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Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

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371–380 of 434 posts

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#371
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, I fully support decriminalizing drugs, even if I disagree with the currently fashionable rhetoric about their supposed harmlessness. The statistical debate you want to have is fine. It could potentially be helpful, but not if you insist on terms that tell people that they are helpless. Please just stick to accurate terms that don't convince people to not even try. We have an existing term, "prison lab…

> It's vital to recognize that criminals can choose to exit the criminal class. Citation needed. How can one choose to not have a cop plant evidence on you? Or lie during trial, or choose to not get strong armed into pleading guilty because you can't afford bail and they're threatening you with even worse consequences if you don't plead out early? Or not have a law about drug usage enforced selectively against you an…

Not much point talking if you're going to say "Citation needed" to trivial truths, while making trivially disprovable claims like rural whites not going to prison for drugs. (You may have heard of methamphetamines). I was actually intentionally trying to be more fair to the left when mentioning unfair blame being assigned, as it could seem biased if I only mentioned unfair blame against "conservatives", but it's interesting how you masterfully twisted that attempt at fairness into a slur against me.

"The liberal elements of whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro. Getting sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, and getting the mind of the Negro. Then the Negro sides with the white liberal, and the white liberal use the Negro against the white conservative. So that anything that the Negro does is never for his own good, never for his own advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the white liberal. The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, tricked, or deceived by the white liberal then Negros would get together and solve our own problems. I only cite these things to show you that in America the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems. Our problems will never be solved by the white man. The only way that our problem will be solved is when the black man wakes up, clean himself up, stand on his own feet and stop begging the white man, and take immediate steps to do for ourselves the things that we have been waiting on the white man to do for us" - Malcolm X, seeing straight through the word games and sophistry.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#372

Wow. I know firsthand from family how this can severely destroy someone's mental health in what may not be so obvious; it is extremely heavy on someone every moment past the first hour they go past their release time, then the first day followed by a variety of things that will then be taken advantage of by other inmate and guards while one's defenses are down. The fun poked at by other jealous inmates and cruel guar…

If a prisoner knows he's past his release date, can't he contact his lawyer?

From reading the article it sounds like laws dictating when a prisoner is released are pretty complicated and many prisoners may not know if they should be released early based on good behavior or changing laws.

That's just my assumption. Remeber prisoners tend to be from less privileged backgrounds and some may be very ignorant of how the law works or even functionally illiterate. So things that seem "obvious" to educated engineers may not be obvious to them.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#373
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an apparent implicit economic calculation Spending money will remain economic decision until we can have government agencies fueled by the righteous indignation of their critics rather than having a line item added to their budget. Until you can convert that indignation into legal tender, agencies will remain subject to old fashioned accounting constraints.

The onerous budget item we are talking about here is a feature that multiply days sentenced by 0.7 if the inmate completes one checkbox item. You know, just to keep things in perspective.

Multiply by 0.7? Doesn’t that mean the sentence is shortened?

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#374
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The onerous budget item we are talking about here is a feature that multiply days sentenced by 0.7 if the inmate completes one checkbox item. You know, just to keep things in perspective.

Right, so that's just * a UI change to check the box this information is on * UI change to view whether the box is already checked or not * a data model change to store the information * business logic change that modifies some critical code that calculates when someone should be released * security/access control change to decide who is allowed to check this box * auditing logic to keep logs of this stuff * possibly…

Given that your post didn't mention the human rights being violated here once, I think it's you that needs to find the correct perspective.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#375
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the software makers who are committing the crimes. It’s the people abdicating responsibility to software. You can’t wipe your hands of releasing a prisoner on schedule by delegation that to software. The software can help you with your task, but if it’s brought to your attention that there’s a mistake, your failure to promptly fix it is on you.

It's both. Look at the amount of unnecessary waste created by the abysmal Android update policy.

Which abysmal android update policy? What waste?

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#376
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The onerous budget item we are talking about here is a feature that multiply days sentenced by 0.7 if the inmate completes one checkbox item. You know, just to keep things in perspective.

Multiply by 0.7? Doesn’t that mean the sentence is shortened?

