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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Presumably the reason why inmates don't have unfettered access to the internet is to make sure they're not running some empire from behind bars but at the same time in this day and age this sounds like exceptionally cruel punishment.

If there is one thing that would help an ex-convict to re-integrate into society it would be to be able to read about what is going on in the outside world and to be able to self-educate so they can hit the ground running. After all if you leave jail without marketable skills chances of falling back into crime are higher which eventually serves nobody, least of all society.

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My first startup actually landed me in CA state prison. (Read about my prison sentence and my new project here: http://comebackasap.com/burn_the_boats/ )

Though I "only" served a year, the one thing I missed more than anything --including family, friends, and the touch of a woman-- was internet access. (I love my family, friends, and lady friends but a year away from them wasn't so bad. Fortunately I have no kids.)

I'd literally have dreams about the internet. One dream I remember in particular was winning an imaginary "Inmate of the Month" contest. My prize was an hour of unfettered access to the internet. It was absolute bliss checking my email, Google Voice, Hacker News, etc.) I remember that dream with vivid clarity to this day. It may seem innocuous, but to me it illustrates how we've become so accustomed to an information-driven existence.

While in prison I'd seen numerous sports trivia arguments that resulted in all-out brawls that could've easily been resolved with a 5 second Google search. (Dudes were getting sent to the SHU for as many as 6 months because of a fight that stemmed from an argument over which team Kobe Bryant scored 81 points against. Insane.)

So you may ask, "Why not ask the C.O.'s to look it up on their phones?" It's true, some CO's would do it for us. Others would tell us flat-out "no". But then you have to worry about the dk CO's that would pretend to look it up, then give us faulty information just to stoke the flames of discord amongst us inmates. (I've seen this happen multiple times.)

As you can imagine, there is a lot of storytelling (read: lying) that goes on in prison. Imagine not being able to call a guy out on his nonsense with a couple swipes of the screen. "Oh you're in prison for moving 100 kilos of cocaine? Says here you were convicted for felony DUI." An extreme example but you get the point. In the free world, people simply can't get away with BS when each of us is walking around with miniature super-computers in our pockets.

"Cruel punishment" indeed.

So from what I understand from your story, if you hired the proper lawyers and put in the proper legal structure to properly protect yourself in the first place, you wouldn't of been sent to prison?

Jesus

You're partially correct.

Yes, our corporate attorney was useless. We had been under investigation for a year prior to formal charges being filed. He made a variety of changes to our contracts in an effort to make the company compliant with CA law, (mostly indemnifying us against any loss that may come as a result of a person placing their vehicles in our program.) He failed. I was sentenced to state prison.

Our "proper legal structure" mattered little in lieu of the circumstances that led to the company's (and my freedom's) demise.

> Read about my prison sentence and my new project here

Tip: In the UK, operating a fund which hedges against criminal proceedings (colloquially, a 'bust fund') is a severe criminal offence in its own right.

Do reassure me that you've made very sure nobody where you are is likely to prosecute you a second time :)

Unfortunately there aren't any reassurances I can give you. Several code sections in CA prohibit insurance against "willful acts, wrongful acts and criminal acts." However, Comeback's goal with custodial insurance isn't to make the consequences of being convicted of crimes less severe, it's to reduce the likelihood of recidivism upon release.

In a state where the recidivism rate is a staggering 65%, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to taxpayers, we need something radical to turn things around. Over 40% of the prison population is incarcerated for violating the terms of their probation or parole. Custodial insurance is just crazy and disruptive enough of a concept to make a difference in reducing these obscene numbers.

We're working diligently to garner support amongst community activists, religious leaders, and most importantly politicians in hopes of easing any potential restrictions in offering custodial insurance.

Sadly there's a very real possibility that despite our noble intentions, Comeback may ultimately lead to a failed business and some very heavy fines...possibly even jail time.

> possibly even jail time

Are you really ready to go to jail, yet again? That sounds quite bold, and foolish... of you. (No offense intended.)

My 2 cents: if you start getting sued again, you should just leave the country, for some place[1] with not as inane laws. Perhaps Comeback might be more viable there.

[1] Dunno where though... perhaps somewhere in Europe? They probably have low rates of recidivism to start with, though.

As a side point, I can't help but think -- a lot of the recidivism in the U.S. is somehow driven by laws and a system that continues to be upheld by the "stake holders". The stake holders here are, ofcourse those private "prison-as-a-business" corporations.

>Are you really ready to go to jail, yet again? That sounds quite bold, and foolish... of you. (No offense intended.)

Fortune favors the bold and dances with the daring. I truly believe that.

