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[-] VanillaGorilla@kbin.social 88 points 2 years ago

Charges for water?

Do they disclose the cleaning fee after checkout or right in the beginning? What about the convenience fee?

Are Texas prisons run by Ticketmaster?

[-] DoctorTYVM@lemmy.world 74 points 2 years ago

Americans have a punishment boner when it comes to the legal system. They don't want to prevent crime or improve society. They want the bad people to suffer.

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[-] BigMcLargeHuge@mstdn.social 41 points 2 years ago

@VanillaGorilla @gAlienLifeform

Texas prisons are run by someone even worse than Ticketmaster.

They are run by Texas.

[-] baronvonj@lemmy.world 22 points 2 years ago

Well, Texas loves private prisons, so many aren't run by the state. This is another disgusting example of how libertarians get it wrong.

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm definitely no libertarian, but I do have one quibble with this - entirely private prisons are actually very little of the prison space in the United States. However, government run prisons do hundreds of millions of dollars in business with private vendors for things like the commissary and healthcare and phones &c., and all those businesses gouge taxpayers and inmates for substandard goods and services, because they're able to negotiate sweetheart contracts with government bureaucrats who don't give a shit and get lobbied like crazy (vendor salesperson: "Oh, your annual salary is only what? Ha, I've gotten commission checks higher than that! Let me get the tab for our lunch today.").

So it's a bit complicated but at the end of the day underfunding government services and throwing all of our responsibilities for things like taking care of our prisoners to for-profit companies is what's caused all of this, so the solutions to these problems aren't going to be coming out of a libertarian playbook imo.

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[-] MasterObee@lemmy.world 75 points 2 years ago

They say that prisoners have access to tap water, but the prisoners say that tap water is crap.

This could all be solved by, ya know, having potable tap water by fixing some of our shit infrastructure.

Our treatment of prisoners is a disgrace.

[-] gressen@lemm.ee 55 points 2 years ago

Prisoners are being charged for water?

[-] samus12345@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

Yes, because the tap water in their cells often isn't fit to drink.

[-] astral_avocado@programming.dev 12 points 2 years ago
[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 12 points 2 years ago

The tap water in many US towns isn't fit to drink, let alone prisons.

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[-] Pat12@lemmy.world 47 points 2 years ago

how is texas allowed to exist as a state, they are seriously so inhumane and backwards that it's baffling

[-] Mereo@lemmy.ca 44 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The price of bottled water went up 50% in prison commissaries across Texas last month. The controversial move has two state agencies pointing the finger at each other as inmates struggle to endure an entrenched and deadly heatwave in facilities without air conditioning. The state raised the price from $4.80 per case (24 bottles) to $7.20 per case on June 27. Commissary vendor Royal Pacific Tea Company requested to raise the prices in March even though it contract was incomplete. The prices were negotiated by the state comptroller's office and appear to be approved by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“I actually begged him not to [drink the tap water],” said Amy Aguilar, whose loved one is at TDCJ’s Ferguson Unit. Her significant other — whose name she asked TPR to not use — has described the water as “rancid” smelling. And she said she was concerned about the quality. “Do you smell the sewer?” Aguilar said she asked him, “And he goes, 'you kind of just smell it all. It's just this big ole rich mix of rancid smell.' ” Water quality in prisons nationwide have been characterized as very low, due to the age of the facilities and the often remote locations.

Of course, for them, prisoners are subhumans, sigh.

[-] DrPop@lemmy.one 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Royal Pacific tea company sounds like slave traders. No Surprise they are taking advantage of the situation.

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[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 33 points 2 years ago

Some people are truly evil.

[-] SuiXi3D@kbin.social 22 points 2 years ago

Such as the vast majority of folks in Texas government.

[-] Kerrigor@kbin.social 25 points 2 years ago
[-] SuiXi3D@kbin.social 19 points 2 years ago

That’s a funny way to spell Nazis.

[-] Kerrigor@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

Sad that they're effectively synonyms at this point

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

The Republican party has been running on fascism since Goldwater made his 1964 presidential campaign all about opposing the Civil Rights Acts imo, the fact that we weren't all talking about it so directly until Trump tore the mask off was a combination of it being a really disturbing thing we just didn't want to admit and our culture being guided by privileged pundits and media executives and poloticians and think tank members and etc. who are too wealthy and white to experience the consequences of Republican racism

[-] xuxebiko@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

Imho, they're trying to be worse than Nazis.

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[-] damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works 31 points 2 years ago

Is Texas now competing to be more or diseutopian than North Korea because it's certainly seems like that appears to be the goal.

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[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 26 points 2 years ago

Jesus fucking christ, what a hellhole.

[-] girlfreddy@mastodon.social 24 points 2 years ago

@gAlienLifeform

This is what happens when you put for-profit companies in charge of anything and everything.

[-] _xDEADBEEF@lemm.ee 23 points 2 years ago

Peak Texas move.

[-] XbSuper@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago

They have to pay for water?

[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This is about bottled water at the commissary, but

Because of the ongoing heatwave TDCJ guards pass out glasses of cold water each day, and TDCJ has pointed out the men have access to tap water. But many current and former inmates have expressed concern about the water quality of the aging prisons — many older then 50 years.

“I would never drink the water at the tap,” said Don Aldaco, a recently paroled man who spent 24 years in various TDCJ facilities. “I would always get a piece of a sheet and I would tie it on the actual spigot, like a filter. I would have to change it like every other day because of all the rust and all the crud coming out.

Other current inmates commented on the smell of tap water in specific facilities resembling sewage. A TDCJ spokeswoman called the claim false.

“I actually begged him not to [drink the tap water],” said Amy Aguilar, whose loved one is at TDCJ’s Ferguson Unit. Her significant other — whose name she asked TPR to not use — has described the water as “rancid” smelling. And she said she was concerned about the quality.

“Do you smell the sewer?” Aguilar said she asked him, “And he goes, 'you kind of just smell it all. It's just this big ole rich mix of rancid smell.' ”

Water quality in prisons nationwide have been characterized as very low, due to the age of the facilities and the often remote locations.

e; this is over a decade old now, but this bit from a documentary where they check out a convention for prison vendors gives you an idea of how much money's going on behind this whole evil system

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 13 points 2 years ago
[-] regular_human@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

Um, there's only 2 amendments sweaty

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[-] happilybitchycowboy@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

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[-] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 years ago
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
622 points (100.0% liked)

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