I have a friend who was incarcerated for reasons he owns, and reincarcerated twice more--once for being with someone who was committing a trespass, unbeknownst to my friend ("I have to stop at my friend's house and pick something up." "Okay." Boom goes another 18 months of his life) and once for taking out a battery from his EM that wouldn't take a charge, in an attempt to fix it. That `attempted escape' a few weeks from the end of his EM cost him another two years.
I stayed in touch with him by email (.10 a page) and got to see what a foul racket that is. Bought him a tiny little tablet so he didn't have to email from the library kiosk, and could download some music, some classes, for far more than it would sell on the outside. This is an industry, and a very profitable one. Sent him $75 so he'd have a little money for odds and ends. By the time every layer that took a cut got their share, he got about half of that.
He's out again, and the process of getting free of the EM has him under a sword dangling by a thread. He's finally out in his own apartment, which means he has to walk back and forth from work on days he can't get a ride, 3 or 4 miles, and it gets cold here, really cold. He runs under tighter timelines than Cinderella at the ball.
He recently said to me that he takes strength knowing that they've thrown the worst they have to give at him, and he's survived it. He has three kids that haven't seen their father for years except in zoom calls. How does that help anyone? I am convinced that if the system did not profit so greatly on each prisoner, he would not have been so zealously prosecuted.
I no longer believe anything has changed until the Supreme Court approves it. They will find a way to block this for sure, it’s a good idea and it helps non-rich folks.
In my locality, the county jail no longer allows prisoners to receive mail. Their mail has to go through a company in Louisiana that opens and scans it, and the prisoner has to pay to access it. They recently banned the prisoners from having books, but the local library and concerned church groups (liberal churches mostly) raised enough ruckus to get that straightened out.
It's awful the way prisoners are treated. Many of them there for minor offenses and only because they couldn't afford a lawyer or to post bail.
Hey humble suggestion for our benevolent overlords.... can we have a nice times roundup each week, on the weekends? I know there's not always enough for the top ten but it feels like these articles get lost with the screaming and jeering at all the This Week in Garbage People articles.
There was a copaganda scare about prisoners getting letters/books etc that had suboxone painted on it. You can't get high from suboxone, it's to treat withdrawl, but they cried "narcotics!!" and it was enough to interdict all paper materials.
Little by little and step by step it appears that a concerted effort is being made by an informed and humane minority of Americans to chip away at the cold, callous, holier-than-thou, damned deliberate sadism permeating the America penal system. This sick and depraved nation still has a helluva long way to go before we actually start treating inmates like human beings with potential, reduce rates of recidivism, and actually have a functional institution.
The perfect Trump appointee: destroy the agency you're sworn to protect.
I have a friend who was incarcerated for reasons he owns, and reincarcerated twice more--once for being with someone who was committing a trespass, unbeknownst to my friend ("I have to stop at my friend's house and pick something up." "Okay." Boom goes another 18 months of his life) and once for taking out a battery from his EM that wouldn't take a charge, in an attempt to fix it. That `attempted escape' a few weeks from the end of his EM cost him another two years.
I stayed in touch with him by email (.10 a page) and got to see what a foul racket that is. Bought him a tiny little tablet so he didn't have to email from the library kiosk, and could download some music, some classes, for far more than it would sell on the outside. This is an industry, and a very profitable one. Sent him $75 so he'd have a little money for odds and ends. By the time every layer that took a cut got their share, he got about half of that.
He's out again, and the process of getting free of the EM has him under a sword dangling by a thread. He's finally out in his own apartment, which means he has to walk back and forth from work on days he can't get a ride, 3 or 4 miles, and it gets cold here, really cold. He runs under tighter timelines than Cinderella at the ball.
He recently said to me that he takes strength knowing that they've thrown the worst they have to give at him, and he's survived it. He has three kids that haven't seen their father for years except in zoom calls. How does that help anyone? I am convinced that if the system did not profit so greatly on each prisoner, he would not have been so zealously prosecuted.
Give them tablets? Not the one I bought for my friend: https://www.jpay.com/PMusic...
And when he was done with it, he had to turn it back in so it could be wiped and resold.
Women aren't the worst offenders in prison. In fact, they often are incarcerated because their husbands/boyfriends throw them under the bus.
I no longer believe anything has changed until the Supreme Court approves it. They will find a way to block this for sure, it’s a good idea and it helps non-rich folks.
In my locality, the county jail no longer allows prisoners to receive mail. Their mail has to go through a company in Louisiana that opens and scans it, and the prisoner has to pay to access it. They recently banned the prisoners from having books, but the local library and concerned church groups (liberal churches mostly) raised enough ruckus to get that straightened out.
It's awful the way prisoners are treated. Many of them there for minor offenses and only because they couldn't afford a lawyer or to post bail.
Ta, Robyn. Keep advocating for justice.
Finally! Because exploiting the most vulnerable for profit just because you can is no way to run a prison or telecom company.
AFAIK, bala is bullet in Spanish. Makes no sense to me either.
Holy shit. That mail scam sounds illegal AF.
Hey humble suggestion for our benevolent overlords.... can we have a nice times roundup each week, on the weekends? I know there's not always enough for the top ten but it feels like these articles get lost with the screaming and jeering at all the This Week in Garbage People articles.
There was a copaganda scare about prisoners getting letters/books etc that had suboxone painted on it. You can't get high from suboxone, it's to treat withdrawl, but they cried "narcotics!!" and it was enough to interdict all paper materials.
It is about gawd damned time.
Little by little and step by step it appears that a concerted effort is being made by an informed and humane minority of Americans to chip away at the cold, callous, holier-than-thou, damned deliberate sadism permeating the America penal system. This sick and depraved nation still has a helluva long way to go before we actually start treating inmates like human beings with potential, reduce rates of recidivism, and actually have a functional institution.
Now; about those for-profit prisons...
now do bail reform
we have a long tradition of creating a broken system, and declaring the disfunction to be a part of the punishment.
Unless the mail is addressed directly to that company in Louisiana, it sure as hell should be illegal.