July 30, 2025 • 35 mins
This week we want to take a look at a little-known technology kept from public view: electronic tablets in prisons. Dexter talks to Gaby Caplan, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who has been researching how these tablets are used, the connection to the outside world that they promised, and why federal prisons have gone back on that promise.
Read + Watch:
Gaby’s piece on WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/electronic-tablets-in-federal-prisons-chat-apps-disabled/
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You speak to people who are locked up right now? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
How often would you say you're getting messages or talking
to people who are locked up?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I probably get around twenty cools a day from incass
rights to people in prison.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Gabby Kaplan is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. We used
to work together at Vice, and she's been reporting on
the US prison system since I've known her.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Most of the time it's have you managed to look
at my case and do some investigation for me and
try and get me out? And the other fifty percent
of the time is just loneliness wanting to have someone
to talk to.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Being in prison means being incredibly lonely. People are cut
off from everyone they knew on the outside, friends, family,
and any community they used to know, and outside of
the occasional visit, there's not a lot of opportunity for
them to see anything familiar faces. But recently, prisons have
started introducing technology that could provide an easier option for
(01:06):
incarcerated people to connect with the loved ones. This new
option is electronic tablets. It never really occurred to me
that people had sanctioned technology in prisons. Really, I knew
that there were people who had snuck a phone in
or something like that. But incarcerated people have access to tablets.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, so tablets. It sounds like an iPad sort of device.
It's much less advanced technologically than an iPad. It's a
very sort of old fashioned looking device.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But there is a problem with these tablets.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Oftentimes, these incarcerated people who have told me that they
felt like they had been tricked into buying these tablets
that couldn't do what they said they could do.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts is kill Switch. I'm Dexter
Thomas Abitari. Goodbye. This is a technology show, and yet
(02:34):
somehow we've hardly talked at all about actual tech products.
So let's fix that. Welcome to kill Switch's first ever
tech review. The Keith Score seven features a five inch
IPS or seven inch TN screen at a maximum resolution
of something approaching for ADP. It's got a two megapixel
(02:55):
front camera, and it's running a quad core Media Tech
eight one six seven C with one gigabyte RAM, and
it's fully updated to a customized Android eight point one.
In case those specs don't mean a lot to you.
That's a little bit worse than the Amazon Fire seven,
which debuted at fifty dollars back in twenty fifteen. This
(03:19):
device is not something you'd want to buy because you're
probably not the target market. The keyf Group site, which
is where I'm getting all this information from, really sells
this to jail and prison administrators, saying that quote your
facility will benefit from a calmer, better behaved, a fender population,
and a safer corrections environment. End quote. But I do
(03:40):
want to point out a section that would interest the
end user. Under a section entitled quote connection to the outside,
it promises quote communication with loved ones using fee based text, photo,
and videogram messaging. So this connection to the outside part
is pretty important because before tablets, the tech landscape and
(04:02):
prisons was really basic. The only thing incarcerated people had
access to were these payphone type phones that you see
in movies and some desktop computers with very limited access
and capabilities.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So the regular sort of prison telephones are for public use.
So the telephones that you normally see in the films
that almost look like payphones, but they actually top up
through internet services, those are always available in any prison.
They also have desktops that exist in the common areas,
so people line up to use these quote unquote payphones
(04:38):
and pay to go desktops that are available to the
incarcerated population at these facilities. And with the desktops they
can send messages. Oftentimes they can send video messages, audio messages.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
How much does it cost to make a call or
send a message or something like that, So.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It's about fifteen cents per minute to make a call
and most of these prison facilities, which doesn't sound like
a lot to the outside population, but when you consider
the fact that if one works within prison, they're earning
oftentimes less than a dollar an hour in order to
do that work, and oftentimes that's the only income that
(05:15):
you can earn while in prison. So either your relatives
on the outside, who may also be struggling, are providing
that money so that you can keep in touch with them,
or you're providing that money for yourself through work. But
you know that work is so poorly paid that it
wouldn't even cover a twenty minute core Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So when tablets were introduced in prisons, it was monumental
for incarcerated people and their families to have an easier
and more reliable way to communicate with each other and
at least on the surface, that seemed like the official
reason that these institutions started to provide them.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I mean, bottom line, in carsloads of people have a
constitutional right to keep in touch with their loved ones
on the outside. We know that when instray to people
are able to stay in touch with their loved ones
behind bars, that they're much less likely to come back
to prison once they're being released. Keeping those ties with
the outside world. It gives them something to live for
while they're behind bars, and something to strive towards, trying
(06:14):
to get out of prison as quickly as possible so
that they can get home to their loved ones who
they'd stay in touch with every day, and then once
they're out, it gives them something to stay out for.
So electronic tablets were introduced in order to allow them
to stay in touch with their loved ones on the
outside when they are unable to do so through the
communal phones or communal desktops that are available to them.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
In the communal desktop or the communal phones, the reason
that they wouldn't be able to would be because of what.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Because the prison is on lockdown, either due to violence
or staffing shortages, or as we saw during the pandemic
because all the prisons were stopping visitation and didn't want
the incarcerats of people mixing with each other in the
communal areas, and so.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Could you could you actually define what lockdown is for
those who aren't familiar.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Lockdown is very similar to solitary confinement most of the time.
It means that all of the incarcerated people in a facility,
or all the incarcerats of people in a specific section
of said facility, are restricted to their cells for twenty
three hours a day. They may be let out into
the yard for an hour a day for exercise, but
for the majority of the day they're locked in their
(07:26):
cells and they are unable to hang out in the
communal areas of the prison. In the past, lockdowns were
used for dangerous circumstances that arose in prisons, for example,
a prison riot or a massive outbreak of violence in
a prison. More recently, we've seen, due to the dire
staffing shortages in prisons across the country, that prisons have
(07:49):
been relying on lockdowns in order to avoid having to
navigate the incarceraids of population with very few correction officers
because of staffing shortages, Seeing lockdowns happen more and more frequently.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
The rate of lockdowns is only increasing. In some places,
it happens more than once a month, and they can
go on for days or longer.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Usually these lockdowns are lasting at least a few days,
if not a week. It must feel extremely frustrating as
an incarcerated person to be placed on lockdown, which is
normally considered a punishment and a pretty bad punishment for
bad behavior within your community. To be placed on this
punishment for something that is completely out of your control,
(08:31):
no incarcerator a person wants to be on lockdown. It
means that they can't communicate with the other incarcerates people.
They pretty much get no human contact while they're in
their cells. So I can imagine it feeling extremely unjust
that they are placed on this lockdown.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And so these tablets are becoming a necessity to just
fulfill an incarcerated person's constitutional right to communicate with the outside.
And this is important for society in general because count
studies show that if someone doesn't have a support system
of people who they know when they do get out,
the chances are much higher that they'll just reoffend and
(09:09):
end up right back in prison. But beyond communication and
their constitutional rights, these devices can also be used for entertainment,
which might sound frivolous, but, like the official advertisement for
these tablets says, this is a win win for everyone.
