Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

Comment by glenstein | Hacker News Reader

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>1. The government decides that prisoners can make phone calls, but they can only use a single prison-approved phone operator, and that operator is a private company.

You're saying "the government" a lot, but AFAIK there's no specific federal mandate of any kind to the effect of requiring a specific company handle calls at all jails and prisons. If anything that is the consequence of an absence of any specific regulation rather than the presence of one, which is completely the opposite of the point you seem to be making.

In reality, a variety of completely separate state and local correctional facilities put the service out to bid. If anything, it is federal level prisons that would most fit the description of "the government" where you have the best regulations, where there is scrutiny of the bidding process, where there are already caps to limit the expenses associated with calls.

At the county and municipal level, companies that tend to win the contracts have special deals in the form of a "site commission" payments, which are a kickback to the prisons, incentivizing them to give a monopoly to whichever company charges the most and kicks back the most to the prison.

Edit: I feel like I (1) spoke directly to what the parent commenter was saying (2) stated uncontroversial facts, (3) echoing a point a chorus of other commenters are making about what "the government" really means, but I'm seeing a bunch of drive-by downvotes. Would appreciate if anyone wants to chime in and help me understand what I'm missing.

You’re technically correct, but try to zoom out for a minute and look at the subtlety of human nature.

This topic has fired every one up because it’s unnecessarily cruel, hurts families who didn’t do anything wrong, enriches companies not providing any value, and shows people trying to be “tough on crime” when very ironically they’re probably creating more crime by eroding support systems.

The parent commenter mostly expresses that outrage, and makes a passing comment about business competition.

By this time anything you said that could be perceived as possibly being near the other side of the argument is going to be taken as supporting the other side.

But they are two separate points that can be independently discussed you say? Technically that’s true, but humans don’t work like that.

Always step back and look at the biggest point being made and realize, there may be little room for nuance depending on the context.

I think you are largely right here, but disappointing to see in an HN comment section.

I think you are taking heat from both sides.

On one hand, you are challenging the dominant narrative, so that gets some reaction.

On the other hand, the logic you are using includes bold and unsubstantiated claims about kickbacks, which alienates your message from the remaining readers.

Thanks for the response. Here's some additional substantiation for the stuff about kickbacks. The term for kickbacks is "site commissions":

>Site commissions are payments that phone companies make to prisons and jails in exchange for the exclusive right to offer service to inmates. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said that banning the commissions will "end the practice of provider kickbacks to correctional facilities and payments for costs irrelevant to providing services so callers will no longer be forced to bear the financial burden of these costs."

https://www.wired.com/story/prison-phone-call-fees-fcc-caps/

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I do think it is interesting that the FCC prohibited not just the site commission costs, but also the call surveillance costs. who exactly will pay the surveillance costs now?

There was some strange language in the FCC quotes. 8 out of 12 of the phone providers had a profit before the cost of "safety and security categories that generally are not used and useful".

I guess the charitable take of the FCC statement is that these services are not required by law, but still desirable to prisons?

Funny anecdote: a week after getting out of prison I was hired to listen to these calls and transcribe them. The State's Attorney's office would send me the ones they suspected of talking about illegal activities and were being investigated. None of the calls I listened to had anything illegal going on. Usually the opposite. Securus (the main operator) has a system for detecting certain words, so if you mention "drugs" it gets flagged.

I remember one call from a girl to her wife and the entire call was about how she badly wanted to get clean, the drug classes she was taking, the rehab they were setting up for her after she got out. It was literally as wholesome as you could get, and yet it was flagged for drug crime.

>It was literally as wholesome as you could get, and yet it was flagged for drug crime.

This isn't surprising in the least. The act of flagging shouldn't be construed to imply criminal content. That determination should be made at the time of review.

They would send me the transcripts to tidy up, but a ridiculously cursory review would have shown there was no crime. They had already been through two levels of "review," apparently.

Were transcripts sent to you so you could document evidence of a crime, or evidence that there was no crime?

I was a neutral party just hired to accurately fix the AI-gen'd transcripts, because most of the call is stuff that is fairly slangy prison terms, but the calls would come with unnecessary notes that I didn't need to see where the gov was champing at the bit trying to find crimes where they didn't exist. They were convinced there were crimes happening if they just looked harder.

After that I was given police interrogations, but honestly, when you have to listen to this stuff for hours it is horribly depressing (not because of the crimes, which are often horrific, but more because of the governmental conduct). I had to give it up.

It's an important job though. I've seen transcripts that were entered into evidence that were so totally wrong that it would boggle your mind. And wrong to the point where they logically reverse whole aspects of the case or evidence.

In some people’s minds “the government” is a big amorphous mass which includes everything from the local city planner to congress and the post office and their state DMV. Ignore the downvotes.

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