Historically, prisons and jails have been loathe to give prisoners access to technology. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) didn’t even allow prisoners regular access to telephone calls until 2009. Access to internet-based services, which the non-incarcerated take for granted, is also forbidden by prison officials who cite vaguely-expressed “security concerns.” In recent years, however, electronic tablets that include a variety of programs and ­services have proliferated behind bars.

What has caused this shift in the Luddite mentality of prison officials? Money, mainly. Corrections agencies almost always receive “commission” kickbacks from the revenue generated by fee-based content offered by tablet providers, which ranges from e-messaging and video calls to music downloads and games. The two primary tablet vendors are GTL/ViaPath Technologies, headquartered in Virginia, and Dallas-based Securus Technologies. They are also the nation’s leading prison and jail phone service providers.

Both are owned by private equity firms and have long histories of price-gouging prisoners and their families. Other companies that supply tablets and e-content include Edovo, Inmate Calling Solutions (ICSolutions) and Keefe Commissary Network.

In the business model they all use, corrections officials can select the programs and features available on tablets that are usually provided to prisoners at no cost. The companies do this because they can count on significant revenue generated from fee-based tablet apps. While email and video calls are usually free for the non-incarcerated, prisoners and their loved ones must pay for those and other e-services.

The Pros of Tablets …

Prisoners in Alaska may soon be receiving tablets after state lawmakers passed HB 330 to allow them to have such devices at the discretion of prison officials. State Rep. Sarah Vance (R-Homer), who sponsored the bill, explained that tablets can provide educational and rehabilitative programs which aid in reentry. “For every dollar spent on correctional education, $5 are saved in three­ year reincarceration costs, amounting to a remarkable 400% return on investment,” she said.

Tablets also allow prisoners to have increased contact with their families, and as noted by state Rep. Zack Fields (D-Anchorage), “It is very clearly in the public interest to allow [incarcerated] parents to talk to their children.” Indeed, research has shown that the more communication prisoners have with loved ones, the more successful they are post-release.

“Studies have shown that having meaningful contact beyond prison walls can make a real difference in maintaining community ties, promoting rehabilitation, and reducing recidivism,” noted former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Mignon Clyburn, as PLN reported. “Making these calls more affordable can facilitate all of these objectives and more.” [See, e.g.: PLN, April 2014, p.24.]

The Appeal reported that TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier identified “several potential benefits of the tablet program to incarcerated users, including expanded access to resources and educational materials, more frequent contact with the outside world, and increased technological literacy.” From rarely allowing prisoners to make phone calls, it was a big turnaround when TDCJ let state prisoners receive Securus tablets in 2021.

The Nebraska Department of Corrections (DOC) had a different rationale for supplying GTL/ViaPath tablets to its prisoners. Secretary of Adult Correction Todd Ishee said that the devices reduce idleness, resulting in a calmer prison population. Apparently he believes that prisoners get into fewer fights when they are listening to music, playing video games or watching downloaded movies. Given a 40% systemwide vacancy rate for guards, using tablets to keep prisoners in line is a definite benefit if, much like TVs, tablets serve as a virtual babysitter. Further, according to Ishee, as of October 2023, state prisoners had taken almost 260,000 tablet-based educational courses, including certification programs in carpentry, plumbing and electrical repair.

“Sometimes there’s initial skepticism” from prison and jail staff, said Mitchel Peterman, an executive with tablet vendor Edovo. “But after a few weeks they see that [prisoners] are quiet, that incidents of violence go down. It makes their lives easier.”

Another advantage for corrections officials: Tablets are considered a privilege, which can be taken away as a disciplinary measure to encourage compliance with prison rules unrelated to tablet use. The devices may also slow introduction of contraband into prisons and jails through the mail when mail scanning services are included with the agency’s tablet contract.

Another pro for prisoners is the ability to use tablets to communicate with their loved ones during lockdowns, when phones in unit dayrooms aren’t accessible. Additionally, video sessions are beneficial when family members live too far away to have in-person visits.

