Massachusetts becomes fifth state to make prison calls free

> In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them.

Which is equivalent to "if it is good for them it should likely cost prisoners something" i.e. "if it is good for them it likely should not be free for prisoners".

I'm aware that the hnarn's comment said "you" instead of "prisoners", but the principle of charity leads me to assume that hnarn meant specifically a prisoner rather than any person. And regardless, the answer to the question "Can you find a “shouldn’t“ part in my response?" is yes.

Don't believe me? Look at industrial cities like Cleveland where the poor areas are concentrated phyiscally downwind of the factories, and the wealthy areas are either upstream on the West side or further away on the East side, where they built a private train for themselves that allowed them to be further from the city while keeping commuting distance. This line is now the RTA Blue/Green line, and if you do a street view of the line in Shaker Heights you'll see that it runs straight down a boulevard of period mansions.

The wealthy can avoid almost every negative externality they create:

Underfunded public transit in NYC? Just take a helicopter to work.

Too many people are poor and crime is high? Hire private security and live in a gated community.

The poor are mad at you every time you go out in public and have their pitchforks at the ready? Fly private, have your assistant pick up your coffee, dine out in a private room, spend time in places the poor can't afford to go like your yacht or Monaco.

In Science Fiction, they go as far as moving off-planet, like in Elysium.

If things that were good for society were profitable we'd be living in a Star Trek utopia by now.

You're right, but in the wrong place.

You're paying for another big expense when the person commits another offense and ends up with another round of prison. BIG bucks. If you'd just paid for their phone calls when they were in the last time, you'd have had a much better chance of not needing to spend that additional money.

I mean thats what things are like based on previous Supreme Court rulings [1].

You have no privacy or expectation of privacy in prison, this includes communication with the outside world.

There as with all things of this nature some nuance to this, but bottom line telephone communications are allowed to be tapped without a warrant so long as the phone isn't given under false pretense of being unmonitored, which leads to expectation of privacy [2].

Its seems odd to be debating this since at it base prison is an act of depriving rights. You cannot have a private conversation with your family nor can you have dinner with them or go anywhere because you are in prison...

It basically in the 5th amendment: "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

You have been deprived of liberty through due process of law...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_v._Palmer

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(United...

Drugs being illegal is batshit insane and literally keeps the cartels in business which destabilizes entire countries and kills way more people than having legal drugs.

Anyway thats a whole different conversation.

That being said theres this weird liberal trend to feel sympathy for murderers. And in my book if a person is a murderer or rapist or something, they need to be in a dungeon not a comfy prison with internet.

But for the bullshit you got in for Im glad you were able to find a good spot and make the best of the situation.

Hope you can get some sort if early release situation.

For one its possible to encourage good behaviour by threatening to take it away but also because a sense of purpose and achievement is important for a healthy mental state. That's true for incarcerated people as well and a stable population reduces enforcement costs and churn among the guard personal.

Concepts of justice are old. They tend to include these elements, though I’m open to seeing how others formalize its aims.

> when victims and victim families are interviewed on this subject, most of them aren't terribly satisfied by criminals being "punished."

Source needed. Also, retribution reduces not only victims taking the law into their own hands, but also the public.

Note that I am not saying every incarceration needs a retributive component. The American justice system is absolutely too retributive. But it’s an old institution [1] for good reason.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retributive_justice

I'm not sure this is true for society at large. There's zero chance that Elizabeth Holmes will pull off another Theranos, or that Sam Bankman-Fried will pull off another FTX. It's hard not to see their sentences as being entirely for retribution and deterrence (deterring others). And few if any comments here took issue with that.

> Not sure what the value of retribution is other than deterrance

It's irrational. But it seems fundamental to human nature. If you remove deterrence, victims and those who identify with them--which in the modern world is increasingly the public--take justice into their own hands.

The 1984 subway shooting acquittal is one example [1]. Goetz shot four people in cold blood. He was obviously guilty. But the jury acquitted, because he was seen as acting justly. (The four kids "allegedly tried to rob him," and there was a lot of unpunished robbery in New York at the time.) The reaction was in excess of self protection. But the public bought into the vengeance narrative because the criminal justice system wasn't doing it for them.

Another example was Chesa Boudin refusing to prosecute someone who unintentionally killed a kid. He said it wouldon't bring the child back. Which is true. But that infuriated the victim's family. They wanted revenge. (They got it through the recall. But most families don't have recourse to the political system to sort things out peacefully.)

> substantial number of inmates commit crimes while in prison

Not on the public. But yes, we fail at this.

> We need to find a better way

I agree. I'm describing tenets of justice. We fail to do justice in America--we do not deter, we do not incapacitate and we certainly don't rehabilitate. We're okay with restitution and retribution, though it's a statistical versus comprehensive approach.

That doesn't undermine the theory, however, which has persisted for millenia and across cultures for good reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...

Inmates see you coding all day? lol And they aren't that stupid, they know people working in the "computer business" make money.

if it's just going to a bank account somewhere though, whatever. keep your mouth shut, tell em you're getting $3.24/hr, and then go on a bender when you get out with all that saved up cash.

Not paying a fine? You committed a crime that led to the fine. The not paying is an after effect.