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Working on databases from prison

(turso.tech)
849 points dvektor | 1 comments | 16 Jun 25 12:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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mlissner ◴[16 Jun 25 14:28 UTC] No.44289885[source]▶
Maine's remote work program is an incredibly promising development to prevent recidivism. The amazing thing about it is that it gives real jobs to prisoners that they can seamlessly continue after they get out of prison. Normally when you get out, it's impossible to get a job, and the clock is ticking. This leads to desperation, which leads to bad behavior.

There is a real risk of exploitation, but if it's properly managed, remote work for prisoners is one of the most hopeful things I've heard about the prison system. It gives people purpose while there and an avenue to success once they're out.

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dfxm12 ◴[16 Jun 25 14:52 UTC] No.44290150[source]▶
Do participants get paid a real wage?
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glommer ◴[16 Jun 25 14:57 UTC] No.44290225[source]▶
Preston was free to negotiate his pay with us, and we pay him a full salary. Just no health care benefits.
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dgacmu ◴[16 Jun 25 15:24 UTC] No.44290487[source]▶
Does he actually get the salary, or does the prison take huge overhead?
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glommer ◴[16 Jun 25 15:31 UTC] No.44290547[source]▶
they take an (actually very reasonable) cut, but he is free to take his salary.
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kgwxd ◴[16 Jun 25 15:37 UTC] No.44290606[source]▶
No cut is reasonable.
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mp05 ◴[16 Jun 25 17:07 UTC] No.44291361[source]▶
Don't you suppose that it's "fair" to request compensation for the room and board if the person is making a "fair" wage?
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BlarfMcFlarf ◴[16 Jun 25 18:26 UTC] No.44292090[source]▶
No. Prisons should cost society money. If you are taking away someone’s freedoms, there should be a high cost so you don’t do it flippantly when another solution will work.
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mp05 ◴[16 Jun 25 20:06 UTC] No.44292941[source]▶
Wow.

No, they forfeited their freedoms and we're put away by due process, but if that's your point of view then we've nothing further to discuss. Incredible stuff on HN these days.

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1. const_cast ◴[17 Jun 25 06:31 UTC] No.44296228[source]▶
For starters this is just a complete non-comment. I mean there's no substance here.

And secondly, he has a good point. We don't want to make locking people up easy or cheap. It should be high-friction, it should take a long time, and it should cost the government lots and lots of money.

Why? Incentives. The government has no reason to prevent crime if locking people up is cheap. It's made even worse by the promise of cheap or free labor. Then, you run into issues where the government actually wants people to fail and do crime, so they can extract labor from them. We see this quite aggressively in some southern states like Georgia. A remnant of Jim Crow era America.

But, if prison is expensive, the government will be incentivized to put some of that money into crime prevention programs. Things like homeless shelters, food banks, job programs.