States that allow tablets in their institutions also benefit from significant kickbacks from those telecom companies in the form of revenue and profit sharing and incentives. For example, the Colorado Department of Corrections, which contracts its tablets through GTL and provides them to incarcerated people for free, receives a fixed annual payment of $800,000. Other states like Missouri are allocated a portion (20 percent in Missouri’s case) of revenue from purchases of entertainment downloads such as music, movies and games.
High fees for content downloads, combined with wasted time, often result in a hefty bill at the end of the month for incarcerated people. And since prison jobs, on average, pay a minimum wage of 86 cents a day for prison work, the burden of footing the bill for those discharges often falls on loved ones on the outside.
Still, for families of people incarcerated in federal prisons, a tablet can be a real lifesaver (albeit an expensive one) and would be worth the associated costs. Bowman told us: “It would be very important if they could communicate via tablets. That way, if we don’t hear from them on the phone, we would at least get an email letting us know that they are okay and that we don’t need to worry.”
So when people incarcerated in federal facilities and their loved ones saw state prisons handing out tablets, they were hopeful that the same technology would soon reach them. And so it was, with one caveat.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons reportedly issued a statement in October 2022 confirming that it was “in the process of submitting the Keefe Score 7c Tablet in federal institutions, offering it for sale through police stations at a cost of $118.” Initially, the office said, the tablets could only be used for music downloads and movie rentals on a pay-per-download model. Keefe, however, said on his website that buyers will be able to use the tablet to communicate “with loved ones via text messages, photos and paid videograms.”
However, in our reporting we contacted nearly 30 federal prisons and did not find a single facility that allowed texting or phone calls on Keefe Score 7c tablets. We also spoke to over a hundred federally incarcerated people and their loved ones and were unable to find a single incarcerated person able to use the phone calling, video chat, or messaging features on their Keefe SCORE 7c tablets.
Several incarcerated people told WIRED they would not have purchased the Keefe SCORE 7c tablet if they had known the messaging features would be disabled. “They don’t do anything they say on the tablets,” says Fro Jizzle, who was released from a federal facility in January. “I would never have bought one if they had told me I couldn’t message or video chat. “The only thing we could do was buy music, games and rent movies.”
These incarcerated consumers are understandably confused, especially considering that Keefe’s own advertising on its website claims that the tablets offer text, photo and video capabilities. In the marketing pitch to corrections departments on his website, Keefe writes: “Your facilities will benefit from a calmer, better-behaved offender population and a safer prison environment.”