Oregon prisons ban many technology and programming books | Hacker News Reader

Oregon prisons ban many technology and programming books

salemreporter.com

59 pointstraderjane16 comments

I completely understand the need to ban books like Black Hat Python but they also ban First Html5 Programming and Microsoft Excel 2016 For Dummies?

We do actually want to rehabilitate these folks and teach them valuable life skills right? How is banning books on HTML and Excel helpful? As a tax-paying Oregonian, this is a little baffling.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that prison management gives zero fucks about rehabilitation. They’ve not been incentivized to do so for decades at least and therefore I’d suppose that those who would want to rehabilitate prisoners have self-selected out of the career entirely leaving only the more punitive-minded or those who just can’t find employment elsewhere.

This is mainly speculation so I’d genuinely appreciate it if anyone with direct knowledge of the situation could correct me if I’m way off base here.

Rehabilitation is counterproductive for prison officials. Someone who is rehabilitated is much less likely to reoffend, and deprives your prison of an inmate. Releasing people with no life skills, no job prospects, and a black mark on their record is a much more reliable way to make sure you can maintain your population.

I don't want to agree with you because it seems really craven, but I'm not sure I can disagree. Speaking only for my state, Oregon doesn't seem to have any interest in actually combating recidivism.

Yeah, sadly private prisons are like that. You could even go buy stock in prisons too. So then I guess if you are a shareholder you'd wish for more crime as it'd be in your best interest for your prisons you invested in to be successful. Pretty sad to actually have to hope for crimes.

Pretty interesting though they allow access to computers. Never heard of that. I always imagined reading dusty old law books if your prison has a library and writing things down by hand. However some lawbook's are very outdated, there's some old book often cited claiming you don't need a driver license to drive because you aren't in commerce... Yeah try that one with a cop and I doubt it will go very well for you.

I like to watch Orange Is the New Black on Netflix and they pretty much did an entire season about private prisons. I've already knew a bit about them though but maybe talking about them in a comedy might get people thinking or doing their own research.

So many messed up things going on in the world though, I doubt many people have enough time to even care or know what to even do to help make things better.

> We do actually want to rehabilitate these folks and teach them valuable life skills right?

No. We want to punish them.

(I don't agree with this, but it's how the prison system is run in the US)

If those books are security threats then every last warden needs to be fired. Because then an IT professional in jail is either uncageable or capable of controlling every gang.

How many competent IT folks do you know that want to go work in a prison?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/inmates-built-co...

This isn't the kind of job that is going to attract the best and brightest, especially since it's likely viewed as a cost center and will be about as thankless as can be.

I think their point is that, if a prisoner cannot be trusted to know things, then people who know things cannot reasonably be made into prisoners. So either you can't put a programmer in prison or you should allow prisoners to know how to program. It doesn't make sense to have it both ways.

Just stuff the smart ones into solitary, problem solved.

Prisons aren't about finding solutions that are just or humane. They're for punishing the people in them. Rehabilitation isn't punishment, so prisons don't do it.

If you rehabilitate you get horrible cases like Norway where the total prison population is a measly 75 per 100,000 residents and the system is tiny. So many "bad guys" on the streets earning an honest wage. It's completely unacceptable to US legislatures. Where's the vengeance? Where's the humiliation? Where are the kickbacks from the numerous industries that exploit the literally captive audience? Totally unacceptable.

Perfect

I was briefly in jail, and had the opportunity to examine the security systems there in relative peace.

It was a lot of fun actually. I would look at the screws holding things together, the locks, the hinges, the computer systems, etc. I would challenge myself to McGuyver an escape plan if somehow all the guards left and escape was my only option. I dont think there were any rooms, or areas that I could not have gotten out of.

It gave me an interesting perspective on security. It changed my understanding of the role of a guard. A jail doesn't have to be escape proof, it just has to make escape slow or noisy enough that the guards can intervene.

Without watching eyes, anyone determined enough will find ways to circumvent static security measures.

I understand banning the C++ books but iOS Game Programming is a prison in and of itself. /s

This really saddens me. If civilization wants to mature, we need to treat our prisoners with empathy and compassion. Kicking the already powerless is a coward's move.

A very good friend of mine went through 2 years of prison due to a string of unfortunate incidents, and one of the best sysadmin/devops folks I know well before, and even after. They read a lot of fiction, as the "system" was opposed even to me sending some custom car and hot-rod building books. Such weird insecurity, don't want any inmate smarter than the $15/hr guards.

During his years inside, me as a linux user, found it almost impossible to use any/all services to communicate in the prison system. They were all built for only ie6 by the same little mafia of crappy IT web services companies that were entirely unusable outside of firing up an old xp instance. This was circa 2013. It made communications all but impossible, and really quite painful/expensive.

Everything from telephony, to any sending of property is controlled by a small, nepotism/lobbyist-driven industry mafia that literally over charge everyone involved, raping all sides associated to the incarcerated. Government lobbying at its finest by the prison industry, and actively fight against any reform.

After said person got out, went immediately back to making 6 figures with oddly a defense contractor even, and many others industries after. Employers were always happy to overlook some of his history for the graces that he was actually competent and produced results.

Go figure, often hard to find even those without prison records that can do so.

> ... than the $15/hr guards

is it good form to insult someone based on how much money they make?

How about that, here's what happens when you teach inmates to code:

https://www.hackreactor.com/blog/code7370-teaches-coding-to-...

The result is that Google engineers come visit and socialize:

https://sanquentinnews.com/google-attends-san-quentin-mixer/

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