The Great Prison Wi-Fi Purgatory of 2023

After many months of solid service, the residents of ERDCC discovered this past week that the JP6S tablets loaned to us by Securus Technologies work fine until they don't.

It began innocently enough one morning, with just a few people unable to access their tablets' content. My cellmate and I could unlock our devices, but our neighbors couldn't. By noon it switched: they could, and we couldn't. Logging in felt like a coin flip – maybe you'd get to access your e-mail, class work, music, and e-books; maybe you wouldn't. Everyone assumed that it was a glitch quickly to be remedied. Then the whole system went down.

Unlike our old JP5S tablets, which only downloaded software updates when connected via USB cable to a kiosk in the wing (leading to the sort of low-grade pandemonium I blogged about here), the JP6S is constantly connected to Wi-Fi and subject to very inconveniently timed automatic updates. The JP6S also depends on a Wi-Fi connection for its offline content. Forty-eight hours after a connection is lost, the device becomes a useless mass of silicon, heavy metals, and plastic, impossible to use beyond the lock screen. The tablets bricked and people lost their shit. Prisoners who'd been locked up for twenty or thirty years suddenly ceased being able to function. Some took to pacing. Many took longer-than-usual naps. The wing telephones clogged, as long, unruly wait-lines formed for the first time in nearly a year. "My games!" one man wailed, to no one in particular. I asked him what he did with his days in prison during the decades before tablets. He just blinked, as though I'd inquired into his understanding of epigenetics or Planck geometry. In my off-work hours I dug out and opened a book stowed in my footlocker for just this kind of situation. I could've just as easily drawn, painted, and watched TV. People often overlook the most obvious solutions to problems. We build our little nests and feather them with at-hand whatnots – whatever's easiest, generally. Tablets have made much of the prison population lazy, de-emphasizing people's ingenious qualities in favor of a game app or endless music shopping. I don't want to be one of those prescriptivists who decry the dumbing-down of modern society by handheld technology... but damn.

New VideoGrams, e-mail, photos, and podcast episodes awaited me when, six days after service went down, a guard made her afternoon rounds and informed us that our tablets should be fully operational again. I was happy to have them all. The outage served as a simple reminder of the privileges that enjoy. In the same way as I recently appreciated my first sip of coffee after a two-month abstinence, the enjoyment I got from reading somewhat delayed messages from friends and loved ones was that much greater for the wait.