Yep! The problem here is that the software doesn't take into account extra release credits earned from a piece of legislation introduced in 2019. Currently, additional credits are earned and the software fails to apply them to the release date, so the parent is saying the fix is to multiply the number of time in the original sentence by .7 to get the new, reduced sentence.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#377
post #57
post #3

It's like gov system don't even have test cases. They should, and they should be public. Why aren't these softwares for the public open source? See also: employment security sites, cannabis track and trace, driving license, etc. Some of these bugs cause direct financial harm to citizens and this one is much worse! Show me the test cases! Show me the code!!

I think there is still a genuine concern that open-source software allows bad people to find loopholes before the good people do. The last thing you want is someone finding a bug that allows a murderer to get released because the computer said-so. I think it can be managed but it is a genuine concern nonetheless.

Restrict access. Why does a prison management system need to be connected to a public network and be accessible to more than 20 or so authorized users? I worked on plenty of government systems using insecure software galore but it didn't really matter because we were air gapped and you needed to get through Fort Knox level physical security to get physical access to a terminal.

Granted, that doesn't make attack impossible, but it does make it very hard, especially when you disable all the USB ports and optical drives and socialize extreme consequences to any employees not following ITSEC rules.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#378
post #3

It's like gov system don't even have test cases. They should, and they should be public. Why aren't these softwares for the public open source? See also: employment security sites, cannabis track and trace, driving license, etc. Some of these bugs cause direct financial harm to citizens and this one is much worse! Show me the test cases! Show me the code!!

If my tax $ goes to it, it should have source available (excepting natsec). it would be nice to get some value out of it. If it's well written, I could learn how a large scale project works. If not, I can have something to petition and voice my concerns about, inform about vulns, etc.

You exempt national security, and suddenly everything is national security. Look at the FISA “courts”.

Not arguing against it. State secrets are needed in some instances. Just pointing out that if you exempt something, there’ll be people who’ll construe as much as they can under than exemption. Is there any solution to that?

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose for an inmate to contact his representation?

Mail, or asking another prisoner with communication to the outside to ask their contact to call the lawyer and have them come visit.

If somebody is objecting to this comment based on it being wrong, I'd love to hear any corrections. Perhaps unfairly, I suspect it's more of an objection to the setup being described.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#380
post #153
post #83

Arizona has private prisons (subject of civil rights lawsuits, but TBF I bet they all are). I would not be at all surprised if it's in the interests of these companies and the prison guard unions to conveniently ignore this issue.

The private prison contracts I've seen published have the state pay a fixed amount for up to a certain number of prisoners, say 97% of the capacity of the facility, plus a per prisoner amount for each prisoner over that fixed amount. The numbers I've been able to find suggest that Arizona's overall state prison population is well below capacity, suggesting that it is likely that the private prisons are operating in t…

While this is absolutely correct (Arizona state prisons are relatively famous for their minimum occupancy rates- Florence West, Phoenix West, and Marana Community Correctional Treatment Facility each have 100% minimum occupancy rates [1]), the one caveat I have to note is that private prisons in Arizona don't control, calculate, or have anything to do with awarding release credits and calculating release dates [2]. So, yes- you're completely right. Since they're in this situation where they get paid for 100% of their beds being filled even if they have 50%, 75%, even 97% capacity [3], the private company doesn't have much incentive to fudge release dates. Especially when the number of private bed contracts keep rising even though the total inmate population is decreasing [4].

However, by that same turn, it's been proven in court [3] that the state is on the hook for the minimum capacity % even when that capacity isn't met, and these contracts are fairly long (10 years + 2 renewable 5 year terms [5]). If the state is on the hook for up to 20 years of paying 100% to use 90% of something, there's a clear incentive to make a show of it being used.

So while there's no direct way for a private prison to fudge release date calculation, there's definitely no incentive for it to press the issue with the Department of Corrections considering the DoC could renegotiate the contract the following year [6]. As for the people in state office, it does not look or feel good to squander millions on an overestimation.

I'm not saying corruption is involved- all I'm saying is that there's certainly motive and opportunity for negligence.

Some sources for anyone interested:

[1] http://www.aublr.org/2017/11/private-prison-contracts-minimu... (look for source #14)

[2] A.R.S. 41-1609.01#P https://law.justia.com/codes/arizona/2011/title41/section41-...

[3] MTC vs ADC https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2015/jul/31/report-find...

[4] https://kjzz.org/content/1647948/despite-declining-populatio...

[5] A.R.S. 41-1609.01#I,J https://law.justia.com/codes/arizona/2011/title41/section41-...

[6] A.R.S. 41-1609.01#C,D

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