… and the Cons

While tablets are frequently provided to prisoners at no cost, the content isn’t free. People behind bars comprise a captive market desperate for entertainment and ways to communicate with their families, and fee-based tablet services exploit that desperation.

“[Prison is] boring and it’s isolating and there is a lot of money to be made off of these very isolated people who have nothing to do,” noted Wanda Bertram with the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI). “I’m concerned with watching prison life become more and more of a marketplace. Tablets have been a vehicle for that.”

Securus subsidiary JPay, for example, charges a “stamp” for each e-message plus another stamp for a photo attachment and three more for a “videogram.” Nationwide, e-messaging rates range from free in Connecticut to $.50 each in Arkansas; they average $.25 to $.35 according to research by PPI. GTL/ViaPath sometimes uses per-minute pricing for sending messages.

But prisoners often don’t foot the bill for tablet-based services; rather, it’s their families who pay to stay in touch through video sessions, e-messages and phone calls. “We have to pay to send him money, to talk with him, to send him pictures,” remarked John West, whose son is incarcerated in North Carolina. “A lot of times prisoners are thought of as cash machines.”

The Appeal reported that music downloads on GTL/ViaPath tablets “can range from $.99 to $9.99 and audiobooks from $.99 to $19.99.” At the Harris County jail in Houston, Securus’ contract specifies costs including $1.19 to $2.23 per song for music; $5.99 per month for a newsfeed; and $.99 to $2.99 per episode for downloaded TV programs. Some jails, including the Dallas County Jail, even charge prisoners a rental fee for using tablets.

“The companies that are manufacturing and distributing this technology are hellbent on making as much money on incarcerated people and their families as possible,” Bertram stated.

Another downside of tablets is that they don’t always provide the features or content that vendors advertise. Tablets have been available in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) since 2022, when Keefe devices were introduced and sold for around $120. However, research by WIRED Magazine found that while prisoners can download fee-based content, BOP officials have blocked access to tablet-based e-messaging and phone calls. In a May 2024 article, WIRED quoted a BOP spokesperson who said, “Currently, there are no plans to enable the public messaging options on the Keefe Score 7 tablets.”

“I would’ve never bought one if they would’ve said I wouldn’t be able to message and video chat,” said former federal prisoner Fro Jizzle. “All we could do was buy music and games and rent movies.”

For prison officials, tablets may also present security risks. On March 8, 2024, South Dakota’s DOC, which contracts with GTL/ViaPath, suspended tablet-based phone, texting and e­ messaging services pending an investigation by the Inspector General’s office. According to one unidentified state prisoner, “as far as what we’ve been told is that somebody from inside the prison hacked the GTL system and was making threats to some type of staff.”

Another security concern is that tablets can be ‘jailbroken,” or rooted, to provide access to prohibited features or services, such as unfettered internet access. While prisoners tend to use such modified tablets to contact their families and access social media, prison officials worry about the risk of fraud, coordinated contraband smuggling, and threats or harassment against victims.

Regardless, for many corrections agencies the pros outweigh the cons, and contracts to provide the devices in prisons and jails continue to proliferate.

NASPO Master Agreement

Rather than reinvent the wheel with each contract for correctional tablets, the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) offers a simpler solution. With Nevada as the lead state, NASPO administers a master agreement for phone and tablet services that other prison systems can join. The turnkey contract provides an easy way for states to get tablets to their prison populations by signing onto the master agreement and selecting the vendor, pricing and optional services. A DOC can choose among five vendors: GTL/ViaPath; Securus; Advanced Technologies Group, LLC; Inmate Calling Solutions (ICSolutions); and Keefe Commissary Network.

In addition to Nevada, at least nine states had joined the master agreement as of mid-2024, including Georgia, Wisconsin, Virginia, Arizona, Tennessee and Nebraska. NASPO receives 1% of gross revenue from all products and services provided under the agreement as an annual fee.

