Here's a tip for policymakers hoping to improve the lives of the most Americans with the least effort: help prisoners.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Decent people don't view poor people as a source of riches. But for a certain kind of depraved sadist, the poor are an irresistible target.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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What's more, the families of asylum seekers are not much better off than their kidnapped loved ones when it comes to seeking official protection.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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If you're following closely, this is one of those places where the hair on the back of your neck starts to rise.
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Cory Doctorow
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This is what economists call a "moral hazard." You can think of it as the reason that prison ramen costs 300% more than ramen in the free world:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in
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Cory Doctorow
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It's actually worse than that: if you get sick from eating bad prison food, the same company that poisoned you gets paid to operate the infirmary where you're treated:
https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/
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Massachusetts Prisoners Say Wellpath Leaves Them Without Teeth
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg (The Appeal)Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Of course, with rare exceptions (flying to get an organ transplant, say) plane tickets are typically discretionary. Housing, on the other hand, is a human right and a prerequisite for human thriving.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/
For Securus and Viapath, the path to profitability is to lobby for mandatory, long prison sentences and then make things inside the prison as miserable as possible.
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Cory Doctorow
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If you're thinking that prisoners might pay Securus, Viapath and their competitors out of their own prison earnings, forget it.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html
Forced labor and extortion are a long and dishonorable tradition in incarceration, but this century saw the introduction of a novel, exciting way of extracting wealth from prisoners and their families.
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Forced Labor vs. Forced Idleness | Dollars & Sense
www.dollarsandsense.orgCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
With the advent of the internet, things got *far* worse. Digitalization meant that prisons could replace the library, adult educations, commissary accounts, letter-mail, parcels, in-person visits *and* phone calls with a single tablet.
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Cory Doctorow
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In their place, prisoners' families had to pay *huge* premiums to have their letters scanned so that prisoners could pay (again) to view those scans on their tablets.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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This is a subject I've followed off and on for years. It's such a perfect bit of end-stage capitalist cruelty, combining mass incarceration with monopolies.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware
My background interest in the subject got sharper a few years ago when I started working on *The Bezzle,* my 2024 high-tech crime thriller about prison-tech grifters:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/28
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/prisoners-lose-again-as-court-wipes-out-inmate-calling-price-caps/
With that bad precedent on the books, the only hope prisoners had for relief from the FCC was for Congress to enact legislation specifically granting the agency the power to regulate prison telephony.
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Prisoners lose again as court wipes out inmate calling price caps
Ars TechnicaCory Doctorow
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https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text
With the new law in place, it fell to the FCC use those newfound powers.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/
But even without Sohn, the FCC has managed to do something genuinely great for America's army of the imprisoned.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/32
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/fcc-closes-final-loopholes-that-keep-prison-phone-prices-exorbitantly-high/
It's hard to imagine a policy that will get more bang for a regulator's buck than this one.
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FCC closes “final loopholes” that keep prison phone prices exorbitantly high
Ars TechnicaCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/33
It shows you how important a competent, qualified regulator is. When it comes to political differences between Republicans and Democrats, *regulatory competence* is a grossly underrated trait.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts
The telecoms sector has been a rent-seeking, monopolizing monster since the days of Samuel Morse:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care
Combine telecoms and prisons, and you get a kind of supermonster, the meth-gator of American neofeudalism:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-police-warn-locals-not-flush-drugs-fear-meth-gators-n1030291
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'Meth-gators': Tennessee police warn flushing drugs could create hyper-aggressive alligators
Kalhan Rosenblatt (NBC News)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/36
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch
The Biden presidency has been fatally marred by the president's avid support of genocide, and nothing will change that.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/37
It's not just presidents who can make this difference. Millions of America's prisoners are rotting in state and county jails, and as California has shown, state governments have broad latitude to kick out prison profiteers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/08/captive-audience/#good-at-their-jobs
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/38
https://exileinbookville.com/events/39808
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Authors on Tap: Cory Doctorow
exileinbookville.comCory Doctorow
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•The business behind that even demands guaranteed numbers of inmates.
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