Stevie Wilson: Tablets Are a New Way for Prisons to Profit off the Incarcerated

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In 2015, the PA DOC introduced tablets sold by GTL (now Viapath) to the general population. We were told we would be able to send and receive emails, buys songs and books, submits requests to staff and order commissary via the tablets. These were the selling points of the device which cost $160. PA DOC paid us $0.19 an hour and expected us to buy a tablet that required over 842 hours of labor. Most of us purchased the tablet with the financial help of our families and friends. When the DOC introduced the tablets, it phased out the cassette tape program run through its libraries. So, if we wanted to hear music, we had to buy a tablet. And at first, music was all we could access on the tablet.

For almost a year, we didn’t have email or eBook access. Even today, nine years later, we still don’t have the ability to submit requests to staff or order commissary. Songs, which include lectures and other spoken word materials, costs $1.91. Initially, we could purchase entire lectures, some two hours long, for $1.91. The PA DOC got wise and chopped the lectures up, making 20 to 25 minutes available for $1.91. So, if we want to hear the entire lecture, we had to spend almost $12.

Emails cost $0.25 and are restricted to 2,000 characters, including spaces. Calling them emails is a misnomer. It’s e-messaging. Unlike emails, which people can use for free, we pay. Also, it can take days before the message is delivered or received. While faster that snail mail, it is nothing like email. Many imprisoned people in PA depend upon e-messaging as a primary form of communication with the world because our snail mail operation was outsourced to Florida in 2018. We don’t receive the actual mail that people send to us. We receive a copy. No pictures. No cards. No original drawings. And since snail mail can take 10 days to reach us, people have turned to e-messaging as their primary communication method. The DOC has made receiving mail onerous so many people have stopped using it.

Outsourcing our mail has lined the pockets of Smart Communications ($4 million/year), GTL/Viapath and the DOC. Imprisoned people and their families are impoverished by this move.

In 2017, the DOC enabled the eBooks app on the tablet. The search function on the tablet is horrible. Most of the subject categories listed have no books listed under them. The only way to know what is available for purchase is to scroll through the entire search list. This would take hours. A hard copy of the catalogue was made available in the library. But you had to purchase a copy. That’s $15.

The books range from $0 to $27. The only free books are religious texts that are in the public domain. Other books that are in the public domain still costs between $3 and $10. Most of the books are classical literature and fiction. Current fiction is the most expensive to purchase. We cannot make suggestions. So are tastes are not represented in the catalogue. The catalogue hasn’t been updated once in six years.

In 2018, the PA DOC tried to restrict all purchases of book and magazines via the tablet. We had to submit a request via tablet to purchase a book or magazine. The DOC would then search for the book or magazine and respond with a price for it. We didn’t know where they searched or how they priced the publication. If we wanted the publication, we would have to submit a cash slip to have the funds deducted from our accounts. The publication would then be purchased, shipped to another address in PA, and then finally shipped to the prison. No one used this service. It was too cumbersome and time consuming. Four months after launching the initiative, the DOC cancelled it.

We were told that along with an expansion of available texts via the tablets, each library under the DOC would be expanded. It never happened. Because the tablets are expensive, there are many people who don’t have one. These folx cannot access the eBooks and they have restricted access to the actual library.

We read less and pay more to be distracted. The digitization and monetization of mail has made obtaining books a struggle, financially and emotionally.

I know few people who have purchased any eBooks. I am a writer so I am an exception. I have 42 eBooks. Prices ranged from $3 to $22. Most of my eBook library is classical literature and historical works. When I asked other imprisoned people about their tablet experiences and eBooks, most told me they didn’t use the tablet to read books. Pricing and selection were the two main reasons cited for not using the tablet to read. Those who didn’t have tablets told me they didn’t know eBooks are available on it. People don’t talk about eBooks. Music, yes. Games, yes. But eBooks, no.

Games were made available in 2019. They cost $4 or $5. These are the very games people out there play for free. Some eBooks are cheaper than the games, but people still don’t buy them. Overall, there has been a downturn in reading behind the walls. The DOC has erected numerous barriers to books. Whether it’s the mail policies, the exorbitant costs of eBooks, especially newer books, or the censorship of the mailrooms, obtaining books has become harder. On the flipside, the DOC has made available numerous distractions (music, games, TVs) at steep prices. We read less and pay more to be distracted. The digitization and monetization of mail has made obtaining books a struggle, financially and emotionally. Money, mainly from the pockets of our families, is being sucked into the coffers of the DOC and private corporations. Access to reading materials is being stymied via policies that claim security and, incredibly, access are the underlying context for the changes. Minds are being closed and pockets are being opened. And the state and its corporate partners are reaping the benefits.

