The FCC has voted to end exorbitant phone fees for prison inmates
qz.com
qz.com
Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company.
Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since hopefully competition will provide the market price.
Essentially they have lost the forest for the trees. Yes government weighing into capitalism is "bad" but government already allowed that by removing competition, so this is a correction of that existing issue.
The article touched on the whole video conferencing thing... It is absolutely criminal that jails restrict actual visitation for the purposes of then charging prisoners to use their video conferencing system (sometimes which requires the family to physically visit the prison, thus making it even more farcical).
The whole private prison thing makes me want to vomit.
Muckrock (shoutout to @morisey) is doing an investigative piece on private prisons. If possible, please think about contributing $10-20 on it.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/sep/18/justice-s...
> Far more influential are political benefits that elected officials of both political parties harvested over the decades by being tough on crime as well as the billions of dollars earned by government-run prisons’ employees and private contractors and vendors.
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/10/07/private_prisons_...
Forest, trees, etc.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-prof...
Old-style tough-on-crime rhetoric from voters and politicians isn't working as much anymore, because people realize that it doesn't work and are less worried about crime than they were 20 years ago.
[1] Anecdote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
[2] Data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...
I mean, that's the definition of a classical liberal, I'm not sure it's described the Republican Party for a long time though.
Suggesting any of those to today's classical liberal would cause them to froth at the mouth and denounce him as a socialist.
In the US, in popular usage, it means someone who supports extensive public programs (education, welfare, research, etc.), even if it means that taxes are higher. It also means someone who is against the government infringing on social freedoms, like equality for people with different sexualities, genders, or races.
The classical usage of "liberal" means someone who supports individual freedom in every sense: lower taxes, fewer government programs, less government spending, and social freedom.
To make it even more confusing, the hard-right of the Republican Party claims to be "liberal" in the classical sense (sometimes also called "libertarian"), but many of them aren't actually libertarian.
And, to make it even more confusing, there are actual libertarians in the US who don't know to describe themselves that way[1][2].
1. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/25/in-search-of...
2. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/there-are-few-libertarian...
The UK Liberal Democrats and the Danish Social Liberal Party are two examples of liberal parties fairly solidly taking that viewpoint. The German FDP also used to in earlier years, but since the '80s is more Thatcher-influenced. The UK Economist newsmagazine also has views that could be put in this category.
Though that runs into another naming collision, because "social liberal" in the U.S. means a liberal who is focused mostly on social issues (gay marriage, abortion, free speech), rather than a liberal who is supportive of social programs.
Makes me vomit too. We've created a systematic punishment machine rather than a reformation and education system. And systematic profiteering machine that's corrupting the objective of the Justice system.
Makes you wonder what horrors a conservative majority FCC will cause.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/22/regulators-sl... [2] Full commission meeting (item was first on agenda) https://www.fcc.gov/events/open-commission-meeting-october-2...
The FCC has recently been venturing into fields where it does not have expertise or (clear) authority. When the FCC issues regulations which should have been addressed by another regulator or actor, accountability is lost. Who is now to blame when something goes wrong with the prison phones? What happens when prisons fail to service the phones, or make it more difficult for inmates to use them? When it is not clear who is responsible for something, no one is responsible for it.
What horrors are you worried that a conservative-majority FCC will cause? That they will be accountable for the consequences of their actions, and not attempt to increase the scope of their authority?
Edit: In this case even there WAS a contract - the prisons signed an exclusive contract with Global Tel-Link, which would provide a percentage of the proceeds back to the prison. The deal incentivized both parties to raise prices as much as possible while the zero rights inmates had no recourse. Those are the sorts of contracts that happen all the time when there are no regulations. What would a trade commission do in this situation?
Can you elaborate on how you're seeing this as an overreach?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
The FCC does not have authority to regulate phones or networks in any business or home, and cannot dictate whether your company can block certain websites or phone numbers, and the company can have a carrier set up these restrictions for them. Likewise, the FCC does have authority to regulate how phone services are provided to the prisons (though it is not clear that the FCC could discrimate prisons from other businesses), but not what happens within the prison itself or under the prison's request.
> [The FCC is] an independent commission created by [C]ongress to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges"
Given that (almost?) all prisoners in US prisons are "people of the United States", this seems like exactly the correct body.
> If you read the commission's charter broadly enough, and without regard to either the original understanding or the original intent, you come to all kinds of absurd conclusions. From the text you provided, one could, for instance conclude that the FCC has the authority to issue regulations which require parents to provide all children above the age of two with a cellphone capable of high-speed internet access with no data cap (just as easily as you could find that the FCC can regulate prison phone prices).