For facilities, it helps with behavior because it's kind of
hard for people to get into too much trouble if
(09:31):
they're busy watching movies. And for people who are locked up,
it's even more important just to feel sane when you're
essentially being put into solitary confinement for days on end
at random because a guard called in sick or something.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Providing incost rates of people with entertainment and these tablets
behind bars is good for everybody in the prison system.
It's good for the inconst rats of person because it
helps with that mental health, It helps them stay out
of trouble, it helps to keep them entertained while they're
behind bars. But it's also really good for the correction officers.
We've seen time and time again through research studies that
(10:07):
incarcerated people's behavior is dramatically improved having a better experience
behind bars, because if you're behind bars and you have
nothing to lose and you're having a really hard time
and the days are just dragging on. It's much harder
to stay well behaved and out of trouble while you're there.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
But there is a catch the tablets and a lot
of the entertainment options on them. They are free, and
are these tablets handed out to everyone? Do you buy them?
How does it work?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
In federal prisons? You have a choice whether or not
you want to purchase the tablet. They go for about
one hundred and thirteen dollars on the commissary list, and
some states have introduced free tablets rollout. Of course, the
tablet may be free, but the content on them is not.
A single music album on one of these devices can
cost you about forty five dollars, so they're really hefty.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Forty five dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, one could say that they have the prime example
of a captive market because there's no competition when it
comes to being behind bars, so it's take it or
leave it, either you pay the forty five dollars. It's
kind of like when you go to the airport and
you really need a juice and they can charge really
high prices because there's no one else offering it. It's
pretty similar, but even worse because obviously they're locked up.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Wow, Okay, that that is a lot, So forty five
dollars for an album, and they can they can rent movies.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, they can rent movies for like five six dollars
apiece and they have like twenty four hours to watch it.
And you know, this is one of the reasons that
there has been a lot of pushback about these tablets.
GTL and Securists are two of the biggest telecom services
that provide telephone services and messaging services to prisons, and
(11:53):
they are infamous for price gouging incart rated people and
their families for phone calls for electronic messages. And this
is just one more level of I guess one could
say exploitation of people behind bars for money when it
comes to these electronic tablets. Because when you're bored and
you're sat in your cellar day, you know, it sounds
(12:16):
really nice to have a new movie to rent and
watch that and let the days go by a little
bit faster.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
From the people you've talked to, are people more interested
in getting these tablets because they can watch movies on it,
even if it's expenses or listening to music or is
it talking to family members.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, it's definitely talking to family members, and most of
the time it's the loved ones that are helping with
the purchasing of these tablets. And I would say ninety
nine percent of the people that I spoke to. Maybe
one person said that they did it for the music
and the movies, but every single other person I spoke
to said that they purchased the tablet to be able
(12:53):
to stay in touch with their incarcerated loved one. Little
did they know that they bought the tablets, all of
the communication capabilities would be disabled.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Remember those specs that I read from the keief group site.
These tablets have been advertised as a way for incarcerated
people to communicate with the friends or family on the outside,
but in federal prisons they've shut off the communication capabilities.
But why, Well, we have answers, or at least the
(13:26):
official answers. We'll get into that after the break. They've
bought these tablets under the pretense that they're going to
be able to use it to communicate with people outside.
(13:48):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (13:49):
So they received these tablets, they've forked out one hundred
and thirteen dollars for them, and they're shocked to find
that when they go to message their loved ones on
the tablets, those communication capability are restricted.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Wait a second, hold on, So we just finished talking
about the you know, the price gouging thing. So they
buy this tablet that you know, has movies that you
can rent, and it's got albums. You can buy forty
five dollars an album whatever, But okay, leave that alone.
I'm really just buying this thing so that I can
talk to my son or I can talk to my
(14:22):
mom or whatever the case is. And then you get
the thing and all you can do you can't do
any messaging. All you can do is, hey, the messaging
it doesn't work. But would you like this forty five
dollars album? Would you like to rent some movies for
really really expensive?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Right? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
That sounds like a bait and switch.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what it is. And in cost
there is the people at federal facilities and their loved
ones are really up in arms about this, because one
hundred and thirteen dollars is not, you know, nothing for people,
especially people who are behind bars.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
This kind of bait and switch would obviously be upsetting,
especially when go on lockdown and incarcerated people can't reach
out to the loved ones to tell them how they're
doing or what's going on. As she was doing research
on prisons, Gabby joined Facebook groups of loved ones of
incarcerated people, and when these facilities went on lockdown, she
saw how frantic people would get when.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
There's a lockdown. There's a lot of activity that goes
on in these Facebook groups, and I've seen it firsthand.
It starts off with a post of has anyone heard
from your loved one? And then it's a string of comments, No,
I don't know what to do. No, I've not heard
from him since Thursday. No, I can't get a hold
of him. And this kind of mass hysteria breaks out
(15:39):
in these Facebook groups where everybody is just trying to
find answers and see if anybody else has managed to
get in touch with their loved one so that they
can confirm everything's okay and there's no massive riot or anything.
It's just there on lockdown due to staff hortages or something.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Right, because it could mean that somebody's not safe exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, it could mean that a riot broke out, or
you know, something really terrible has happened within the prison ground.
But oftentimes it turns out to be okay. And after
a few days someone says, I managed to get in
touch with the prison administration or with my incarcerated loved one,
and they've told me we're all good, so don't worry.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So let me get this straight. So, if you're locked
up in a state facility and you have one of
these tablets, you're able to use the messaging functions. It
just so happens that if you're at a federal facility
you can't. That's what these are locked out of.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Right exactly. And the state prisons have allowed for these
communication capabilities all throughout the pandemic and even before so
the state prisons are managing just fine with having all
of these tablets have the communication capabilities on them, and
incast rays of people have spoken about the benefits that
that has had to their mental health and the way
that they're able to communicate with their loved ones. There's
(16:56):
no reason why the Bureau of Prisons shouldn't be able
to do the same.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The Bureau of Prisons is the entity that oversees the
federal prisons in the United States, and these are the
prisons that are charging one hundred and thirteen dollars per tablet,
again for a machine with worse specs than something that
costs fifty dollars back in twenty fifteen, and yet they
won't allow access to the communication features on the tablet.
Gaby wanted to know why this was happening, so she
(17:21):
started asking questions.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I reached out to the Beer of Prisons that control
the federal facilities across the country, and I heard back
from them, Yes, we don't allow for communication on the tablets.
They're just for entertainment purposes at this time.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
How does that work? Because I'm trying to square that
with the stated purpose of the tablets, but also with
the Constitution. How does that work? What's the justification there?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So I reached out to the Beer of Prisons with
a number of different questions. So the first question I
asked was why do all federal prisons across the US
disable the ecommunication options on the Keith Score seven tablets.
