The FCC can finally hammer predatory prison phone call companies | Hacker News Reader

The FCC can finally hammer predatory prison phone call companies

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109 pointstoomuchtodo44 comments

"The prison system we have is in dire need of reformation in general..."

The last line I found to be the most important. I taught reading and writing in both a state, and federal prison. The problem we have in America is not a rehabilitation issue, but a retribution issue.

In my opinion, the perception of prison for the fast majority of Americans is a place for retribution, not rehabilitation.

Until we change the mindset of prison as a place where someone goes to be rehabilitated, and not just punished, then maybe we can start thinking of more proactive, long-term strategies to reduce recidivism.

Until then, we are just warehousing inmates until their next recycle through society, and back to prison.

I agree with you, and to my mind the only way to change that thinking is to abolish the death penalty and life imprisonment, and to make the maximum prison sentence 25 years.

Then the incentives change really quickly. But until then… most of the industry will see the ability to lock someone up forever as more money guaranteed to the small towns gutted by globalization

Are we optimizing for the law-abiding or the law-breaking?

If someone does <insert pre-medidated, heinous thing>, do/should I support letting them automatically rejoin society in a maximum of 25 years?

I’m not saying there aren’t problems with our current system, but I do believe that some tiny slice of humans have unfortunately proven themselves, via their own actions, to be completely incapable of living among free society and society is right to forcibly exclude them from doing so until/unless that situation changes. This might be only 1 in 100K, but that’s still thousands of people in the US alone and society has to do something with them.

Again, other countries have already came up with solutions to this - in Norway maximum sentence is 25 years, but if you are given it, it's subject to automatic review at the end - if you still aren't rehabilitated, it just gets extended. For instance Anders Breivik was sentenced as such - and the chances of him actually ever leaving prison are close to zero, despite Norway having a maximum time limit on sentencing.

(I can also see the argument as to why this is unusually cruel punishment - you are never sure how long your imprisonment will last, but I think it's the best compromise if you don't want to have a life sentence as a thing.)

Also if someone asks - how is that different than life sentence with possible parole after 25 years - because in this setup, the state has to argue why someone needs to be imprisoned for longer, instead of the prisoner arguing why they should be released. I believe this is much healthier for the whole system.

The caveat is that many criminals in those countries don’t have the capacity for violence that American criminals have.

Also, it’s useless the balk at long sentences because often American prisoners do not end up serving the full sentence for various reasons.

And as you mentioned, those “maximums” aren’t true maximums anyway, so what’s the point? Better to be upfront.

>>The caveat is that many criminals in those countries don’t have the capacity for violence that American criminals have.

I literally mentioned Breivik in my example though? He is probably the worst of the worst and the system knows how to deal with him in a way that makes sense, without having to create special arrangements or exceptions for him. Can you name any American criminal for whom this kind of setup wouldn't be sufficient for?

You start with “again”; where was the previous?

There wasn't, sorry - it's a weird habit I have when arguing online.

> If someone does <insert pre-medidated, heinous thing>, do/should I support letting them automatically rejoin society in a maximum of 25 years?

My understanding of places that don’t do life sentences is that at the end of the term the prisoner is re-evaluated to determine if it’s still in the best of interest of the society to keep them incarcerated or not.

For example, in Norway I believe that the maximum sentence is 21 years with the possibility for extensions if they are still deemed a threat.

While there are certainly people who likely do need to be separated from society forever, I don’t think everyone currently serving a life sentence necessarily falls into that category.

My spouse has a relative serving a life sentence for a double murder when he was young, nearly 30 years ago. By all accounts he’s a very different person now and has been rehabilitated. But he’ll never get out, despite that and despite having a support network were he ever released. Does he, in particular, deserve freedom? I don’t actually know him well enough nor the details of his crime to say for myself, but it certainly seems like the US is keeping a lot of people locked up even when it might be better for society as a whole to reintegrate them as productive members.

