Missouri Prison Tech

Prison's a backwater, for sure, but developments and inroads by rights organizations and for-profit corporations have changed a few things for those of us on the inside. Our access to technology has made especially impressive strides. Here in Missouri, the introduction of tablets marked an apparent turning point in how the Department of Corrections meets the present.

Following a clunky start, prisoners in Missouri are able to do quite a bit on those tablets. We can now make phone calls, listen to FM radio, access public domain books, rent movies and TV shows, send and receive e-mail, research law, buy mobile games, listen to podcasts, subscribe to a news feed, and purchase music. A lot of the features cost money that many prisoners don't have, but having the free features beats having nothing at all.

Because the tablets don't offer even the most basic, firewalled internet access, quite a few people are enthusiastic about a newer app, Edovo, which appeared in the beginning of 2025. Edovo offers video, audio, and text on myriad topics curated for incarcerated users. There are MasterClass courses, guided meditations, LinkedIn Learning classes, Grow with Google videos, Veritasium content, <<link to OpenStax textbooks, prep courses for Modern States Education Alliance's CLEP exam, reentry resources, digital magazines, works of classic literature, WikiHow articles, and a lot more. In some ways, Edovo is YouTube (plus e-books) for prison, serving educational, self-improvement, and spiritual interests—and no cat videos.

The Reentry Center, where I work, has virtual reality goggles for Transfr career simulations. Anyone interested in exploring different fields of employment can make an appointment to test them out. The sims include: installing rooftop solar panels, plating a signature dish at a restaurant, demolishing a bridge, assisting with knee surgery, and numerous points in between. I've read about other states using VR to give prisoners pre-release virtual tours of transitional housing and simulations of activities that might induce anxiety, such as going to a laundromat or using self-checkout at a store.

The most recent addition to prison's tech landscape that I've learned about is a service called Beyond Bars AI. It's pretty much what you'd expect from the name. Artificial intelligence is everywhere else, so why not in prison? Paid subscribers get to e-mail prompts to an AI that responds directly to them via our tablets. Not everyone in prison can ask an outside friend or relative to play proxy for ChatGPT, so this service presumably saves people time and effort, and empowers the incarcerated person to do their own research.

Just last week, I learned that Beyond Bars AI introduced a voice feature, a concept that sounded a little gimmicky to me. By calling a phone number and saying your DOC number, state, and name, you get ten minutes with Nova, an AI ready to converse about... whatever, I guess. The call is charged to your account at the usual rate of 5¢ per minute, but the voice AI service is free until the end of the year.

I had fifty cents to lose, so I gave it a shot over the weekend. I have several people in my circle who say they're only too happy to relay my prompts to AI, but there was something undeniably appealing about using such a tool on my own. (Autonomy is a powerful thing.) The ten minutes flew by as I asked Nova questions and got not only the information I wanted but additional ideas I wouldn't have considered on my own. This might be my new Saturday thing—at least until free usage ends in 2026.

Nova got me thinking about possibilities. A large percentage of people in prison have undiagnosed mental illness, and there's virtually no way for them to get therapy to help overcome underlying issues that brought them here. Someone with an inclination and good funding could set up a valuable (not to say profitable) system to provide the incarcerated population with AI therapy sessions at no cost to them. The hardened convict, unwilling to risk vulnerability by exploring his feelings with another human, might open up to a nonjudgmental AI. I expect that a DOC implementing such a system would see its recidivism rate decrease. Violence and other antisocial behaviors in its facilities would likely go down, too.

This might be an audacious idea; I'm guilty of having those, from time to time. But what a fantastic benefit it could have for people inside and outside alike!

Technology is only as good as the intentions we wield it with. Tech advancements that have made it through the once impenetrable razor-wire barrier are significant. But much is yet to be desired. The pricing structures of a lot of these services isn't great. In many cases it's exploitative. Moving forward, we'll need to remedy that. A lot of the software is junk, too, so more quality control is called for. These are solvable problems.

Putting more automated processes in place could cut down on issues caused by chronic corrections staff shortages. Integrating systems to better manage administrative tasks—health services requests, case manager correspondence, and such—could ease staff members' workload. Adding access to tools that enhance prisoners' sense of autonomy would surely make prison safer and more beneficial for its residents, its employees, and society.

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.