Quote:
Originally Posted by KDAngel
Oh hell no. Someone keep us posted on how this develops. If Iowa residents have any sense whatsoever (not implying that they don't), they'll start complaining non-stop now about this one. Talk about a ridiculously stupid idea.
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It's not at all stupid.
First, inmates are given pen and paper to write letters to whomever they wish, right? This is not "surfing for fun" we're talking about - it's a move into the modern era. There is no fundamental difference, from the inmate's perspective, between writing a letter to your mother and emailing her.
Besides this, there are massive advantages from the state's perspective - you can keep track of email MUCH more easily, just as Geeky pointed out. It's cheap, it's insanely easy to monitor, it's a stupid tax for retarded inmates who write stupid stuff (because there is no doubt who sent and it lives on servers permanently), and the list of potential recipients is narrowed, screened and gives massive information about the inmate to authorities. There is a very real upside for authorities.
This is COMPLETELY different from a "luxury" like cable television, which serves no purpose other than comfort - email does not give a 'liberty' to the incarcerated (in fact, the narrow range of recipients actually narrows the liberty from your letter-writing capabilities). So save your "JAIL IS SOFT!" rhetoric for cable TV, visitation, and commissaries - it's unfounded here.
-RC
--Iowan, so actually knows what's going on . . . "any sense" be damned.