1. These prisoners are in prison for a reason, and
2. The severe, of then horribly violent, result of contraband in prisons.
This isn’t an article about care packages to nursing homes.
I await your immediate downvotes.
Justice: What should a society permit itself in punishing prisoners (and let's stipulate that the ones we're talking about are guilty as charged, even though many many many are not.)
Is it ok to malnourish them? Is it ok to punish their families and friends, who haven't been convicted of crimes? Is it ok to deprive prisoners of outside contact? In other words, where to you draw the line? (And if you don't draw the line, Abu Ghraib is the next stop.)
Pragmatism: As others have noted, if you're going to admit a prisoner back into society in, say, five years, does it make sense to reduce their coping and job skills in prison so that they will likely do worse when they get out? And again, where do you draw the line?
Regarding contraband: it's even worse than you hint at, today. Prisons are taking all sorts of measures to keep opioids from getting in. You can soak a greeting card or letter paper in water soluble drugs which can then be extracted once the document is inside. So my friend now only get printed out scans of letters and cards, not the cards themselves.
So, yeah, security is an issue, too, but I don't think that justifies $25/fifteen minute phone calls, do you?
As their future neighbors, employers, coworkers, customers, seems like it's in our best interest for them to be somewhat ready for that transition. As taxpayers, it's in our best interest to keep the recidivism rate low, as prison is expensive. As humans, we should want our fellow humans treated with some basic standard of respect, even if they are someone we're scared of.
This breaks the HN guidelines. Doing that leads to HN prison. Please don't do that.
The sentence was to be locked up. Not to be ripped off.