I'd bet that someone in either the legislature or the prison system is getting some "consideration" from the providers of these "free" tablets. Nobody would agree to allow these things otherwise.
I don't think Assemblyman Steve Hawley (R) is being stupid when he's asking "why can't we get "free" tablets for students, too?" I think he's in on it. That's the simplest answer.
What's corrupt about asking for children to be treated as well as prisoners, or to sarcastically argue by contradiction?
Anyway, you could reread the article to remind yourself that the question in the headline is answered in the article. The tablets are subsidized by software and services offered through the device, like an Amazon Fire. (But the services are terrible.)
This is simply a case of a private company shifting costs from the government budget to oppressed and exploited citizens. No "personal" corruption is necessary to explain the situation.
I may seem that this is a trivial conclusion for many of us that take sometime to understand technology. However, this is actually a well tuned selling strategy that get most of the people around the world hooked-up to several paid services with money or they private information:
And by "for apps and music" you mean "allowing each of the implicated inmates to video chat with loved ones for a day and a half, costing the company virtually nothing."
Well, they caught someone. Possibly the actual culprits, but maybe not. Outside of prison, there are mules who agree to, under pressure or otherwise, receive stolen funds, knowing (probably) that they'll be caught. These are "lifestyle" criminals and addicts for whom being in prison is just a fact of life, or people who have found themselves in debt to e.g. organized crime.
What I mean is is there some service that they only have available via the tablets and not some other means? Paper letter vs email, video chat vs in person visit, &etc...
Services like JPay are frequently used in the prison system to replace existing systems, not just to supplant them. It may be made the only way to deposit money into the prison commissary, for instance. Or the availability of video chat through JPay may be used as an excuse to limit the availability of in-person visits. And so on.
I've linked to it elsewhere in this thread (as a response to someone who appears to be ignorant that prison services are an industry), but here's a YC announcement for Pigeon.ly, a YC15 batch that "is building a profitable new category of services for the 20M ppl with family in prison":
Pigeon.ly's creator is an ex-convict who served 4 years of prison time for marijuana business. His first-hand experiences with the cost of telecommunication services is apparently what sparked his startup idea:
> One of these ideas was a way to make prison calls cheaper. There are only a couple of companies that handle the vast majority of communications in and out of prisons because messages and letters need to be carefully screened. Because of this market concentration among players like Securus and JPay, it means that prisoners — who are already vulnerable and often lower-income — get gouged.
> Three hundred minutes can cost $70.
> “While I was there, my eyes really started opening up. I started noticing how grossly inefficient everything was,” he said. “I thought, I know I can solve this problem. This is a real market.”
While I support any effort to improve the situation of anyone being denied communication with their family, lowering the bullshit vendor costs of such a system seems like a cynical approach to what should be a human rights issue. The free market by definition can't operate on a population of a captured sub-population that can't weaponize their own capital to buy better rates.
We need to elect politicians that recognize the horrors inflicted upon incarcerated folks and their families and provide communication with family as a cheaply-provided right, not as a strange sub-contracted service provided within the silly prison economy.
You and the OP article (The wonderful Erica Bryant) both make smart reference to
> family in prison
Too many people have no compassion for prisoner, so it's important emphasizing that exploitation of prisoners rolls over into exploitation of innocent family members.
How can this article possibly be relevant to a non-negligible number of HN readers? (unless criminal-grade risk-affinity is more widespread than I thought?)
I mean, sure, good on JPay; but the interesting details are mostly absent.
EDIT: I don't know what you people are thinking, but I'm not trolling. These are sincerely my beliefs.
This is about the intersection of tech companies with morality and legislation. How can this article possibly not be relevant to a non-negligible number of HN readers? This is like claiming an article about Facebook providing Facebook-only Internet to some rural location in Africa is only relevant if a non-negligible number of people live in that specific place in Africa :/.
HN-material arguably includes Silicon Valley/VC-funded entrepreneurial effort, as success stories tend to spawn competitors or inspiration in other fields. Not sure the origination of JPay, but it competes in the same industry as the HN-seeded Pigeon.ly [0]. That said, I don't understand your metric of measuring a company's potential relevance to HN readers. For any given tech startup, I would think revenues/funding rounds/programmers hired is enough of a relevance metric for the average stereotypical HN-ner. But you think HN-relevance is predicated on what proportion of the said startup's userbase would include the typical HN user?
> It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face
I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face, but in addition to the fully comprehensive summary provided by the text, the article provides an in-text link to the full state contract with JPay; I'm not sure how much more detail it is possible to provide.
> I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face
The past several decades have seen that idiots and their resources are departed less swiftly than before. I gladly welcome solutions to that set of problems.
