For Years, Prison Life Was Isolated From Tech. Now Tech Is Beginning to Define It.

Around 1.9 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States, and an estimated 45 percent of Americans have at some point experienced the incarceration of an immediate family member. For many years, prisons have largely been tech bunkers, keeping incarcerated people isolated from the world outside. But things have started to change. In some cases, they changed because prison leaders recognized the need to connect incarcerated people to their communities. In other cases, they changed because, in relationship with private companies, prisons found a way to profit. The pandemic accelerated this trend. Activities like visitation and education programs were paused and in many cases replaced by video calls, e-messaging, and other virtual activities, facilitated in part by glitchy, specially made tablets distributed by private companies. As a result, things like tablets and e-messaging—which may seem trivial to those of us on the outside but can be transformational on the inside—are now popular in prisons and jails across the country. Time, Online, a new package from Future Tense, attempts to document this moment. Through a series of essays that were (with one exception) written by currently and formerly incarcerated people, we’ll examine how tech is changing what it means to be in prison. The essays and art in this series paint a vivid portrait of how technology has altered and shaped the lives of incarcerated people. Tech will define the future of prisons and of the communities connected to them. It’s worth understanding how.