>The FCC does not have authority to regulate phones or networks in any business or home, and cannot dictate whether your company can block certain websites or phone numbers, and the company can have a carrier set up these restrictions for them. Likewise, the FCC does have authority to regulate how phone services are provided to the prisons (though it is not clear that the FCC could discrimate prisons from other businesses), but not what happens within the prison itself or under the prison's request.
Given that not even the 13th amendment applies to prisoners, I also very much doubt that the largess of a congressional mandate for the FCC applies.
linksbro has a reply to that comment that you seem to have missed. It's pretty direct: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10439553
Additionally:
The FCC is obligated to determine if a telecommunications service is required to file tariffs:
"Tariffs contain the rates, terms and conditions of certain services provided by telecommunications carriers. The most common tariff filed at the FCC is for interstate local access service. These tariffs are filed by local exchange carriers, or LECs.
Long-distance companies and others pay the rates set out in these tariffs to LECs for access to local networks at the originating and/or terminating ends of a long-distance call. Access services include:
* End User access, which mainly recovers the Subscriber Line Charge, the Access Recovery Charge, and the Universal Service Fund Charge. ...
Except in very limited circumstances, long-distance companies are not permitted to file tariffs for long-distance service because the FCC has determined that the long-distance market is competitive. Like long-distance service, many broadband services have been detariffed. ...
Tariffs must be just and reasonable and may not be unreasonably discriminatory under Sections 201(a) and 202(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended." [0]
(Emphasis mine.)
If the long-distance market for prisoners is not competitive, the FCC is well within its remit to demand that rates for those services be just, reasonable, and not unreasonably discriminatory.
> Given that not even the 13th amendment applies to prisoners...
Rights and privileges are severable. This means that loss of one does not imply loss of others.
Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure my wireless phone, the bands it can use, and the power it can transmit are highly regulated...
(c) STATE PREEMPTION To the extent that any State requirements are inconsistent with the Commission's regulations, the Commission's regulations on such matters shall preempt such State requirements.
(d) DEFINITION As used in this section, the term ''payphone service'' means the provision of public or semi-public pay telephones, the provision of inmate telephone service in correctional institutions, and any ancillary services.
This explicitly states that since inception, the FCC has been directed by congress to have jurisdiction over __inmate telephone service__, and __any ancillary services__.
How can you have anything __more__ direct than this language?
They've used this authority for a very long time, and the most basic instances of this are municipalities trying to enact regulations that prohibit people from putting up antennas required for otherwise lawful radio communications.
It is still the responsibility of the prison to maintain and provide access to the phones as long as inmates are guaranteed that right. There's no question of who's accountable there. The prison and department of justice/corrections/etc depending on what type of facility.
isn't that the default response for them? they used similar reasoning to go against obamacare.
Don't believe the hype.
>>Look, I get it, you support private industry.
So in the 60's the Republicans launched a thing called The Southern Strategy that was literally the Republican Party courting white racists. They never stopped.
Now that openly calling for segregation is frowned upon making the criminal justice system as punitive as possible is one of the ways they keep that strategy going. See also: Welfare 'reform'
http://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infa...
Wikipedia is as good a place as any to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
it's "for profit prison"
otherwise the average idiot doesn't get the problem
corporations are making bank from holding people against their will in miserable conditions
same way corporation profit directly from war and people being killed, often completely innocent people
I'm not sure this is the fundamental problem. Seattle jail is run by King County Corrections and it's a human rights disaster.
Don't take it from me, take it from a prison reform organization: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/10/07/private_prisons_...
To say this doesn't warrant any attention is similar to saying that we don't need to do space travel or fundamental research before we've cured world hunger, cancer and aids because those address bigger and immediate problems.
There is room for all of the above.
When you are paid by the bed, it is in your best interest to lobby for stronger sentencing guidelines[1] to gain and keep as many inmates as you can, and bleed as much cash out of them as possible in the process. In some cases you even have detention centers bribing judges[2] to lock away children in exchange for cash.
1. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occu... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
I want to reiterate that I'm with you on private prisons, but the basic point remains that any group (public or private) will act in what it perceives as its best interests, whether those jibe with the platonic ideal or not.
http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-califor...
[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/23/1424181/-Pay-for-yo...
> Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company.
I hate to say this, but: most Republicans are not pro-competition. They're very happy helping the government put in place monopolies, and milking that monopoly status. Case in point: the Republicans refuse to the Medicaid negotiate lower drug prices. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/washington/18cnd-medicare....
