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July 6, 2017
"The Wireless Prison: How Colorado’s tablet computer program misses opportunities and monetizes the poor"
The title of this post is the title of this lengthy new Prison Policy Initiative posting about an important new part of the prison experience in a growing number of jurisdictions. I recommend the full piece, and here are excerpts from how it starts and concludes (with links from the original):
A recent Denver Post article reports that the Colorado state prison system has awarded a contract to prison communications giant GTL (formerly Global Tel*Link) for a tablet program that will eventually be deployed in all the state’s prisons.
The Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) is somewhat of an early adopter of emerging communications technology. For several years it has offered electronic messaging, an email-like service that allows people in prison to send and receive messages using a proprietary, fee-based platform operated by a contractor. Colorado DOC’s electronic messaging program isn’t perfect, but its rollout was notable for giving people a new communication option. The tablet program, on the other hand, foreshadows a potential new paradigm in corrections, shifting numerous communications, educational, and recreational functions to a for-profit contractor; and, at the same time, making incarcerated people and their families pay for services, some of which are now commonly funded by the state.
What makes the Colorado/GTL contract especially frustrating is that it could have been an innovative step toward providing incarcerated people with useful technology. Experts who have studied government technology contracting warn that projects often fail because details are not sufficiently thought through. The Colorado DOC seems to have walked down this familiar path by focusing largely on its own financial interest without giving much thought to the user experience or the financial impact on incarcerated people and their families....
Historically, people in prison have communicated with the outside world using tools that were simultaneously specialized and universal. Specialized in the sense that letters and phone calls were subject to restrictions and monitoring for security. Universal in the sense that the actual communications networks were the same ones used by the population at large — namely the nation’s mail system and the network of Bell telephone companies. These networks charged reasonable, regulated rates for universal service. Emerging technologies for prison communication are taking a decidedly different approach: instead of applying security protocols to a general purpose network, prisons are relying on specialized providers that use proprietary systems and charge user fees far in excess of cost. The profits of this model are then divided among the prison systems and the private equity firms that own the providers.
New technologies have the potential to help incarcerated people. But the ways in which such systems are being implemented tend to focus on profits over people. The Colorado/GTL contract provides other jurisdictions with a case study in how new technologies can be implemented in ways that financially exploit incarcerated people and their support networks. Other jurisdictions should view the Colorado experience with caution, and strive to develop better, more humane models for bringing prison communications into the twenty-first century.
July 6, 2017 at 03:41 PM | Permalink