>As a side point, I can't help but think -- a lot of the recidivism in the U.S. is somehow driven by laws and a system that continues to be upheld by the "stake holders". The stake holders here are, ofcourse those private "prison-as-a-business" corporations.

Bingo. Society has been using non-profit solutions, (i.e. government funded reentry programs) to combat a for-profit problem. It's time to fight fire with fire. Our revenue model relies on our ability to keep our policyholders out of jail. This means we're going to bust our ass to provide career training and job placement to reduce the likelihood of them returning to custody, thus reducing the likelihood of them filing a claim and us having to pay out. Our success is directly tied to the success of our policyholders. The better they do, the better we do. We're making it profitable to keep people out of jail.

Low enforcement might start issuing warrants to hand over your customer list as a list of potential suspects. If I were you I'd start that rumor myself.

> If I were you I'd start that rumor myself.

How would such a rumor help him at all? It would ruin his business!

> Low enforcement

I presume you were using some voice-to-text tool?

The rumor would presumably help him because it would discourage his clients from committing crimes, because they would be under additional scrutiny from law enforcement. It seems unlikely that it would actually matter though, since law enforcement already has a database of convicted felons that they go to first for crimes.

>The rumor would presumably help him because it would discourage his clients from committing crimes,

That rumor would most likely discourage people from becoming clients in the first place.

While "getting out of the building" and talking to our assumed target demo, one of the reservations people had was the belief that we were working in concert with law enforcement.

Please tell me you at least have some paid-for legal advice.

Thankfully we have 2 attorneys sitting on our advisory board.

Edit: That's not to say we have it all figured out by any means. I'd love to read some feedback from the HN community. Not so much legal advice, but in terms of the overall concept of custodial insurance, (an insurance policy that covers a person's expenses for up to a year in the event they get taken into custody.)

Interesting idea. What would the premiums be based on? Were you able to find insurers willing to back this business model?

We've developed some proprietary risk assessment software that takes a variety of risk factors like age, gender, zip code, employment status, # of arrests, etc. and calculates the likelihood of an applicant returning to prison. Based on that, we determine premium amounts, down payment, or whether or not we can write a policy for them at all.

The CA Dept. of Corrections has a similar system called the CA Static Risk Assessment (CSRA) which they use to determine housing for inmates and eligibility for early release. Our algorithm uses far more variables than theirs to determine insurability.

>>>Were you able to find insurers willing to back this business model?<<< Our underwriter backed out at the last minute before launch several weeks ago. We're scrambling to replace them as of this writing. Surprisingly we've gotten interest from a number of different insurance companies to offer this.

Presumably the reason why inmates don't have unfettered access to the internet is to make sure they're not running some empire from behind bars

This is the argument that jailers use, but it really doesn't hold water. The vast majority of prisoners pose no threat to the public, online or in person. Preventing Internet access is nothing more than a way to increase recidivism, which keeps prison guard union dues flowing. This is why various correctional officer unions are constantly lobbying for ever more harsh criminal laws and mandatory sentencing schemes - often for victimless crimes. This strategy has worked; the US incarceration rate is the highest in the world - even higher than countries we think of as crazy that tie criminal laws to religious beliefs. Countless lives have been needlessly destroyed, and countless children have grown up without fathers, so that prison and jail guards can have make their $20/hr.

Some form of Internet should be allowed in correctional facilities. Since entire college courses are readily available for free online, you would think it would be a top priority to grant access to them. However, reform simply isn't the goal of the people that have the power to make these decisions. By enabling prisoners to better themselves, they would literally be working themselves out of a job.

I know that HN likes to solve problems, but I don't think spending time debating the best mechanism to provide internet access to a population that many of us don't understand is worthwhile.

How about someone spend some time learning about best ways to rehabilitate criminals and whether internet access should be a part of that? (I'm poking fun that most of us have science, engineering, design backgrounds instead of Criminal Justice degrees).

It's easy to armchair quarterback a two sentence solution, but I doubt anyone leaving comments is going to change career paths into 'Correctional Facility IT'.

> armchair quarterback a two sentence solution

This is the most succinct description of 60% of HN comments I've seen, I think.

Most workplaces block certain websites anyway so I don't see why they could not do the same thing for inmates. Maybe they shouldn't be using Tor, but I don't see why Wikipedia is a problem.

It is ridiculous how some dangerous inmates manage to communicate with the outside world and continue to commit crimes through their network. By allowing them to use Wikipedia, they can leave coded messages as orders for fellow gang members. This happens with traditional mail and you can bet it'll be more wide spread with Internet access.

I believe prisoners need the ability to learn and improve themselves while in prison but the problem is much more complicated than ban tor and allow Wikipedia.

