Massachusetts becomes fifth state to make prison calls free

Here (Maine) calls are almost $7.00/hr which is indeed outrageous, however the jobs pay 2-4x better than other prisons i've been in, the food is better, you are given more things like clothes that other prisons would make you pay for. And I am allowed to go to college, and even hold a job developing software.

So although it is absurd, I have been in other prisons where the calls are dirt cheap but they have shit food, they dont give you ANYTHING and there isn't shit for opportunities. I understand that sometimes the profit they make off the calls might be going to things like quality of the food, etc. I know that this is almost never the case, but I do know that it is somewhat the case here.

How I got here is a very interesting related recent (17d) submission, where a tech-savy inmate discusses how lucky they were to pretty much accidentally end up getting sent to a Maine prison, where they were able to get access to the internet & go from what reads to me like a hopeless prison mentality to a hopeful, interested, engaged & active person in the world, even from their confines.

Alas, the greater context here, and seemingly much of why they write, is that Maine seems to be the one a few rare states where they believe there's any hope of reform & rehabilitation. And even to get this context, it seemingly took Covid for them to be granted access to the knowledge & information to unlock & enable their journey & growth, for them to escape a foreboding dark prison fatalism. https://pthorpe92.github.io/intro/my-story/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38229231

This is unhumble as heck & just my own weird strange warped view, but I personally think there is a resounding screaming loud truth that access to FOSS is a civic virtue that can redeem lives & should be amplified accelerated & supported at all levels. Prisons, schools, & elsewhere: being able to personally entail ourselves into such great projects lifts the soul, gives us worthy efforts to motivate & work towards. FOSS invites us in to participate in the greater non-zero-sum aspects of humanity.

Just hang around all day with no rent learning and coding. Maine prison sounds pretty sweet.

Actually sounds a little like those hackers that live in pod spaces in SF.