A memo from Tennessee’s Department of General Services dated December 26, 2023, recommended that the state DOC join the NASPO agreement because it would “save the [state] both time and administrative work in procuring several other contracts or resoliciting an RFP [request for proposal] in a highly competitive atmosphere for items contained in the NASPO contract.” The state DOC then signed onto the agreement on May 31, 2024.

A Tablet Contract Examined

PLN obtained a copy of both the NASPO master agreement and the Tennessee DOC contract, which provide a comprehensive look at how tablet services are provided and what they include. The contract, with GTL/ViaPath, specifies that the company “shall provide tablet services at no cost to the state”; that is, it’s a revenue contract that generates income from fees paid by prisoners and their families. The DOC opted to receive phone, tablet and mail scanning services from GTL/ViaPath; it has contracted with Securus for electronic payments and money transfers through its JPay subsidiary.

The tablet content and services include educational and e-learning programs, games, movies, music downloads, video calling, e-messaging, plus the ability to access a law library, file prison grievances, check trust fund accounts, place commissary orders and make phone calls. GTL/ViaPath promised to provide “corrections grade” tablets that connect either to a kiosk or to a prison-based wireless network to access available content; like all tablets in prisons and jails, they do not have internet access.

Most of the tablet content is monetized. GTL/ViaPath already provides phone services at state DOC facilities, at a rate of $.075/minute—the same rate under the new contract that will be charged for tablet-based calls. Video sessions are billed at $.25/minute or $7.50 for 30 minutes. The phone and video calling rates are expected to drop next year due to caps set by the FCC in July 2024, which PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1.]

Entertainment content, including movies and games, will cost $.05 per minute ($3.00/hour), or $.03 per minute ($1.80/hour) at promotional rates. Those same per-minute rates apply to e-messages sent by prisoners—thus, fast typists will pay less than those who hunt-and-peck. In a 2023 report, PPI noted that per-minute rates are problematic because “research has shown that people in prison often have lower literacy levels, meaning it likely takes them longer to send and read e-messages.” As a result, “per-minute pricing acts as a literacy tax.”

According to the Tennessee DOC contract, incoming messages from family and friends are charged by GTL/ViaPath at $.20 each, plus $.20 for a photo attachment and $.60 for a videogram. Music downloads cost $1.59 per song, on average; all songs are “industry sanitized versions and appropriate for a correctional setting” Music subscription packages may also be available.

These rates are subject to change—i.e., increase—with advance approval of DOC prison officials. Tablets will be provided to the prison population at no cost and come with earbuds and a charger. Replacement earbuds are priced at $3.49, replacement chargers at $7.99. Internal institutional services, such as trust fund balance requests, commissary orders and grievances, are free. So are “standard” e-books, law library access and “base” level educational programs.

Since most Tennessee state prisoners earn between $.17 and $.75/hour, the pay-for-play tablet services—such as $.05/minute to type e-messages or play games—are disproportionately pricy. Family members and friends can add funds to prisoners’ trust accounts, but the deposits incur fees ranging from $.90 to $7.95 for credit card payments, depending on the deposit amount, or $2.50 for each cash payment.

The GTL/ViaPath tablets are scheduled to be distributed to prisoners at all Tennessee DOC facilities by January 2025.

Commission Kickbacks
and Monopolies

The correctional telecom industry has long used a “commission”-based business model that provides kickbacks to contracting prisons and jails based on a percentage of gross revenue generated from phone calls. Such commissions averaged around 43%, based on 2013 research, with some as high as 90%, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2013, p.l.] It should come as no surprise, then, that tablets provided by the same companies that supply phone services likewise include kickback provisions.

After the first year that tablets are made available to the prison population held by the Tennessee DOC, according to its contract with GTL/ViaPath under the NASPO master agreement, the prison system receives a 5% commission on revenue from video sessions and entertainment content—including games, music, movies and other fee-based services. Additionally, the state receives a commission of almost 19% on phone revenue, including that from tablet-based calls, with a guaranteed minimum annual payment of $2,225,000.

