"Captive Audience: The Music Business in America's Prisons" na spin.com

Czyli rewolucja technologiczna w amerykańskich więzieniach.

Jeśli kiedykolwiek zastanawiałeś się, jak muzyka wpływa na resocjalizację, dlaczego odtwarzacze mp3 sprawdzają się w kiciu lepiej od płyt CD i kaset (spoiler alert: trudniej z nich wykonać narzędzie zbrodni) i skąd więźniowie w Idaho czerpią nutę, David Peisner ma dla ciebie obszerny reportaż.

"They can listen to their music players pretty much anytime they're in the unit," she says. Idaho began allowing inmates to have specially designed prison-issue MP3 players three years ago and somewhere between 15 to 30 percent of offenders in Orofino have bought them through their commissary accounts. "MP3 players are a lot like televisions. They're a really good babysitter. It keeps their minds from running and maybe creating some chaos."

Whether it was the seminal recordings Leadbelly made while incarcerated in Louisiana or Johnny Cash touring California prisons or just the countless inmates who have passed time huddled in their cells listening to a Walkman, music has long played an active role in inmate life. There's always been a struggle to balance the practical needs of a corrections environment with the benefits that music can provide for prisoners; but just as the digital revolution has upended the way we listen to music in the outside world, it is beginning to fundamentally change life inside prison walls too.

"They love their music players so much," says Carlin. "The people that have them want to take them wherever they go."

For decades, most corrections departments allowed inmates to purchase CDs or cassettes through approved outside vendors — sometimes the same vendors who sold them toothpaste, shampoo, and hairbrushes. But now, at least a dozen states and some federal prisons offer inmates the opportunity to buy special prison-issue MP3 players and download music through systems, informally called "Music Wardens," designed specifically for prison use. According to Brian Wittrup, operations manager for the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections in Ohio, it took awhile to make the change from CDs to MP3s, mostly due to institutional technophobia.

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