Prison Tablets Are the Best Thing to Happen in Decades

Earlier this year (i.e. 2023) Texas finally got around to fully incorporating the prison tablets into its prisons. I have been reading about e-tablets being issued to inmates in various prison systems throughout the United States since at least 2014, as well as the controversy surrounding this program.

While it would still be another nine years before this program would be fully realized in Texas, just by the fact that the conversation was on the table made its fructification seem very possible, maybe even probable.

I first began hearing about the e-tablets being issued to inmates in some of the county lockups in Texas during the pre-Covid months of 2020. From there it was a matter of simple logic to conclude that the e-tablets would eventually find their way into the State prison system. For many of us here, however, it was just another case of “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Actually getting the e-tab. program up and running must’ve been no small accomplishment. I can only imagine some of the political hoops its proponents were compelled to jump through, especially when considering that Texas, at every juncture, has had to be dragged out of its nineteenth century southern plantation mentality kicking and screaming.

I mean, until very recently, the height of technology in Texas prisons has been an obsolete electric typewriter, a transistor radio with a dipole antenna (which doesn’t amount to much more than a toy), and a legal pad. Intellectually, I have known that something like the Securus e-tablets were coming since 2011, when 366 U.S. post offices, in Texas alone, closed their doors. On a more fundamental level, however, I’m still not completely sure that I actually believed my own hype. This program has certainly not arrived in any shape or form that I could have predicted.

Without a doubt, the e-tablets have revolutionized the way in which time is now done in Texas (as I’m sure is also true of other states as well). I have been down here now for 31 calendar years and the e-tablets are arguably the best thing that TDC has ever done for prisoners. Not simply because of the distraction that they provide from the daily drudgery and monotony of doing time — albeit they do that too — but in spite of it. In other words, all of the guys down here that are still content at trying to make a living snatching old ladies’ purses needn’t fear that the e-tablets will somehow change them for the better. They can remain the same tired assholes that they’ve always been while watching cat videos and jacking off on the lawsuit against Cardi B. (cf. Brophy v. Almanzar, 359 F.Supp. 3d. 917).

Yeah, okay. So I looked. What can I say? The “Premium Content,” or the tablet content that has to be subscribed to (and most times paid for) — movies, TV shows, music videos, audio podcasts, video games, music packages, and the e-newsstand — can be more addictive than heroin. Trust me on this. I was buying so many movies you’d have thought Hollywood had gone out of business, until TDC had those apps removed from my e-tablet. It’s a fantastical way of doing time and one I never thought to see in my lifetime. This one will be a tough act to follow.

On the other hand, for those cats who may be trying to improve their existence or modify their ways of negative thinking/behavior, however, there is no shortage of resources on offer: the telephone, e-mail, Lexis/Nexis (far superior to any law library found in a Texas prison—as well as home to our gal, Cardi), self-help/self-betterment videos, oodles of e-books (which contain any number of great books unless you’re looking for John Grisham or Danielle Steel), religious content, and a shitload of lectures on anything and everything from history and religion to art and politics to mathematics, astronomy, and computer programming.

And while I have no problem with tossing Securus a bone, neither am I so naive as to believe that TDC issued us the e-tablets out of the spirit of altruism. The e-tablets were not given to us because TDC cares about us or just wanted to do something nice for us. Like everything else here, they were issued as another means to control us. It used to be done with tobacco, it’s done (now as then) with commissary, with the radios, with the TVs, and with the weights, among other things. In TDC, exerting control is the order of the day. In a sense, the e-tablets have even made this, if not exactly acceptable, at least more tolerable.

TDC hasn’t, in the past, given anyone much of an incentive to conform to their rules. They’ve simply told us, “Do this, don’t do that, sit here, stand there, give me that, fuck off” and expected people to comply. They still do that. These days, however, more people than usual are trying to (or at least getting caught) committing the venial sins that could result in their e-tablet being confiscated. TDC is quick to take things away but never in any hurry to give them back.

Don’t miss J.S. Slaymaker’s story: There Are Rules in Prison for Virtually Everything 

In the years that I have been down here, I have played witness to more than a few big changes, not all of them positive depending on your perspective. The first, I think, was the banning of the sale of tobacco products in 1995. This was/is a pivotal moment in TDC. The ban of tobacco products is the Holy Grail of the proverbial fork in the road, the change from which all other changes flow.

For example, TDC is reported (by their own sources) to have made $1.4 million annually from tobacco sales alone. So it was within 90 days of this ban that we began to see its ill effects: decreases in the amount of food served us as well as decreases in the amount of toilet paper and soap. TDC discontinued handing out bleach, tooth powder, and over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol, Sudafed, and stool softeners (i.e. shit pills, in the vernacular), adding them to the commissary list instead and thereby rendering them attainable via commissary purchase or a doctor’s prescription.

Of course, various reasons for these changes were given, but what it really comes down to is the Agency attempting to clean up a $1.4 million poor business decision. This, in turn, resulted in the creation of a black market where previously there hadn’t been one. The result of this has been countless job losses and prison sentences given.

Other major changes include air conditioning on some units and the installment of industrial sized fans on others. Some, if not all, of the really old units now have respite areas, air conditioned rooms (usually a classroom, part of the infirmary, or the church) where inmates that are feeling overheated can go to cool off. In the summers, there are cool down showers for the same reason.

Don’t miss J.S. Slaymaker’s story:  15 Years In Solitary Confinement And Look At Me Now

These changes are the direct result of a Texas heat wave in 1999 that left several dead prisoners in its wake as well as the lawsuits that followed. For me, Texas prisons will always be represented by sweat, bugs, cigarette smoke, bad food, field work, and rednecks. And while the sweat, the bugs, and the bad food are still with us and, as Billy Joel once said, “probably will be for life,” the cigarette smoke is gone (well, ya know), the rednecks no longer run the joint (although in Texas, you can’t walk down the street without stepping on a redneck), and more than a few farms no longer even have fields.

Thirty years ago, such a statement was unheard of in Texas. There, of course, have been other big changes within the Texas prison system, both before and after the ones I’ve mentioned here. But none of them are on a par with the issuance of the Securus e-tablets. These have, for many of us that have been in the joint since before the advent of much of the “new” technology, given us access to resources previously unattainable.

The Securus e-tablets have opened up a world to us that has largely passed us by. There are many negative things I can, and do, say about TDC, but not this time. Mr. Collier, I raise my whiskey glass and give you a toast. Salud.