Colorado also contracts with GTL/ViaPath, which returns the state a flat $800,000 payment each year. Under a contract with Securus, the Missouri DOC gets a 20% commission on entertainment media. Connecticut receives a kickback of 10-35% on certain tablet content. Although Minnesota provides free phone calls to state prisoners, it collects a 20% commission on tablet-based content under a contract with GTL/ViaPath, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Sept. 2024, p.38]. TDCJ rakes in a 40% kickback on phone and video calls in Texas prisons, most of which goes to a fund to pay crime victims.

Commission-based contracts are particularly insidious because they encourage correctional agencies to increase their kickback revenue by maximizing prisoners’ use of monetized services. As noted by The Appeal, “The higher the rates for emails, video calls, and movies, the more commission the DOC receives.” Kickbacks therefore “discourage DOCs from advocating for fair pricing on behalf of incarcerated people.”

In some cases, jails have discontinued in-person visits in order to maximize commission revenue from video calling. PPI reported that “74% of jails banned in­ person visits when they implemented video visitation,” according to 2015 data.

Prisoners’ family members sued two jails in Michigan over that very practice in March 2024. As PLN reported, the jail in Genesee County, was guaranteed at least $240,000 in commissions and incentive payments annually, plus a 20% cut of revenue from video sessions, under its contract with GTL/Viapath; in St. Clair County, Securus guaranteed $290,000 plus 50% of video call revenue and a whopping 78% of phone call fees. The suit accused each county of engaging in a “quid pro quo kickback scheme” to end in-person visits as a way to increase “the use of high-cost video calls and traditional phone calls.” [See: PLN, Dec. 2024, p.46.]

The jail in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County reportedly banned prisoners from receiving physical books, and they were allowed to read only a limited selection of e-books available on the facility’s GTL/ViaPath tablets. As Prisoners’ Rights Project attorney Caroline Hsu said, “Having tablets to help people in prisons use email and technology is a good thing, but I’m worried about these services being considered replacements and not additions.”

As with telecom services, arrangements to provide tablets in prisons and jails are monopolistic. Corrections officials contract with only one company to supply tablets. That means prisoners and their families have no other option for services, such as video calling and e-messaging.

According to the NASPO master agreement, contracting states shall “not allow any products or services that compete with those supplied by [the vendor] during the term of the contract to be, or to remain, installed at any state facilities.” This lack of competition and consumer choice means that prisoners and their loved ones cannot select which company they prefer based on cost or quality of service.

The FCC’s rate caps included an order discontinuing commission payments for phone and video calls, set to go into effect in 2025. When that happens, prisons and jails will be incentivized to renegotiate their tablet contracts to increase kickbacks from e-messaging and entertainment content, which aren’t covered by the FCC’s ruling.

The End of Paper Mail?

Another concerning aspect of tablets is that they can be used to eliminate paper mail sent to prisoners. Instead, correspondence is electronically scanned and provided to incarcerated recipients in digital files.

This is problematic on several levels. First, there is a delay; with mail scanning, correspondence addressed to prisoners is typically diverted from the prison mailroom to a central facility, where it is inspected and scanned before an electronic copy is then forwarded to prisoners’ accounts via tablets or kiosks. Often there are quality issues with the scans, which may be partially or wholly illegible. But there is also an inestimable benefit to prisoners from handling cards or letters touched by their loved ones, or smelling perfume on love notes, or receiving drawings from their children; that is simply lost.

Nevertheless, state DOCs are increasingly scanning incoming mail; TDCJ announced in September 2023 that it was going to transition to a scanning service. The NASPO agreement anticipates this shift, providing for optional “Digital Mail Services” which include the ‘‘secure digitization and delivery of” regular and/or privileged (e.g., legal and medical) correspondence.

