Program to educate incarcerated people costs 40K per graduate?!

[Jonathan Whatley]

They can use DNS blocking to prevent users from visiting certain sites.

It would be cheap to hire someone in a 3rd world country to monitor their PCs remotely and use software that takes screenshots to monitor internet activity.

Prisoners studying introductory psychology or sociology or the Bible or Romeo and Juliet will quickly encounter testable content areas about violence, sexuality, drugs, etc. I don't think a state policy that decisions about Internet content filtering for prisoners on such subjects should be made by sub-minimum-wage workers in third world countries rather than and without appeal to American correction or education workers would survive long.

[LevelUP]

They can use DNS blocking to prevent users from visiting certain sites.

It would be cheap to hire someone in a 3rd world country to monitor their PCs remotely and use software that takes screenshots to monitor internet activity.

Prisoners studying introductory psychology or sociology or the Bible or Romeo and Juliet will quickly encounter testable content areas about violence, sexuality, drugs, etc. I don't think a state policy that decisions about Internet content filtering for prisoners on such subjects should be made by sub-minimum-wage workers in third world countries rather than and without appeal to American correction or education workers would survive long.

They don't have to make the final decision. Instead, they can flag the session and have a prison staff review it later. 

I don't know how picky they would be about sites they visit as long as it's related to studying. But I would imagine they don't want them on Twitter/Facebook or Instagram, so those types of sites would be DNS blocked.

A prisoner might try to be smart and go through a VPN/proxy, but that is what the screen monitoring is for, so that would be an instant ban for trying any workaround.

[jsd]

DNS filtering doesn't cut it in the "real world," let alone a prison environment.

[Jonathan Whatley]

I'm enthusiastically for college opportunities for prisoners, and I'd love to have disruptively inexpensive ways to deliver more.

Handing prisoners computer time and competency-based education subscriptions, and the Internet but with filtering and monitoring that's somehow simultaneously appropriate for American prisons, appropriate for American adult college students, and very low cost to administer, might help a few people, in minimum security, typically with good prior education.

But in general, we should expect prisoners will be significantly more expensive to provide appropriate college education to than students in low-cost CBE programs on the outside.

[LevelUP]

DNS filtering doesn't cut it in the "real world," let alone a prison environment.

Define what you mean by "doesn't cut it." 

But in general, we should expect prisoners will be significantly more expensive to provide appropriate college education to than students in low-cost CBE programs on the outside.

The government, in general, is by a factor of 10 to 1 less efficient than the private sector.

That's why I'm not surprised by the college education costs in prison.

[jsd]

DNS filtering doesn't cut it in the "real world," let alone a prison environment.

Define what you mean by "doesn't cut it." 

Is ineffective for the purposes of preventing people from accessing problematic sites.

[LevelUP]

Is ineffective for the purposes of preventing people from accessing problematic sites.

So if the DNS for the site is blocked, how would you go to the site?

[jsd]

let's pretend bypassing a DNS filter isn't easy and go with the obvious problem here -- are you implying they'd be able to blacklist every possible site they're trying to avoid on the internet just with DNS filtering?

[LevelUP]

let's pretend bypassing a DNS filter isn't easy and go with the obvious problem here -- are you implying they'd be able to blacklist every possible site they're trying to avoid on the internet just with DNS filtering?

You can have over 100 million+ websites blocked if you want. 

Though you can't block everything because anyone can make a brand new website that gets around the filters in a matter of minutes. That is simple to do, and an inmate with help from the outside could easily set this up.

I'm saying that DNS filters with screen monitoring would work well enough.

[jsd]

You can have over 100 million+ websites blocked if you want. 

Though you can't block everything because anyone can make a brand new website that gets around the filters in a matter of minutes. That is simple to do, and an inmate with help from the outside could easily set this up.

Which is my point, it's not very efficient. Compile your list of 100mil+ sites, and it's out of date before you even started.

I'm saying that DNS filters with screen monitoring would work well enough.

I agree that this combo would work, but I can't see such a program being realistically implemented, aside from maybe a very low-occupancy prison with very limited computer usage time windows.