Are there ways that friends and family can easily video conference with prisoners? I know that prisoners have access to phones and they can have visitors at the prison, but it seems like it would also be beneficial if it was easier for the family to keep in touch.
Visiting at the prison seems like a huge hassle. First you have to travel to the prison, then you have to wait and go through the search process. I’m sure that puts a strain on the family, and kids especially are likely to not want to keep in touch. If there was a way to communicate more easily, I would think it would help keep those relationships strong. I have heard of some prisons having on-site video conferencing between prisoners and visitors, but that’s to keep them physically separated. Both video terminals are at the prison and the the visitor still has to travel to the prison to access the video terminal.
Of course, there would be lots of issues to work out. It might be a problem if visitors were allowed to connect from anywhere using their own devices. But it seems like there could be video terminals in government locations like police stations, courthouses, social services, etc. This would allow family to stay in touch with much greater convenience.
Yes indeed. I’ve seen it in action at the Indianapolis Women’s Prison. The system they used was called J-Pay, which also allowed for (screened) emails. It’s sort of a scam in that it costs much more than a free person would pay for the same service. Same with the special radios/TVs they make prisoners buy–they must have a clear case so that contraband can’t be hidden, but you’re still paying well above a store price.
Yes, the prices for prison phone service are outrageous. But it’s the free market at work. The state puts the program up for public bidding and private companies bid for the right to manage the program. The state takes whichever company offers the most money. Would you want the state to accept a lower bid?
Of course, a company that submits a high bid is planning on recouping its costs by setting prices high. That’s how capitalism works.
Back when I started working, the prisons ran the phone programs directly. It was part of the general phone system and prisoners paid the same amount of money for phone calls that anyone else would pay. But then people decided privatization was a great idea and prisons should contract out for services. The result is a lot of private companies are not making a profit out of doing things prisons used to do cheaper.
I’ve seen it in our sole urban prison. Family members can go to that site and visit via skype-style setup with their loved ones who are housed at prisons far removed from that city. I know no further details about it though.
Monopolies and price gouging are also how capitalism works without regulations against them. In the example I linked it says that the private company requires the prison to agree not to allow any in-person visits as part of the contract. All visitation has to be done through their system at a buck a minute.
I can’t think of a more literal example of a ‘captive audience’ than prisoners and their families. Of course going to prison is all about losing some personal liberties, but when you add a profit motive to the equation it starts to look less like punishment or rehabilitation and more like taking advantage of prisoners and their families because they have no other choice.
I agree it would be wrong if a private company was able to dictate terms like forbidding visits or requiring prisoners to make a mandatory number of calls each month. But that doesn’t happen in New York. The state sets up the parameters of the phone system it wants; a certain number of phones per prisoner, how many locations will have phones, how many hours of service must be available, service contracts, etc. Then once the state had described what it wants, private companies look over the description and submit bids on how much they will pay to provide the service as described.
It’s good to hear there are some video conferencing options, but it’s too bad that they are so expensive. The people who could most benefit from using it likely can’t afford it.
While I can understand the benefits of having a private company manage the whole thing, why isn’t something more off-the-shelf used? Why not something more like what we all use all the time for our own video conferencing–regular computers and tablets over the internet with Skype?
That is a terrible example of “free market”. The fundamental of a free market is providers compete for the consumer. The consumers in this case are the prisoners (and their families) and I don’t see them having any choice at all. How is this free market?
This is the very definition of a command economy. The government chooses the only provider that benefits themselves - not the consumer.
Yes, the state using its mandate power to sell a monopoly is the very opposite of free market. (In fact, reminiscent of the sort of behavior that led to the American revolution) Plus, one has to ask what is involved in qualifying to bid for the option. I suspect the barriers to entry are such that it also creates the opposite of free market.
The reason to use a specialized system is for security. The machines are out in the open so it’s a little hard to imagine what secrets might be passed in a video chat, maybe a little easier to see how email might be used to communicate in a bad way unless it is monitored. Still seems to me there’s a price-gouge happening, but I don’t know the economics of it.