Everyone should want prisons to be better; it isn’t that hard to imagine of some unfortunate circumstances that can lead to you or someone you know ending up there; its in everyone’s best interest to keep it effective, efficient and as painless as possible to make it through the system.
rossant · 6h ago
Yes, and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong. The proportion of totally innocent people in prison is all but negligible. Hard to believe but true.
pfannkuchen · 6h ago
While true that some people do end up in that situation, I think the probability of the average hner ending up in that situation is basically zero. The people who are overrepresented in being harassed by police tend to be underrepresented in technology circles.
Yeah brb accidentally sexually assaulting a minor under 16, could happen to anyone.
nujabe · 4h ago
The only person who suggested that was yourself.
> I think the probability of the average hner ending up in that situation is basically zero.
You were proven incorrect. There’s no need to move goal posts, it’s not that serious, just accept it and move on.
pfannkuchen · 4h ago
You have reading comprehension difficulties.
From the post I was replying to: “and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong”
“IF YOU DON’T EVER DO ANYTHING WRONG”
But you are right, interacting with this sort of person on the internet is probably a waste of my own time.
nujabe · 3h ago
I bet you think Ulbricht did something wrong too.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
Anyone thumbing their nose at the feds or sticking their dick in a 16yo knows what the risks are.
Now, that's not to say I wouldn't welcome with open arms the "errors" of the legal system (or tax system, or municipal code enforcement, or pretty much anything else where government really screws people by messing up) being concentrated upon the demographics that make up places like HN. After all, the ignorance of said demographics do the bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to providing the political will to perpetuate unjust systems, for they themselves rarely find themselves targeted by them and when they do they can usually pay the problem away. But I do agree with the person you're replying to, the demographics that make up HN find themselves subject to the kind of law enforcement scrutiny that puts you in prison less than the population average.
stoltzmann · 3h ago
Well, he did facilitate drug trade. I wouldn't call that "not doing anything wrong".
Whether you believe it's morally right or wrong, that doesn't matter - he did violate several high profile laws.
A lot of immigrants read HN, and immigrants are getting plenty harassed these days.
ljlolel · 6h ago
My friend in tech went to federal prison for years (weed)
No comments yet
kelseydh · 5h ago
I never understood why prisoners shouldn't at least have read-only access to the internet.
This is going to become a bigger issue as more and more people think and understand the world through Google searches and LLMs. One reason people who post bail end up with vastly better outcomes in court is because they can prepare for their cases so much better than those stuck in jail waiting for trial.
xboxnolifes · 4h ago
How does one setup a read-only access to the internet?
pcthrowaway · 2h ago
One doesn't "setup a read-only access to the internet". But for information access, I imagine something like Kiwix[1] or El Paquete Seminal (without the piracy of course)[2] would be useful to a lot of people
Another option would be to mitm all web requests from a custom web-browser (install a root cert on all devices) and drop all POST, PUT, and DELETE requests. Prohibit the browser from storing cookies or localStorage, and perhaps maintain an allow-list of sites which can be accessed.
This is obviously not foolproof, but it'd certainly make real-world "request smuggling" much more difficult.
Of course, a better question is if there's really even value to providing read-only internet access in the first place? I understand that for some inmates there might be concerns of them contributing to illicit operations in the outside world, but the rationale I usually hear for why inmates are prevented from computer/internet access has more to do with the "dangerous" information they might access (how to commit crimes in the future, avoid getting caught, etc). And I think both of these arguments are worth our skepticism.
Wait a moment, they can't use computer? I remember read some news about prison people become a programmer or something like that...
ddtaylor · 7h ago
Federal versus state(s).
The Federal system is more-or-less standardized and many have access to many things either on campus or remotely.
The State system is a hodge-podge of nonsense and most States are ran like trash for money reasons.