The Keith Score seven tablets are the tablets that are
available to federally incarcerated people. Their answer to that was
the Federal Bureau of Prisons Trust Fund Branch works in
(18:12):
conjunction with internal stakeholders to establish a Commissary Secure Media
device program that is used for leisure activities with services
and functionality that meet the SBOP security requirements. So a
very back channel, long winded way of saying that they
have some nondescript security concerns when it comes to incarcerats
(18:36):
of people using the tablets to communicate with their lost ones.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
But okay, whatever reason there might have been to turn
the messaging functions off, the question a lot of incarcerated
people were probably wanted to ask is when it would
get turned back on. So Gabby also asked that does.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The BOP plan to enable said communication applications. Currently, there
are no plans to enable the public messaging options on
Keith score seven tablets. So then I asked, what is
the BOP doing to ensure that during prison lockdowns inmates
can still communicate with their loved ones. Incarcerated individuals are
encouraged to correspond with their loved ones. For information on correspondence,
(19:16):
you may see Program Statement five two sixty five one
four correspondents found here, and basically that section of their
policies relate to sending what constitutes snail mail to their
loved ones while on lockdown. I asked if Keith is
aware that marketing have said tablets do not match the
reality in federal prisons because they're marketed as being connected
(19:38):
to the outside world and connectors to their loved ones.
And of course, the BOP threw the hot potato back
to Keith and said the FBOP is unable to speak
on behalf of Keith. Any further questions regarding Keith's marketing
should be deferred to them. I did reach out to Keith,
but I never heard back.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
So I'll jennifigure out why is the protocol at a
state facility so different from one at a federal facility specifically? Yeah,
seems like a very kind of arbitrary distinction here.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Right, So I guess one of the reasons that I
can think of is in a state, you have X
number of prisons, maybe three four prisons, and the Department
of Corrections for that state is in charge of those prisons.
Now with federal prisons, you have over fifty federal prisons
across the country, and the Bureau of Prisons is in
(20:27):
charge of all of those prisons. So it is a
fairly big federal organization, the Bureau of Prisons, but it's
still a massive amount of facilities to be in charge of,
so I understand that from their perspective, it's hard to
manage that many prisons. And also we know that the
Bureau of Prisons is extremely short on money, which is
(20:49):
probably one of the reasons that they're so short staffed
in these federal prisons. And we know that federal prisons
are so short staffed at the moment. In some federal prisons,
they've even instituted the National Guard to try and keep
the peace within these prisons. So, for example, in Florida,
for more than two years now, the National Guard has
(21:11):
been introduced into Florida's prison system, specifically the federal prison.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Two years.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.
So it's very possible that their reasoning for not allowing
these communication capabilities is true, that they are that they
do have security concerns because if you think about fifty prisons,
each one has a fairly large population that is a
(21:37):
ton of electronic tablets to be monitoring. Now, with AI
and stuff like that, it should be a little bit easier.
It doesn't take one human being looking through each message
before it goes. But who knows what their real reasoning is, so.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
With all these security concerns, you might wonder why federal
prisons are providing tablets at all, especially since they aren't
helping people communicate with the outside world, which once again
is why most people are buying these things. And because
we're not getting clear answers from the Bureau of Prisons,
I don't have a clear answer for you, so we're
kind of left to wonder. And that's where it's hard
(22:17):
not to think of the next obvious incentive, the sales.
What cut is the Federal Bureau of Prisons getting from
that one hundred and thirteen dollars per tablet and those
forty five dollar albums. We tried asking the Bureau of
Prisons how much they're making here. We didn't get a
response in time for publishing. But even if they're not
taking a cut off of each individual's sale here, we
(22:38):
do know that there is some money coming.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
In prisons that are providing these tablets. They have a
vested interest in providing them as well, because they're getting
massive kickbacks from the companies like GTL and Securists are
providing these tablets. So, for example, a prison in New
York got eight hundred thousand dollars for allowing these tablets
to be bought in their commentsary.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
For a wait hold on, for allowing the tablets to
be bought, for just putting it on the shelf, just
putting it on the shelf. So there is an incentive
to do business here.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
There is a massive incentive on all parts when it
comes to the companies that provide goods and services to
incarcerats of people. I mean, everybody has their finger in
the pot when it comes to providing incarcerats of people
goods and services. Everybody is getting paid and everybody is.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Earning money or for vet except the people apart from.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
The incarcerates of people. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Coming up next the guests who I really wanted to
interview but couldn't get a hold of. That's after the break.
(23:55):
How did you even find out about all of this?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I got an interesting phone call from a gentleman named
Jerrell who had just been moved to a federal prison
and was very disappointed with the fact that he couldn't
use his electronic tablet to communicate with his loved ones
in the same way that he had been able to
at the state facilities that he'd been at. We ended
up becoming penpals where he would update me on his
(24:20):
day and stuff. And one of the things that kept
coming up on the cause with him was that he
felt like he couldn't stay in touch with his loved
ones when they went into lockdown, and he felt that
was extremely.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Unjust wow, yeah, so would you just like not hear
from for days? And then he would say, yeah, I
couldn't use my messaging device here exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah. So I became one of the main people that
he would call when he just wanted to have a
quick chat. And after a few days, I would notice, Huh,
Jerrell hasn't called me in a few days. I wonder
if he's okay. And sometimes Jerrell would get into some trouble,
so I thought maybe he might be in the shoe
or something, and then I would get a very frustrated
call from him saying, I've not been would call you
(25:00):
for four days because we've been on lockdown, and we've
been on lockdown because they're short staffed, not because anybody
did anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Helps Jerrell doing right now.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I've not heard from Jarrell in about a week. I
have heard from his family members that he's doing okay,
and I had reached out to him to try and
get him to join us on this podcast, which I
know he would have loved, but currently I can't get
ahold of him. His relatives got a letter from him
saying that they're in lockdown, that he can't make phone
(25:30):
calls or messages.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, because when we first talked, you were saying, you
know what, I think Jerrell would be down to talk
with us, and I was thinking, yeah, that'd be great.
I mean, we can get his perspective on it. But yeah,
precisely what you've been talking about has happened again, which
is just they've just gone a lockdown and he can't
use the messages on his tablet, which again defeats the
(25:52):
purpose of why they got.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
The thing exactly. Yeah, and it's incredibly unfair because, like
I said before, the only phones and desktops that are
available to these people existing communal areas. So if they
can't access those communal areas because they're on lockdown, they
have no way of contacting their loved ones. They can
try and send written mail, but it takes a hell
(26:14):
of a long time to get to someone, and you know,
the prisons aren't very organized about sending them out every day,
and so yeah, it's really really tough. I think a
lot about you know, children have incarcerated people who are
unable to hear from their mother or father on their
birthday because they're on lockdown and they can't use the
(26:37):
electronic tablets. Like that child hasn't done anything wrong, so
it seems a little bit unfair for them to be,
you know, restricted from reaching out to guy loved one
in that way.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
There is a third function for these tablets that we
haven't discussed yet. The need for newer technology like tablets
isn't just for talking with people back home or for entertainment.
