FCC closes "final loopholes" that keep prison phone prices exorbitantly high
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Phone contact required sign up at a web page, which was some web service that to sign up looked like it had been written in 1995 for aol by a 12 year old, and even attempting to sign up didn't work on any browser I tried (I'm pretty sure Internet Explorer 6 might have worked though). The site was almost laughably bad to the point I couldn't imagine any actual security involved in them taking any payment information.
I sent him some books, and told him I'd tried, but I wasn't dealing with some insecure amateur web service that was certainly created by the nephew of whoever runs his prison.
I know that prison is meant to be punishment, but the industry that has sprung up around it is so exploitative and pitifully gross toward both the prisoners and any family/friends they might have it only left me even more disenfranchised with the state of the US.
I feel for anyone that has or had to deal with someone in prison. I'm glad for someone with decency in the FCC to finally agree to fix the prison phone cost exploitation.
That’s one purpose, but for the many people not in for life, rehabilitation (or the less controversial: prepare for re-entry into society) has to be at least some component of their purpose, and on this metric the things they do seem to be massively counterproductive.
Ex-gf of mine was a clinical psychologist who deal with marginal people including prisoners. She said a lot of people in jail and prison have mental health problems. And jail and prison makes those worse.
There are things that convince me that whatever species eventually leaves earth to colonize the stars won’t be Homo sapiens in a meaningful sense, and this tendency is one of them.
> The FCC's draft order said that even with the new caps, potential "revenues for eight out of 12 IPCS [Incarcerated People's Communications Services] providers exceed their total reported costs when excluding site commissions and safety and security categories that generally are not used and useful in the provision of IPCS.
The FCC should be commended for closing these loopholes, but it's notable that these prison phone companies are still profitable even at these significantly lower rates. That indicates that the relationship here was (and is) purely extractive and should be operated purely at cost, if not banned outright.
This sounds like a quick route to prisons with no working phones.
Better: ban prison-phone monopolies and unbundle the prison-specific security component from the calling component. The latter is a commodity. The former can probably be done remotely (or by AI listening for naughty words).
I agree; if you want the less terse version of my view, it's that the right to communicate (not necessarily privately!) with your loved ones from prison should be enshrined in law. There shouldn't be any profit in it; it should be one of the costs of operating prisons (and, by the numbers in TFA, a very small one).
Sure. My point is turning it into a pure cost centre almost guarantees it will be ignored.
That said, I’d support a certain number of minutes being required to be provided to every inmate every month for free, provided they aren’t in a high-security prison or otherwise high risk (where their calls need to be manually monitored). That simplifies the problem from maintaining infrastructure to ensuring it's being properly provisioned.
> This sounds like a quick route to prisons with no working phones.
I don't think so, and it certainly wouldn't be with sufficient oversight.
> the prison-specific security component ... can probably be done remotely (or by AI listening for naughty words).
Come on, it's not like they monitor prison phone calls to keep the inmates from swearing. It's to prevent inmates from coordinating criminal activity from inside prison, and no "AI" is going to be able to detect and prevent that.
Show HN: Ameelio.org – Free Prison Communication Platform -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042558 - May 2020 (90 comments)
Show HN: Ameelio – Free and Open Source Prison Communication Platform (Part II) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23701356 - July 2020 (2 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39376264 (CTO comment on policy 5 months ago)
Thank you! Yes we are extremely excited about this decision from the FCC. The next 6 to 12 months (depending on average daily population (ADP) of the facility) are going to see some big changes, in my opinion for the better. With this decision in place, there are still lots of implementation details to figure out so it's still early to say how it will all land, but this is good news for justice-impacted people (especially incarcerated people & their loved ones).
that's literally all we're asking for!
the only political difference I have with many of you is where absence of Congress or inability of Congress to pass anything means that the agency should do something. I agree that a denial of service by the courts is bad and sad, but I don't agree that something should happen just because Congress won't pass a law.
I think partisan stuff is never going to pass so stop trying, and surface representatives that can bridge consensus so that Congress does grant authority to agencies for modern relevant things.
Seems bipartisan? All five approved of part, four of all.
It passed the Senate by unanimous consent. The next morning at 9:48 am it was received in the House.
At noon there was a motion in the House to suspend the rules and pass the bills. That's done for non-controversial bills with broad bipartisan support. The motion passed within a minute.
After such a motion passes there is up to 40 minutes of debate on the bill. For this bill that lasted 10 minutes and then at 12:10 pm it passed by voice vote.
If Trump gets elected and decides the FCC's regulatory powers are bad, I promise you it will not matter how many republican senators or house reps voted for this before. I cannot think of a single incident in the last 8 years where a member of that party showed the slightest bit of ideological consistency, save McCain, who's dead, and maybe Romney, who's no longer a senator.
My organization (Ameelio) works with anyone we can to provide free-of-charge communication services to incarcerated people and their loved ones (and increasingly legal and medical services), and we have almost a perfect split between "red" and "blue" states/areas. Regardless of your priorities, there's somethign important in this. Whether you believe that it's a fundamental right that people are being denied, or whether you care only about tax dollars (keeping people in touch with the loved ones dramatically reduces recidivism, which saves a lot of tax dollars), there's something to love about this. There will no doubt be some pains as the industry readjusts, but this isn't going to be reversed just because a new president of the opposing party takes office.