Most prisoners can't use social media directly anyway. So this proposal would prevent loved ones from using a social media account on a prisoner's behalf.
As an ex incarcerated individual this is total bullshit. There's no reason for this other than to further isolate a vulnerable population and silence stories of abuse.
Is that even legal??
They want to make it illegal for a family member to post on a prisoner's social media for them, or send comments/pictures etc. posted to social media.
That sounds illegal
It's probably a free speech lawsuit by the ACLU if it passes.
I hate TikTok but to disallow them to use it or any social platform just due to being prisoners is incredibly fucked up. America's prison population is a huge percentage of the population. You can't silence people this way. This is beyond evil when a large amount of prisoners have arguably been wrongly or unfairly incarcerated. Let's not forget how many innocent black men have been arrested and killed by the police. Some states arrest people just for being homeless. We're also seeing mass arrests of protestors right now due to the genocide and war protestor arrests are common in contemporary American history. The Supreme Court is going to have to step in on this. Wish we didn't have such a shitty Supreme Court gang right now. Hell, they'll probably support it. This country is ruined.
Given that there's typically no requirement for a social media page to actually belong to the person named on the page itself I can't imagine how this could possibly be legal or even enforced.
I could just say "this Facebook page under the name of my incarcerated brother does not belong to him. It's my Facebook page. I just post about stories he tells me over the phone about what he's going through. I'm under no direction from him to post anything and am posting these things of my own volition."
Unless they want to say they somehow have jurisdiction to restrict the actions of a completely free individual this can't possibly go anywhere.
Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.
See Critical Resistance's definitions below:
The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.
Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.
PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.
From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.
Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.