It's also really great, crucial for when people leave the
system and need to reintegrate back into society. Technology moves
so fast now that even missing just a few years
could leave you completely confused and lost when you get out,
(27:11):
and this would make it really hard to say, hold
down a job and be a productive member of society.
Have you spoken to anybody who's gotten out and then
had to deal with what technology is like in the
outside world.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I have. Actually, there was an incarcerated person that
I was working with who had been incarcerated for about
fifty years. His name was Gregory.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Fifty five zero.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
By the time he was released, he was released on
compassionate release. He was struggling with cancer and he was
eighty seven years old, and he had never seen a
flat screen TV. He'd never seen an iPhone, he'd never
seen Wow. Cause the way that we know them now,
billboards that are electronic just all sorts. It kind of
(27:57):
reminds me of that scene from Georshank Redemption when he
comes out prison and he's like, damn, everybody got themselves
in a big damn Harry, Like you're just stepping off
into a different planet.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It feels like wow. I mean, Gabby. One of the
reasons I wanted to talk to is because I think
when I tell people that I'm working on a tech podcast,
I think a lot of times the assumption is like
I'm going to be reviewing the next iPhone or something
like that, or that hey, maybe I'll be talking about
some kind of new scam or ways to protect yourself
(28:27):
from scams. But right now we're talking about very much
not cutting edge technology and a scam that frankly, there
is no way to protect yourself from Yeah, for sure,
because it sounds like a scam to me. Okay, let
me take a step back and pause here, because in
that interview I'm using a pretty strong word. I call
(28:49):
the experience of getting these tablets disconnected a scam. But
I stand by that and think about the scenario. Let's
say I'm a tech reviewer doing a review of a
new iPhone, and I want to understand the consumer's experience.
So I walk into the local T Mobile shop and
I buy this new phone that's advertised as being able
to watch videos and make phone calls. And then a
(29:09):
week later, the phone call capability is shut off. I
now have half a product. I'm gonna feel scammed. The
promise made to me that the product and service would
be there was not fulfilled. I don't care who shut
it off. If it was T Mobile, if it was
Tim Cook, if it was some local government, I don't care.
It doesn't work anymore. I'm gonna feel like I've been
(29:31):
scammed out of hard earned money. I think the same
thing applies here. If you spend money on something, you
have the right to get what you paid for. Anything else, well.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It is it's an outright scam. And even when the
tablets work as exactly how they're supposed to, one could
argue they're still a scam because the price gouging is
so extreme and the exploitation of inconst rats to people
paying such a flated prices for these services on these tablets.
It's so extreme because they know they can't go anywhere else.
(30:06):
The whole thing is a scam one hundred percent. And
I think it's interesting what you said about you know,
being a tech podcast, because tech really touches everybody's lives
and access to tech is such an indicator of success,
you know. So if you're a student in school and
you don't have access to digital learning capabilities and it's
(30:29):
the pandemic and you can't go to school, you're going
to be left behind. And that's what's happening with these
incarcerated people. They are stuck in this very archaic facility
that looks like something from the early fifties, and most
of the technology that's available to them is very, very
old fashioned technology, and so it's not preparing them for
(30:52):
coming out and being reintroduced to the workforce or being
reintroduced to the world writ large.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, I mean, when you put it like that, yeah,
you get out, and if you don't have access to
some semblance of what the world outside looks like and
how it functions, you're going to get out. You can't adapt.
And if you can't adapt to the outside world after
you've been locked up for five, ten, fifteen, thirty years,
(31:18):
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Right exactly? I think so much of our lives on
the outside world now depend on technology, and if you
get out of prison and have no idea how that
stuff works, how even a touchscreen phone works, a smartphone works,
You're already being blocked out of so many different markets
when it comes to trying to find a job.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, I mean, you basically can't work a cash register
at this point, right exactly. So incarcerated people need access
to these technologies and access to the outside world. And
Gabby's hoping that her reporting will shine a light on
this problem and lead to some changes in the system.
But even if it doesn't, it's you don't means something
(32:00):
for the people who are on the inside.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I got a letter from Jirell after I wrote this
article for Wired, just expressing how grateful he was that
Wired took this story and highlighted this issue. It means
the absolute world to people behind bars, because even if
nothing changes, it just proves to them that people on
the outside care about them. They're not just thrown away
human beings that you just put to the side and
(32:27):
forget about. Like people on the outside are really caring
to listen to their stories, and not just the hyper
sensationalized stories about crime, but you know, the real things
that they're struggling with on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
What would hitting the kill switch on the situation look like.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Well, I hate to sound very communist and left, but
for me, it would be the abolition of prisons as
a whole. I don't think that they're having a purpose.
Can I say that? Or is that inciting a revolution?
But I don't think prisons are being new in the
way that they were initially intended to be used, which
was to correct behavior and ensure that once you're out,
(33:07):
you sort of fit into our societal norms. I look
back at my early teen years and know that I
could have very easily ended up in the same position
as these people, be it experimenting or you know, just
doing things that kids do when they're you know, growing
up and learning and learning how to be part of society.
(33:27):
And I was very lucky to have avoided ever ending
up in prison. And I think if I had ever
ended up in the system, I probably never would have
gotten out of it, because you do just hop from
system to system, and prisons are not setting people up
for success to re enter society. In fact, they're putting
everything in place, not just the prison but criminal justice
(33:48):
system and society as a whole is putting everything in
place so that when you leave prison, you cannot get
a job, you cannot get housing. It pretty much leads
no other option but to come back to prison. And
we see that with the tablets too. It's not setting
people up to have loved ones to come back to
you once they leave prison, to have technology know how
when they leave prison so that they can go about
(34:09):
their lives. Like at every step of the prison process,
we are blocking people from being able to better themselves.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
When I tell people I'm doing a technology show, the
last thing they probably expect is a review of taboleists
that are only available in jails and prisons. But technology
is around everyone everywhere, even if you're locked up, or
if someone you care about is locked up and so
for me, that is very relevant for what kill Switch
is doing. And I think we're still just scratching the surface.
(34:41):
But yeah, that is it for this one. Thank you
so much for listening to another episode of kill Switch.
Let me know what you think, and if there's something
else you'd like us to cover, you can hit us
up at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC and on
Instagram where kill switch pod, or you can hit me
directly dex d that's d e x D I g
(35:02):
I on Instagram or on Blue Sky if that's more
of your thing, and if you're able to leave us
a review wherever you listen to your podcast, it really
helps other people find the show, which in turn helps
us keep doing our thing. And this thing is hosted
by me Dexter Thomas is produced by Shino Ozaki, Darluk
Potts and Kate Osbourne. A theme song is by me
(35:23):
and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixes a show from Kaleidoscope.
