
Did a murderer and a sex offender just save Oklahoma $20 million? - marshc1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/10/29/did-a-murderer-and-a-sex-offender-just-save-oklahoma-20-million/
======
logn
There's a fine line between prisoner and slave.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOR)
->

 _Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk
or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some
other prison job. Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of
US$1.15 per hour, and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations
must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts._

I think work and education/skills are key to being a healthy human. I just
worry that prison labor could easily cross over from being rehabilitative to
being exploitative.

~~~
mistercow
>I just worry that prison labor could easily cross over from being
rehabilitative to being exploitative.

I think we've already crossed that line. As far as I know, they don't do it
directly, but prison lobbying groups have worked hard to increase the use of
mandatory minimum sentences, make sentencing harsher, and keep the war on
drugs going.

To me the line is where prisons go from making use of a labor pool that
already exists, to actively trying to increase the size of that labor pool.

~~~
csallen
I see where you're coming from, but I disagree that the degree to which
prisons campaign to increase the size of the prisoner labor pool is indicative
of exploitation.

Imagine an hypothetical situation in which a prison teaches its occupants to
code, pays them market wages, and turns a profit. If demand for programmers
was high, this prison would be heavily incentivized to lobby for more
prisoners, but you'd be hard-pressed to call the nature of the work
"exploitative".

~~~
meric
That can only work if, on average, prisoners in prisons are innately better at
programming than programmers in offices. Otherwise there may not be a
competitive advantage, there may even be a competitive disadvantage.

~~~
csallen
Maybe, but the point of my hypothetical isn't to prove that prisoners can be
good programmers. It's to show that lobbying for more prisoners doesn't
necessarily mean that you are exploiting said prisoners. It simply means they
are helpful to you.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Any time you create an economic demand for more prisoners, you are exploiting
_people_ some of whom are not prisoners _yet_.

------
DanBC
I'm interested in the 2 different prices.

> _The software showed that Sysco, which supplies food to the state prison
> system, was charging the state different prices for the same food item sent
> to two different facilities,_

From the linked Oklahomian article:

> _“In some cases an exact same item might arrive at Lexington (Assessment and
> Reception Center) and Harp at the same warehouse, and one has a different
> price than the other,” Murphey said._

Was that a deliberate underhand move by Sysco, or is it normal expected part
of contracting the job out? Or is it even more mundane, and just a price break
for ordering more?

It's nice to think that there's a prison where inmates are not just allowed to
rot. Here's another story where inmates get to do challenging, rewarding work
looking after inmates with dementia. Warning: It contains graphic accounts of
horrible violence.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-
dement...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-
among-aging-criminals.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&)

~~~
kiba
_It 's nice to think that there's a prison where inmates are not just allowed
to rot. _

That how our prisons should work. It may not satisfy a human being's need for
retribution, but when did inflicting harm more than what's necessary to keep
humans safe ever did for humanity?

Anytime you jail a human being, you're using up resources to feed them,
shelter them, and protect them from dangerous human beings. That cost taxpayer
money. Why not get something out of the condemned by fixing them and studying
them and making them better so that the prison system will collapse because
it's so effective at repairing? (Of course, there are human beings that may be
unfixable, but the vast majority probably are)

~~~
cardamomo
> Why not get something out of the condemned by fixing them and studying them
> and making them better

I understand your point--prisons can be rehabilitative or educational
institutions rather than fulfilling a purely retributive function--but your
language is setting off some alarm bells for me. We ought to shift from using
the language of "fixing" people to helping people or, in many cases, fixing
the system.

------
Shivetya
just because they go to prison doesn't mean they have to stop contributing to
society. There are probably a good number of such individuals that need the
chance and encouragement. Idle minds serve no one

~~~
tux1968
You're right of course, but we have to be careful about unintended(?) side
effects. It's a very short road from prisoner development to the state having
an unhealthy economic incentive to lock people up.

~~~
thenerdfiles
Are you talking to the militant hacker crowd?

Hey, aren't you? I do believe we call that a "draft".

[http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/are-mexico-drug-
ga...](http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/are-mexico-drug-gangs-
drafting-hackers)

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/18/rsa-russian-
speaking-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/18/rsa-russian-speaking-
hackers-drafting-new-recruits/)

OR: An unhealthy economic incentive to release [made-for-prison] software onto
the public writ large. (And if the software isn't sufficiently modular, what
kind of unwanted surveillance comes "for free" – or "batteries includes"?)

A dialogue:

A: "What did you do in prison?"

B: "Started a hacker school that wrote the surveillance program which monitors
this very traffic intersection."

A: "What were you in for?"

B: "Drunk driving; caused an accident."

A: "Does it see my concealed metals?"

B: "If you move fast enough. We had to make first launch!"

Will this tease out public opinion on "rehabilitation"? Or will it show how we
really feel about "bootstrapping"?

------
acjohnson55
Interesting story. I say give these people resources to be productive and a
certain number of hours a day. Let them own their own IP. The point of prison
shouldn't be to punish, but to rehabilitate people, if possible, and if not,
to keep other people safe from them. Either way, if people have the capability
to contribute to society while behind bars, why not let them? (As other
posters have noted, it's important to make sure the prison/industrial complex
isn't being incentivized to increase prisoner count in all this, as they are
today.)

------
billpg
An actual sex offender or just someone caught up in some politician's moral
panic?

At least "murderer" hasn't been hi-jacked. Yet.

~~~
jlgreco
They didn't actually name the person, so that is unknowable.

My uninformed impression however is that while many people may unjustly get
the "sex offender" label (for example, somebody who got caught pissing in an
alley behind a bar), the people who receive a "sex offender" label _and_ jail
time skew towards the _" did something that actually has a victim"_ crowd.

~~~
asmithmd1
Has a victim and doesn't have enough money to buy enough "justice" to keep
them out of prison.

~~~
acjohnson55
...perhaps be fleeing to Europe and continuing their career in film?

------
balabaster
Was this software vetted by security experts to make sure it wasn't being used
behind the scenes for anything nefarious? Like say, exploitation of prison
computer systems etc.?

------
holyjaw
It all sounds good, until you get to the barcodes:

> "Prisoners each have a bar code they can scan, ..."

> "When an inmate’s bar code is scanned, prison officials would be alerted
> that they should receive a diabetic meal, or a Halal or Kosher meal."

~~~
DanBC
I'm not quite sure what your point is?

------
altero
I wonder if Oklahoma purchased license to use this software.

~~~
dopamean
Purchased a license? I bet they own it.

~~~
altero
It is a question how author law is set. But prisoner does not lose rights to
own things.

------
bcl
Where is the source? The taxpayers are paying their room and board, this
software should be freely available on github.

Might even help with the auditing process.

