So I could start a positive social media campaign for an inmate as a smokescreen for my actually trying to get them punished more harshly?
It’s like some sort of bizarro swatting.
My first thought too. What could possibly go wrong? 
Yes, and no.
There is the very real case of the professor who shot five or six other professors at Concordia University here in Montreal in 1992. Word has it he was a Usenet kook before he shot them, but for a really long time after being convicted he got others to post his messages to Usenet, and certainly some of the time, relay replies to him.
He never stopped blaming those he killed for being the reason he killed them. He was never remorseful. He wasn’t wrongfully convicted. He also complained constantly about being “mistreated”.
The good thing was it was contained to Usenet, and we could reply with some reality. I’d like to think I posted something that caused whoever was posting the messages to stop, but who knows.
The bad side was the vulgar replies, people more interested in being vulgar than caring about the people who had been shot. One time a local columnist wrote about it, I had a letter in the paper chastising the columnist, the column just gave attention to the killer. And I’ve managed all this time to never mention his name.
Then for some reason some do gooder group found out about the posts “think of the children, we must do something” and went on publicity blitz. It got a lot of press for that killer. The group never bothered asking those directly affected by the posts about it, thy just jumped in.
Things aren’t binary, there is a line somewhere.
Why is Texas so mean-spirited? Driving through, drivers are courteous. People are generally nice when you talk to them, so why do they have such harsh views toward others? I don’t get it.
Yes, the line ends where a person’s speech breaks the law. We may not like it, but unless there’s an actual law on the books that you can prove has been violated, they are free to say whatever horrible things they want to say. The burden is on those making accusations to prove them also. Speech is allowed until that point.
Who wants to build a system that scrapes the public prisoner databases in each state and automatically creates social media accounts for every inmate? They can’t put everyone in solitary.
OK, so I get how prisons can place limits on the actual prisoners, but how in the hell can they justify punishing the prisoners for something their families are doing? Even for Texas, this seems particularly idiotic.
Typical idiot law from the most idiotic state in the US.(Yeah, Florida works harder at it…but no one does “ugly” and “vile” as moronically as the Lone Star bunch.)
The faux-cowboys and loudmouthed rednecks across the place keep “threatening” to secede. Do it !!! You can then set up your blowhard paradise any effed-up way you like.
There’s an answer, but its a sad one, noirling.
Texans are crazy.
Sure they can. You’ve haven’t heard they’ve been doubling up “solitary” now? Yeah, putting two guys in a murderbox unsupervised for years on end, 23 and a half hours a day.
How the fuck is this even remotely legal?
Give prisoners internet access. Unless they are committing a crime over the internet give them access.
See Sweden.
Swedish inmates to receive digital tablets
Only if you had access to the inmate’s social media accounts. The limitation isn’t on family members (or anyone else) publishing social media on their own accounts. Just anyone “maintaining” the inmate’s social media account/presence with posts about their case/prison conditions and such. (It’s still a vile policy that blanket restricts all kinds of free speech with no rationale whatsoever while holding the threat of what amounts to torture over the inmates).
There’s plenty of rationale. Just not valid ones.
Rationales like: If we don’t let inmates have any contact with the outside at all, we can abuse them as much as we want without consequences.
Do you labour beneath the belief that somehow, the law still rules?
Nope, but I sure am even further disheartened that the fuckers er, ah… the “powers that be” don’t even deign to bother with thin veneers or facades anymore.
Basically I’m just waiting for the first report of food/water riots breaking out.
That’s the first death knell for a “civil society” that never actually existed, IMHO.
more than a decade in solitary confinement
I can’t even begin to comprehend this. A fate worse than death.
So that person who put that into action would have to possibly commit the crime of hacking (logging into the inmates social media account) or identity theft (making a fake social media account in that person’s name.)
That’s what you think.
