<
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/01/19/cell-phones-in-prisons-tiktok-education>
"Sometime around the start of the pandemic, a young, blonde woman I’d never met
sent me a message on Twitter.
She promised damning information about deteriorating conditions at a notorious
Texas prison — and said she had video to prove it.
The clips were short, but they showed a darkened prison pod with black smoke
wafting through the air. In the background, people screamed. I’d never seen
such raw footage before, and when I messaged the woman some follow-up
questions, she said she’d ask her source and get back to me.
Her answers came far more quickly than I expected and eventually, I realized:
The young, blonde woman was not young, not blonde and not a woman at all. She
was a middle-aged man in prison, using a contraband phone and fake online
persona to draw attention to worsening conditions behind bars.
Until then, most of what I knew about illicit electronics came from press
releases and news stories that offered example after example of all the bad
things people could do with contraband phones, things like trafficking drugs,
making threats and running scams. While it’s true those things can happen, over
the past three years I’ve also seen a lot of people use their phones for good.
Some use them to self-publish books or take online college classes. Others
become prison reform advocates, teach computer skills, trade bitcoin or write
legal briefs. I’ve seen a whole plethora of savvy and creative uses that fly in
the face of stereotypes about people behind bars. “Our cell phones have saved
lives,” a man in prison in South Carolina told me. “There’s times we’ve called
up front to the administration building for help, when something happens and
there aren’t enough officers here on the unit.”
He, like the others quoted in this story, asked to remain anonymous. Although
some jails and prisons have allowed prisoners to have cell phones, since most
don’t, there are major risks to having illicit electronics. Getting caught with
a contraband phone can result in losing privileges, spending months in solitary
confinement or catching a new criminal charge.
“We have to acquire contraband phones from the people who are supposed to be
watching us,” a man incarcerated in California told me. “That’s the only way we
can do things to better ourselves because they damn sure don’t offer that stuff
here.”
For some people, the risks are worth the opportunity. From education to
activism to medical care, here are some of the unexpected ways people use
cellphones inside."
Via Esther Schindler, who wrote "There’s a group chat of 300 prisoners from
multiple states who teach themselves computer science based on Harvard online
courses … using contraband phones."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
