Hartford, Conn.
But tablets, growing in popularity in prisons nationwide, also can help inmates advance their education, connect with family and prepare them for life in the technology-saturated outside world, officials say.
In Connecticut, which plans to introduce tablets in its prisons this summer, Correction Commissioner Scott Semple said officials are learning from other states that cellblocks become much quieter after tablets are introduced.
“Just like when you walk in the mall, everyone is looking down at their phone,” he said.
The devices, which are transparent so contraband can’t be hidden in them, won’t be hooked up to the internet, but to an internal system. They will be preloaded with educational materials, including books, educational videos and games.
Inmates also will be able to use them — for a price — to send emails and make monitored phone calls to those on their approved communications lists. They also will be able to buy music, video games and other items to load onto the machines from kiosks in the prisons.
The company that provides the tablets will make a profit selling those materials, allowing the state to get the machines at no cost.
“We’re trying to increase engagement opportunities for a population, because sometimes there is down time in prisons,” Semple said. “We’re also trying to keep them exposed to technology, because we hear from people that when they go back into society, the technology is so different that they struggle.”
Connecticut got the idea from similar programs in Georgia and Colorado, Semple said.
Miramar, Fla.-based JPay, one of the major tablet providers to prisons, said it has put them in 13 states so far. Prison officials estimate tablets are used in more than 10 percent of correctional facilities nationwide.
In January, New York announced plans to provide tablets to 51,000 inmates, and in April, New Hampshire signed a five-year contract with Reston, Va.-based Global Tel-Link to provide tablets there.
Anthony Plant, 27, of Lancaster, N.H., served 21 months for selling drugs. Tablets, he said, kept him in touch with relatives and eliminated conflicts among inmates vying for their once-a-day use of the phone.
“Talking with my family gave me a sense of keeping my head straight and motivated me to keep doing what I’m doing,” he said.
The programs do have critics.
Questions have been raised about whether the tablets could lead prisons to decrease in-person visitation and whether there is enough regulation of private providers to prevent price gouging.
“If we believe that people in prison would benefit from resources that enrich their lives and allow them to contact their loved ones more, we shouldn’t make those benefits contingent on who can pay, especially since we’re talking about people who are disproportionately very poor,” said Wanda Bertram, with the Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank.
And Connecticut state Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, a co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he doesn’t understand why the state would give priority to criminals over, say, public school students.
“These folks have committed really bad crimes that have consequences and victims,” he said. “It bothers me as to what message we’re sending.”
Plant said that he understands that criticism, but that the tablets, especially their educational content, are an important rehabilitation tool.
“If you don’t want things like this, then change the name from the Department of Corrections to the Department of Holding,” he said. “Because that’s all you are doing.”