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
Expanding on this: each state is often run by a mix of public and for-profit institutions and services by crooked corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic, and so there are often incentives like campaign $upport for politicians to find ways to imprison as many people as possible. In Texas, the facilities are like 19th century penal colonies.
astura · 36m ago
So each prison or prison system has its own rules.
But I can imagine a prison allowing people to learn computer skills while also having very limited access to computers. They could have a computer lab that has locked down computers and no Internet access and is accessed with supervision for use only for classes and class assignments.
aspenmayer · 9h ago
Prison is like a SCIF you can never leave.
mikeodds · 8h ago
Equally awkward places to have your phone not on silent
aspenmayer · 4h ago
Could’a swear I turn the ringer off
Was wrong, first burner nick(ed)
Had’a ‘nother one; unsure on vibrate tho
So now my cellie’s shitting bricks
Havoc · 9h ago
Why can’t they just change the rules?
At some point surely everyone involved can see it’s just silly
decimalenough · 9h ago
Why would they?
Put yourself in a prison bureaucrat's shoes. There is no upside to changing the rules, easier legal work or whatever for the inmates doesn't affect them (hell, it might even cause more work). But if they do change the rules and something bad happens (like, shock horror, somebody smuggling in a picture of a naked lady), it's their ass on the line for approving it.
BrenBarn · 8h ago
One answer to that is that prison bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of deciding stuff like this.
moron4hire · 8h ago
The downside for them is more like: prisoners get released earlier, so they don't make their quarterly earnings targets, so that's why their asses are on the line.
zx8080 · 6h ago
Seems pretty serious and probably very real KPI. We live in a capitalist society, after all.
Why does the parent get downvoted?
potato3732842 · 1h ago
Because the majority of prisons are not private and all the perverse "muh headcount, muh resources, muh silo" incentives that you see in government are more applicable.
cmeacham98 · 9h ago
Most people don't actually believe in rehabilitative justice (they'll say they do, but ask them how they think a rapist should be treated).
Thus, fixing this is not a priority to them, if anything they want it to stay this way.
rectang · 8h ago
Rape is not the only crime people get sent to jail for, and at least some fraction of the US population is capable of seeing the imprisoned as human beings.
I agree nevertheless that inflicting maximum misery and pain on prisoners is popular with a substantial segment of the US electorate, and thus there are negative incentives discouraging even simple fixes like the technology changes wished for in this article.
cmeacham98 · 8h ago
Rape is just a useful litmus test, because it triggers the "prisoners are irredeemable and deserve to be treated less than human" emotions in most people who don't support rehabilitative justice.
It's easy to say someone who stole a loaf of bread should be rehabilitated, but when asked about a one-off rapist people will show their true beliefs.
rectang · 8h ago
It’s a bad litmus test because people are at least capable of making distinctions between classes of crimes and the extent to which rehabilitation is practical. Many might support rehabilitation for e.g. petty thieves (or murderers, since recidivism for homicide is low!) but not rapists.
It’s like conducting a “push poll” using such an emotionally freighted and skewed framing — you’re obviously looking for the answer “nobody supports rehabilitative justice” by emphasizing “BUT WHAT ABOUT RAPISTS”.
cmeacham98 · 7h ago
> Many might support rehabilitation for e.g. petty thieves (or murderers, since recidivism for homicide is low!) but not rapists.
This would be an example of not supporting rehabilitative justice, as there's no reason to believe this other than emotional reasoning. As a matter of fact, the evidence suggests the contrary - recitivism rates are _lower_ for rape and sexual assault than most other types of crime, including theft: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorsp9yfu0514.pdf
> you’re obviously looking for the answer “nobody supports rehabilitative justice”
I never said nobody or anything close to it, that's a straw man you've made up in your head. Obviously, some people truly do support rehabilitative justice, but I believe they are in the minority.
awesome_dude · 8h ago
It's not really - the people that believe that the individual was innocent beforehand will always say that he (it's always a he..) can be trusted.
