
Between the Bars: Snail-mail blogging for prison inmates - mbrubeck
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20101114-00
======
Derferman
After reading the article, I looked into similar services available online.
While I couldn't find any blogging sites, both WriteAPrisoner[1] and
PrisonPenPals[2], while dated, offer to connect visitors with incarcerated pen
pals.

Even more interesting, however, is that the State of Arizona banned these
types of interactions in 2000[3], only to have to the law struck down as
unconstitutional four years later. Specifically, the law banned any "attempts
to correspond with a communication service provider or remote computing
service" such as the sites listed above.

[1]: <http://www.writeaprisoner.com> [2]: <http://www.prisonpenpals.com> [3]:
<http://www.ojr.org/ojr/law/1082592378.php>

~~~
araneae
Arizona is notorious for all kinds of crap like this. For instance, they
regularly use exposure - putting people out in the sun - as punishment. One
women died as a result of this treatment, and no one was prosecuted:
[http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/09/marcia_powe...](http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/09/marcia_powells_death_unavenged.php)

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pyre
I found this one interesting: <http://betweenthebars.org/posts/28/untitled>

~~~
bugsy
That is interesting indeed. Here's a couple of articles on what got him in
there: [http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/09/ex-marine-
gets-16...](http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/09/ex-marine-
gets-16-years-for-bolingbrook-standoff.html) and
<http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35215>

I'd have posted it on the site, but unfortunately it doesn't allow anonymous
comments or easy sign up (have to come up with a email address and a password
and then validate it, bah, I prefer the reddit/HN username+password only
design anything beyond that is too much bother).

~~~
yourcelf
Thanks for the feedback. We're testing confirmation-less registration now and
will likely roll it out later today. It's very important to us that people
find it easy to comment (though that's checked by concern for keeping a handle
on abuse, given the politics of the site's content).

best, Charlie (BtB staff)

~~~
bugsy
Thanks very much for the reply. Topix has an analysis at
[http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-
numb...](http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-numbers.html)
of the effects of allowing "anonymous" (no registration, but still with an
alias) comments. The results were the percent of abuse didn't change either
way since trolls and the like have lots of free time to grab a public email
account, but no-registration greatly increased the amount of contribution, and
possibly the quality since professionals with limited time and high quality
contributions are perhaps less likely to deal with the rigamarole of
registration.

Topix does still have a lot of bad comments, but it's more the nature of a
small town political board and so attracts a lot of gossip and low IQ people.

I think a better design is HN/Reddit where one has to register but email (with
confirmation if presented) is optional in the registration and all registering
does is validate the user with a captcha and group their posts so they can be
found and maintained (edited/deleted) by the user. I think that topix would be
well served in fact to make the slight adjustment to switch to hn/reddit
style.

Of course both reddit and HN are notable for having virtually no noticeable
spam and being relatively free from abuse especially compared to boards with
registration like yahoo news discussions.

Reddit HN and topix all do have a comment feedback mechanism though so that
may provide social feedback regarding appropriate comments. These mechanisms
do have a weakness though in that they are often used to punish unpopular
points of view even when reasonably presented.

OK, so that's on the topic of the social effects of registration methods. I
also want to talk about the value and tech implementation of anonymity on such
a site but I'll start that in a new comment so as to segregate these.

------
vdm
Could a snailmail/sneakernet gateway to the Web be implemented for prisoners?
Email/telnet WWW gateways were used in the early days for people who couldn't
install clients, were on intermittent connectivity, etc.

I must admit to fantasising about truckloads of paper rolling in and out of
prisons until somebody says "Enough" and gives them Internet access.

The carrier pigeon RFCs could actually be put in to practice here, just think
of the potential.

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spudlyo
This is a good idea, but transcription for me is a must. Reading the
handwritten (sometimes typed) scans of the prisoners writing is just too
irritating for me, a person who increasingly relies on _Readability_ to read
just about anything on the web.

The last time I looked at freeware OCR software, the accuracy left much to be
desired -- but I think it'd be a start, at least on the typed correspondence.

~~~
pyre
It is transcribed. Just scroll past all of the scanned pages. And seriously,
some of the penmanship is pretty good. (e.g. This one seemed very stylized to
me, and a lot better than the chicken scratch that a lot of people write with:
<http://betweenthebars.org/posts/27/scarred-walls-and-more>)

~~~
spudlyo
Oh I see. Some are and some aren't. I guess transcription is something the
site's community helps out with.

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bugsy
What a great idea. Read through some of the blogs and found them compelling.

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zackattack
does anyone else have recurring nightmares about going to prison?

~~~
inovica
I think its a common theme for people to worry about it - through no malicious
intent of your own, ie through circumstances, a lapse in judgement whilst
driving etc

