back

by rhgraysonii·11y ago·view on hn ↗
I can speak to this personally.

My father is currently in a federal prison. I do not want to reveal sentencing, names, etc. but I deal with Jpay on a daily basis.

Their core currency is 'stamps' if you are technologically literate.

It is $4.50 to be able to buy 12 'stamps'

It takes one stamp to send an email, plus one stamp per attachment.

Beyond this, there are music 'credits', video call 'credits', etc.

It is a fucking racketeering ring. I literally keep a Windows laptop so that I can have video calls with my father because its incompatible with OSX and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 in my case)

Would love to hear a way to make a difference here...I've thought of nothing.

3 comments
Sadly the only way to a make a difference, presuming you're in America, is to get a movement going to reform the penal system. The reason it's sad is that for many Americans the point of prison is punishment rather than rehabilitation. So they're happy with people going through hell, 'cause you know, they deserve it.

Your best bet is to find an existing rights group to pursue the changes. It will be a hard sell since the US moved to a private system. This means that the states and fed will have less direct control of things. More red tape and contract negotiations.

The two big issues in the US prison system are:

1) Treatment of prisoners

2) Number of people in prison

As a country we need to improve treatment and reduce the number of people imprisoned quickly.

If there is anyone located in San Francisco or northern south bay that wants to get together and do a hackathon with the focus of building something that generates either awareness or solves a particular problem we should meet up for coffee. I can meet anywhere in the Mission to discuss it. (Contact info in profile). I am currently swamped running my business but I would figure out a way to take a weekend off to build something.

the revolution will not be appified
i agree, but in a world where "going viral" determines what people pay attention to (almost always stupid shit), maybe figuring out how to make socially valuable things go viral is an important approach.
Though the US has some private prisons, they are a minority by a wide margin. And other countries use them as well; the UK has 11% of its prisoners in private prisons and apparently are working on expanding (according to Wikipedia).

The county jail referenced in this piece is almost certainly not privately owned.

A position similar to yours has been countered on HN before... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8562786
> find an existing rights group to pursue the changes.

If you're fine hanging out with a mix of Christians, Agnostics and Atheists who occasionally quote scripture in support of their cause, check out the Quaker Prison Fellowship.

I will suggest that one obvious answer is to try to develop a competitor for Jpay and see if it isn't possible to arrange for people to have another option, even if individuals in prison don't get a choice, maybe a few prisons would take the option and then at least a subset of prisoners would be less screwed over by this system.
In addition to virmundi's suggestions, find your state and/or federal representative and talk to them about it. While it's not likely to make a big impact, these are the people who have the most sway in this regard, and you never know what might 'take' with them.