[1] https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/prison...
Do you have a good explanation for this? I haven't though about prisoner rights much. The obvious layman view of this is "the whole prison thing is about restricting access to resources"
I think "reasonable"[1] access to communication & informational resources is a sensible bedrock upon which to guarantee that people who've done wrong and completed their proper punishment can spend their time and energy preparing to lead a more productive life after they are free.
[1] What this word means always causes a fight but at least we're talking about it.
In the US, I believe the overwhelming preference of the public (the "obvious layman view") is that prison should be punitive. Other cultures seem to find success with more rehabilitation-focused approaches.
This then means that the government has to go to third parties and contract with them to provide those goods and charge the people using them.
For example, an ankle monitor - the state can't provide it and give it to the person for supervision and so the third parties who make them have a captive customer base - both the state and the individual.
When looking at items inside prisons, there are special requirements for them. They need to be transparent so that contraband can't be hidden in them. There are a number of other requirements for it too. It must run on batteries that can be purchased. This creases a very small market which in turn results in higher individual prices.
It is a complex topic that from one side or the other can appear to be clear cut - but the boundary between those sides is incidentally complex that results in a market that has prices much beyond what would be considered to be reasonable ... but the alternative is even more expensive or restrictive.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-one-of-the-l...
Sure, you need to keep someone who murders people away from the general population. That purpose of prison is restriction.
However, you have way more people in "prison" for things like drug possession. The purpose of prison in that case should be rehabilitation. You can help people kick their drug problem as well as gain education that they likely missed for various reasons. "Restricting" these people's access to resources is counterproductive.
The problem is that people in the US have forgotten that the purpose of incarceration should be about "paying your debt to society" and that afterward you should be reintegrated.
It's also an issue that people in the US seem to believe that prison has a deterrent effect. By and large, it does not (white collar crime being the exception--but we never hear about increasing the penalties for executives). People who are committing crime are not going to be deterred by small adjustments to prison sentences. They know that going to prison is a risk and are doing it anyway.
Some argue that prisoners do not enjoy access to any constitutional rights, or perhaps only a few of them. But if this were true, surely the Constitution would have explicitly established them as a specific underclass, as it did for slaves.
Some want prison to be a hard punishing experience and are fine with low quality of life and forced labor, because they believe that this sort of punishment will make criminals regret doing crime, and discourage future people from doing crime. This is the same logic that leads to supporting the death penalty (deterrence).
Others want more of a Nordic model, where prisoners are given essentially a basic but relatively-well-appointed studio apartment, good food, activities, etc - but also with a lot of mandatory therapy and "social rehab" classes and stuff like that, in order to reform prisoners back to model citizens.
Really what it comes down to is what we believe is the source of crime. Are criminals regular people who made a bad choice (and thus the source of the decision can be found and rectified)? Or are they a different kind of person more likely to do crimes (and thus must be locked away from society without bothering to try and "rehab" them)?
Like anything it is an incredibly complex and nuanced problem. But personally I think we should all agree that if the State is going to maintain the power to lock people up, we shouldn't allow doing so to become a profit center.
Access to a tablet and messaging outside the prison is hardly a "basic resource" and it's likely an avenue for exploit.
Should we treat prisoners like humans? Sure. Should they be comfortable? Not so much.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90249550/can-screen-time-replace...
Studies have shown that continued contact with family and friends while incarcerated increases the chances of having a support network upon release.
I regularly message about a dozen people in prison on a daily basis and 95% of my communications is help with finding housing, finding jobs, education, and legal information to help fix issues with their criminal case.
I was in for 10 years myself, and I can tell you the last month where I finally had a tablet was the most productive of my time inside. The number of connections I made that helped me when I got out was life-changing.
p.s. these tablets are generally super-cheap Ali Express style junk with literally the worst software you've ever seen. Imagine going on UpWork and saying "I need some messaging software for Android. No bug fixes or support required. Just has to take $$ and occasionally work. Willing to pay US$40 for the app." -- that's probably how the thing got made. Some first time coder followed a YouTube tutorial and then deployed it to a million devices.
And not that, they're publicly traded corporations who have to meet Wall Street's profit expectations. Sickening, if you think about it.
Why prisoners, in particular? As you say, they don't exactly have easy access to online resources to begin with.
They might as well offer free pap smears to incarcerated men. They won't take advantage of the offer, but you sure look philanthropic as you pocket the grant money that funds this initiative. In a few years you can shut it down, citing lack of use.
And jstor being opaque as it is, it is the perfect recipe for zero discoverability.
I understand the struggle here. I was interviewing at that company at one point, and it was difficult to do research on them and the Jstor platform for the reasons you listed.
I think they started doing this during the pandemic.
The personal account allows you to read up to 100 articles online every 30 days. "Online" means you can't download the article as a PDF, for instance. It's cumbersome to have to read stuff online only, but better than nothing.
University accounts are nicer, since you can download articles and read offline. On the other hand, most schools won't carry all the journals that JSTOR holds.
I really, really miss sci-hub and being able to read research papers. Before sci-hub there were a handful of forums for requesting and fulfilling full text papers. But those forums basically died because sci-hub was so easy and useful. And now that sci-hub is dead there's nothing.
It is probably a good idea to first check to see if there are any such libraries in your area that offer such success before turning to prison.
If this is in the realm of "unimaginable goals" for them, then public access to science is infinitesimally unlikely. What a joke of an organization.
