Inmates Program Logistics App For Prison 98
schweini writes "Inmates in an Oklahoma prison developed software that attempts to streamline the prison's food logistics. A state representative found out, and he's trying to get every other prison in Oklahoma to use it, too. According to the Washington Post, 'The program tracks inmates as they proceed through food lines, to make sure they don’t go through the lines twice... It can help the prison track how popular a particular meal is, so purchasers know how much food to buy in the future. And it can track tools an inmate checks out to perform their jobs.' The program also tracks supply shipments into the system, and it showed that food supplier Sysco had been charging different prices for the same food depending on which facility it was going to. Another state representative was impressed, but realized the need for oversight: 'If they build on what they’ve done here, they actually have to script it out. If you have inmates writing code, there has to be a continual auditing process. Food in prison is a commodity. It’s currency.'"
Teaching Software Development (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the code needs to be audited anyways, it'd be a great chance for an instructor to introduce code reviews and/or pull requests. And maybe during that process, help enlighten other curious inmates as to how the system and programming works.
-- Jim
Your website could be better. Getting weekly feedback [weeklyfeedback.com] is a good starting point.
Rehab (Score:4, Interesting)
At least they're learning a skill that will be useful after they get out of prison. No wait ... that was before they shipped all the jobs offshore. I'll bet being a car thief pays better than flipping burgers, so maybe these guys ought to teach economics.
Re:Food in prison is a commodity. It’s curre (Score:4, Interesting)
What is needed is something with intrinsic value but which is also universally valued by most (if not all) of a population. Food is perfect for this: let's say you want something from another inmate.
Nota Bene: Food in prison can also be considered a raw material - bread for instance can be turned into alcohol with the right know-how, or fruits fermented for the same purpose.
Re:Food in prison is a commodity. It’s curre (Score:5, Interesting)
trading and exploitation, where the strong exploit the weak.
Trading does not imply exploitation. In fact, it implies the opposite: two willing traders. I am a vegetarian, so I when I was in jail, I was happy to trade away the meat, but not the dessert (I love sweet stuff). Several other inmates offered to do my toilet cleaning duty in exchange for the meat. I declined, because I don't actually mind cleaning toilets (as long as I can take a shower when I am done). So I mostly exchanged food for votes on the TV channel. I built up enough votes to watch the PBS Newshour every Friday (when Brooks and Shields do the analysis of the week's news). Sometimes I even had enough votes to watch Gwen Ifill on Washington Week. It was in a county jail, not a "real" prison, and Santa Clara is not a typical county, but I never saw "the strong exploit the weak". Mostly they were a great bunch of guys, and we all cooperated to keep the area clean and running smooth. It was also a great way to improve my conversational Spanish. The food trading was an open and fair process. Nobody was coerced, and nobody ever went hungry.