{"id":7749,"date":"2018-08-02T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=7749"},"modified":"2018-08-02T13:13:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T17:13:37","slug":"idaho-tablets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/02\/idaho-tablets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Idaho prison tablets “hack” is a lesson in how to cover the prison business"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month, while we were uncovering the hidden costs<\/a> of JPay’s “free” prison tablets, people incarcerated in Idaho were discovering something else<\/a>: a way to “hack” JPay’s software to transfer credits to their own accounts.<\/p>\n

It’s never certain how a story like this will be covered in the news, or how readers will react. But on Twitter, readers overwhelmingly sympathized with the “hackers”<\/b> behind bars:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We tip our hats to readers who intuitively put this story into perspective. However, some news sites missed the point<\/b>, with headlines like “Prison inmates hacked into tablets to steal nearly a quarter-million dollars,” or “Inmates ‘Hack’ Prison-Issued Tablets, Swiping $225,000 in In-App Bucks for Music and Games.”<\/p>\n

For newsrooms covering prison tablets, we have some suggestions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Be wary of describing prison retailers the way they describe themselves<\/b>. A company that “provides inmates with access to the outside world” at no cost to taxpayers sounds good, but what if that company sustained itself by grossly overcharging people in prison<\/a>?<\/li>\n
  2. If you’re talking about credits, don’t say “dollars.”<\/b> A “quarter-million dollars” in tablet credits buys a lot less than you’d expect (see #3 and #4).<\/li>\n
  3. Explain that the credits aren’t just for music and games<\/b>. People in prison are also charged for video chats, email and money transfer<\/a> – things that cost you and me almost nothing. Most of the Idaho hackers gifted themselves $1,000 in credits (or less). That amount – at least in other states whose contracts we’ve studied – buys less than 60 hours of video chat<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. Don’t forget to explain that these systems are unlike anything in the free world<\/b>. The economy for digital services in prison is broken<\/a>, with prisons often offering monopoly contracts to providers that will charge customers the most<\/i>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Finally, a general tip for covering the prison business: Talk to incarcerated people and their loved ones<\/b>. For those forced to use JPay, the big story may not be the “exploitation” of vulnerable software, but the company’s ongoing exploitation of vulnerable families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Stories about prison tablets are becoming more common. We offer tips to newsrooms for covering this issue fairly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[46],"class_list":["post-7749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7749"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7796,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7749\/revisions\/7796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7749"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}