I think the Republican stance comes from the perspective that you can never really "negotiate" with a body that writes and enforces all the laws.
OK, Medicare, fair enough. But that's quite an excuse. Why, then the government should be forbidden from negotiating any type of price reductions! Let the government pay $10,000 for a pen, and $100,000 for a flashlight, eh?
Especially when the principle you're forgetting is the one that limits your own power. That's a very tempting sort of principle to forget.
It's very simple, they support businesses making a ton of money. They don't care about competition, they don't care about regulation, they don't care about fair.
They care about businesses making a boat load of money. End of story.
Oh wait, that was the Democrats! The Republicans actually killed it.
Do you think these monopolies just randomly happen? There's a lot of competition to be the monopolist.
If there is something better it should always win.
That's not what Republicans, or almost any politicians, support. Politicians are mostly addicted to power and support keeping power, even if that means screwing the ideals they supposedly espouse. And keeping power in a democratic republic involves keeping funding for the next election cycle. Regardless of their stated ideals, politicians are de facto slaves of the corporations whose interests they serve, unless laws exist to limit this effect. In short, laissez faire capitalism and democracy are incompatible.
This is a monumental decision for inmates & their families, but long-term progress can be made by getting rid of commissions, particularly at the state & local level. The FCC chose not to make a decision on commissions (citing the lack of legal authority) however it's eliminating or limiting these kickbacks thats needed to really re-align the market. Currently commissions are negotiated on a percentage basis, so facilities have an incentive to favor high customer costs since they get a chunk. This could be improved by legislation limiting commissions to a per-minute basis, so facilities have incentive to favor lower cost & higher-volume. That way rates continue to move downward.
Think about it like this... With the FCC's decision today rates are limited to a max of 0.14 cent a minute. Since commissions are percentage based a facility could demand 13.99999 cent commissions. Theres no incentive for them not to! If states were to set a maximum per-minute commissions at say, .05 cent a minute, it would encourage facilities to push the rates down in order to increase usage. Rates would never fall below .05 cent, but facilities would have incentive to push the rates down as close to the maximum as they could. It would also help cut down on the extra fees vendor's charge. Since extra fees eat into the money that families can spend on actual calls, facilities would have financial incentive to favor lower fees that would increase the number of minutes used.
We've seen nationwide[1] that lowering the total price to families increases call volume. Also increasing phone calls fights recidivism and heals family units. It's something I've been reading and personally care alot about with my work with Penmate[2]. Today's victory was landmark, but there's certainly more progress ahead.
[1] 2014 FCC Report on ICS (search 'call volumes') http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000975214 [2] http://penmateapp.com
Does the FCC have the right to tell a state or town what to do with local calls? That is the root of this. It's a given that they can regulate interstate, but historically intrastate has been the rights of the states.
Each personal project I work on is technical primarily, but each requires me to involve myself more in the political process by design. Technology alone will not change things, so I must get better at the people part of the process to enact the change I wish to see.
It made sense in a time when people lived in same state their whole lives, rarely traveled outside the state, and rarely communicated outside the state. Their whole lives unfolded within a few hundred square miles.
That's not the case anymore. You can't subdivide the interests of American citizens by state anymore. What does it mean to be from Ohio vs. Indiana? Almost nothing.
When that testing happens, as it does now, the determining factor shouldn't be "states vs federal rights". It should be, "Does this state have a good reason to differ from the rest of the country?"
In this case, where inmates' families are being harmed, there is no reason for Hawaii to differ from Mississippi.
I'm not saying I believe that argument, but I don't live in Mississippi, I don't pay taxes in Mississippi, and I'm extremely unlikely to ever end up in a Mississippi prison. Maybe it should be the job of Mississippians to weigh the pros and cons of these things?
The federal government should be able to say, "No, sorry Mississippi, you aren't going to run your prisons on the backs of the families of inmates."
Why should someone have to pay extortionist prices to speak to a loved one? They likely had nothing to do with the crime (or the criminality of the inmate), and it's not fair to punish them just for being unlucky enough to love someone who becomes a convict.
- OK to lock someone up in a cage.
- OK to charge them $0.11/minute to talk to someone outside of that cage.
- NOT OK to charge $1/minute to talk to someone outside of that cage.
Yes. That how treating humans humanely works.
Keep in mind this wasn't a ruling by SCOTUS citing the constitution. It was a ruling by the FCC meaning that ultimately it WAS a community voting on them. The only debate here is the size of the community that should get a vote.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I think ultimately the federal government gets what it wants because it holds the biggest purse-strings and that's all that matters at the end of the day.