>Are we optimizing for the law-abiding or the law-breaking?

The entire paradigm shift for retribution -> rehabilitation is that the law-abider and the law-breaker are (or can be) the SAME people. The distinction you are making falls away.

We are all born of the same nature, capable of doing evil. Does that make us all evil people? Separate the sin from the sinner, and create space for repentance

I’m not interested in retribution, but I am highly interested in reducing future crimes against members of society.

If rehabilitation fosters that more effectively than exclusion after an episode of law-breaking, I’m interested.

Data that I’ve seen so far does not suggest that, but showing “released prisoners have a lower or equal rate of subsequent law-breaking than the average member of society” would be extremely compelling.

Crime happens inside of prison just as is happens outside of prison. If you affirm the innate and equal dignity of every human life (assuming here), why optimize for law-abiding outside a prison to the detriment of law-abiding inside prison?

I support enforcing laws both inside and outside prison, but would not be at all surprised to find the base rate of law-breaking inside a prison was higher, giving that the reason prison exists is to segregate proven past committers-of-crime away from free society under a premise that they are likely to do so again.

We should work to reduce that in-prison crime, but not at the crime-risk expense of the never-convicted. Perhaps stricter law enforcement inside prisons is needed if you’re saying that the reforming-to-ongoing-law-abiding within are being victimized by on-going criminal activity.

What GP is saying is that death penalty and life sentences don't incentivize society for rehabilitation. The implications here is that if society was faced with the fact that they have 25 years to fix the person, that's a much greater incentive for rehabilitation than death or life.

I won't argue that the existing system isn't broken. But elimination of life imprisonment and capped sentences of 25 years for all crimes is just absurd.

What about Dennis Rader? He murdered numerous people throughout the 70s and 80s. The details of the Otero family are the kind of thing they don't even write about in fiction. Should he be allowed freedom before he dies? Should he be free today because of how old his crimes were?

What about Jeffrey Dahmer? (I realize he's dead, but that was at the hand of another inmate, and he'd still be alive and well if not for that.) He would be walking free today as a 62 year old if there was a 25 year maximum.

Furthermore, who's going to assume responsibility when people like this are released and then kill again to satisfy the urge within them?

Like I said, I won't argue that what he have needs correction, and I agree with the focus on rehabilitation, but there ARE other things that matter - such as appropriate punishment and protection of society - that still need to be factored in.

It works really well in norway, at the end of the sentence if they are an extreme public risk, such as in those cases, it's extended. But it's very important to have the automatic "we need to extend this" rather than the expectation it's a life sentence built in from the start of serving it.

Fundamentally, prison is about preventing prisoners from committing additional crimes against the populace. We can talk about retribution and rehabilitation but those are justifications for why we used x method instead of y method. Prior to the 20th century we couldn't afford to keep people in prison for a long time so criminals were simply executed. Now that we can afford to keep them alive in prison we lean towards life sentences for heinous crimes.

Choosing long prison sentences instead of executions has externalities. One of which is that now street gangs owe fealty to prison gangs.

People don't go to prison to be rehabilitated and never will. Prison is solely to keep convicted criminals far away from normal people. If rehabilitation is going to happen it not going to be at prisons.

Maybe you should read about the penal system in Nordic countries

In every counrty, exept the US, criminals mostly come out of a prison as a better person. In no other country a prison is just to lock people away. In the US a prisoner is just a kind of perpetum mobile, a unlimited money machine.

"Every country except the US" is a weird way of saying "a handful of rich countries". The US prison system is exceptional for its size, but not for its low quality.

>>People don't go to prison to be rehabilitated and never will

Yeah that's complete nonsense and we have lots of data that proves otherwise. US is really a massive outlier there amongst developed countries.

Shortened title from “The FCC can finally hammer predatory prison phone call companies, thanks to just-passed bill.”, which was too long.

Mentioned bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/154...