Give them access to a static, read-only dump of Wikipedia hosted on an internal prison server. Update said dump once every month.

You'd also want to limit it to the most vetted and monitored articles to prevent someone from the outside from leaving coded messages in articles. I figure the more popular articles could spot strange updates and eliminate them.

There's also nothing urgent about the access they get. Articles could be restricted to 1 or 2 years old to further prevent the transfer of timely information.

Honestly, is this really that big of a concern? This sounds like something that may be necessary for the OBLs or <murderous drug lord>s of the world. But in general, this level of paranoia about being able to communicate with the outside world is just insane. It only serves as an easy excuse to exert an obscene level of control over these people's lives.

From what I've seen (in documentaries and the show lockup raw) violent offenders will try to harm the families of prison personnel and others by sending and receiving orders. It's a real problem. It's not as easy as restricting access from just these people because they can force other inmates with Internet access to do their bidding.

Its possible that lower security prisoners can be treated differently.

edit: typo

Sure, the process in my mind is the same as when they are given a TV. There is some level of filtering on what information they can obtain and a time delay of when they obtain it. Regardless there is so much information out there that even if you drop entire categories from a Wikipedia dump, it would still be left with a substantial ammount of knowledge for inmates to learn from.

Isn't worrying about coded info coming into the prison a bit silly, given that inmates have visiting rights? What kind of code could you put into a wikipedia article that you couldn't provide in a face-to-face?

Give them a book. Paper.

What about the articles that teach you how to make moonshine? Or a shiv?

I'm only half-joking, I'm sure the prison authorities would be very concerned with this stuff.

Sure, but what marketable skill are you able to learn with Wikipedia alone?

Knowing nothing about this sort of thing, is this a copyright issue?

No: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Comm...

Not only isn't it a copyright issue, but Wikipedia gives you the download link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

... though using torrents is generally recommended to reduce server load and bandwidth.

How hard it would be to develop a patched browser (on a secured os, plus a firewall of course) that would only allow "read only web access" (not form submitting, no way to manually go to an url by entering it) to a limited number of domains? I guess the number of dangerous inmates with advanced tech skills or outside resources is very low, so you could separate these high risk guys from the rest of the pack. There's the possibility of high risk guys using the low-risk guys to communicate for them, but really, I don't think there are that many "criminal masterminds" out there... I mean the really dangerous ones are either in high security prisons, or they are too smart to get into prison anyhow.

Very hard in a general sense. Many prisons are giving people walled garden access to legal libraries and video conferencing, but nothing else.

I've done some peripheral work for corrections type people -- they don't adopt paranoid thought processes for nothing.

The average drug convict is not a criminal mastermind, but he is a cog in a criminal enterprise that is controlled by smart people. Drug and gang enterprises are real businesses, and they provide support and resources to their employees. They are capable of anything.

This level of paranoia is just insane. Let's not legitimize the war on drugs by elevating any sort of communication with the outside world into some sort of existential threat to civilized society.

If you were the guy working in the prison who is going to get stabbed to death by some inmate, you might feel differently.

Kill messages are so easy to get in as it is that I doubt internet access would have a huge impact. Even so, there are ways to mitigate it. Graduated access due to good behavior seems like an obvious one. The point is, we treat all inmates as if they're potential murderous drug kingpins. And this is exactly why the recidivism rate is so high. There are much better ways to rehabilitate than what we are doing today.

I agree -- I'm not defending the policy, I'm just trying to point out that these polices don't come out of a vacuum. People who run prisons are concerned about the welfare of their people first.

Even a GET is a signal. As henchman on the outside I can create a page, linked from my wikipedia personal page or on some otherwise innocuous page, that says something like "Boss, should I off Big Tony? Click here for Yes, Click here for No" and wait to see which link he clicks.

Using a GET for this is okay, because `kill` is idempotent.

Ask North Korea.

Generally: the answer is to provide a web proxy or mirror with restrictions as to available content. And likely highly logged access.

Rather than a dump on a prison server, it would be easier to get Wikipedia to block the prison IP range from editing. I believe that some schools (high schools/secondary schools, not universities) do this due to high rates of vandalism.

The "prison IP range"? What's that? There are literally thousands of prisons in the US (4500. We've got more than any other country in the world, go us.)

Wikipedia certainly is not interested in the task of trying to track the IP addresses of each of these prisons.

(Also, I can guarantee you that the vast majority of these prisons are served by under-resourced barely-competent IT departments.)

(Also, it may not even be possible to distinguish between 'inmate' IP addresses, and IP addresses used by staff, or even staff working for the department of corrections not even physically at the prison. Why? Because there's no such thing as an 'inmate IP address', because right now inmates aren't allowed to use the internet at all. So you're asking under-resourced barely competent IT departments to set up a new IP address allocation regime. At 4500 different prisons.)

