In the twisted world of prison communications, voicemail is an innovation

For people in prisons and jails, voicemail can still be very useful. Corrio is a Washington state-based company co-founded by Alex Peder, a former inmate himself, that offers a service that lets inmates call a special number assigned to them and then record a voice message that gets texted as a link to any person the prison or jail has allowed them to contact. It connects the facility’s network to Corrio’s private switch network, and a person on the outside can send a regular text to the inmate, as well as record voicemails. The inmate can check their messages at any time they have access to a phone, listening to the recording or to texts that are automatically converted into voice messages. The aim for Corrio’s messaging platform, which launched June 11, is to make the communication process easier, given that maintaining contact with the outside world has consistently been proven to be beneficial for the incarcerated person’s wellbeing and rehabilitation. Peder said that in tests, the messages were largely very short, concise, often as simple as “I love you.”