However, in the case of states, there is a organizing body that can, and is increasingly governing in their stead -- the federal government. And as many people believe the federal government has on average done a better job, that is why there are calls for the retirement of the 'states rights' concept.
Whatever happened to "celebrate [and protect] diversity"?
The biggest difference was the cost of a pack of cigarettes, when I still smoked. Now the biggest difference is the weather, which I gather varies quite a lot just within CA.
My coworkers are variously local and transplants like myself, and I wouldn't be able to tell except for being told.
One of the effects of the last half-century of mass media is the wholesale homogenization of American culture. I'm fine with this, and I wish our political structures would adapt accordingly; I happen to think American norms of 2015 are considerably better than North Carolina's norms circa 1965.
Strange that you pick that example since that happens within a single state too. In fact it seems like there is a much larger difference between urban and rural regions within any given state then there is between urban regions (or rural regions) across different states.
That's not a criticism of states' rights; that's a criticism of not agreeing with you. Join the club :-p
My point was that we already have examples where there are exceptions to federal law on a state-by-state basis. What I've been saying all along is that we should codify that system.
>It's probably time to give up on the ridiculous sanctity of states' rights.
isn't an opinion? I'm lost.
While there has been far too much cross-party desire to be "tough on crime", this is yet another example where the GOP seems to be stuck in the past, unwilling to recognize the failure and brutality of that stance. And while this is absolutely a positive step, meaningful reforms will not transpire to any significant degree so long as state governments are dominated by conservatives. They may occasionally voice social justice concerns, but want to comes time to vote on those issues the result is what you see here, almost without exception.
That's done in politics all the time. Their explanation was just a smokescreen. It's politically dangerous as a Republican to look like you have compassion for convicted criminals.
That's a pretty terrible way to run a government. When you elect someone you expect them to follow the law and do their job.
Not just do anything they want and say "it's fine, if we are wrong the court will fix it".
Whether or not it's terrible, it's the system of checks and balances that was envisioned by the founders of the United States. It's exactly how our government has (and does) run for its entire history. The courts exist for this purpose.
"Follow the law" is not cut-and-dried. Statutes can be interpreted any number of ways, and very little common law is set in stone. Even common law created by the Supreme Court (e.g. Roe v Wade) it incredibly controversial and could be challenged again.
The courts are there in case of mistakes, they are not intended as the primary way for government to function.
Do you realize just what you are advocating for? Every little police chief will claim any road he can, until a court tells him to stop. Every property inspector will levy fines for parking tickets until told he can't. Nothing stops me from setting up a toll booth at the end of the road, until the court tells me to stop.
No, this is not the way. People should, on their OWN, know what they should and should not do.
The Republicans felt this was a power grab by the FCC, you would have been happy if in fact they had grabbed that power, but that's because you like the issue at hand. Next time it will be for something you don't like.
So in this case, the Democratic FCC members were willing to take a risk because they thought the potential benefit (giving prisoners affordable access to telephones) is worth it. The Republicans did not, because they are, in this scenario, comfortable with the status quo.
But for most of the time, lawmakers should try to only pass laws that are clearly legal.
The marginal cost of the bandwidth required to make the phone calls is negligible, so there is no reason it should cost anything to the inmates.
A simple solution to achieve such a result is to buy a cell phone plan with unlimited minutes and route calls through it.
Cause the prison makes $$$.
I think these costs should be a cost of doing business as a prison, whereas they consider it should be "user pays".
Stopping prisoners from harassing their victims/witnesses against them/enemies or organising others to do their dirty work externally is already a massive problem. Prisons have the ability to listen to calls and read mail to try and curtail it.
Giving them access to the internet makes all of this far easier, and monitoring it far more expensive. Not to mention that now they can use the internet to commit new crimes, and they have nothing better to do for the years or tens of years that they're sitting in a cell.
I think giving them access to email is do-able, since that is no different in practice to physical letters. But giving them unrestricted access is a monitoring nightmare.
And news sites but not the comments sections on those news sites?
It sucks that this is even an issue, I agree. The proposal in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10434720 would be interesting, if workable.
Theoretically, a GET request is only supposed to retrieve data, but it can be (and sometimes is) also used to write data. There's no way for a screening algorithm to know the difference.
That's part of the argument for why those phone calls are so expensive...
Monitoring what someone does on the web would be possible too, of course. At least if you only let them do it for a few minutes at a time like a phone call. Monitoring someone for an hour or more of web browsing is likely to be deathly boring for the one doing the monitoring.
The vast majority of people aren't going to cause any issues.
Even giving most prisoners full, unrestricted access is possible.
