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Comment by alchemyzach | Hacker News Reader

If prison is going to claim to be rehabilitative then access to word processors, and even some websites (jstor, wikipedia, etc), is a bare minimum requirement imo. Revoke it for bad behavior, sure, but it should otherwise be available several hours per day.

And to all the vindictive sociopath losers out there who want prisons to just inflict max pain all the time - do you not realize improving prison quality of life directly benefits you and could even save your life? Brutalizing a man with harsh conditions, treating him like a wild animal for months/years on end, and then releasing him is just going to make him 5x more angry and dangerous upon release and less likely to assimilate, but now here he comes walking down the same street as you and your loved ones

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Otherwise they just learn how to be better criminals from other inmates.

Life is really tough on the outside for a lot of prisoners. I’m extremely in favor of helping them lead successful and productive lives on the outside that don’t need to rely on crime.

Oh this is easy.

> Brutalizing a man with harsh conditions, treating him like a wild animal for months/years on end, and then releasing him is just going to make him 5x more angry and dangerous upon release and less likely to assimilate, but now here he comes walking down the same street as you and your loved ones

"Maybe he should have made better choices" they say, as they smugly reference an eye for an eye in their text sent from God.

I think more realistically, they'll argue if the prison didn't succeed in rehabilitating them, they obviously just need a longer sentence.

> Revoke it for bad behavior, sure

Why is this an acceptable form of punishment?

I would argue that a significant proportion of people are unable to act in their own immediate best interest - they actively make choices that create their misery, sometimes even knowingly punishing themselves.

How much less are they able to make positive choices for remote 'others', especially people they consider bad?

It seems the rehabilitation strategy for a lot of offenders in prison is to merely take away their youth and hope that middle and senior age decline keeps them out of trouble. For some people this might work but the opportunity cost is absolutely enormous.

Because wikipedia is editable by _anyone_ it's probably not the best for prisons - it would provide a means for communication that wasn't able to be monitored.

I mean, if you were in prison and had access to Wikipedia, I could edit, or put something on the talk page, that was a message to you.

You would look up the specific page, and get the message.

There are downloadable, offline versions of wikipedia.

This is an excellent point. Wikipedia is explicitly not a primary source so any access to it should include the sources as well.

This reads like it was written by someone who is developing a Batman villain.

"...make him 5x more angry and dangerous..."??

Laughable: maybe it's the prison food. But perhaps to be cautious we should increase the gruel and reduce the use of red meat *a la'" Oliver Twist?

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