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David Webb: Prison Tablets are Great but Could Be So Much Better

It has been close to a year since we were given tablets at this institution in Maryland where I’ve spent the last two years of a sentence started in 1986.

Everyone loves them—myself included. Honestly, they are so convenient. I believe many remain silent about some of the tablet’s issues for fear of being accused of seeking the perfect over the useful. The technology is useful, after all. But what I’m asking for isn’t perfect.

To start using a GTL tablet you type in your prison ID and scan your face with facial recognition software. Once you’re logged in you can see different applications for different content, like any regular computer or phone. There are two sets of apps: one is free, and the others can only be used after a monetary transaction. Payments can be made from someone on the outside, or through a prison account whose information is already on the tablet because it’s affiliated with our IDs.

It’s possible some people feel the content is perfectly adequate.

A premium package consists of 55 apps. This package costs $22 per month. A smaller package gives the same 55 apps at $10 but is only good for 400 minutes during a 30-day period, which is eight hours. In prison, this is nothing. Either of those might seem like a deal until you realize 38 of the apps are games—games that I’ve been told are mind-numbingly boring, like Burrito Bison, Bubble Witch, and Pet Saga. Playing games like these is certainly better than staring at the wall, which might be someone’s only other option. But they’re not much more interesting. I think they grabs people’s attention and holds it merely due to activating the fight or flight response.

This is not a high hat to those people who enjoy them. Doing time is incredibly hard. I know. If someone survives doing their time because they were able to play these stupid games, it’s much better than them being destroyed mentally or engaging in other ways to survive incarceration. It is also not to advocate for getting rid of these games. Merely, what is also needed is the availability of more diverse, informative, and educational content.

Other apps have great content, but there’s a roughly two in ten chance you’ll get what you select and pay for. For instance, Pluto has documentaries, history, and biography along with films. But good luck viewing what you paid for. Many times, the signal indicator spins endlessly without ever connecting. iHeart has a nice selection of material aside from its catalog of music, like recorded history, famous speeches, and foreign languages. But in order to access exactly what you want, someone on the outside must sign you up and pay a monthly charge. Without that, you can look up an artist and see their work, and maybe hear some songs from them before it arbitrarily switches to music from someone else entirely. For instance, while listening to Tina Turner, you could be switched to Madonna or Cyndi Lauper. In addition to that, there is a built-in default that never allows you to listen to the songs you choose—even when you pay for them. Instead, your choice is redirected to another album or another artist.

So far there has been no remedy to any of this. As I’ve said, it has been a year and these problems still exist. But many are of the mind that it’s better than nothing and, because there is no choice, we should accept the warts and all. So, we purchase the apps, pretty much, by default as well.

As one would expect, the free apps feature even less. Of my tablet’s twenty apps, seven are related to prison operations. There is one for Settings, as in, color, print size (we can’t print), etcetera. One deals with personal account information, and another for commissary. The Notices app features a variety of things, like what form of pictures are restricted and descriptions of diseases and their symptoms. The Help app describes how to use the tablet. The Facility Information app features scant information on parole and reentry. The Facility Messages app is an overlap of the others, and features new notices. The Requests app is supposed to address complaints.

That leaves roughly twelve other applications in addition to those. There is an FM radio app, a couple of religious apps featuring literature from multiple denominations and word of the day verses. There is a Merriam Webster’s app, which doesn’t have modern definitions of words like “gaslight”—for that you have to purchase the better version in the paid apps. There is a Calm app devoted to meditation, with ambient sounds and scenery. The others include the Career One Stop job search app, a Calculator, and a Photo app where you can receive pictures from the outside.

And there is a free Books app.

Most of these free books are titles with expired copyrights that the companies can acquire and distribute for free. For example, some of the titles date back nearly 3,000 years to Homer and others to 150 years ago such as James Joyce. As a writer, I enjoy reading masters like Homer and Joyce. But with innovation constantly upon us, it seems this would require new literature as well. The threat of AI appropriating our employment seems like a more pertinent topic than Charles Dickens relaying the horrors of child labor.

