States that allow tablets in their institutions also benefit from large 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 for free to incarcerated individuals, receives a lump sum of $800,000 annually. Other states like Missouri get a share (20 percent in Missouri's case) of the revenue from the purchase of entertainment downloads such as music, movies and games.
High costs for downloading content, combined with time to kill, often result in a hefty bill at the end of the month for inmates. And since prison jobs pay an average minimum wage of 86 cents per day for prison work, the burden of footing the bill for those downloads often falls on loved ones on the outside.
Still, for the families of people incarcerated in federal prisons, a tablet could be a real lifeline — albeit an expensive one — and well worth the associated costs. Bowman told us, “It would mean everything if they could communicate on the tablets. If we don't hear from them by phone, we will at least get an email saying they are fine and not to worry.”
That's why, when incarcerated people in federal facilities and their loved ones saw state prisons handing out tablets, they hoped the same technology would reach them soon. And it did – 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 implementing the Keefe Score 7c tablet in federal institutions, and offers it for sale through the commissaries for the sum of $118.” Initially, the agency said, the tablets could only be used for downloading music and renting movies on a pay-per-download model. However, Keefe said on its website that buyers can use the tablet to communicate “with loved ones through paid text, photo and videogram messages.”
Yet in our reporting, we contacted nearly 30 federal prisons and found not a single facility that allowed messaging or phone calls on the Keefe Score 7c tablets. We also spoke to more than a hundred federally incarcerated people and their loved ones and couldn't find a single inmate who could use the phone call, video chat, or messaging features on their Keefe SCORE 7c tablets.
Several inmates told WIRED that 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,” said Fro Jizzle, who was released from a federal facility in January. “I would never have bought one if they had said I wouldn't be able to message and video chat. All we could do was buy music and games and rent movies.”
It's understandable that these locked-in consumers would be confused, especially considering that Keefe's own advertising on its website notes that the tablets offer text, photo, and videogram functions. In his marketing pitch to corrections departments on his website, Keefe writes, “Your facility will benefit from a calmer, better behaved offender population and a safer corrections environment.”