Our executive producers are Ozma Lashin, Mungesh Hajikadur, and Kate Osborne.
From iHeart our executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki E.
Tour good Bye, get you on the next one.
You speak to people who are locked up right now? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
How often would you say you're getting messages or talking
to people who are locked up?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I probably get around twenty cools a day from incass
rights to people in prison.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Gabby Kaplan is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. We used
to work together at Vice, and she's been reporting on
the US prison system since I've known her.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Most of the time it's have you managed to look
at my case and do some investigation for me and
try and get me out? And the other fifty percent
of the time is just loneliness wanting to have someone
to talk to.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Being in prison means being incredibly lonely. People are cut
off from everyone they knew on the outside, friends, family,
and any community they used to know, and outside of
the occasional visit, there's not a lot of opportunity for
them to see anything familiar faces. But recently, prisons have
started introducing technology that could provide an easier option for
(01:06):
incarcerated people to connect with the loved ones. This new
option is electronic tablets. It never really occurred to me
that people had sanctioned technology in prisons. Really, I knew
that there were people who had snuck a phone in
or something like that. But incarcerated people have access to tablets.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, so tablets. It sounds like an iPad sort of device.
It's much less advanced technologically than an iPad. It's a
very sort of old fashioned looking device.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But there is a problem with these tablets.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Oftentimes, these incarcerated people who have told me that they
felt like they had been tricked into buying these tablets
that couldn't do what they said they could do.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts is kill Switch. I'm Dexter
Thomas Abitari. Goodbye. This is a technology show, and yet
(02:34):
somehow we've hardly talked at all about actual tech products.
So let's fix that. Welcome to kill Switch's first ever
tech review. The Keith Score seven features a five inch
IPS or seven inch TN screen at a maximum resolution
of something approaching for ADP. It's got a two megapixel
(02:55):
front camera, and it's running a quad core Media Tech
eight one six seven C with one gigabyte RAM, and
it's fully updated to a customized Android eight point one.
In case those specs don't mean a lot to you.
That's a little bit worse than the Amazon Fire seven,
which debuted at fifty dollars back in twenty fifteen. This
(03:19):
device is not something you'd want to buy because you're
probably not the target market. The keyf Group site, which
is where I'm getting all this information from, really sells
this to jail and prison administrators, saying that quote your
facility will benefit from a calmer, better behaved, a fender population,
and a safer corrections environment. End quote. But I do
(03:40):
want to point out a section that would interest the
end user. Under a section entitled quote connection to the outside,
it promises quote communication with loved ones using fee based text, photo,
and videogram messaging. So this connection to the outside part
is pretty important because before tablets, the tech landscape and
(04:02):
prisons was really basic. The only thing incarcerated people had
access to were these payphone type phones that you see
in movies and some desktop computers with very limited access
and capabilities.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So the regular sort of prison telephones are for public use.
So the telephones that you normally see in the films
that almost look like payphones, but they actually top up
through internet services, those are always available in any prison.
They also have desktops that exist in the common areas,
so people line up to use these quote unquote payphones
(04:38):
and pay to go desktops that are available to the
incarcerated population at these facilities. And with the desktops they
can send messages. Oftentimes they can send video messages, audio messages.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
How much does it cost to make a call or
send a message or something like that, So.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It's about fifteen cents per minute to make a call
and most of these prison facilities, which doesn't sound like
a lot to the outside population, but when you consider
the fact that if one works within prison, they're earning
oftentimes less than a dollar an hour in order to
do that work, and oftentimes that's the only income that
(05:15):
you can earn while in prison. So either your relatives
on the outside, who may also be struggling, are providing
that money so that you can keep in touch with them,
or you're providing that money for yourself through work. But
you know that work is so poorly paid that it
wouldn't even cover a twenty minute core Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So when tablets were introduced in prisons, it was monumental
for incarcerated people and their families to have an easier
and more reliable way to communicate with each other and
at least on the surface, that seemed like the official
reason that these institutions started to provide them.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I mean, bottom line, in carsloads of people have a
constitutional right to keep in touch with their loved ones
on the outside. We know that when instray to people
are able to stay in touch with their loved ones
behind bars, that they're much less likely to come back
to prison once they're being released. Keeping those ties with
the outside world. It gives them something to live for
while they're behind bars, and something to strive towards, trying
(06:14):
to get out of prison as quickly as possible so
that they can get home to their loved ones who
they'd stay in touch with every day, and then once
they're out, it gives them something to stay out for.
So electronic tablets were introduced in order to allow them
to stay in touch with their loved ones on the
outside when they are unable to do so through the
communal phones or communal desktops that are available to them.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
In the communal desktop or the communal phones, the reason
that they wouldn't be able to would be because of what.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Because the prison is on lockdown, either due to violence
or staffing shortages, or as we saw during the pandemic
because all the prisons were stopping visitation and didn't want
the incarcerats of people mixing with each other in the
communal areas, and so.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Could you could you actually define what lockdown is for
those who aren't familiar.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Lockdown is very similar to solitary confinement most of the time.
It means that all of the incarcerated people in a facility,
or all the incarcerats of people in a specific section
of said facility, are restricted to their cells for twenty
three hours a day. They may be let out into
the yard for an hour a day for exercise, but
for the majority of the day they're locked in their
(07:26):
cells and they are unable to hang out in the
communal areas of the prison. In the past, lockdowns were
used for dangerous circumstances that arose in prisons, for example,
a prison riot or a massive outbreak of violence in
a prison. More recently, we've seen, due to the dire
staffing shortages in prisons across the country, that prisons have
(07:49):
been relying on lockdowns in order to avoid having to
navigate the incarceraids of population with very few correction officers
because of staffing shortages, Seeing lockdowns happen more and more frequently.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
The rate of lockdowns is only increasing. In some places,
it happens more than once a month, and they can
go on for days or longer.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Usually these lockdowns are lasting at least a few days,
if not a week. It must feel extremely frustrating as
an incarcerated person to be placed on lockdown, which is
normally considered a punishment and a pretty bad punishment for
bad behavior within your community. To be placed on this
punishment for something that is completely out of your control,
(08:31):
no incarcerator a person wants to be on lockdown. It
means that they can't communicate with the other incarcerates people.
They pretty much get no human contact while they're in
their cells. So I can imagine it feeling extremely unjust
that they are placed on this lockdown.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And so these tablets are becoming a necessity to just
fulfill an incarcerated person's constitutional right to communicate with the outside.
And this is important for society in general because count
studies show that if someone doesn't have a support system
of people who they know when they do get out,
the chances are much higher that they'll just reoffend and
(09:09):
end up right back in prison. But beyond communication and
their constitutional rights, these devices can also be used for entertainment,
which might sound frivolous, but, like the official advertisement for
these tablets says, this is a win win for everyone.
