Prisoners are persons whom most of us would rather not think about. Banished from everyday sight, they exist in a shadow world that only dimly enters our awareness. They are members of a "total institution" that controls their daily existence in a way that few of us can imagine. "[P]rison is a complex of physical arrangements and of measures, all wholly governmental, all wholly performed by agents of government, which determine the total existence of certain human beings (except perhaps in the realm of the spirit, and inevitably there as well) from sundown to sundown, sleeping, walking, speaking, silent, working, playing, viewing, eating, voiding, reading, alone, with others. . . ." It is thus easy to think of prisoners as members of a separate netherworld, driven by its own demands, ordered by its own customs, ruled by those whose claim to power rests on raw necessity. -- Justice William Brennan, dissenting in O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 354-55 (1987).

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Prison Talk Fund Raiser

I received the following email from Prison Talk, an online forum for friends and families of inmates that I have referred to in the past. They are attempting to raise funds to increase their technical infrastructure and upgrade their features.

The letter I received is as follows. I encourage anyone interested to please contribute. I will be donating $100.

Dear PTO Member,

PTO has been a wonderful place for friendship, understanding and support for over 6 years. We all have the common bond of having a connection to the prison system, whether it is having a loved one, pen pal or friend in prison, or just an interest in human rights and wanting to know more about the criminal justice systems.

PTO does not charge for membership or access to the site and we intend to continue in that tradition. At times however we need to raise funds in order to maintain and expand PTO.

With the near completion of the forum upgrade, live chat room, the addition of new features such as blogs, member albums, photo galleries, customizable member profiles (etc), we now are focusing on the graphics upgrade and adding new servers to handle the additional and growing loads required to host PrisonTalk.com.

While the server we purchased two years ago has done well for us, we have outgrown it. We are currently running at load levels that leave little “room for error” or to grow and it is becoming more problematic each month. Page load times have been slowing down, and when the system has a “hiccup”, we have to jump in and address it much more than we would if it had more resources available.

We have spent quite a bit of time talking to our server admin and a number of other professionals to determine exactly what equipment we need to give us optimum performance for the most reasonable amount of money. The setup we have come up with is to add two additional new servers to our existing server.

We realize that not everyone is in a position to contribute to the fund raiser and we want to assure you that your experience on PTO will not change. Every feature around the site that you currently have access to will remain the same and PTO will always remain free to access! For those who are interested and able to contribute to the fund raiser, you will have a few new enhanced features once the upgrade is completed. You can find full details of this here:

http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=331563

All PTO members who contribute to this years fund raiser will be recognized by having an "award" icon placed in their post bit, as well as included in the Donation List. For full details on this, please see this thread:
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=331725

How To Donate to PTO:

If you are interested and able to donate to the PTO Fund Raiser, you can do so either via PayPal / Credit Card or by mailing in a check, money order, etc.

If you want to use the PayPal or Credit Card option we ask you to please use the automated system located at PrisonTalk.com so that your contribution will instantly be recorded into the system and we will know who you are so we can recognize your contribution.

You can access the system either by clicking on the “Donation” Option in the Navigation bar in the forums, or you can access the donation page by clicking on this link:

http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/awc_ds.php?do=donation

If you prefer to mail in your contribution, please be sure and include your PTO User Name along with the donation. If you would prefer your name and/or the amount to be anonymous, please specify this.

Contributions should be made payable to: PrisonTalk.com, and mailed to the following address:

PrisonTalk.com
P.O. Box 644
Sugar Land, TX. 77487-0644

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If you are interested in learning more about the equipment we plan to purchase, the costs associated with the upgrade and other details, you may view them and comment in the following thread:
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=331568

If you would like to know more about What’s New at PTO, please visit the PTO Site News & Information forum located here:
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=33

If you have any questions, comments or would like to know more about PTO's fund raiser, please visit the following forum dedicated to it:
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1049

Thanks for taking the time to read this email and we will see you at PTO!

3 comments:

Tea N. Crumpet said...

I will donate on the next paycheck! I've been to this forum-- it's a great link for people to make sense of that which baffles the smartest people!

Your color choice for this post is bad-- you need to make it darker, dearest Bill!

Bill Bailey said...

Is blue better? :)

web tasarımı said...

will donate on the next paycheck! I've been to this forum