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smart prison

the internet of things for a home prison.
  (+4, -2)
(+4, -2)
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prisons are ungoldy expensieve. in fact, the u.s. has so much national and municipal debt, that very much like russia, there is no possiblity we can cotinue paying to keep a revolving group of 2 million people housed and fed with expensive motel keepers ( prison guards make very good money ) ---and an additional cost for managing the parole of another 7 million.

furthermore , prisons are notoriously overcrowded and out of the way.

i propose the government utilize the internet of things to develop a series of house arrest and wearables technologies that track everything about the person and ensures more or less automatically that the person does not leave their house, or the house they are assigned to. moreover, the wearables ( a device which provide full spectrum data as well as an ability to remotely disable the person should they attempt an act of violence or escape.

in this manner , the existing prisoners of the united states can help provide beta testing for technology that can be used widely around the world . furthermore the prisoners can mostly stay at their own homes or group homes.

of course, you'd probably still want to keep the most violent prisoners locked up in a conventional prison, but it's possible even they coujld and would be 'reformed' better if given a more peaceable environment than a massive array of caged human beings we call a conventional prison.

in many ways, this would also be good for eliminating the violent environemnt of the prison altogether which itself fosters a lot more violence and organized crime.

finally, as part of their participation in the home imprisonment , the prisoners could be subject to many technology beta tests AND they could be picked up for forced labor as needed.

smart hand cuffs smart watch 24/7 video robot surveillance.

smart vibration and heat sensors to observe the convict at all times.

smart chip implanted into the convict for gps blood cortisone co2 and of course---drugs.

and other biometric monitoring of all types, using the prisoners essentially as guinea pigs for experiments.

in many ways-------this idea is a tradeoff of one evil ( keeping a human caged like an animal) for another evil ----keeping a human in an information matrix panopticon that turns their life into a data full life metrics array the likes of which could never have been mandated at any scale due to the unethical nature of the experiment. the vast quantity of controllable information that could be collected probably would make for groundbreaking research.

the experiment itself IS thus rationalized by this tradeoff. keeping in mind how utterly horrible the conventional incarceration system already is.

i would argue that this would be a far more effective way of dealing with 95% of ordinary convictions, and what's more it would be far more profiteable for the state, for the military (to gain information about how to use fully integrated internet of things)

i'm certain people are asking, why not simply do this inside a prison. my answer is that there's no real need to this in prison other than if you are trying to minimize the hours of work or nature of the work done by guards in order to raise profits.

taken to its logical conclusion, the most profitable thing to do is to take the convict out of the prison using this technology and only leave behind the publicly owned prisons for the most violent and deviant offenders.

furthermore , this isn't really an either or proposition, you can do both.

teslaberry, Jul 04 2014

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       Not really an original idea first ever conceived by you. But an interesting idea, nonetheless. Already extant to some degree as an alternative to incarceration, parole, monitoring of sex offenders etc. It's not really a punitive measure, but maybe punishment is unproductive and society should generally move away from it. Instead replacing the offender under strict behavioral control of surveillance, psychiatric medication, and social isolation etc.
rcarty, Jul 04 2014
  

       I believe Rolf Harris was recently imprisoned in the UK for offences against minors.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 04 2014
  

       [+] It works best when you make the monitoring so invasive like you mention. (Blood monitoring, 24x7 video, likely with an anonymous crowd of watchers, internet monitoring, etc.)   

       The more invasive, the more punitive, and so you won't remove the deterrent effect.   

       I also like how we'd use these offenders as a data set, to help us understand biology, psychology, and sociology in very useful ways. Meaning, we'd have large sets of data that would show, "People who reoffended at X, also had these behaviors & symptoms 3 days prior." as a warning & intervention method, not as a punishment pre-crime (Minority Report style)
sophocles, Jul 04 2014
  

       Hold a lottery among the fifty states. The state that loses gets all the prisoners. The state line becomes a prison wall/fence.   

       You could end up sentenced to New Jersey.   

       Maybe in each state a lottery between the counties.   

       You could end up sentenced to Morris County, New Jersey
popbottle, Jul 05 2014
  

       Mass market all this technology you specify under the trademark Smart pIrson brand. Basically combine all technology into one handheld device resembling a cell phone. The technologically imprisoned person becomes so totally institutionalized that he or she identifies with the brand.
rcarty, Jul 05 2014
  
      
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