Challenges to Achieving Digital Equity for Incarcerated Individuals

Through a series of acquisitions and mergers over three decades, prison technology companies like JPay and Global Tel Link (GTL) have dominated the prison telecommunications space, effectively becoming virtual monopolies. Anticompetitive practices have allowed corporations to gouge families with high prices and ancillary fees for prison phone calls, a practice that reportedly left one in three inmate families in debt. Surrounded by a “digital moat,” incarcerated people are disadvantaged by a lack of access to training opportunities in digital skills otherwise available to the general public. The result is a returning prison population ill prepared for the challenges of reentering free society. Although internet access is expanding in some corrections facilities, it is often still limited or prohibited by law. And even when internet access is available, the costs of internet use can be prohibitive. Researchers Paolo Arguelles and Isabelle Ortiz-Luis find that inmates have little opportunity to engage with technology while behind bars.