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from the jail-/prison/cell-inmates-127.0.0.1-"echo-coding" dept.
TechCrunch has an interesting report on an initiative to rehabilitate inmates in Maine:
If you omit some key details, all Preston Thorpe has to do to become a senior software engineer at a promising tech company is walk through the door.
For about six months, Thorpe was a prolific volunteer contributor to an open source project led by database company Turso. His work was impressive enough that Turso's CEO, Glauber Costa, quickly offered him a job. That was also when Costa realized that Thorpe is anything but an ordinary programmer.
"I checked his GitHub profile, and he mentions the fact that he is incarcerated," Costa told TechCrunch. "It's a story I've never seen before."
It's true: Thorpe is serving his 11th year in prison for drug-related crimes. Still, he has worked full-time from his cell at a venture-funded, San Francisco-based startup since May.
Thorpe is part of an experimental program in the Maine state prison system that allows incarcerated people to work remote jobs from custody. Though unconventional, these opportunities have proven immensely rehabilitative.
[...] The United States criminal justice system is plagued by recidivism, or former prisoners' return to custody after they have been released. Repeat offending creates a financial burden on the state and its taxpayers. But Commissioner Liberty has the data to show it's well worth the effort and investment to expand access to education and addiction treatment.
Is remote education and work a better way to rehabilitate people in prison? Are second chances worth the expense? Is the commissioner's last name a fateful omen?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by istartedi on Monday July 28 2025, @03:20PM (2 children)
It really is a travesty. Not only are the inmates getting short-changed; but in some cases they are supposed to be paying restitution to victims; especially if they're in for a financial crime, theft, property damage, etc. Good luck recouping your loss when the inmate gets pennies on the dollar. The real criminals are the ones running the prisons.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday July 28 2025, @04:50PM (1 child)
"its complicated"
My state had a well meaning goal of increasing inmate pay to the tipped employee minimum wage, so at least waitresses can't complain that prisoners make more than them (before tips, anyway). That got torpedo'd because the people proposing the change did not understand the prison economy. Not knowing what they're doing is normal for most social engineers LOL, but this time it made the news in my state.
Apparently there's multiple tiers of jobs, some folks are not permitted to work, which sounds relaxing, until you realize they're very poor and the prison system barely keeps them alive. If you want to brush your teeth, you must pay, the state will not help.
The next circle of hell is the guys doing prison laundry or literally sweeping the prison floor get around 25 cents/hour but it all goes to their commissary account. The prison system does not provide free toothpaste but it does sell stuff like that at about 2x to 3x walmart prices (like walgreens or gas station convenience store prices) and an inmate not in solitary could eventually save up $5 to $10 for a tube of generic toothpaste. These wages have not gone up with inflation (not all the different than the outside LOL). If they "fixed" the pay or got rid of the low paying jobs, the inmates would be bored and the state would have to buy them toothpaste instead of getting their relatives to pay inflated prices. The economy of this tier of worker is the state refuses to pay for basic needs but they get basic needs for "free" if they volunteer to "work" 40 hours/week. The level of effort is ... not high, matching the pay.
The next tier up is the state owned industries they make like $1/hr and this is for the better behaved inmates and they make factory-ish products for the state. The stereotypical license plate stamper, state owned furniture for state owned office buildings, run a small printing press for state forms, works of art for the state capital (engraved wood things and similar art) things like that. You're pretty wealthy by prison standards if you have a job like this.
The next tier up from that is for the even better boys and that seems to be what the article is about. My state has a different program where they pretty much just let them out during the day on work bus but they have to sleep in the jail. I guess remote work is a similar concept except they aren't allowed out at all?
Now get busted for drugs or fighting or whatever misbehavior, and its back down the tiers to 25 cents/hour... Thats the good side of using jobs to force good behavior. The bad side is get successfully blackmailed and intimidated or someone will make you take the fall and you're back to 25 cents/hour. So there's competing good and bad effects of using access to rehabilitative jobs as a punishment/reward.
The numbers are not as big as people think. Muni jail for drunks is not a state prison. Federal penn for felons is not a state prison. There are a quarter million acres of oranges in Florida and google claims about 30K people work in the citrus industry overall (including or excluding illegals?), and Florida only has 80K state system prisoners, so it would be quite a stretch to replace all citrus workers in FL with state prison workers, but it's possible. The numbers are both larger than some people think while also being smaller than some people think. I live east of the mississippi river so we have tons of rain, therefore tons of trees, and 60K or so forestry and related workers, but we only have 20K state prison inmates. Not that I think it would be a great idea to give every state prison inmate a chainsaw with a stern lecture to behave.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 28 2025, @08:49PM
>it would be quite a stretch to replace all citrus workers in FL with state prison workers, but it's possible.
On paper. In the field, there's a lot of trust involved in harvesting oranges. Not only that the workers won't disappear over the fences into the wilderness (which is usually pretty hospitable to living off the land for a few days, if you don't mind the mosquitoes), but also that they will pick the oranges properly (enough), not damage the trees, etc. Along the lines of handing inmates chain-saws, letting them disappear into the trees for hours at a stretch isn't exactly compatible with all inmate psych profiles.
The real issue is: while in prison are they being rehabilitated for a successful post release life, or just being warehoused for minimal oversight cost and likely to become 'return customers" paying the prison system $50-100K/year to keep them inside, again. When the prisons are privately managed, for profit, the implications to society are beyond obvious and the US is among the lowest performing nations in the world in terms of "freedom for all."
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]