For facilities, it helps with behavior because it's kind of
hard for people to get into too much trouble if
(09:31):
they're busy watching movies. And for people who are locked up,
it's even more important just to feel sane when you're
essentially being put into solitary confinement for days on end
at random because a guard called in sick or something.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Providing incost rates of people with entertainment and these tablets
behind bars is good for everybody in the prison system.
It's good for the inconst rats of person because it
helps with that mental health, It helps them stay out
of trouble, it helps to keep them entertained while they're
behind bars. But it's also really good for the correction officers.
We've seen time and time again through research studies that
(10:07):
incarcerated people's behavior is dramatically improved having a better experience
behind bars, because if you're behind bars and you have
nothing to lose and you're having a really hard time
and the days are just dragging on. It's much harder
to stay well behaved and out of trouble while you're there.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
But there is a catch the tablets and a lot
of the entertainment options on them. They are free, and
are these tablets handed out to everyone? Do you buy them?
How does it work?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
In federal prisons? You have a choice whether or not
you want to purchase the tablet. They go for about
one hundred and thirteen dollars on the commissary list, and
some states have introduced free tablets rollout. Of course, the
tablet may be free, but the content on them is not.
A single music album on one of these devices can
cost you about forty five dollars, so they're really hefty.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Forty five dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, one could say that they have the prime example
of a captive market because there's no competition when it
comes to being behind bars, so it's take it or
leave it, either you pay the forty five dollars. It's
kind of like when you go to the airport and
you really need a juice and they can charge really
high prices because there's no one else offering it. It's
pretty similar, but even worse because obviously they're locked up.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Wow, Okay, that that is a lot, So forty five
dollars for an album, and they can they can rent movies.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, they can rent movies for like five six dollars
apiece and they have like twenty four hours to watch it.
And you know, this is one of the reasons that
there has been a lot of pushback about these tablets.
GTL and Securists are two of the biggest telecom services
that provide telephone services and messaging services to prisons, and
(11:53):
they are infamous for price gouging incart rated people and
their families for phone calls for electronic messages. And this
is just one more level of I guess one could
say exploitation of people behind bars for money when it
comes to these electronic tablets. Because when you're bored and
you're sat in your cellar day, you know, it sounds
(12:16):
really nice to have a new movie to rent and
watch that and let the days go by a little
bit faster.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
From the people you've talked to, are people more interested
in getting these tablets because they can watch movies on it,
even if it's expenses or listening to music or is
it talking to family members.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, it's definitely talking to family members, and most of
the time it's the loved ones that are helping with
the purchasing of these tablets. And I would say ninety
nine percent of the people that I spoke to. Maybe
one person said that they did it for the music
and the movies, but every single other person I spoke
to said that they purchased the tablet to be able
(12:53):
to stay in touch with their incarcerated loved one. Little
did they know that they bought the tablets, all of
the communication capabilities would be disabled.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Remember those specs that I read from the keief group site.
These tablets have been advertised as a way for incarcerated
people to communicate with the friends or family on the outside,
but in federal prisons they've shut off the communication capabilities.
But why, Well, we have answers, or at least the
(13:26):
official answers. We'll get into that after the break. They've
bought these tablets under the pretense that they're going to
be able to use it to communicate with people outside.
(13:48):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (13:49):
So they received these tablets, they've forked out one hundred
and thirteen dollars for them, and they're shocked to find
that when they go to message their loved ones on
the tablets, those communication capability are restricted.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Wait a second, hold on, So we just finished talking
about the you know, the price gouging thing. So they
buy this tablet that you know, has movies that you
can rent, and it's got albums. You can buy forty
five dollars an album whatever, But okay, leave that alone.
I'm really just buying this thing so that I can
talk to my son or I can talk to my
(14:22):
mom or whatever the case is. And then you get
the thing and all you can do you can't do
any messaging. All you can do is, hey, the messaging
it doesn't work. But would you like this forty five
dollars album? Would you like to rent some movies for
really really expensive?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Right? Exactly?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
That sounds like a bait and switch.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what it is. And in cost
there is the people at federal facilities and their loved
ones are really up in arms about this, because one
hundred and thirteen dollars is not, you know, nothing for people,
especially people who are behind bars.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
This kind of bait and switch would obviously be upsetting,
especially when go on lockdown and incarcerated people can't reach
out to the loved ones to tell them how they're
doing or what's going on. As she was doing research
on prisons, Gabby joined Facebook groups of loved ones of
incarcerated people, and when these facilities went on lockdown, she
saw how frantic people would get when.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
There's a lockdown. There's a lot of activity that goes
on in these Facebook groups, and I've seen it firsthand.
It starts off with a post of has anyone heard
from your loved one? And then it's a string of comments, No,
I don't know what to do. No, I've not heard
from him since Thursday. No, I can't get a hold
of him. And this kind of mass hysteria breaks out
(15:39):
in these Facebook groups where everybody is just trying to
find answers and see if anybody else has managed to
get in touch with their loved one so that they
can confirm everything's okay and there's no massive riot or anything.
It's just there on lockdown due to staff hortages or something.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Right, because it could mean that somebody's not safe exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, it could mean that a riot broke out, or
you know, something really terrible has happened within the prison ground.
But oftentimes it turns out to be okay. And after
a few days someone says, I managed to get in
touch with the prison administration or with my incarcerated loved one,
and they've told me we're all good, so don't worry.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So let me get this straight. So, if you're locked
up in a state facility and you have one of
these tablets, you're able to use the messaging functions. It
just so happens that if you're at a federal facility
you can't. That's what these are locked out of.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Right exactly. And the state prisons have allowed for these
communication capabilities all throughout the pandemic and even before so
the state prisons are managing just fine with having all
of these tablets have the communication capabilities on them, and
incast rays of people have spoken about the benefits that
that has had to their mental health and the way
that they're able to communicate with their loved ones. There's
(16:56):
no reason why the Bureau of Prisons shouldn't be able
to do the same.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The Bureau of Prisons is the entity that oversees the
federal prisons in the United States, and these are the
prisons that are charging one hundred and thirteen dollars per tablet,
again for a machine with worse specs than something that
costs fifty dollars back in twenty fifteen, and yet they
won't allow access to the communication features on the tablet.
Gaby wanted to know why this was happening, so she
(17:21):
started asking questions.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I reached out to the Beer of Prisons that control
the federal facilities across the country, and I heard back
from them, Yes, we don't allow for communication on the tablets.
They're just for entertainment purposes at this time.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
How does that work? Because I'm trying to square that
with the stated purpose of the tablets, but also with
the Constitution. How does that work? What's the justification there?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So I reached out to the Beer of Prisons with
a number of different questions. So the first question I
asked was why do all federal prisons across the US
disable the ecommunication options on the Keith Score seven tablets.
