Prisons Are Banning Books That Teach Prisoners How to Code

It’s almost like there are multiple industries built on prison labour that might feel threatened by prisoners learning employable skills and never coming back... strange.

This is a disgrace. The idea that someone is going to be a menace to prison computer systems because they read a few books is really laughable and betrays such a thorough ignorance of how these things work.

No one cares about prisons because it’s not an issue that affects most of us in any way and prisoners aren’t a powerful interest group.

The absurdities of bureaucracy are allowed to fester without checks. What does the person in charge of approving books, who is probably ignorant of technology themselves, gain from allowing a book? Nothing. What do they lose if allowing a particular book leads to problems? Potentially a lot. So they’ll only allow only the safest material for which their judgment could never possibly get questioned.

I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to keep prisoners uneducated and likely to come back to prison. There’s just no reason to for the people in charge to do better.

I don’t know how feasible it is, but if we’re going to have private prisons, maybe they should be rewarded when prisoners successfully reintegrate after their release.

the US job market for coders is kind of saturated anyway, and given the extreme selectivity tech companies apply to job applicants, avoiding coding might be a good thing for people in that particular sub-population. i mean it will probably save ex-cons a lot of heartache. our beloved tech employers are likely to discriminate against ex-cons just like they do other minorities and protected classes. what is the point of raising an ex-con's hopes of getting a coding job? the tech companies are going to find some reason or other to reject them anyway.

just sayin'