{"id":136196,"date":"2018-05-02T17:56:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T23:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=136196"},"modified":"2018-05-02T21:34:24","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T03:34:24","slug":"making-prison-a-bit-less-humane-a-bit-less-hopeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/02\/making-prison-a-bit-less-humane-a-bit-less-hopeful.html","title":{"rendered":"Making prison a bit less humane, a bit less hopeful"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prison serves three purposes: to incarcerate (segregate criminals from the general population), to punish (discouraging criminals from committing crimes in the future), and to rehabilitate (to give criminals the ability to rejoin society someday in a productive fashion).<\/p>\n

The American penal system — supported, sadly, by a large chunk of the American public — have largely given up on that third purpose. And as a result, prison becomes more harsh, and more likely<\/i> to create repeat offenders.<\/p>\n

This latest set of policy changes in the federal prison system is emblematic. Books are no small thing in prison. They can be materials that help train or inspire a prisoner in changing their life. They can be a way to occupy oneself that isn’t a communal TV or causing trouble.<\/p>\n

And now, by federal fiat, they will be much, much more expensive, and much less convenient to acquire.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that prisoners should have it easy. But I’m not sure making it harder on them in this way is helpful.<\/p>\n

In parallel, federal prison regs now make it more difficult to stay in touch with people on the outside, by forcing all prisoner email contact lists to be unique — two prisoners with the same friend on the outside, or family member, or pen pal (or, perhaps, journalist associate) will have to go through a special process for both of them to be able to correspond.<\/p>\n

Because further isolation of prisoners is surely going to help them have lives to return to outside.<\/p>\n

And making it harder for journalists to stay in touch with prisoners will certainly improve prison conditions, too, right?<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/a>
\nNew Federal Prison Policies May Put Books and Email on Ice<\/a><\/span>
\nThe Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is quietly rolling out a pair of new policies that could restrict access to books and communications\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prison serves three purposes: to incarcerate (segregate criminals from the general population), to punish (discouraging criminals from committing crimes in the future), and to rehabilitate (to give criminals the ability to rejoin society someday in a productive fashion). The American penal system — supported, sadly, by a large chunk of the American public — have … Continue reading “Making prison a bit less humane, a bit less hopeful”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,350,715,12],"tags":[1546,1545,1547],"class_list":["post-136196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-civil-liberties","category-crime-punishment","category-fourth-estate","tag-penal","tag-prison","tag-punishment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/victorville-penitentary.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12669,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/28\/land_of_the_free_except_t.html","url_meta":{"origin":136196,"position":0},"title":"Land of the Free (except those behind bars)","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 28-Feb-08 8:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Over 1% of Americans are in prison. That's a higher level of the population than in China, or North Korea, or Cuba.\u00a0 Or, if you prefer, than in France, Russia,...","rel":"","context":"In "Crime & Punishment"","block_context":{"text":"Crime & Punishment","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/crime-punishment"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128204,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/01\/who-cares-theyre-only-crooks-right.html","url_meta":{"origin":136196,"position":1},"title":""Who cares, they're only crooks, right?"","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 1-Oct-15 4:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"One key element in reducing recidivism by imprisoned criminals is maintaining contact between them and their families on the outside. It makes sense and it's been demonstrated in studies.Which makes price gouging by phone concessionaires at jails and prisons not only ethically suspect, but societally damaging.Fortunately, it looks like the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26000,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/03\/demographics-catches-up-with-the-prison-system.html","url_meta":{"origin":136196,"position":2},"title":"Demographics catches up with the prison system","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 3-Feb-12 10:23am","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, if you start incarcerating massive numbers of people with lengthy sentences, especially for drug crimes, then, yeah, sooner or later you're going to end up with a prison population that includes a lot of elderly people who require extra care and are in facilities not designed for their medical\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30245,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/13\/the-fundamental-injustice-of-private-prison-ownership.html","url_meta":{"origin":136196,"position":3},"title":"The fundamental injustice of private prison ownership","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Sep-12 3:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Is spelled out quite plainly in the story below. \u00a0\"We'll buy this expensive prison from you and operate it, if you promise to keep it full.\"If you lock people up, you will get money. And if you don't lock up enough people ... well, financial penalties may be incurred.What does\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31419,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/19\/the-prison-phone-scam.html","url_meta":{"origin":136196,"position":4},"title":"The prison phone scam","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 19-Nov-12 1:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Another example of private companies making money off the prison system -- with kickbacks to the state, to boot. \u00a0Of course, the actual victims here -- convicts and their families on the outside -- aren't in any position to complain effectively.And for the thunderously righteous out there who say to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130527,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/01\/the-non-police-state.html","url_meta":{"origin":136196,"position":5},"title":"The Non-Police State","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 1-May-16 5:07am","format":false,"excerpt":"So I wouldn't have guessed this.. Compared to most countries, the US has far fewer police per capita. More prisoners (and, perforce, correction officers), but a lot fewer police. Are the two connected? Do fewer police on the street make for more less deterrence, fewer arrests -- but, therefore, harsher\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136203,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136196\/revisions\/136203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}