For people who spend hours each day locked in cells the size of a parking space, the prospect of easy access to games, music and movies is exciting. At the Lawrenceville Correctional Center, ninety inmates used to share six pay phones, sometimes sparking fights, but with their own tablets each person can make calls from their cell, and the cost is less than three cents a minute.
That should make the arrival of tablets a cause for celebration, but Keith Hill is cautious.
“I think it’s a money-grab, and it’s going to break a lot of guys.”
He earns over a hundred dollars a month working in the prison’s law library and recently paid $15 for 750 minutes of content on his tablet, but he worries about other prisoners.
“A lot of these guys only make $35-$40 a month, and if they buy one or two of those bundles, that’s it. That’s their entire paycheck for the month.”
At the Fluvanna Correctional Center, inmate Regina Watkins agrees. She makes 45 cents an hour cleaning.
“I found in the Bible where it says ‘Do everything that you do unto the glory of God,’ so even when I do the bathroosm, I try to clean it as if Jesus himself is going to use it.”
She likes the idea of tablets but finds them difficult to use.
“A lot of us are having problems with the emails. Some have problems retrieving them, and some have problems sending them.”
It costs twenty cents per message, but new limits on the number of characters might make it necessary to send three e-mails when, under the prisons’ previous system, one would suffice.
Watkins also claims calls are frequently dropped, ear buds don’t always work, and batteries don’t hold a charge for long.
“We can charge it up, and it says 100%Forty-five minutes later it’s down to 27% charge.”
The tablets do offer a number of free features – games, like chess and solitaire, hundreds of E-books, religious programs and services. At the Green Rock Correctional Center, jailhouse attorney Askari Lumumba is looking forward to law library access.
“You know that’s pretty doped, because you’ve basically got Lexis/Nexis in your cell, all day, every day – 24 hours a day, so that’s kind of awesome for me!”
At the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative, Wanda Bertrum says the contractor – a Virginia-based company called Viapath -- will easily pay for those things by overcharging for music, movies, TV shows and games.
“As the FCC and state governments are increasingly putting the squeeze on prison telecom companies to provide fair and just telecommunication rates, the companies have been pivoting to other technologies – tablets for the most part – to make up for their losses they’re taking.”
The state has agreed to pay Viapath $1 million a year for software, security equipment, infrastructure improvements and lower phone rates. The deal also provides a kickback to the Department of Corrections – 5% of gross revenue.
Meanwhile, prisoners like Doug Ankney complain that they have lost access to all of the e-mails, games and music they paid for when the state did business with another company called Securus.
“You know people had thousands of songs, games, and photos. photos. All that’s gone.”
The state claims it’s working on that problem and will get the music back if Securus cooperates. But Doug Ankney isn’t holding his breath. Originally, prisoners had to pay $50 for a Securus tablet called a JP5.
“They said you’ve got to turn those in, and you’re going to get a JP6, and we’ll reimburse you for your $50. No one ever got reimbursed.”
The state hopes to deliver new Viapath tablets to all of its prisons in the next few months.