The Keith Score seven tablets are the tablets that are
available to federally incarcerated people. Their answer to that was
the Federal Bureau of Prisons Trust Fund Branch works in
(18:12):
conjunction with internal stakeholders to establish a Commissary Secure Media
device program that is used for leisure activities with services
and functionality that meet the SBOP security requirements. So a
very back channel, long winded way of saying that they
have some nondescript security concerns when it comes to incarcerats
(18:36):
of people using the tablets to communicate with their lost ones.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
But okay, whatever reason there might have been to turn
the messaging functions off, the question a lot of incarcerated
people were probably wanted to ask is when it would
get turned back on. So Gabby also asked that does.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The BOP plan to enable said communication applications. Currently, there
are no plans to enable the public messaging options on
Keith score seven tablets. So then I asked, what is
the BOP doing to ensure that during prison lockdowns inmates
can still communicate with their loved ones. Incarcerated individuals are
encouraged to correspond with their loved ones. For information on correspondence,
(19:16):
you may see Program Statement five two sixty five one
four correspondents found here, and basically that section of their
policies relate to sending what constitutes snail mail to their
loved ones while on lockdown. I asked if Keith is
aware that marketing have said tablets do not match the
reality in federal prisons because they're marketed as being connected
(19:38):
to the outside world and connectors to their loved ones.
And of course, the BOP threw the hot potato back
to Keith and said the FBOP is unable to speak
on behalf of Keith. Any further questions regarding Keith's marketing
should be deferred to them. I did reach out to Keith,
but I never heard back.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
So I'll jennifigure out why is the protocol at a
state facility so different from one at a federal facility specifically? Yeah,
seems like a very kind of arbitrary distinction here.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Right, So I guess one of the reasons that I
can think of is in a state, you have X
number of prisons, maybe three four prisons, and the Department
of Corrections for that state is in charge of those prisons.
Now with federal prisons, you have over fifty federal prisons
across the country, and the Bureau of Prisons is in
(20:27):
charge of all of those prisons. So it is a
fairly big federal organization, the Bureau of Prisons, but it's
still a massive amount of facilities to be in charge of,
so I understand that from their perspective, it's hard to
manage that many prisons. And also we know that the
Bureau of Prisons is extremely short on money, which is
(20:49):
probably one of the reasons that they're so short staffed
in these federal prisons. And we know that federal prisons
are so short staffed at the moment. In some federal prisons,
they've even instituted the National Guard to try and keep
the peace within these prisons. So, for example, in Florida,
for more than two years now, the National Guard has
(21:11):
been introduced into Florida's prison system, specifically the federal prison.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Two years.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.
So it's very possible that their reasoning for not allowing
these communication capabilities is true, that they are that they
do have security concerns because if you think about fifty prisons,
each one has a fairly large population that is a
(21:37):
ton of electronic tablets to be monitoring. Now, with AI
and stuff like that, it should be a little bit easier.
It doesn't take one human being looking through each message
before it goes. But who knows what their real reasoning is, so.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
With all these security concerns, you might wonder why federal
prisons are providing tablets at all, especially since they aren't
helping people communicate with the outside world, which once again
is why most people are buying these things. And because
we're not getting clear answers from the Bureau of Prisons,
I don't have a clear answer for you, so we're
kind of left to wonder. And that's where it's hard
(22:17):
not to think of the next obvious incentive, the sales.
What cut is the Federal Bureau of Prisons getting from
that one hundred and thirteen dollars per tablet and those
forty five dollar albums. We tried asking the Bureau of
Prisons how much they're making here. We didn't get a
response in time for publishing. But even if they're not
taking a cut off of each individual's sale here, we
(22:38):
do know that there is some money coming.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
In prisons that are providing these tablets. They have a
vested interest in providing them as well, because they're getting
massive kickbacks from the companies like GTL and Securists are
providing these tablets. So, for example, a prison in New
York got eight hundred thousand dollars for allowing these tablets
to be bought in their commentsary.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
For a wait hold on, for allowing the tablets to
be bought, for just putting it on the shelf, just
putting it on the shelf. So there is an incentive
to do business here.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
There is a massive incentive on all parts when it
comes to the companies that provide goods and services to
incarcerats of people. I mean, everybody has their finger in
the pot when it comes to providing incarcerats of people
goods and services. Everybody is getting paid and everybody is.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Earning money or for vet except the people apart from.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
The incarcerates of people. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Coming up next the guests who I really wanted to
interview but couldn't get a hold of. That's after the break.
(23:55):
How did you even find out about all of this?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I got an interesting phone call from a gentleman named
Jerrell who had just been moved to a federal prison
and was very disappointed with the fact that he couldn't
use his electronic tablet to communicate with his loved ones
in the same way that he had been able to
at the state facilities that he'd been at. We ended
up becoming penpals where he would update me on his
(24:20):
day and stuff. And one of the things that kept
coming up on the cause with him was that he
felt like he couldn't stay in touch with his loved
ones when they went into lockdown, and he felt that
was extremely.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Unjust wow, yeah, so would you just like not hear
from for days? And then he would say, yeah, I
couldn't use my messaging device here exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah. So I became one of the main people that
he would call when he just wanted to have a
quick chat. And after a few days, I would notice, Huh,
Jerrell hasn't called me in a few days. I wonder
if he's okay. And sometimes Jerrell would get into some trouble,
so I thought maybe he might be in the shoe
or something, and then I would get a very frustrated
call from him saying, I've not been would call you
(25:00):
for four days because we've been on lockdown, and we've
been on lockdown because they're short staffed, not because anybody
did anything wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Helps Jerrell doing right now.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I've not heard from Jarrell in about a week. I
have heard from his family members that he's doing okay,
and I had reached out to him to try and
get him to join us on this podcast, which I
know he would have loved, but currently I can't get
ahold of him. His relatives got a letter from him
saying that they're in lockdown, that he can't make phone
(25:30):
calls or messages.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, because when we first talked, you were saying, you
know what, I think Jerrell would be down to talk
with us, and I was thinking, yeah, that'd be great.
I mean, we can get his perspective on it. But yeah,
precisely what you've been talking about has happened again, which
is just they've just gone a lockdown and he can't
use the messages on his tablet, which again defeats the
(25:52):
purpose of why they got.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
The thing exactly. Yeah, and it's incredibly unfair because, like
I said before, the only phones and desktops that are
available to these people existing communal areas. So if they
can't access those communal areas because they're on lockdown, they
have no way of contacting their loved ones. They can
try and send written mail, but it takes a hell
(26:14):
of a long time to get to someone, and you know,
the prisons aren't very organized about sending them out every day,
and so yeah, it's really really tough. I think a
lot about you know, children have incarcerated people who are
unable to hear from their mother or father on their
birthday because they're on lockdown and they can't use the
(26:37):
electronic tablets. Like that child hasn't done anything wrong, so
it seems a little bit unfair for them to be,
you know, restricted from reaching out to guy loved one
in that way.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
There is a third function for these tablets that we
haven't discussed yet. The need for newer technology like tablets
isn't just for talking with people back home or for entertainment.
