Yeah it's not great but it's a move in the right direction and beyond closing all prisons there will always be a need for vendors to provide goods and services inside prisons. Prisoners need food and clothing at the very least and it'll be bought from someone.
They don't need phone calls in some jails that cost over $20 for 15 minutes. Please don't make excuses for a corrupt system. Yeah, this is a win, but the problem is MASSIVE and in so many different domains. Frankly, you don't seem aware of the many issues that they were hinting at.
Sorry I didn't provide an exhaustive list of all the evils in the prison vendor system I'm aware of. I know about the horrendously expensive phone calls and the move toward video conferencing in place of in person visitation and the massive over charging for commissary items and the nearly slave 'wages' prisoners are paid for jobs they have no option to reject.
I just didn't think I needed to provide an exacting list of thing that will probably always involve a vendor. For example though unless the state gets into growing and preparing all the food from scratch there'll always be a food vendor in place, maybe just a normal food services company but it'll always be bought from someone, similarly for clothes and furniture.
I think I was too negative in that comment. I apologize.
I do think you're minimizing the issue in the way you talk about it, but the line about you not being aware of problems wasn't justified in the slightest and was just rude.
Yeah, could have been a bit less snippy myself. This whole thread has been super frustrating though with so many responses that to me boil down to "why didn't they tackle the whole gordian knot of the prison industrial complex?"
