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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: 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]