Court To Prisoner: No Xbox 360 For You 337
jonklinger writes "An Israeli Court rejected the appeal of a prisoner who requested to have an Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 because there is no possibility to remove the internet connectivity apparatus from the device without harming its functionality. Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
Can they get a pc with no networking? (Score:2)
Can they get a pc with no networking?
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Yes, of course they can. They (prisons) get custom built machines. A mate of mine worked on a project to supply just these machines to prisons. Among the other special requirements was a case made entirely of clear acrylic so there would be nowhere to hide contraband.
The real question is (Score:2)
Is jonklinger stupid or has a really bad sense of humor...
"Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
That is just bad.....
Tv is used as a contol tool in prisons (Score:2)
And most of them pay for it with the high priced Commissary.
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The "article" did appear to be a machine translation of the original Hebrew, so odd wording should not be unexpected.
Boo Friggin Hoo (Score:3)
Prisoners should be making big rocks into little rocks.
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If prisoners get to sit around playing games, the punishment of prison could easily be less than their punishment outside of prison? Prisoners should be making big rocks into little rocks.
Yes I'm sure that will work well. Bore the prisoners to the point of breaking, and teach them nothing, then dump them back on the streets at the end of that time with no prospects of making money legitimately. Great move. I'm sure that will bring crime rates down. If a prisoner can read a book or play pool or basketball or watch tv lest they go insane and start beating other to a pupl, why not an Xbox once a week?
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In most cases, including this one, the prisoner is interested in using his own money to buy an Xbox, not tax dollars.
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From jobs they held before prison, from outside family members, form jobs they hold in prison?
They are not being given money by the state you dumb fuck. Cable TV also costs them money to have in there cell. Quite often more then it would normally cost since they have a "captive" audience.
Re:Boo Friggin Hoo (Score:4, Informative)
A: If they work, they must be payed. Slavery is illegal.
B: some of them may have savings or income from outside prison.
C: Some of them may have relatives willing to buy them things or give them money directly.
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If they work, they need to be compensated. Free room and board and utilities and clothes ought to do it.
You left out food. I suppose we should starve them all to death.
People make such idiotic statements then wonder why prisoners re-offend. You forget that punishment is only one function of the prison system. It's other function ought to be reforming the prisoner. Back them into a corner with a medieval stupid attitude like yours and you have criminals who have nothing to lose because once they're labelled it takes heroic effort to get back into society. People think that they are being tough on criminal scum
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Just because a library is less hi-tech than a playstation does not mean that it is cheaper.
There's better economies of scale with a book. A single library can serve an entire prison at a time. While a single Xbox, at best, serves a few prisoners.
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Great idea, then you can spend even more money when they come back to prison again since all you did was make them more violent and more bitter. None of the tax dollars you don't pay anyway you poor fuck are going for this. These devices are bought with the prisoners own money. These are then used for reward and punishment and preventing riots thus saving the actual taxpayers loads of money.
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Clearly we should bring back corporal punishments for minor infractions, and various forms of torture executions for serious offenses. It's a win-win: taxpayers pay less because we don't need that many prisons anymore, and the cost of torture instruments is minimal - but, at the same time, for their money, taxpayers get one hell of a show!
~
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I agree with you in all but one detail. Prisoners should be making something useful. Furniture, cars, whatever.
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Great idea, slave labor! Surely, no one would ever then bribe judges and police to place more people in jail longer so that his business had a steady source of cheap labor. No, no one should ever do such a thing.
For obvious reasons prisons should cost the taxpayer money. They should also not provide undue profit to any private firm. There are too many possible perverse incentives that come into play.
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And yes, judges do occasionally get caught getting kickbacks from the prison owners to hand out more and longer sentences.
So if the purpose is to punish (Score:3)
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do you really think that every prisoner is 100% bankrupt?
do you really believe that being deprived of your liberty and forced to sit in a prison against your will is not a punishment?
Re:Boo Friggin Hoo (Score:5, Funny)
Prisoners should be making big rocks into little rocks.
Well in that case, problem solved [wikipedia.org]!
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No those are used after the riots start. It is preferred to not have the riot to begin with.
Harsher prisons only lead to harsher ex-cons when they finally get out.
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Before you claim I loaded the question about the game content, consider the prisoners already have access to educational material from the library and are apparently unhappy with that option.
Inmates and entertainment (Score:2)
It's been mentioned elsewhere, but one cannot generally read only educational material for entertainment. Heck, many prisoners are functionally illiterate. Thus, reading, even learning to read, is work for them.
The games are to rewind, something other than lifting weights, playing basketball, or such.
