Well, that’s not exactly true, but I just got out of the hospital (yes, I’m fine, in case you cared) after 5 days in. I damn near went stir-crazy, and I had TV, a pile of books, constant visits from family and friends, and two nice roommates. Had I had Internet access, I certainly would have used it to kill a lot of time.
My question is: How many real prisoners have Internet access? I bet a lot of the guys in those minimum-security Danbury-type prisons do. And what percentage of heavy Internet users are prisoners? Damn, if I was in there and had access, I’d be on-line all the time.
Why keep prisoners away from computers? I understand not giving them unrestricted internet access, but why not let them learn some kind of useful job skill, like word processing, or programming, or something?
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
Prisoners are not allowed to have computers or any other recording device, such as typewriters with memory, or cassette recorders. According to a prison social worker I know, it’s to prevent secret messages from being relayed.
Wouldn’t that vary from state to state? I would find it hard to believe there aren’t some prisoners with tape recorders.
Also in some minimum and medium security prisons they let mail go uncensored. What is the difference there? They could send any message through uncensored mail.
The idea is to restrict internal communications between prisoners, not external communications with the outside world. The only censorship on outside mail is when a prisoner is writing to a prisoner at another jail. Otherwise, the mail isn’t read.
Tape recorders (or other recording devices) are prohibited. Tape players and AM radios are allowed. FM radios are generally prohibited because they can be modified to listen in on the security radios. CD players are also prohibited; I’ll admit I don’t know the reason for this.
I’m speaking here specifically of the New York state prison system, but I would imagine most other prison systems in this country have similar rules.
Are you kidding me…? No disrespect to all you that think you know, but you got it all wrong… I did time for the BOP. we had a billiards table, fuzzball table, computers to e-mail our families with, and yes they were monitored. our letters were only read coming into the facility, and we could go online in the Rec Area and order arts and crafts supplies. but it depended on what facility you went to too…
In the dark ages of 1999, when people had these weird plastic devices on their desks called “phones”, names were not yet invented. The only way to hail people was to shout, “Hey, you!” and when referring to others, one had to resort to vague descriptions.
And in addition to these horrors, every time you went on the Internet, your computer emitted horrible screeching noises, and porn images took for-fucking-ever to download. Never even mind videos.