I'm just wondering: is the high incarceration rate in the U.S. somehow connected to it's multi-ethnic makeup?

In Europe, and other places/countries with more homogeneous ethnic makeups, the incarceration doesn't seem to be that high. Scandinavia, for example.

I think it is, in the sense that the US is a country founded on one group of people imprisoning and disposessing other groups of people for economic profit, with those groups differentiated by ethnicity. But NOT if you're suggesting that a place with a hetereogenous ethnic or cultural makeup is neccesarily more violent or something.

Also, in fact, when you say "in other places with X, the incarceration rate doesn't seem to be as high", X can be _anything_. The US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, by a fairly wide margin. So in EVERY other place, with any characteristic at all, the incarceration rate isn't as high. Not in Scandinavia, not in China, not in any part of Africa, not in Mexico, not anywhere. The US is alone.

That wouldn't stop editing through a proxy.

You'd have to have someone white-listing that proxy. And I don't see that happening.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to a few ex-prisoners about basics of websites, digital marketing etc (they are starting businesses). While their digital knowledge is not much, their street smartness and "real" world knowledge is unbelievable - I'd never ever have a tenth of their smartness.

It would be nice if they had internet access (perhaps in some restricted way)

ZOMG! We should totally make a petition to allow inmates to use the internet. How they manage without Facebook & Twitter is beyond me!

Yes, let's make everything ridiculous, that way we can shout down any meaningful debate on whatever subject you don't agree with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_prisons

Australia: Prison-provided devices sometimes available outside of cells under approval.

Canada: No.

Norway: Yes, even in cells.

Romania: A few prisons have inmate-accessible computers, but no internet.

US: There is a 'TRULINCS' program providing supervised access to email (only) in some prisons.

Yes! We should treat them like to rotten criminals they are! Throw them in the hole and toss away the key. That way they will never return[1]!

Oh, wait, that doesn't work. Perhaps treating them like normal human beings instead proves more effective[2].

[1]http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=17 [2]http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/space/publications/recidivism-studi...

Want to treat them like human beings? Don't put them in the damn prison in the first place!

They're in prison because "justice" needs to be done for the crime they committed against fellow human beings. They're in there for _punishment_. Once you start giving them free meals, clothing, warmth, internet, tv - then what kind of punishment is this? Do you seriously want people who have robbed, killed, trafficked, drugged etc to live like that?

Is it good, ideal? No. Is it better than "an eye for an eye"? Probably.

As for rehabilitation, I will not even start to discuss it, prisons and rehabilitation have nothing to do with each other.

Prison exist for two things: a) Punishment b)Rehabilitation. If it existed solely because a) then all sentences would be permanent.

Personally I'd like to see end of prisons, at least for many minor offenses.

Actually, I'd say there's only one reason for the existence of prisons: confinement. As in, removing someone who could otherwise present a physical threat to others.

Prisons might be a deterrent, but locking up people who never caused physical harm to others is insane. Those should be alternate sentences.

Re point "a", it doesn't make that much sense. Why would they be permanent? It should be permanent for very serious offences (murder etc).

For minor offences I agree there shouldn't be a case of imprisonment. I'd send those people to do some community work and maybe learn something good from it.

Because if you don't want to rehabilitate them (i.e. acclimate them to world outside bars), what's the point of releasing them back?

Have you never tried teaching yourself a new skill using online resources?

Assuming you have (hasn't everyone, nowadays? Even just looking up recipes counts...) -- now think about how you'd pick up the same info, without the internet. While in prison.

Obviously there are technical hurdles, but damn -- I really want motivated, supervised prisoners to be able to learn new skills while they're behind bars.

Because I really want them to be able to earn a living & lead a normal life when they get out.

If they can't, what happens then?

Books. They are not backlit, and they get great battery life. Often, they have been localised.

Who is going to pay for books that are up-to-date enough to be useful as a teaching tool for modern life skills?

And which books are easily available to you in prison?

Obviously the tech world is worse than most for how rapidly information goes stale, but still -- compare working with a few copies of things like Netscape 3 For Dummies, Learn Windows 98 in 21 Days and the like with what you can find in 10 minutes searching online.

Also, most books (regardless of the topic) are actually pretty poorly done. Even most instructional books written by experts are bad; the skills in question don't often overlap with the difficult skills involved in effective teaching something complicated with only static text and graphics.

If you want a really good book, you choose your topic then start reading reviews & recommendations online before you buy something.

If you're in prison you won't even be able to effectively research what the good books are, never mind finding them.

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