As of 2022, at least 14 state prison systems had implemented mail scanning; the BOP also started a pilot program in 2021. Even the problems with scanned mail present money-making opportunities for tablet vendors (and the DOC to which it pays a kickback). Delays in mail delivery and poor-quality scans simply influence prisoners “to use other, paid communications services provided by the companies,” such as e-messaging, PPI noted. The NASPO master agreement admits as much: “When agencies move to digital mail scanning, data shows that physical mail volumes can drop by 50%.”

Prison and jail officials claim that mail scanning is necessary to reduce the amount of contraband sent through the mail—particularly drugs like K2 (synthetic marijuana), which can be sprayed on paper and is difficult to detect. While there may be some merit to this argument, it ignores the fact that drugs are most commonly smuggled by prison staff members, and mail scanning does nothing to prevent that.

The companies that provide mail scanning have a financial incentive to tout its benefits, as the service isn’t cheap. Under the NASPO agreement, for example, GTL/ViaPath charges $1.25 per piece of mail for scanning at an off-site facility. However, PPI reported that research in Pennsylvania from 2019 and Missouri from 2022 found that adopting mail scanning in those states had “little to no effect on the frequency of [prisoner] overdoses and drug use,” which are “the type of issues that prisons claim mail scanning will address.”

Dearth of Privacy

It is generally understood and accepted that prisoners have a diminished expectation of privacy, both in terms of their persons and property. But what about their friends and family members, whose only connection with the criminal justice system is their desire to communicate with their incarcerated loved ones?

The NASPO master agreement specifies that phone calls made by prisoners (excluding attorney calls) shall be recorded and stored for the life of the contract, with call record details retained for four years after the contract ends. Video sessions will be recorded and stored for at least 90 days.

E-messages are likewise retained and kept in a database that can be searched by keywords—so prisoners and their families should avoid sending messages that contain phrases like “the movie was a riot!” or “it was a narrow escape.” Photos and video attachments sent by family members are stored, too. The NASPO agreement states that tablet vendors must provide corrections officials with the “ability to track, research and investigate messaging history by various factors including, but not limited to, send date, sender, recipient, etc.”

Scanned incoming mail is also stored in a searchable database that allows prison and jail officials to review and monitor prisoners’ personal correspondence. According to the NASPO agreement, scanned mail will be kept online for at least a year and record details (e.g., sender and recipient) stored for another four years. The original letters (hard copies) will be retained for one year and are considered property of the corrections agency. Additionally, the mail scanning vendor must provide “an alert capability that will notify authorized DOC staff when certain key words or phrases that are identified in inmate correspondence.”

JPay/Securus states in its privacy policy, vaguely, that user data may be shared “with law enforcement personnel and/or correctional facilities and certain third parties for use in connection with and in support of law enforcement activities.” GTL/ViaPath says its data collection will “enable correctional facilities to easily review and analyze the networks, relationships, and connections associated with their inmate population”—and by extension the people prisoners communicate with on the outside. Beyond the creepy feeling of being watched by Big Brother is the very real concern for those people that the point is to gain a measure of control over them as well.

These practices raise obvious privacy concerns for prisoners’ family members and friends, whose conversations with and correspondence to their loved ones are retained by corrections officials (sometimes indefinitely). On top of that, telecom providers such as Securus have been repeatedly hacked, and their recorded and stored data compromised, as PLN has reported—sometimes by prisoners themselves. [See: PLN, Aug. 2016, p.1; June 2019, p.27; and Nov. 2024, p.18.]

Tablet-Related Litigation

Most aspects of prisons and jails have been the subject of litigation, and tablets are no exception. With new technology comes new legal issues, such as those that arise when prisoners have their tablets confiscated, or they are restricted from accessing certain features or content.