Ameelio.org show HN thread (as they’re a non profit in this space): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042558

There was some "how to survive your time in prison" advice for Elizabeth Holmes that I read somewhere, that pertained to this:

Your time on the phone is strictly limited, and it's illegal to buy someone else's. So another convict will "helpfully" offer to trade his for something you have, and then rat you out. Don't do it!

After they report you, the prison guards offer you the choice of time in solitary, or transfer to a higher-security prison.

What another convict gets out of ratting you out?

Usually ratting out fellow inmates gets you bonus points for "good behavior", meaning better chances of getting out on parole or a reduced sentence. Basically, you're being an arse for your own gain - which is the reason why cooperating with the wardens usually makes you the lowest of the lowest on the rungs, even below pedophiles and child/wife beaters.

Huh? You only get bonus points if you do something big like help build a case against someone and I think that's like an actual program that you have to join in advance not just be like 'hey I found this out'. They can't be bothered to care enough about this petty stuff, in fact it's my opinion they encourage a lot of petty scams and hustles as an outlet for people's energy. Source: ran the food service warehouse and cellie ran a ticket.

At least here in Germany, your behavior while in prison definitely matters for early release, parole or commuted sentencing.

(Source: good friend of mine served five years for dealing industrial quantities of pot)

Meanwhile the USA is rapidly legalizing weed.

> cooperating with the wardens usually makes you the lowest of the lowest on the rungs, even below pedophiles and child/wife beaters.

If they really believe that cooperating with wardens is worse than sexually abusing children, then I have zero sympathy for them and zero desire to see their living conditions improve.

I bet it's more that it's something you're doing right now.

Also it's more personal.

This comment has bothered me the past few days so I'm returning to it.

More than thorny and interesting problems with indexing modes and building blocks. Which is frankly sad. I don't know how many kilometers of neurons I've lost to these discussions. Trust me, it's not just your comment.

I understand if you feel the purpose of inceration isn't rehabilitation. Maybe some classes of prisoners should stay in prison forever, due to their threat to others.

I just know that it's tough to resist pressure when you are in a helpless and powerless situation, like I suppose prison might be.

I don't think you should also have to resist pressure for phone scams. There are multiple scams that can be run, and cooperating with wardens can hurt those who were too weak to resist say, giving up two minutes of their authenticated and tracked phone time to an inmate who just needs two minutes with their "daughter." Is the inmate who shared time at fault? Technically yes, but why does the scam succeed? Would cooperating with a warden possibly destroy a person's life in that case who may not be a pedophile? Most wardens are probably good people, and cooperation is of course probably legally required. I wouldn't want to advocate breaking the law. You just hope there is slack once the paperwork train starts rolling.

Making us stronger is a philosophy on its own.

In the same sense, this post is a larger win for government authentication methods. And I didn't want to be a part of it, regardless of the benefit to the incarcerated.

I hope I don't have to be dragged into it in the future. To some people, these discussions may be interesting philosophical debates about justice, rehabilitation and control models that are just as interesting to them. They may have built their life around them. That's awesome, but it's tiring on the other side.

And what warden gains from catching such person? Is there just warden's personal satisfaction in it, or such diligence encouraged by the prison system?

(Disclosure: never been in, although I know someone who was)

I imagine it's not so much as actually ratting you out as, "now I have something on you, so do this for me. Or you'll be sorry."

Yeah no. If dude ratted you out he's the one that's going to have to check himself into the SHU. And if you get caught you just lose your phone privileges for like a month. Now if you get caught with a cellphone that is considered an escape attempt, and yeah, your points go up, you get a new charge, and you get shipped to a higher security yard so probably don't do that even if you really want to facetime with your gf.

> if you get caught with a cellphone that is considered an escape attempt

That sounds really bizarre. :(

I doubt this is the case universally in American prisons given that on the state level there will be rules per state and at least different rules per security level. It may be the case for Federal rules - don't know.