Nothing to do with the rehabilitative prison time.
varenc · 8h ago
Changing the rules is definitely more work than maintaining status quo. Imagine a giant bureaucracy and all the things that are would need to adjust. And granting prisoners even limited internet access is fraught.
A close friend of mine taught physics and programming in San Quentin and for the most part his students couldn't use even a restricted variant of the internet. He told me guards would complain that he was "making criminals smarter".
He ended up hosting a local copy of Wikipedia for student use, but to make the prison staff happy he had to remove any controversial articles from it, like "lockpicking" and any article with explicit imagery.
N_Lens · 8h ago
Total global debt is estimated in excess of 100trillion. We have everything we need to thrive, but we're living within a self created system of indenture for most people.
Why don't we just change the rules?
Terr_ · 7h ago
> Total global debt is estimated in excess of 100trillion.
That number sounds scary, but ask yourself: Who is the debt owed to? Is it to Galactus, Eater of Worlds, who will devour our planet if we fail to pay? No, the debt is mostly owed to other people who have their own debts. Follow the flows around--instead of summing every step--and you'll see the cycles cancel out.
Imagine three people marooned on an island: They could find a shiny rock, slap a price on it, and sit down in a circle, lending it around clockwise until the Total Islandwide Debt reaches $300 trillion, where each resident has $100t in debt (to the person on their right) and $100t in credit (to the person on their left.)
Have these three castaways doomed civilization or enslaved the masses? Will countries deliberately not-rescue them to prevent an economic crisis? Nah.
TLDR: "Total" debt is not a very meaningful statistic.
650REDHAIR · 7h ago
Because changing the rules makes you look “soft on crime”.
There’s no incentive to fix the broken system(s).
AngryData · 9h ago
Sure they could, but who with that capability has a reason to care? To the jail a bad court result from inmates means nothing to them and might even help them maintain prison capacity and politicians don't care because most of the people will never be allowed to vote again.
bsenftner · 8h ago
The courts were weaponized well over a decade ago, by the political party system. It's now a drawn out media fight where no matter what the public loses.
buckle8017 · 9h ago
because they don't trust inmates with computers and they also don't trust their lawyers
Finnucane · 8h ago
because our prison system is designed to inflict as much punishment and cruelty as the courts will let them get away with. Nothing will be changed unless it is forced by law.
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
It's no accident. Maximum cruelty, difficulty, and petty punitiveness are the point because America happily throws away people and doesn't have any concept of reform or reintegration.
No comments yet
alchemyzach · 8h ago
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
virtue3 · 8h ago
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.
N_Lens · 8h ago
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?
bongodongobob · 8h ago
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.
programjames · 8h ago
I think more realistically, they'll argue if the prison didn't succeed in rehabilitating them, they obviously just need a longer sentence.
mulmen · 8h ago
> Revoke it for bad behavior, sure
Why is this an acceptable form of punishment?
unnamed76ri · 8h ago
This reads like it was written by someone who is developing a Batman villain.
awesome_dude · 8h ago
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.
stickfigure · 7h ago
There are downloadable, offline versions of wikipedia.
giardini · 8h ago
"...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?
buckle8017 · 9h ago
Sounds like your lawyer messed up not sending paper copies.
Good thing he saved the $10.
bdangubic · 9h ago
Paper copies?????! What is this, 1999 :-) Many (many, many…) Courts have been fully paperless for years
umanwizard · 8h ago
Sure, but what stops the lawyer from printing out the PDFs?
awesome_dude · 8h ago
Have you SEEN the price of ink????
btown · 8h ago
Don't worry! If ink's too expensive to buy outright, have no fear - you can buy a subscription to Instant Ink and pay... (checks notes) even more! But you'll never need to worry about buying ink again!
ok but the jail is not and he would have gotten the paper copies right away
quietthrow · 9h ago
Aren’t prisons a business run by corporations? And I could be wrong but I recall reading somewhere a while ago that 1 or 2 companies run most of the prisons in USA. As such they probably have no need / incentives driven by market forces to modernize. It’s not exactly a market to begin with in the first place I would say.