Just by looking at the text, it looks like 40% of the text deals with JPay's specific business details (pricing for its services), and 30% of background info (e.g. a description of the contract, services rendered, the specific government dept.). And 30% rhetoric, arguing that this is an exploitative deal and that lawmakers have not performed due diligence in considering the long-term impact of this revenue model. Not sure what the right proportion of content mix is needed to make this a legitimate article in your eyes, but consider that not everyone feels the immediate need to argue the public policy position.
The primary relevance is that this looks at the business details of a tech startup, JPay, which is in the not-insignificant industry category of incarceration services (estimated 1 to $2 billion) https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-...
The secondary factors of relevance are: hardware sales, the increasing use of mobile/tablet computers, the impact of private contractors on the cost of government, and interesting/controversial pricing schemes.
Personal attacks, flamebait, and acerbic sprinkles ("oh please", "sigh", "yawn", etc.) are not ok. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
I think it's fine to accept that this article was written by what seems to be a pro-prison reform group (I saw it retweeted by a friend, who I believe works in that area), but that doesn't make it irrelevant to the tech entrepreneurial crowd. Just as pricing strategies and revenues for pay-to-win mobile games is interesting to folks here who have no intention on playing such games.
But yes, there is an additional element of public policy discussion, particularly whether we should be cautious of the wider consequences of seemingly no-strings-attached contracts. Not everyone shares your clearcut perspective on what amenities convicts should have access to. But the bulk of these costs are borne by the families of these convicts, who are generally not morally culpable in their family members' crimes.
To start, the US (Main HN audience) incarcerates 0.716% of its population. Add on family of those incarcerated, and prison rights immediately effect a sizeable portion of the population. Then there is the societal effects of how we treat those who are incarcerated. Prison is a punishment, but that does not strip prisoners of their rights. The punishment is that they are no longer free to go where they will. Enforcing that happens to come with other downsides, but no part of enforcement includes 'price gouging by state sanctioned monopolies'.
Now, HN isn't supposed to be political. This is where the tech angle comes in. The stuff about using free devices to peddle services. In this specific case, there is a state sanctioned monopoly that exacerbates the issue. Note that some of these services supplant others; meaning that inmates don't have alternatives.
> To start, the US (Main HN audience) incarcerates 0.716% of its population. Add on family of those incarcerated, and prison rights immediately effect a sizeable portion of the population. Then there is the societal effects of how we treat those who are incarcerated. Prison is a punishment, but that does not strip prisoners of their rights. The punishment is that they are no longer free to go where they will. Enforcing that happens to come with other downsides, but no part of enforcement includes 'price gouging by state sanctioned monopolies'.
We don't have the kind and extent of unjust laws that would give me the ability to care one iota about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to break them.
> Now, HN isn't supposed to be political. This is where the tech angle comes in. The stuff about using free devices to peddle services. In this specific case, there is a state sanctioned monopoly that exacerbates the issue. Note that some of these services supplant others; meaning that inmates don't have alternatives.
Right, that's the beauty of it all, but the article buries it in the midst of a bunch of humanitarian bullshit. (pardon the pleonasm)
> We don't have the kind and extent of unjust laws that would give me the ability to care one iota about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to break them.
Just because someone broke a law doesn't mean they should lose all of their rights. The reason for various levels of penalty (from a fine, to some prison time, to life in prison, to execution) is so the penalty can be proportionate to the crime. By extending your reasoning, one might conclude it is fine to execute every single prisoner. After all, they are criminals.
I have heard people say that prison rape isn't a bad thing, because those getting raped are criminals anyway. Do you agree with that?
All of this ignores the more practical matter of reintegration upon release and the message we are sending to the loved ones of prisoners. If the systems society has set up were exploiting them, can we really expect them to then have faith that trying to work with society will help? The same goes for their loved ones. They see the same unfairness in the system, will they feel like society is fair? like it pays to do what society wants?
> I have heard people say that prison rape isn't a bad thing, because those getting raped are criminals anyway. Do you agree with that?
The victims being criminals makes the "is it a bad thing?" question all-but-irrelevant. I would have thought that obvious.
> All of this ignores the more practical matter of reintegration upon release and the message we are sending to the loved ones of prisoners. If the systems society has set up were exploiting them, can we really expect them to then have faith that trying to work with society will help? The same goes for their loved ones. They see the same unfairness in the system, will they feel like society is fair? like it pays to do what society wants?
It is unnecessary to make people feel like it pays to do what society wants (as true as that may be), as long as they feel like it hurts to do what society abhors.
> The victims being criminals makes the "is it a bad thing?" question all-but-irrelevant. I would have thought that obvious.
So summary execution of every criminal ever would be fine?
I really don't follow your reasoning here. You seem to hold that criminals are essentially not human, and not due any consideration. If so, I don't see us coming to a resolution.
I don't think Assemblyman Steve Hawley (R) is being stupid when he's asking "why can't we get "free" tablets for students, too?" I think he's in on it. That's the simplest answer.