Plus, it's an incentive - act like a civilized human being, get some of the benefits of being one. Don't act like a civilized being, and your game station is taken away(along with everything else in your cel
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By releasing the extra adrenaline playing instead of fighting each other. Learning such techniques can be invaluable for the life outside.
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"Unless you're trying to create sardaukar troops."
Frank Herbert was telling a good story. I'm a big fan of his novels. I don't take it as paralleling reality.
What you'd really get is very sociopathic types with little ability to trust others.
A group like that would fragment into the individuals it was, and get routed by a real army.
Maybe they'd be somewhat effective concentration camp guards, but I sorta doubt even that.
That's exactly what you don't want in a soldier. Even in armies that commit horrific atr
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Prison should keep people from re-offending - separation from the society works fine this way, and rehabilitation helps to keep that effect post-prison.
Judging from statistics, it does look an awful lot like severity of punishment does not serve as a significant deterrent to other people - therefore, any aim to punish offenders instead of rehabilitating them is unnecessary brutality.
PS2? (Score:2)
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"Why not allow them the cheaper PS2s"
How about, because they are f*#king prisoners.
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What does that have to do with it?
They are still people and we would prefer they come out better than they went in. These sorts of things are hugely useful in that respect, they also allow for a simple level of punishment and reward inside prison. Prisoners who misbehave can have their video games taken away.
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No speaka da English! (Score:3)
Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence.
It would be nice if the slashdot editors would resort to other kinds of editing.
Summary implies falsehood. (Score:3, Insightful)
The old adage of 'they need to get it out of their system' - this is a falsehood: prisoners do not have to "result to other kinds of violence" in the absence of a substitute. If you are prone to violent acts, with all other variables being equal, you'll commit violent acts even after having already committed violent acts. Even with a violence simulator, you're still going to perform the other violence outside it that you were supposed to be suppressing.
Mike Tyson was a good example; all day long he's sparring with partners, hitting punching bags, shadowboxing. Then he beats and rapes a woman, and later looses his temper and bites an opponent's ear. Despite having 'worked it out of his system' hundreds of times more than a normal person, he's still violent.
People don't have violence meters that you can fill up. Stop perpetuating this invalid belief like it was common sense.
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1. Sitting on your couch pressing a button to show a boxing glove punch is very different from getting up and beating the shit out of a bean bag or sparing with another human.
2. Mike Tyson is not representative of even 10 other human beings.
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"1. Sitting on your couch pressing a button to show a boxing glove punch is very different from getting up and beating the shit out of a bean bag or sparing with another human."
Yeah. It's a hell of a lot poorer workout.
"2. Mike Tyson is not representative of even 10 other human beings."
A meaningless statement. Yes, he's an extreme rarity in boxing ability.
That says relatively little about his personality or impulse control ability.
The problem is WiFi (Score:3)
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The court was wise in here. It's never OK to underestimate the ingenuity of the inmates. At the now-closed Katajanokka prison in Helsinki, inmates made a tattoo machine out of a vibration motor extracted from a PS2 DualShock controller. In this case, a USB wireless modem is small enough for "internal mail", and any components broken by the guards can be potentially replaced. And whenever you ask "what's the harm", the problem is similar to Pablo Escobar's case. He was officially in jail but in practice in h
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Actually that would not be appropriate for any human. I don't want to live in Soviet Russia nor Nazi Germany, those are the kinds of places that do the stuff you are talking about.
Those places did not get it right, they got everything wrong.
If I were a prisoner... (Score:2)
Am I the only one? (Score:2)
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Who went "huh he requested an xbox in an Israeli prison..." somehow, being from the netherlands where even some of the worst offenders get max 8 years plus mental support, I was surprised he even got the chance to request it. So much for being jaded.
Different countries, different rules.
I'm still perplexed how Israel continues to paint Palestinians as the obstruction to peace, while countering recognition from UNESCO with more building on occupied land. (While Isreal was effectively carved from the heart of Palestine and is recognised and a member of the UN.) Bloody weird country, if you ask me.
Huh? (Score:2)
I doubt there's an open Wifi network in the prison... So why does the presence of a Wifi chipset or ethernet port even matter? There's nothing to connect it to.
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Because they do not want people from outside of the prison setting up a wifi network to exchange information.
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Don't get it (Score:2)
If they don't want this to be online, just don't hook it up to the network. It can still play games. What's the problem?
Or, give him a jailbroken console (no pun intended) that has been banned. Heck, I can sell mine for a good price!
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot (Score:2)
Everyone arguing about whether the ethernet port can be removed from an Xbox 360 or not.
The real question is why even consider giving an Xbox 360 to a prisoner.