bdcravens · 7h ago
There are some private prisons, but overwhelmingly most are run by the state or federal government. However, that makes what you say even more true; they aren't driven by competitive market forces. Of course, many things aren't, and presumably that's the role of government regulations, to protect the public interests and fulfill the social contract. (Whether it does or doesn't is larger topic, and not something I'm trying to address in this comment)
cmeacham98 · 9h ago
New Jersey State Prison is, as the name implies, a state-run prison.
ronsor · 8h ago
Most people are not in private prisons (< 10% [0]), even if there shouldn't be any at all. Of course, there are still many "contractors" and "vendors" (phone service providers, food vendors, etc.) in public prisons which grift everyone.
Public is when the government holds the wallet and pays vendors. Private is when they give a wallet to someone else to pay the vendors.
poslathian · 8h ago
After becoming familiar with the reality of the cost inflation of (in my case local government real estate) development projects vs private I chalked it up to graft, incentives, and mismanagement.
Actually your comment is probably more correct - adds a whole step to move the wallet. Misaligned incentives and mismanagement are probably more equal across public/private than we like to believe
monkeyelite · 7h ago
I'm being a little bit facetious. When the government actually owns/operates the labor or equipment they can do a lot more. In the prison example state COs are certainly better than rent-a-cops.
It's just unfortunate that's how most administrators work. The traditional debate about public vs private usually focuses on different tradeoffs and incentives of the public - but if they are just paying market vendors it's greatly diminished.
bdcravens · 7h ago
Who signs the paycheck of the warden and the officers is another way to differentiate.
monkeyelite · 7h ago
I agree the officer story is the most significant difference, with state COs being more like police - likely to be well trained, have a long term stake in the career, and having somewhat of a social service culture.
jrm4 · 8h ago
The answer to this question is technically no but practically yes.
https://www.idoc.idaho.gov/content/prisons/resident-client-s...
Some of his blog posts in the past several months also highlight the dismal state of prison tech, which I suppose is on-point for this thread:
https://www.sevarg.net/
> I think the probability of the average hner ending up in that situation is basically zero.
You were proven incorrect. There’s no need to move goal posts, it’s not that serious, just accept it and move on.
From the post I was replying to: “and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong”
“IF YOU DON’T EVER DO ANYTHING WRONG”
But you are right, interacting with this sort of person on the internet is probably a waste of my own time.
Now, that's not to say I wouldn't welcome with open arms the "errors" of the legal system (or tax system, or municipal code enforcement, or pretty much anything else where government really screws people by messing up) being concentrated upon the demographics that make up places like HN. After all, the ignorance of said demographics do the bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to providing the political will to perpetuate unjust systems, for they themselves rarely find themselves targeted by them and when they do they can usually pay the problem away. But I do agree with the person you're replying to, the demographics that make up HN find themselves subject to the kind of law enforcement scrutiny that puts you in prison less than the population average.
Whether you believe it's morally right or wrong, that doesn't matter - he did violate several high profile laws.
No comments yet
This is going to become a bigger issue as more and more people think and understand the world through Google searches and LLMs. One reason people who post bail end up with vastly better outcomes in court is because they can prepare for their cases so much better than those stuck in jail waiting for trial.
Another option would be to mitm all web requests from a custom web-browser (install a root cert on all devices) and drop all POST, PUT, and DELETE requests. Prohibit the browser from storing cookies or localStorage, and perhaps maintain an allow-list of sites which can be accessed.
This is obviously not foolproof, but it'd certainly make real-world "request smuggling" much more difficult.
Of course, a better question is if there's really even value to providing read-only internet access in the first place? I understand that for some inmates there might be concerns of them contributing to illicit operations in the outside world, but the rationale I usually hear for why inmates are prevented from computer/internet access has more to do with the "dangerous" information they might access (how to commit crimes in the future, avoid getting caught, etc). And I think both of these arguments are worth our skepticism.