Most of the books available would be by those authors chronologically on the timeline between Home and Joyce. Authors like Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Flaubert, Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson. (The paid apps have about 25% of these titles as audiobooks. I guess we are paying not to read.) This is the bulk of the free Books app, which is the classics section. Other sections, like Legal—which has only one book, a glossary—and Modern fiction, which has six books, are scant and by obscure authors.

The Addiction section has two books—Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous—and the Reference has two books, the Constitution and Dale Carnegie’s Art of Public Speaking. This is pretty much the entire collection of books with classics dominating the volume. There is no option for search and choice—say, for a math book or something on celebrities or some other subject of interest—only what is already there. And, whenever I talk to another reader about the tablets—or anyone for that matter—it is never about the reading material. For that, everyone still relies on the library.

So, someone interested in plumbing or some other practical trade is out of luck. When many incarcerated people are eager to learn because we know upon release, a skill would enable a much greater chance of success at transitioning back. There are physical books in the prison library on these skills—sometimes. But library access is limited.

Most prisons allow one visit per week, some every other week, with a little extra time if you have an upcoming court date. Max time with a book is two weeks. Book drops are set up in high traffic areas like the chow hall to eliminate the need to return to the library. Late returns can result in restrictions and money taken from your account. All these restrictions mean library books are highly limited and most people can’t access books with near regularity.

In the nine prisons I’ve been in, not one has had the capacity to meet the needs of incarcerated people. With the exception of people who do their time reading books, many have conditioned themselves not to go to the library unless there is an immediate need. This is done with a mind toward conscientiousness, so not to get in the way of those who need to search and do legal work—which in the minds of prisoners everywhere supersedes everything else in the library.

Tablets represent a tremendous opportunity to increase access. Without taking any space, through the miracle of technology, the mountain is brought to Muhammad on the tablet. Alongside Webster’s, there could be reference materials like encyclopedias, content on US history, GED instruction courses, and a very needed Case Law app. I am not suggesting that tablets should replace the physical library, or end the allowance of books. Rather, tablets with robust content would be more than mindless entertainment. It would supplement the physical library, providing access to a broader set of learning and enabling access for people who are in solitary and expand the number of people that can read and learn as they do their time.

If we consider people are here for correction then tablets offer many meaningful and substantial benefits. Reading offers ameliorating effects on the mind and character. Less accessibility appears here as unmitigated error, and shares an affinity with censorship. Depriving someone of reading compounds stagnation. With less choice of potential ways to improve themselves and move forward does not support rehabilitation.

The idea that books and information can change lives is not pollyannaish or liberal fantasy for me. It is a reality. Prior to coming to prison, I had never read a book from cover to cover, or outside of school. I didn’t like reading or writing, and was incarcerated with an 8th grade education. Now, I’ve published a couple articles and I am two years into a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree with Georgetown University. It took years and years for me to reach this point.

Tablets represent a tremendous opportunity to increase access. Without taking any space, through the miracle of technology, the mountain is brought to Muhammad on the tablet.

I struggle and still have to work for it. Rarely does any of the study come to me easily. But it has always been worth it. The aim in learning is to fill the mind with as much information as it can hold.

One of the things that inspired me long ago was an article in the sports section of the newspaper about Los Angeles Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss. After he’d been asked why he still went to school with all of his success, he replied—I’m paraphrasing—that education was a lifelong pursuit. Something simple like that.

So I’m not done. More than anything, my education has shown me how much I still don’t know. How much there still is to search and learn. There is a free app on my tablet called Edovo. They are a nonprofit that charges providers and offers free educational content to incarcerated people. I’ve taken a course on writing that taught me things I didn’t know. I learned about major literary periods like the Enlightenment and modernism and how writers in those movements wrote and how to distinguish as a reader those characteristics. That opened up a whole realm of writing for me. They also offer certificates for completing these courses. I have three so far.

The addition of Edovo on the tablets is a big step towards equipping incarcerated people with education and skills. In addition to the educational content, they also have information about re-entry, recovery and health and wellbeing. Having tablets stocked like the shelves in a library would go a very long way toward achieving what prisons claim their goal is: rehabilitation. That is, if prisons are not really the warehouses of the new Jim Crow.