It's also really great, crucial for when people leave the
system and need to reintegrate back into society. Technology moves
so fast now that even missing just a few years
could leave you completely confused and lost when you get out,
(27:11):
and this would make it really hard to say, hold
down a job and be a productive member of society.
Have you spoken to anybody who's gotten out and then
had to deal with what technology is like in the
outside world.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I have. Actually, there was an incarcerated person that
I was working with who had been incarcerated for about
fifty years. His name was Gregory.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Fifty five zero.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
By the time he was released, he was released on
compassionate release. He was struggling with cancer and he was
eighty seven years old, and he had never seen a
flat screen TV. He'd never seen an iPhone, he'd never
seen Wow. Cause the way that we know them now,
billboards that are electronic just all sorts. It kind of
(27:57):
reminds me of that scene from Georshank Redemption when he
comes out prison and he's like, damn, everybody got themselves
in a big damn Harry, Like you're just stepping off
into a different planet.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It feels like wow. I mean, Gabby. One of the
reasons I wanted to talk to is because I think
when I tell people that I'm working on a tech podcast,
I think a lot of times the assumption is like
I'm going to be reviewing the next iPhone or something
like that, or that hey, maybe I'll be talking about
some kind of new scam or ways to protect yourself
(28:27):
from scams. But right now we're talking about very much
not cutting edge technology and a scam that frankly, there
is no way to protect yourself from Yeah, for sure,
because it sounds like a scam to me. Okay, let
me take a step back and pause here, because in
that interview I'm using a pretty strong word. I call
(28:49):
the experience of getting these tablets disconnected a scam. But
I stand by that and think about the scenario. Let's
say I'm a tech reviewer doing a review of a
new iPhone, and I want to understand the consumer's experience.
So I walk into the local T Mobile shop and
I buy this new phone that's advertised as being able
to watch videos and make phone calls. And then a
(29:09):
week later, the phone call capability is shut off. I
now have half a product. I'm gonna feel scammed. The
promise made to me that the product and service would
be there was not fulfilled. I don't care who shut
it off. If it was T Mobile, if it was
Tim Cook, if it was some local government, I don't care.
It doesn't work anymore. I'm gonna feel like I've been
(29:31):
scammed out of hard earned money. I think the same
thing applies here. If you spend money on something, you
have the right to get what you paid for. Anything else, well.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It is it's an outright scam. And even when the
tablets work as exactly how they're supposed to, one could
argue they're still a scam because the price gouging is
so extreme and the exploitation of inconst rats to people
paying such a flated prices for these services on these tablets.
It's so extreme because they know they can't go anywhere else.
(30:06):
The whole thing is a scam one hundred percent. And
I think it's interesting what you said about you know,
being a tech podcast, because tech really touches everybody's lives
and access to tech is such an indicator of success,
you know. So if you're a student in school and
you don't have access to digital learning capabilities and it's
(30:29):
the pandemic and you can't go to school, you're going
to be left behind. And that's what's happening with these
incarcerated people. They are stuck in this very archaic facility
that looks like something from the early fifties, and most
of the technology that's available to them is very, very
old fashioned technology, and so it's not preparing them for
(30:52):
coming out and being reintroduced to the workforce or being
reintroduced to the world writ large.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, I mean, when you put it like that, yeah,
you get out, and if you don't have access to
some semblance of what the world outside looks like and
how it functions, you're going to get out. You can't adapt.
And if you can't adapt to the outside world after
you've been locked up for five, ten, fifteen, thirty years,
(31:18):
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Right exactly? I think so much of our lives on
the outside world now depend on technology, and if you
get out of prison and have no idea how that
stuff works, how even a touchscreen phone works, a smartphone works,
You're already being blocked out of so many different markets
when it comes to trying to find a job.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, I mean, you basically can't work a cash register
at this point, right exactly. So incarcerated people need access
to these technologies and access to the outside world. And
Gabby's hoping that her reporting will shine a light on
this problem and lead to some changes in the system.
But even if it doesn't, it's you don't means something
(32:00):
for the people who are on the inside.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I got a letter from Jirell after I wrote this
article for Wired, just expressing how grateful he was that
Wired took this story and highlighted this issue. It means
the absolute world to people behind bars, because even if
nothing changes, it just proves to them that people on
the outside care about them. They're not just thrown away
human beings that you just put to the side and
(32:27):
forget about. Like people on the outside are really caring
to listen to their stories, and not just the hyper
sensationalized stories about crime, but you know, the real things
that they're struggling with on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
What would hitting the kill switch on the situation look like.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Well, I hate to sound very communist and left, but
for me, it would be the abolition of prisons as
a whole. I don't think that they're having a purpose.
Can I say that? Or is that inciting a revolution?
But I don't think prisons are being new in the
way that they were initially intended to be used, which
was to correct behavior and ensure that once you're out,
(33:07):
you sort of fit into our societal norms. I look
back at my early teen years and know that I
could have very easily ended up in the same position
as these people, be it experimenting or you know, just
doing things that kids do when they're you know, growing
up and learning and learning how to be part of society.
(33:27):
And I was very lucky to have avoided ever ending
up in prison. And I think if I had ever
ended up in the system, I probably never would have
gotten out of it, because you do just hop from
system to system, and prisons are not setting people up
for success to re enter society. In fact, they're putting
everything in place, not just the prison but criminal justice
(33:48):
system and society as a whole is putting everything in
place so that when you leave prison, you cannot get
a job, you cannot get housing. It pretty much leads
no other option but to come back to prison. And
we see that with the tablets too. It's not setting
people up to have loved ones to come back to
you once they leave prison, to have technology know how
when they leave prison so that they can go about
(34:09):
their lives. Like at every step of the prison process,
we are blocking people from being able to better themselves.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
When I tell people I'm doing a technology show, the
last thing they probably expect is a review of taboleists
that are only available in jails and prisons. But technology
is around everyone everywhere, even if you're locked up, or
if someone you care about is locked up and so
for me, that is very relevant for what kill Switch
is doing. And I think we're still just scratching the surface.
(34:41):
But yeah, that is it for this one. Thank you
so much for listening to another episode of kill Switch.
Let me know what you think, and if there's something
else you'd like us to cover, you can hit us
up at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC and on
Instagram where kill switch pod, or you can hit me
directly dex d that's d e x D I g
(35:02):
I on Instagram or on Blue Sky if that's more
of your thing, and if you're able to leave us
a review wherever you listen to your podcast, it really
helps other people find the show, which in turn helps
us keep doing our thing. And this thing is hosted
by me Dexter Thomas is produced by Shino Ozaki, Darluk
Potts and Kate Osbourne. A theme song is by me
(35:23):
and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixes a show from Kaleidoscope.
Our executive producers are Ozma Lashin, Mungesh Hajikadur, and Kate Osborne.
From iHeart our executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki E.
Tour good Bye, get you on the next one.
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Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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