A federal appeals court today struck down price caps on intrastate phone calls made by prisoners. Inmates will thus have to continue paying high prices to make phone calls to family members, friends, and lawyers.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with prison phone company Global Tel*Link in its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. But that's exactly what the FCC's current leadership wanted. The FCC imposed the prison phone rate caps during the Obama administration, but current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai instructed commission lawyers to drop their court defense of the intrastate caps.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @11:22PM (4 children)
So the only people a criminal should have social links with are other inmates? And you call this "serious about rehabilitation"? I thought you were just stupid till you said that -- now I know you're trolling. (But maybe stupid, too.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:25AM
Correct. I don't feel like spending the time to dig up citations now but there's plenty of empirical evidence that recidivism goes down when connections to the outside go up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:41AM
I dunno, its not outrageous enough to be a decent troll. Reeks of teenage idealism and naivety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:07AM (1 child)
No prisoner should be able to contact any person who has ever been convicted of a crime or any person who is currently charged with a crime. Yes, this requires sound-proof doors and ventilation ducts.
Prisoners should be able to talk to lawyers and prison staff. Anything else invites trouble, but we could perhaps carefully vet people as we do for security clearances.
(Score: 1) by StarryEyed on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:15AM
We got that covered:
http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/590x/prison-626944.jpg [express.co.uk]
When the food stops being eaten, just drop another prisoner into the hole. No unnecessary contact.