[1]: https://kiwix.org/en/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
The Federal system is more-or-less standardized and many have access to many things either on campus or remotely.
The State system is a hodge-podge of nonsense and most States are ran like trash for money reasons.
But I can imagine a prison allowing people to learn computer skills while also having very limited access to computers. They could have a computer lab that has locked down computers and no Internet access and is accessed with supervision for use only for classes and class assignments.
Was wrong, first burner nick(ed)
Had’a ‘nother one; unsure on vibrate tho
So now my cellie’s shitting bricks
At some point surely everyone involved can see it’s just silly
Put yourself in a prison bureaucrat's shoes. There is no upside to changing the rules, easier legal work or whatever for the inmates doesn't affect them (hell, it might even cause more work). But if they do change the rules and something bad happens (like, shock horror, somebody smuggling in a picture of a naked lady), it's their ass on the line for approving it.
Why does the parent get downvoted?
Thus, fixing this is not a priority to them, if anything they want it to stay this way.
I agree nevertheless that inflicting maximum misery and pain on prisoners is popular with a substantial segment of the US electorate, and thus there are negative incentives discouraging even simple fixes like the technology changes wished for in this article.
It's easy to say someone who stole a loaf of bread should be rehabilitated, but when asked about a one-off rapist people will show their true beliefs.
It’s like conducting a “push poll” using such an emotionally freighted and skewed framing — you’re obviously looking for the answer “nobody supports rehabilitative justice” by emphasizing “BUT WHAT ABOUT RAPISTS”.
This would be an example of not supporting rehabilitative justice, as there's no reason to believe this other than emotional reasoning. As a matter of fact, the evidence suggests the contrary - recitivism rates are _lower_ for rape and sexual assault than most other types of crime, including theft: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsorsp9yfu0514.pdf
> you’re obviously looking for the answer “nobody supports rehabilitative justice”
I never said nobody or anything close to it, that's a straw man you've made up in your head. Obviously, some people truly do support rehabilitative justice, but I believe they are in the minority.
Nothing to do with the rehabilitative prison time.
A close friend of mine taught physics and programming in San Quentin and for the most part his students couldn't use even a restricted variant of the internet. He told me guards would complain that he was "making criminals smarter".
He ended up hosting a local copy of Wikipedia for student use, but to make the prison staff happy he had to remove any controversial articles from it, like "lockpicking" and any article with explicit imagery.
Why don't we just change the rules?
That number sounds scary, but ask yourself: Who is the debt owed to? Is it to Galactus, Eater of Worlds, who will devour our planet if we fail to pay? No, the debt is mostly owed to other people who have their own debts. Follow the flows around--instead of summing every step--and you'll see the cycles cancel out.
Imagine three people marooned on an island: They could find a shiny rock, slap a price on it, and sit down in a circle, lending it around clockwise until the Total Islandwide Debt reaches $300 trillion, where each resident has $100t in debt (to the person on their right) and $100t in credit (to the person on their left.)
Have these three castaways doomed civilization or enslaved the masses? Will countries deliberately not-rescue them to prevent an economic crisis? Nah.
TLDR: "Total" debt is not a very meaningful statistic.
There’s no incentive to fix the broken system(s).
No comments yet
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
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.
How much less are they able to make positive choices for remote 'others', especially people they consider bad?
> 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.
Why is this an acceptable form of punishment?
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.
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?
Good thing he saved the $10.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/instant-ink.html#section=e...
[0] https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in...
Actually your comment is probably more correct - adds a whole step to move the wallet. Misaligned incentives and mismanagement are probably more equal across public/private than we like to believe
It's just unfortunate that's how most administrators work. The traditional debate about public vs private usually focuses on different tradeoffs and incentives of the public - but if they are just paying market vendors it's greatly diminished.