Look at prisons in Europe (I’m thinking about Germany here) and you’ll see that it works.
Unfettered access ==> ability to run criminal business, organize groups, stalk victims, perpetrate fraud, etc.
Restricting internet access like you're proposing is presuming their guilt and ruining it for the rest of the inmates.
It isn't designed to tell whether Inmate X is flooding Victim Y's Instagram with veiled threats. You'd have to create an incredibly complex system of rules for each individual inmate in order to do anything close to being effective, and even then, you'd require a level of AI sophistication that doesn't exist yet.
It's just not possible right now.
We're trying to prevent prisoners from communicating. The internet is a tool the sole purpose of which is communication. To be remotely plausible, you'd have to use a very restrictive whitelist approach, something like "you are allowed to send email (through the prison's forwarding server) to the following addresses".
TRULINCS appears to work like this. [0]
I think a lot of the hesitation surrounding a system for giving inmates additional access to the Internet focuses on the premise that all inmates would get access at once, or all the time. But that's not necessary. It could used as a reward for good behavior. Basic monitoring technology already exists, and humans could be employed if absolutely necessary. Additionally, it's easy to know who committed what crime and disqualify them if they're likely get up to no good.
[0] http://wysk.lamp.uscourts.gov/ex-offender-suggestions/trulin...
Further, you can't prevent access to email for the same reason.
Could you elaborate on this? China blocks Facebook/Instagram/Twitter [0] so well that there's an entire industry of VPN providers making bank on getting them access to it illicitly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...
And it doesn't help when it's literally the focus of their stated ideology. Or when the leaders of their party say things to the effect of "Our goal is to destroy this president at all costs no matter what it does to the country or the american people"
I get that it's easy to say it's always a mistake or oversimplification to call a group of people evil, but what if they actually are?
How do I know you are not evil? You say that the conservatives are trying to persecute the disadvantaged, but you could be accused of pursuing authoritarianist populism.
Emotional screeds like this convince no one; perhaps this is a self-satisfying venture, or it may be an attempt to signal your loyalty to a cause, but either way, it is entirely useless to anyone except you.
If you want to argue against someone, please pick a logical framework, and go with it. From what you've written, it seems you have utilitarian leanings; there are points for and against this vote in that paradigm, and it would be interesting to read an exposition of them.
My post was not particularly emotional; it's not really necessary to attack it by claiming so: claiming you are the logical reasonable one and I am being hysterical is a cheap schoolyard tactic and I'm not particularly moved by it. You asked a question and I answered it.
I intended with my post to defend the notion of unconditional rejection of a position or of an ideology or of a political group; we are allowed to just say that they are wrong. We aren't obligated to constantly justify their positions and look for ways in which they are right -- in fact if we do this we will be taken advantage of and it will cause even more extremism and polarization.
I despise utilitarianism and I'm not quite sure how you inferred I was one from my post.
At the end of the day, though, the "why" of their cruelty is not all that important. The fact is that they are evil, and relish in it.
it's kind of terrifying to think that a single republican in the wrong place could have blocked a measure affecting millions of people.
https://www.fcc.gov/what-we-do
"An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the commission is the United States' primary authority for communications law, regulation and technological innovation."
Many decisions with a "legislative character" are, however, made by the executive branch through executive agencies (Dept of Agriculture, Dept of Homeland Security, etc.) These agencies only exist with the blessing of Congress, though, so they technically derive their power from the legislative branch.
If that sounds weird, it is. The legality and limits of executive agencies is still somewhat of an open question, even though they've been around for 150+ years.
For example, the EPA is working (though not enough) to prevent the end of human life on earth. That's something I wouldn't trust Congress to do, since they seem to be gridlocked forever on all common sense issues.
But then there are agencies like the USDA, which fed "pink slime" to children for years in order to help out the cattle industry[1].
Pink slime is only a marginally-bad thing for cattle ranchers like me. I would benefit if people decided to only eat ribeye, because ribeye is a small portion of the total carcass and that would drive up the price of cattle. Conversely, every beef patty sold that includes 10% pink slime lowers the price of cattle just a little bit.
It hasn't ceded any; Congress retains all legislative power. Regulatory power is a delegation (and the degree to which power can be delegated is limited), not a cession.
> it's a loophole in democracy.
It may not be something you like, but I don't think its really anything other than the system working as designed; executive agencies making decisions within parameters set by Congress through legislation, including decision that involve notice of predictable ways that executive power will be applied, within the limits set by legislation, in future cases (i.e., regulation) was not an idea that the founders would have been surprised by.