Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison? At its most fundamental, it has no incentive to actually rehabilitate
No. I believe they're inherently cruel and shouldn't be legal
Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
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Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#22Too late for the lockdowns, too early for the climate catastrophe, just in time for private prisons.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#23Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison? At its most fundamental, it has no incentive to actually rehabilitate
Absolutely 0. Worse than for profit healthcare, which is a feat.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#24Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison? At its most fundamental, it has no incentive to actually rehabilitate
Prison should be painful for the jailers and expensive for society, so the only imprison people when it is really important, and to incentivize prevention.
BTW, it's weird that jail and synonym are roughly synonyms, but jailer and prisoner are opposites.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#25Sounds very cruel, another sign that we can't control our technological growth at all. I have a friend, a former FAANG veteran that has dedicated his life to destroying what he calls "techno-Satan", maybe he's on to something.
I have also noticed that programmers have a tendency to sometimes distrust the stuff they make. I for one will never install "smart" home devices, I'm happy with my classic light switch that won't spy my on/off status and send it to China, or my toaster that needs a monthly subscription.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#26Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison? At its most fundamental, it has no incentive to actually rehabilitate
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Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#27Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison? At its most fundamental, it has no incentive to actually rehabilitate
>Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison?
No. But there's nothing redeeming about state prisons either. The whole system is broken regardless of who's letterhead the warden's pay stubs are on.
The typical argument for "for profit" prisons is that it provides a motive to keep costs under control, a motive that is very obviously in too short supply in most other government endeavors. Furthermore, the government is far more willing to screw its contractors to satiate public outrage (when the prisons are inevitable caught abusing prisoners and failing to deliver the services the state is paying for) than it is to screw its own departments. In my observation this breaks down in practice because of the revolving door and the government's willingness to absolve itself of responsibility for actions of its contractors and people's willingness to entertain that.
I think 3rd party contractor prisons could work in a state where the people both have high expectations of ethical behavior in both government and business AND strongly care about controlling the costs of government. The catch is that no state satisfies both those criteria as far as I can tell and state operated prisons would work just fine in any state that did so IMO it's a wash.
The reason we hear so much about for profit prisons and not the abuses within state prisons and jails is mostly one of ideological convenience. It's harder to get the people who care about prison reform to get angry at the .gov for mismanaging prisons than it is to get them angry at private contractors doing the same thing.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#28Sounds very cruel, another sign that we can't control our technological growth at all. I have a friend, a former FAANG veteran that has dedicated his life to destroying what he calls "techno-Satan", maybe he's on to something. I have also noticed that programmers have a tendency to sometimes distrust the stuff they make. I for one will never install "smart" home devices, I'm happy with my classic light switch that wo…
It’s similar to how when Doctors receive a terminal diagnosis, they choose to just accept it and die, rather than pursue aggressive treatment.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#29Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison? At its most fundamental, it has no incentive to actually rehabilitate
The motivation for prison for a significant portion of US population is punishment not rehabilitation
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#30Holy crud, literally everything about this is terrible, from the motivation/phrasing, to the "market" it's a part of, to the followup research about using VR to torture people, to the technical merits of the patent itself. Rare to find an article that so efficiently touches on so many simultaneous points of awfulness. I realize it's only one aspect of the article, but it's tough to talk about patent reform when stuff…
I think it's worse than the patent office rubber stamping everything. They actually don't rubber stamp things that your average, small inventor might try to patent. They seem to always initially reject applications, requiring multiple submissions with small modifications over and over until they relent and grant. This serves to filter out everyone except those with deep pockets and highly paid patent attorneys. When…
The more examples I hear, the more I think patents should just be thrown out altogether in many cases.
At the very least, software patents in the sense of "if your implementation uses exclusively general purpose computers and software, it cannot be violating a patent".