In Illinois, state prisoner Justin Fejerang filed suit pro se against GTL/ViaPath, claiming breach of contract, false advertising, and due process and First Amendment violations. He had bought a tablet that was advertised to include a variety of services; however, prison officials “made 30 out of the 40 advertised apps unavailable,” according to his complaint. On initial screening the federal court for the Southern District of Illinois rejected his due process claim but allowed the First Amendment and state-law claims to proceed on October 10, 2023. See: Fejerang v. G.T.L., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182349 (S.D. Ill.).

GTL/ViaPath then failed to respond to the summons Fejerang sent, and the district court recorded a default judgment against the firm; but it reversed that on January 22, 2024, crediting legalese in company documents that compelled users like Fejerang to take his complaint to arbitration, rather than to federal court, and specified limitations on liability and a disclaimer of warranty, stating that the company could “alter or remove subscription content with or without notice.” See: Fejerang v. Viapath Techs. Incorrectly Named As G.T.L., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11171 (S.D. Ill.). That doesn’t bode well for his claim, but it remains pending, and PLN will update developments as they are available.

Another Illinois prisoner, Willie Hall, filed a similar suit pro se in the same court, citing restricted access to content on a tablet he purchased. His First Amendment and state-law claims were also allowed to proceed on February 29, 2024, though the district court dismissed an equal protection claim based on Hall’s argument that “inmates at other prison facilities … have access to different tablet content.” His claim related to inability to access certain religious content also was rejected, as he had not shown it “substantially burden[ed] his religious practice.” See: Hall v. GTL, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35683 (S.D. Ill.).

On January 13, 2025, the district court decided to stay the case while the parties go to arbitration, as mandated under the “End User License Agreement” (EULA) that appears on the prisoner’s tablet—a laughable proposition, since the prisoner’s only other option at that point is to power off the device and never receive any of the content that state prison officials diverted there with the contract that they signed with GTL/Viapath. See: Hall v. G.T.L., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6531 (S.D. Ill.).

By letting telecom vendors hide behind contract law, courts turn what they sell into property, and prisoners have long been held to have few property rights. On January 29, 2019, for example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a Colorado state prisoner failed to state a liberty or property interest when he sued over his inability to access downloaded music on his tablet. Todd K. Robinson said he paid over $1,500 for digital songs, but when the tablet stopped playing them, he couldn’t get it adjusted or fixed because the prison system had since cancelled its contract with the tablet vendor. The Tenth Circuit agreed with the district court that Robinson had not alleged an “atypical and significant hardship” regarding the loss of his music, and the “challenged deprivation concerned only the use, rather than ownership, possession, or control of property.” See: Robinson v. Doe, 761 Fed.Appx. 855 (10th Cir. 2019).

Another Colorado prisoner, Delmart Vreeland II, filed suit after prison officials confiscated the tablet he had bought. Among other claims, he argued that he had legal pleadings stored on the device and its loss violated his right of access to the courts. The Tenth Circuit affirmed dismissal of his complaint, finding that he had failed to “demonstrate that the seizure of the tablet prevented him from filing complaints in other matters or effectively litigating existing matters.” See: Vreeland v. Wren, 702 Fed.Appx. 676 (10th Cir. 2017).

On August 22, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana held that another pro se prisoner plaintiff who sued over a denied tablet could proceed on First Amendment and equal protection claims because he alleged that others held in Westville Correctional Facility were allowed to have the device. On initial review, the district court found that Christopher L. Scruggs’ complaint “suggests there is no rational basis for refusing to give [him] a tablet device while giving them to inmates who arrived [at the facility] later than him.” He was also allowed to pursue an equal protection claim “on the theory that the defendants discriminated against him based on his race by refusing to provide him with a tablet device.” See: Scruggs v. Pullins, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147153 (N.D. Ind.).

