Any cents a minute is wrong. They were sentenced to be incarcerated, not sentenced to have to pay for telephone calls.
the united states doesnt have a justice system. it has a revenge system. cruelty is part of the process
It’s not just the justice system. We have multiple systems designed to hurt people. Cruelty is a fundamental pillar of half of our two-party system.
The Supreme Court however is working hard to undermine these new policies to keep the money and exploitation flowing as God intended.
This calls out Texas because it is the Texas Tribune, but this is a rule across the nation now thanks to the FTC.
If a prisoner works a day $3.50 and calls cost $0.25/min, then a prisonor can afford a 14 min call for a day's labor. Yes, these numbers are quite realistic.
Supply maintenance is near zero. Demand is elastic but there's no alternatives. Max profit is obviously not at the highest prices.
Helping prisoners was never the goal. It's convenient optics, icing on the cake of profit maximization.
Did you know that the US never abolished effective slavery. It's perfectly legal for prisoners. Always has been. It's even in the federal Constitution.
Incarcerated labor organizers are god damn heroes. Every barrier to educational information in prison means one less informed slave.
When I was incarcerated the Chaplain was the one to understand this and act upon it. I called a friend, who bought books at a specific store, that the Chaplain picked up, smuggled into prison and left in my cell. He did this about once a month for a year, about a half dozen books at a time.
Mad respect for this man. He made so many people better for just being around. I stayed friends with him until his end. I hope he met his God as he wanted.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.