Finally depending on system there may be a great deal of leeway for the warden to set rules on their individual prison.

so much this. i've shared phone time plenty of times, standing right there at the phone so the guy can read my inmate id off my bracelet. i've honestly never even heard of someone ratting someone out for this. if anything the guards wouldn't give a shit because they don't want to be bothered with the paperwork. (unless they have a particular grudge against someone)

but yah, being a rat means extreme violence every yard you get bounced to until you end up in SHU. there's a perverse sense of satisfaction from telling the guards that your race can't protect someone anymore.

Is this Federal prison you're talking about, or state? Holmes will be in Federal.

Not until they fill the FCC position that’s been open since Trump left office. FCC is pretty deadlocked as long as congress won’t vote for the nominated replacement.

Like most agencies the FCC's emphasis is "Federal." I used to have a ton of respect and even admiration for the FCC when I was first getting an amateur radio license, but ever since the net neutrality fiasco and Ajit Pai's complete and total lack of any sense of structure or objective during his tenure for the organization aside from cronyism and smug apathy, its just another appendage to me.

Things like phone spam should have been curtailed 35 years ago, and spam texts are still a huge problem nobody seems to be able to fix either. Prison phone call companies will likely see a few token wrist-slaps and a moderate reform effort die on the vine as evidence the system "works" but ive no faith, none at all, that a system to which private capital and bureaucrats alike reap so much profit from is going to see a big change.

I highly recommend reading https://commsrisk.com (no affiliation) if this stuff interests you. Robocalls are up month over month even with STIR/SHAKEN (https://robocallindex.com/history/time). Essentially, caller ID spoofing is just a symptom of the issue, the truth is that anyone anywhere in the world can get a US number in any area code and start making calls and as long as that doesn't change robocalls will increase. Even if there is a VOIP crackdown a bunch of rogue "carriers" will pop up like they do in Africa where they put a bunch of prepaid sim cards in a box and use them to terminate calls.

Lots of articles like https://commsrisk.com/calls-with-stir-shaken-c-attestation-a..., https://commsrisk.com/us-says-no-need-for-telcos-to-pay-3-3m..., https://commsrisk.com/what-is-the-us-regulator-really-doing-.... I don't think things will get notably better anytime soon.

Ideally they would give us every single hop, and we could just block anything we don't like. I don't want to receive any calls, texts, voicemails from any VOIP number or any number that has a hop outside of the US (or maybe Canada). I have family outside the US, but we communicate using other technology.

If there is any provider at any point that drops any of the info, they should be blocked as well. Just as I am able to subscribe to uBlock Origin lists to automatically online ads, I should be able to subscribe to lists of malicious providers to automatically stop spammers

But even using the current tech, why is anything less than A-grade attestation reaching my phone? As a user of a phone, I do not care if some sketchy phone company can't get their shit together; in fact I consider that to be a good indicator that such a company is a source of spam. Why let them contact me at all?

See https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt. There is a debate to be had over every spam mitigation technique. For instance banning VOIP numbers would prevent most 2fa codes from being delivered and has a high false positive rate in general. What you are talking about with the hops is called "traceback" but is generally rather complicated due to the ways call routing works in practice and is often done manually.

I think email and phone spam differ, in part because there is a semi-centralized authority setup for phone calls, as the FCC and other govt organizations sort of control it along with a small handful of real consumer phone companies (in the US that's just Verizon, ATT, T-mobile). And I think email spam is basically a non-issue for most users nowadays, it's super easy to filter and ignore emails in aggregate.

Your 2FA thing is a good point, but perhaps they could be allowed to do SMS and nothing else. Or I could temporarily deactivate it. The point is, users have no control now.

Tracebacks are definitely something phone companies are attempting (or claim to be able to do so). If some companies don't cooperate, ideally those calls would never complete. If they make phone calls more expensive, I consider that to be a good thing at this point.

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