!@#$% NO!!!!!
I have barely had time to even touch my Xbox 360 in the past year. I'm too busy working and commuting to work so I can keep my mortgage paid, heat running and food on the table for my family.
I don't see anyone out there leaping up to provide me with an Xbox 360 or PS3. I haven't had cable TV for the past 5 years. Can't afford it. Frankl
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And yes, I know this did not happen in America. It happened in Israel. But it happens in America all the time too.
Sheriff removes cable TV from the prisons and the court system orders him to put it back.
$280,000 on cable bill for about 20 prisons.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20081204_12_0_OKLAHO673257 [tulsaworld.com]
U.K how much on toys for prisoners? Why not spend that money on children instead?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1040932/Pampered-prisoners-supplied-221-726-PlayStations.html [dailymail.co.uk]
they don't get free cable (Score:2)
In some prisons they have to pay for it and or work for right to have a TV. Prisoners have to buy the TV as well.
Other prisons pay for it with the money made at the prison commissary.
Other prisons have the guards living with them.
NO Xbox or other stuff in most cells prison can buy stuff like decks of cards.
for tv Prisons are billed like hotels pay per room / drop.
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Nobody's suggesting that this prisoner be given an Xbox. The request was that he be allowed to purchase an Xbox. That's a bit less controversial. If we allow them books, why not other media as well?
If America's prison system is so soft that it encourages crime, then Scandanavia should be swarming with murderers. Finland has open prisons and a very low recidivism rate. On the other hand, the US has one of the toughest prison systems in the developed world, and we still have the highest crime rates. Y
Disagree (Score:2)
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And yet their murder rate is half that in the US.
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No wonder the tea party is so popular, when people like you are ready to foam at the mouth about the government buying a prisoner a PS3 without even spending a second to think about it.
Do you really think every prisoner is 100% broke? The guy wanted to buy a PS3. Prisoners have money. Some prisoners can even work in-house for pennies on the dollar, not only getting paid pennies on the dollar, but being forced to spend a large fraction of the money they earned towards court fines, incarceration fees, rest
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Go on...
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I want to see every friggin able bodied criminal have to work 8 hours a day, just like the rest of us. And if you don't, you don't eat. Plain and simple.
So unemployable prisoners should be left to starve or freeze to death, just like on America's streets.. sounds fair.
If you think the US is freakishly gentle on Criminals you should come visit Canada. We even let prisoners vote and participate in our democracy like actual humans.
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They aren't giving him anything. He's asking to purchase with his own money a gaming console to likely use for the 12+ hours a day he's locked in a barred room. Much like the XBox he pays for everything but his food including soap, cigarettes and any other product he wants. Not only that but the prison vastly inflates the products sold at the commissary to sometime 10x their normal cost to soak money from the prisoners.
Give them a Nintendo 64. (Score:2)
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We're overlooking the obvious here: (Score:2)
How may prison cells have Ethernet jacks in them?
Even without Ethernet jacks would there actually be anything to connect to WiFi with? I'm pretty sure you could permanently disable WiFi without killing the system, mostly by attacking it from the antenna angle, maybe even the radio (I really don't know these things on the board level).
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Good points. The PS3 if I'm not mistaken can use PS2 controls with USB adapters, this could be the work-around they're looking for.
The only modern home system I have is a Wii, and I could imagine it would be useless without the Wii-Remotes, even if you do try to use GameCube control compatible games.
Whew! (Score:2)
At least prisoners are otherwise able to get game consoles. Otherwise prison would be downright inhumane....almost like PUNISHMENT.
Shouldn't have been crimes in the first place (Score:2)
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do you really think being deprived of your personal liberty is not a punishment?
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At least prisoners are otherwise able to get game consoles. Otherwise prison would be downright inhumane....almost like PUNISHMENT.
yeah.. because being inhumane is what punishment is supposed to be.
I hope you never have children.
Re:English, motherfarker...! (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
Can you explain that one away? You may be technically correct in your arguments, but there is essentially zero chance that the author is well versed in the historic etymology of English. Even a broken clock et cetera, et cetera...
Re:English, motherfarker...! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:There is always a way (Score:5, Interesting)
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Then give them a useful task like building roads... Let them read a book or go to school. I don't have a PS3. Why should gang-banger joe in prison have better stuff than me?
I'm sure that you don't have a PS3 because you put no value in owning one. You put much higher value in reading books for example.
So by your standard, playing a PS3 is less valuable than reading a book, and so they would have *less* value than you, not more.
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Re:There is always a way (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There is always a way (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you plan to use that to fill up 100% of their time? Idle hands and all that jazz.
