That is just an insane way of looking at it. All those expenses would have to be paid whether the prisoners were working or not.
The United States does not have a regulatory body like the ones in Canada or France that are tasked with monitoring prison conditions and reporting information to the public. Without the oversight, lawsuits filed by inmates are one of the main ways details about prison conditions become public knowledge.Seriously?
Like, if prisoners were actually being abused there's no way market forces wouldn't supply them with effective legal representation.
I'll bet this whole problem could be solved with self-driving cars. Somehow.
Ram the first fifty or sixty into the gates, use the rest to transport the prisoners, keep another fifty in reserve to obstruct pursuit.
I assume you're using Ubers for the gates? Because otherwise I foresee problems.
I assume the answer to 2 is "because federalism".
Vaguely relevant: California is getting rid of felony murder, insh'Brown!
Also cash bail but that's a more mixed-bag victory.
Complete with resentencing petitions to be made available to past convicts.
Thanks for explaining that. I followed the link and at first thought it was just about changing the titles of the crimes, but it looks like 189(e) is the heart of it. And, as you point out, that it's being made semi retroactive in 1170.95 means that some of the old problems can also be fixed.
My brother and the organization he works with have been lobbying for the end of the felony murder rule. I am glad for the end of it in general, and specifically for my brother and his group. I'm a little baffled that my brother found incarceration issues as his passionate cause, but I do know that fascinations strike like lightning.
His group, Initiate Justice, has organizing prisoners as its primary focus and their platform is led "from the inside". I've been hearing a lot more about this stuff than I ever would have if it weren't for my brother.
Oh yeah, I got a presentation from IJ at one meeting. They were trying to get an initiative on the ballot to enfranchise current prisoners (not just former), on the theory that future movement away from incarceration needs to include prisoners as political actors; unfortunately didn't get enough signatures this year.
The headline in today's Washington Post, "Md temporarily cancels all visits to state prisons", doesn't sound sinister at all.
I was getting nail biting updates from the kid last night during the vote, luckily it passed juuuuust before I was forced to shut down all passionate political discourse for the night so i could get some sleep. Teenagers can be exhausting...but lovely!
Since we have some people on the blog who vote in Ohio, I worked a tiny bit on getting signatures for Issue One and think it would meaningfully change things for the better. I'd also love to see prison phone rates come down around here. I can't afford to talk to anyone at this point. I've blocked Nia's dad's prison number on her phone since she doesn't want to talk to him, but sometimes her mom calls and puts him on threeway calling even though that's against policy. The extent to which I'm a rule-follower is pretty ridiculous, I guess, but I'd worry about repercussions.
I should think that enfranching people who are currently incarcerated is great for moral reasons, but I have to admit that I mostly love it because of how it would change elections in rural California.
Once I was looking up which congresspeople have the most prisoners in their district and I don't know if any of them were over 2 or 3% prisoners. Maybe the district with Angola, Louisiana in it. Glenn Thompson represents vast swathes of Northwest Pennsylvania and I think there are 7 prisons in his district, but each district is like 600,000 people so still they wouldn't sway anything.
It would definitely change some state legislative elections!
16: I believe California in the latest statewide redistricting counted prisoners at their prior homes, to avoid this effect on state legislative districts (I don't think congressional). Made sense in that context. But does that mean that if enfranchised, they would vote in those same non-rural home areas? I'm curious which they would prefer (home community or bloc ability).
We also enfranchised all county jail inmates in 2016. I'm not sure which districts they vote in.
Maybe the jails, as a whole, should be a constituency. The UK House of Commons used to have constituencies like "The Scottish Universities".
16, 19: College students get to choose whether they vote in the district of their home or of the college (in general I'm pretty sure that's true, I'm sure some states choose for them because yay federalism), why shouldn't prisoners?
Only if they have to purchase $200 books.
I can't help but love how most of the changes in the law are by the grammar police. All the "whiches" are changed to "thats," for example.
The above (25) is in response to 8, if it isn't obvious.
When I was a lad, MA towns/cities made it really hard for college students to register to vote here. I dunno about prisoners, though.
22. Of course Scottish Universities and prisons would normally be treated similarly...
25: There's a quarter-amusing sub-genre of bill where they submit a placeholder bill with zero content with the intent of amending it to be a real bill later. Sometimes it declares the "intent of the Legislature" on the same subject, but sometimes they keep closer to the chest and just make a meaningless grammatical change to existing state law.
Example: "For the purposes of this code..."
(The Legislative Counsel makes sure everyone knows it has no effect - nothing sneaky by summarizing with "This bill would make a nonsubstantive change" or some such.)