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Paula Grieve: My Disillusionment with JPay/Securus eBooks

In September of 2018, JPay kiosks were installed in my dormitory. The line of women who waited to use the kiosk slinked down the hallway. Once I reached the front of the line, frustrated and impatient women stood behind me while I read, then responded, to email. With scant remaining minutes before the system automatically logged me out, I searched through the eBooks. It was readily apparent that the selection leaned heavily towards classics. I’ve read a slew of classics throughout my life, which meant I was not initially as disappointed as my neighbors were. I downloaded Dracula, Alice in Wonderland, and The Count of Monte Cristo, though I never opened the app on my tablet to read them. Instead, I continued to access the facility’s library to check out books, or read books loaned to me from a friend. My preferred genre was YA fiction and post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy.

Eventually, there was a notification sent to all JPay customers, which advised the eBooks would be updated at some unspecified future date.

Nearly six years have elapsed and the only eBooks available remain versions from the public domain with expired copyright. Each eBook I looked at began with the disclaimer: “Project Gutenberg this eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away, or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenburg.org.”

Last year JPay’s contract with FLDOC ended and Securus began servicing the Media, e-Messaging and eBooks. My expectation for a revised catalog was quickly dispelled. The catalog remained the same.

Last week, when I read the call for the eBook experience submission, I decided to search through the Securus catalog, yet again, for any updates. I typed “Poetry” into the search bar and the return was a mixed bag: “Poetry a Magazine of Verse, Volume 1, October-March, 1912-13,” as well as, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: a series of very plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-senator George  Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum at the New York County courthouse bootblack stand; recorded by William L. Rior.”

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall was definitely political science, not poetry.

I clicked on most downloaded, which returned the options of: “10,000 Dreams Interpreted; or What’s in a Dream a Scientific and Practical Exposition by Gustavus Hindman Miller” which, surprisingly, had the most downloads at 439, as of yesterday.

Lyman’s Frank Baum’s “Glinda of Oz In Which are Related the Exciting Experiences of Princess Ozma of Oz, and Dorothy, in Their Hazardous Journey to the Home of the Flatheads and to the Magic Isles of the Skeezers and How They Were Rescued From Dire Peril by the Sorcery of Glinda” garnered only 34 downloads.

My experience with the eBook catalog was not a complete disappointment. Last month I received the required text list for a Study of Literature course I enrolled in through Adams State University. I must pay for all required reading separately from tuition costs. I was grateful to find that 4 of the 10 required texts were available for free through the Securus eBook catalog. My family did not have to purchase: O Pioneers! by Willa Catha, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Thank you Securus!

I had hoped for a more robust selection, but truth be told, I prefer to hold a real book in my hands. Due to recent policy changes, incoming physical mail must be scanned and send digitally to the tablet. My greatest concern regarding the lackluster showing of available eBooks stems from the very real possibility that the FLDOC may eventually bar incoming books. Were that to occur, educational and recreational reading opportunities would be limited solely to eBooks.

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Stevie Wilson is an imprisoned Black, queer, abolitionist organizer and multi-genre writer from Philadelphia. His work interrogates the meanings of freedom, community, belonging, identity, and truth. Wilson is rewriting a collection of essays that explore kinship and HIV/AIDS. The first version of the original manuscript, which focuses on the period between 1993 and 2009 when Stevie worked in the AIDS-services field, was destroyed by prison guards. Wilson is the founder of the inside abolitionist study collective 9971 and is the founder of the abolitionist journal In The Belly. He was a 2022 Marvel Cooke Fellow. Wilson has published numerous articles in print and online. His most recent work appears in Radical History Review, the Journal of American History, and the collection After Accountability: A Critical Genealogy of a Concept. Currently, he is a columnist for the Abolitionist, a newspaper published by Critical Resistance.

David Webb was born in Baltimore in 1971. He was raised and attended public schools in West Baltimore. K-3rd Pimlico Elm, 4th and 5th 125 Furman L. Templeton, 6th Booker T. Washington, 6th – 8th graduated Mount Royal Middle, 9th Dunbar High. As a kid, David loved sports, and began playing in leagues organized by the Rec Centers (Robert Marshall, McCollough Homes, Murphy Homes, Lexington Terrace, Crispus Attucks) at age eight. David had no other dream but to play in the NBA. At 14, he got into the trouble that he is still paying for. He discovered literature and that he loved it in his late twenties, and began writing shortly afterward. He currently attends Georgetown University through their college in prison program.

Paula Grieve is incarcerated for life and is currently in Homestead Correctional Institution in Florida.