Harsher prisons only mean harsher people when they are finally let out.
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An adult daycare you can't leave, that locks you in a barred room for 12+ hours a day, that totally limits everyday activities, where gainful employment is either free or at vastly reduced wages (in the US typically $.70 cents an hour, where the prison vastly inflates the prices of items sold to the prisoners (are bar of soap can exceed $5 and a pack of cigarettes $10), where you are under threat of violence and where drug use is so high because there is nothing to do.
I'll never understand the American pris
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What, the image of four hardened inmates, sporting tats, scars and bad facial hair all bobbing around playing Mario Cart holding little white steering wheels doesn't almost make you want to commit a crime just to join in the banter and merriment?
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Some people don't even have enough money to get it in their homes.
You know, I would be quite happy if every prisoner had a playstation or xbox while they were doing time. Even if one in a hundred got really into gaming, and when they got out kept playing rather than going back to crime, it would certainly be worth the investment. It's probably a bit too optimistic, but that's the way I roll these days.
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So instead of stealing a PS3 for heroin money they steal it for their own use? I guess that's better. :)
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Quite possibly, but it is still the lesser of two evils isn't it? Seriously, if I was to pick an addiction for a friend, and I had the choices of heroin or PS3 gaming, it would be an easy choice.
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Some people don't even have enough money to get it in their homes.
Do we need to make sure that every prisoner is treated worse than the worst treated person who isn't in prison?
After all, most prisoners at least get fed and get health care -- there's no such guarantees outside.
If they're good prisoners, let them have a gaming console. It's another carrot that can be taken away if they become bad prisoners.
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Or, don't leave unsecured wifi running in your prison?
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The issue would be someone who wants to communicate with prisoner simply parking a car with Wi-Fi base station nearby.
Glue might be chipped out. (Score:2)
Why not start with a basic firewall on the prison's network?
They DO have a firewall, right? For the legitimate Internet traffic of the guards and the administrators, right? Right?
Or, just don't run an Ethernet connection to the cell. I mean, having an Ethernet cable would be an issue anyway! Why even provide a data jack for them to use?
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So open the joker up an desolder the antenna. I bet a business could make good money supplying modified for this sort of use Xboxes and updates via usb.
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So open the joker up an desolder the antenna. I bet a business could make good money supplying modified for this sort of use Xboxes and updates via usb.
Prisoners may not be smart but they do have a lot of time on their hands. These people make cross-bows out of paper, saliva and pencils so I'm fairly certain they could figure out how to resolder an antenna.
http://weburbanist.com/2009/09/10/insane-prisoner-inventions-24-diy-prison-tools-weapons/ [weburbanist.com]
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Prison and games (Score:2)
Okay, so you don't think prisoners should be 'given' video games.
I can understand the logic, however, on second thought I can see reasonings TO do so:
1. It's something to do other than scheme escape, shanking a fellow prisoner or guard, etc...
2. Privilage is one of the ways you can control prisoners - by giving them access to luxuries for good behavior, you encourage it. The old 'nothing to lose' maxim applies
3. Integration back into society. You make prison too harsh, too alien, and they're actually l
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Prisons... probably not. But you can't really tell the guy living next door to the prison that he can't have one.
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That next guy is several hundred meters away from anywhere that the prisoners are going to live, and they'll also be behind several rather thick concrete walls that aren't going to play so well with the signal.
In short, the prison grounds are too large for any sort of useful wifi connection from somewhere external.
Its not like the prison and the people around it share the same unfenced back yard. You can't get within a 100 yards of a prison at the closest.
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You think the US courts have a monopoly on stupidity?
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Nope. But I don't think "[t]his is the same justice system" either, which was the specific assertion being refuted.
not giveing healthcare to prisons is cruel (Score:2)
They have the right to see a doctor and you have to feed prisons but the food sucks and a lot of prisons buy food at commissary.
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you have to feed prisons but the food sucks and a lot of prisons buy food at commissary.
The food might taste bad, but the calorie level of the meals is a lot higher than what a lot of people get outside prison.
Re:Prison should be punishment (Score:4, Informative)
Fear and punishment might give you a stiffy but they don't work. What we want is rehabilitated prisoners not people more angry and violent than when they went in.
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So you think killing innocent people is just?
I base this on the following:
1. humans are fallible
2. humans form juries, judges, prosecutors and police
3. thus any use of capital punishment will invariably kill innocent people
4. to skill believe in the use of capital punishment you must be ok with some innocent people being killed by the state.
This has been proven time and time again with people released from death row by DNA evidence. It is also used disproportionately on the poor and minorities, even when al
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