
Oregon prisons ban many technology and programming books - traderjane
https://www.salemreporter.com/posts/891/oregon-prisons-ban-dozens-of-technology-and-programming-books-over-security-concerns
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cols
I completely understand the need to ban books like Black Hat Python but they
also ban First Html5 Programming and Microsoft Excel 2016 For Dummies?

We do actually want to rehabilitate these folks and teach them valuable life
skills right? How is banning books on HTML and Excel helpful? As a tax-paying
Oregonian, this is a little baffling.

~~~
jandrese
Rehabilitation is counterproductive for prison officials. Someone who is
rehabilitated is much less likely to reoffend, and deprives your prison of an
inmate. Releasing people with no life skills, no job prospects, and a black
mark on their record is a much more reliable way to make sure you can maintain
your population.

~~~
Keverw
Yeah, sadly private prisons are like that. You could even go buy stock in
prisons too. So then I guess if you are a shareholder you'd wish for more
crime as it'd be in your best interest for your prisons you invested in to be
successful. Pretty sad to actually have to hope for crimes.

Pretty interesting though they allow access to computers. Never heard of that.
I always imagined reading dusty old law books if your prison has a library and
writing things down by hand. However some lawbook's are very outdated, there's
some old book often cited claiming you don't need a driver license to drive
because you aren't in commerce... Yeah try that one with a cop and I doubt it
will go very well for you.

I like to watch Orange Is the New Black on Netflix and they pretty much did an
entire season about private prisons. I've already knew a bit about them though
but maybe talking about them in a comedy might get people thinking or doing
their own research.

So many messed up things going on in the world though, I doubt many people
have enough time to even care or know what to even do to help make things
better.

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Nasrudith
If those books are security threats then every last warden needs to be fired.
Because then an IT professional in jail is either uncageable or capable of
controlling every gang.

~~~
jandrese
How many competent IT folks do you know that want to go work in a prison?

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/inmates-built-
co...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/inmates-built-computers-
hidden-in-ceiling-connected-them-to-prison-network/)

This isn't the kind of job that is going to attract the best and brightest,
especially since it's likely viewed as a cost center and will be about as
thankless as can be.

~~~
Retra
I think their point is that, if a prisoner cannot be trusted to know things,
then people who know things cannot reasonably be made into prisoners. So
either you can't put a programmer in prison or you should allow prisoners to
know how to program. It doesn't make sense to have it both ways.

~~~
jandrese
Just stuff the smart ones into solitary, problem solved.

Prisons aren't about finding solutions that are just or humane. They're for
punishing the people in them. Rehabilitation isn't punishment, so prisons
don't do it.

If you rehabilitate you get horrible cases like Norway where the total prison
population is a measly 75 per 100,000 residents and the system is tiny. So
many "bad guys" on the streets earning an honest wage. It's completely
unacceptable to US legislatures. Where's the vengeance? Where's the
humiliation? Where are the kickbacks from the numerous industries that exploit
the literally captive audience? Totally unacceptable.

~~~
banku_brougham
Perfect

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sitkack
I understand banning the C++ books but iOS Game Programming is a prison in and
of itself. /s

This really saddens me. If civilization wants to mature, we need to treat our
prisoners with empathy and compassion. Kicking the already powerless is a
coward's move.

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bastard_op
A very good friend of mine went through 2 years of prison due to a string of
unfortunate incidents, and one of the best sysadmin/devops folks I know well
before, and even after. They read a lot of fiction, as the "system" was
opposed even to me sending some custom car and hot-rod building books. Such
weird insecurity, don't want any inmate smarter than the $15/hr guards.

During his years inside, me as a linux user, found it almost impossible to use
any/all services to communicate in the prison system. They were all built for
only ie6 by the same little mafia of crappy IT web services companies that
were entirely unusable outside of firing up an old xp instance. This was circa
2013. It made communications all but impossible, and really quite
painful/expensive.

Everything from telephony, to any sending of property is controlled by a
small, nepotism/lobbyist-driven industry mafia that literally over charge
everyone involved, raping all sides associated to the incarcerated. Government
lobbying at its finest by the prison industry, and actively fight against any
reform.

After said person got out, went immediately back to making 6 figures with
oddly a defense contractor even, and many others industries after. Employers
were always happy to overlook some of his history for the graces that he was
actually competent and produced results.

Go figure, often hard to find even those without prison records that can do
so.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> ... than the $15/hr guards

is it good form to insult someone based on how much money they make?

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bb88
How about that, here's what happens when you teach inmates to code:

[https://www.hackreactor.com/blog/code7370-teaches-coding-
to-...](https://www.hackreactor.com/blog/code7370-teaches-coding-to-inmates-
at-san-quentin-state-prison)

The result is that Google engineers come visit and socialize:

[https://sanquentinnews.com/google-attends-san-quentin-
mixer/](https://sanquentinnews.com/google-attends-san-quentin-mixer/)

