Unintended Consequence of Texas Prisoner Tablets: Retaliation from Fellow Prisoners
As prisons and jails make services available to prisoners via electronic tablets, they report generally positive results, especially the easy access to information that the systems provide. But in an essay published by Prison Journalism Project on March 19, 2024, Texas prisoner Khaaliq Shakur notes it can sometimes be a trap: When a prisoner’s criminal history is part of that easily accessible information, it may result in retaliation from fellow prisoners.
Prisoners are generally reluctant to inquire about one another’s crimes, appreciating the opportunity to be left in peace about their own. That’s because some criminal histories, especially sex crimes, are known to provoke retaliation from other prisoners. But Shakur notes that on electronic tablets issued by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), the Law Library app puts this information quickly and quietly within reach. All that’s needed to find it is a prisoner’s name or ID number.
Shakur says he knows prisoners “who have been harassed, bullied, abused and forced to fight to protect themselves because their crime was disclosed to people in their prison.” Making such information easily accessible is a major drawback to the proliferation of electronic tablets in prisons, one that doesn’t get as much notice as benefits like “podcasts, music, movies, games, electronic books, and educational and language-learning apps,” Shakur argues.
Before tablets, accessing this information was more challenging for TDCJ prisoners, involving a request to visit the prison law library and a wait for that request to be approved, then waiting for a guard escort to the library and, once there, spending the time needed to learn how to look up cases. For most prisoners, it was simply too much trouble.
But not anymore. If you’re a prisoner with a criminal history that makes you a target for violence from fellow prisoners, you may now need to request protective custody—isolation that carries its own steep social cost—or prison officials may even need to move you to a new lockup, though the risk may follow you there.
Admittedly, there’s no easy solution. Shakur recommends requiring prisoners to provide a reason for court case lookups—an appeal they’re filing or helping another prisoner to file. But ferreting through those reasons would consume many guard hours that TDCJ saved by switching to tablets in the first place.
TDCJ could also require this sort of verification step from its tablet vendor, Securus Technologies, but that would cut into the firm’s profits by requiring more manhours from its employees, making that solution also unlikely. Meanwhile, we can file the problem Shakur has identified in the drawer labeled “unintended consequences” of prison profiteering.
Source: Prison Journalism Project
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