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Comment by SN76477 | Hacker News Reader

Why not just let prisoners have free access to the phone? This has never made sense to me.

I'm not sure that total deregulation of the prison phone market is a good idea, but at least in the United States, the current solution is pretty outrageous [0]. There is a a reasonable censoring role to be played by the prison (same as it is for mail), but like much else about prison system, seems served by rent-seekers [1].

[0] https://theintercept.com/2017/06/16/fcc-prison-phone-call-ra...

[1] https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2017/11/20/indiana...

Is there reason for censoring?

Most criminals don't have an empire to run from prison. I suspect there's very few prisoners where censoring makes any sense.

Consider the cost and benefit, and the value of maintaining contact with friends and family.

What exactly is the reasonable censorship role? I'm honestly curious..

One circumstance: a lot of men* are in prison for domestic violence. The victims are often close to completely emotionally and mentally broken. The offenders often have equally manipulative friends who are not incarecerated. Allowing such prisoners unfettered phone access to 1) potentially contact victims or 2) contact friends to harass victims, seems like it is worth avoiding. Words can be very powerful and escaping the cycle of abuse is difficult. That was the first instance I thought of. I imagine there are many other where censorship makes sense.

* this is the most common dynamic, violence perpetrated by men.

There are already legal mechanisms such as a judge's order (not to mention technical methods) to address such cases. Banning every convict from using a phone is like swatting a fly with a Buick.

They should use phone access as a carrot. Good behavior? You get more access to a phone. Bad behavior? You don't.

Thanks for the links. The Indy Star gave a Bad Gateway so I found the amp ariticle here:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.indystar.com/amp/858322001

It’s to stop them from being able to continue to commit crimes from the inside.

This is an ongoing problem in mexican prisons, see:

http://www.newsweek.com/el-chapo-puente-grande-mexico-582319

Large scale phone fraud seems like something that should be easy to stop... Even without monitoring all calls.

Assuming the officials aren't corrupt.

Okay, what do you do if you detect large scale phone fraud?

Put them in prison and take away their access to landline? Well, that's what we do now, and it's not working, they'll just use a tiny cell phone as they do now.

Except that they can't without using proxies on the outside. Instead, we decide that they no longer have a right to communicate or express themselves to anyone outside the prison.

It seems like a more effective and humane method is to allow them free telephone usage, with the complete disclosure and knowledge that their conversations are being listened to/recorded. If crimes being driven by their command are executed on the outside, it can be found out how they communicated that command, and the people responsible for committing that outside crime also punished.

Exactly how many prisoners have a criminal empire to run from prison.

Most of them have nothing. And communication would be of no concern, or am I missing something.

The problem is how to determine that someone is a "low risk" mule for coded communication. (For favours inside prison or later outside.) So the solution is a wide ban indeed.

Like with many such "solutions" its efficacy is not evaluated.

Before cell phones, they would use code words and phrases so they could orchestrate activities via monitored phone calls.

intimidation of witnesses, the jury, victims, ...

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