Social media and prisoners assignment - Essay Example

This is because, allowing the prisoners to access and use social media is placing the victims and the families of those affected by the crimes at the mercy of the prisoners, for perpetual threatening, insults and further torment. Whenever the victims and the families of the victims encounter the faces of the prisoners who offended them on the internet calling for friendship and love, it is a horrifying reminder of the ordeals they suffered on the hands of the offenders. Additionally, allowing the prisoners to access and use social media, presents them with an opportunity to seek for their victims and their families online, and continue to torment or threaten them through inappropriate messages (Allisa, 73).

For these reasons, those opposed to the prisoners accessing and using social media platforms to access the outside world, holds the opinion that it is only fair to hinder, and illegalize any access of social media by prisoners. Secondly, the critics and those contesting social media access and use by prisoners, hold that such action amounts to opening further avenues for the criminals to continue perpetrating crimes, since by allowing the prisoners to use social media platforms, they can engage in plans to escape from jail, or even organize for the supply of contraband goods into the prisons, or worse still, coordinate further criminal activities through communicating with their partners in the outside world (Jonsson, 1).

For example, in May 2000, an inmate from a New York prison who had been sentenced for fraud was found to have masterminded a stock-picking internet fraudulent scheme (Allisa, 74). Further, a case of David Puckett, an in inmate from Texas who befriended and cajoled a Face book friend who eventually assisted him to escape from prison, serves to strengthen the case for those opposed to the access and use of social media by prisoners (Jonsson, 2). Nevertheless, the discussion holds that prisoners should be allowed the access and