebackasap.com/burn_the_boats/ ) Though I "only" served a year, the one thing I missed more than anything --including family, friends, and the touch of a woman-- was internet access. (I love my family, friends, and lady friends but a year away from them wasn't so bad. Fortunately I have no kids.) I…

> Read about my prison sentence and my new project here

Tip: In the UK, operating a fund which hedges against criminal proceedings (colloquially, a 'bust fund') is a severe criminal offence in its own right.

Do reassure me that you've made very sure nobody where you are is likely to prosecute you a second time :)

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#68

Post by Spooky23 »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #61
Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very hard in a general sense. Many prisons are giving people walled garden access to legal libraries and video conferencing, but nothing else. I've done some peripheral work for corrections type people -- they don't adopt paranoid thought processes for nothing. The average drug convict is not a criminal mastermind, but he is a cog in a criminal enterprise that is controlled by smart people. Drug and gang enterprises…

This level of paranoia is just insane. Let's not legitimize the war on drugs by elevating any sort of communication with the outside world into some sort of existential threat to civilized society.

If you were the guy working in the prison who is going to get stabbed to death by some inmate, you might feel differently.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#69

Post by treerock »

richardlblair wrote: post #65

Because you were locked up for so long I'll go easy on you. Use a font size bigger than 13px... seriously. You're lucky I wanted to know what you had to say. Normally I'd just close the tab and never look back.

He says on hackerNews with it's 9pt text and 8pt headings.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#70

Post by hackinthebochs »

Spooky23 wrote: post #68
hackinthebochs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This level of paranoia is just insane. Let's not legitimize the war on drugs by elevating any sort of communication with the outside world into some sort of existential threat to civilized society.

If you were the guy working in the prison who is going to get stabbed to death by some inmate, you might feel differently.

Kill messages are so easy to get in as it is that I doubt internet access would have a huge impact. Even so, there are ways to mitigate it. Graduated access due to good behavior seems like an obvious one. The point is, we treat all inmates as if they're potential murderous drug kingpins. And this is exactly why the recidivism rate is so high. There are much better ways to rehabilitate than what we are doing today.
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