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Comment by blindriver | Hacker News Reader

They still have access to the prison library. It's only about receiving direct books and magazines.

> Critics say such restrictions, however, severely limit access for people in prison to reading materials since the offerings in prison libraries and on prison-issued tablets can be limited or outdated.

Sounds like there's a very easy solution to the problem

Yeah. Restoring their rights.

Their rights to an extremely generous and updated tablet based ebook selection. The ROI on that providing that would be very good for governments, you would assume. Recidivism down. Libraries could do other things with the book space.

The great thing about prison tablets is that they are cheap and offer a low-cost selection of reading materials, with no incentive to have some scummy third party company in the loop to profit off their monopoly.

The first thing prisoners will do is destroy the tablet. I'm okay with both restricting prisoners' abilities to get direct mail, and I'm okay with allowing subscriptions go directly to the prison library. I am not inclined to want to give prisoners more privileges and I am inclined to remove as many privileges as possible, especially for first time offenders so that they realize that the path they are on is the wrong one.

I’m not ok with this

I believe that criminals should have a terrible experience in jail, so that they don't want to return again. I don't think it should be comfortable at all.

This is such a garbage take because research unanimously shows that terrible imprisonment would only increase recidivism rather than reduce it.

You can continue to be wrong, or you can do even minimal research and revisit your biases. Choose.

As in completing the abolition of slavery.

Have you ever lost library materials? They don’t let you replace it from just any ol' source.

Why not let inmates’ families buy books from an approved vendor?

Doesn't matter: the types of people criticizing such a decision happens to also be the type of people who have zero compassion for the victims of crime. "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent" and all that comes to mind.

Rehabilitation at all cost / dubious redemption is the subject of the satire movie "A clockwork orange".

HN shall upload and upvotes articles like these, implying inmates are suffering horrible injustice in red states. But same HN shall not upvote any article about a blonde woman ukrainian refugee getting slaughtered in the neck and dying while hearing the last words "take that white girl".

Poor criminal: he now has to go the prison's library to read and cannot receive books and magazines directly.

Such injustice.

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