Ohio prisoner David Dell attempted to file a class-action suit pro se after that state’s prison system transitioned from JPay/Securus as a tablet vendor to GTL/ViaPath. When the JPay tablets were phased out, prisoners had to send them home or turn them in. Dell argued that although “inmates have spent over one-thousand dollars on video games … [they] have yet to be compensated for their tablets or video games.” On December 19, 2023, a magistrate recommended to the federal court for the Southern District of Ohio held that he had not shown there were inadequate post-deprivation remedies for his loss of property; had not alleged his property was taken for public use to support a Fifth Amendment claim; and his allegations did not support equal protection or First Amendment violations. After that, his claim was quickly dismissed on February 23, 2024. See: Dell v. Smith, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 225681 (S.D. Ohio); and 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31337 (S.D. Ohio).

In California, state prisoner Carlton L. Reid bought a tablet from JPay/Securus under its pilot program with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). But when that program was dropped and CDCR contracted with GTL/ViaPath in 2022 to provide free tablets, prisoners had to relinquish their JPay devices. Reid sued pro se and moved for a preliminary injunction to require Defendant prison officials “to refrain from taking any more tablets and to return those that have been taken.” The federal court for the Eastern District of California adopted a magistrate’s recommendation and denied this motion on February 17, 2023, finding he failed to show how loss of the tablet constituted irreparable harm. See: Reid v. Allison, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28333 (E.D. Cal. Feb.).

Another California prisoner, Clarence L. Hearns, also filed suit when his JPay tablet was seized, arguing that prison officials were removing JPay tablets because they “would take away revenue from the state-owned [GTL/ViaPath] tablets.” In dismissing his claim, the same district court wrote that “concerns regarding revenue earned or retained by the state are rationally related to a legitimate government interest.” The court also found that Hearns failed to state a due process claim—also resorting to contract law to find that he did “not have a liberty interest in possessing a JPay tablet and its contents.” That judgment was affirmed on February 23, 2023, by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the full Court declined to rehear the case en banc on May 11, 2023. See: Hearns v. Cisnero, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 4351 (9th Cir.); and 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 11620 (9th Cir.).

On April 8, 2024, the federal court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed a lawsuit filed pro se by state prisoner William J. Wallace, who claimed that confiscation of his tablet deprived him of the ability to communicate with his family and listen to music downloads that he had purchased. To the extent he alleged a takings claim under the Fifth Amendment, the district court found no evidence “that the tablet was reappropriated for ‘public use.’” Wallace didn’t own the tablet, and he sought only compensation for the songs he had purchased, which the district court said was “admittedly a closer call”; nevertheless, it held that he already had an adequate post-deprivation remedy under state law allowing him to sue the state DOC for damages. See: Wallace v. Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63680 (S.D. Fla.).

Wallace’s case reflects the general holding since Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984), that only authorized, intentional property deprivations are recognized as stating due process claims; negligent or unauthorized seizures do not state a claim unless a meaningful post-deprivation remedy is unavailable—such as grievance procedures, a claims process or state tort actions.

A More Equitable Approach

Tablets can provide valuable services for prisoners and their families, particularly additional communication options and educational resources. However, the business model relies on selling these services to cash-strapped prisoners and their families at inflated prices, so that part of that revenue can be paid back to prison officials as “commission” kickbacks. Add in concerns about quality, privacy and lost access to content, and it is a bitter pill to swallow.

A more equitable approach to providing tablets in prisons and jails would include making content available at no cost or more reasonable rates; ensuring privacy protections, such as provisions that prohibit selling or sharing user-related data; eliminating kickback payments for tablet content; and allowing prisoners and their families to choose between different providers for services such as video calls and e-messaging—much like non-incarcerated customers can select between different apps on their smartphones.

Additionally, if prisoners buy content on their tablets and later have to relinquish them, such as due to a change in vendors, they should be compensated for the games, music and other purchases they’ve made. That is only fair.

Absent such reforms, the new paradigm of tablets and related e-services in prisons and jails looks much like the old one established by the correctional telecom industry: price-gouging and exploitation of prisoners and their families.  

Additional sources: Alaska Public, The Appeal, Dakota News Now, KSAT, Reuters News, Slate, South Dakota Searchlight, Wired Magazine, WRAL

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