Technology is increasingly used to enhance educational opportunities for incarcerated individuals, bridging the gap between in-prison and outside educational programs. This includes providing access to tablets, digital platforms, and online libraries, as well as incorporating smart boards, secure video conferencing, and modular workstations in classrooms in carceral settings.

Many prisons can’t afford computer hardware for classrooms, and they have limited internet access due to insufficient infrastructure or security concerns. This makes it difficult to implement and maintain ed tech programs.  The U.S. spends at least $80 billion a year to operate prisons and jails in all 50 states. Funding inside prisons varies widely across the nation, and there are significant disparities in how states allocate resources for prison education programs. Generally, states with lower overall budgets tend to spend less on programs designed to help incarcerated individuals gain skills or education.

Additionally, many criminal justice advocates and reformers are recognizing the importance of ed tech in rehabilitating prisoners and reducing recidivism. As technology continues to evolve, it holds the potential to transform educational opportunities for incarcerated learners, as long as those basic technological tools are provided and are accessible for incarcerated people.

Stacy Burnett, senior product manager at ITHAKA, an organization comprised of innovators in many fields, working to make education more accessible, affordable, and effective for everyone, leads the development of JSTOR Prison Education, an initiative that enables people in prison to access one of the world’s largest online libraries. “We have proven that through collaboration and creativity that we can create workable solutions that deliver access to digital equity and information literacy for incarcerated people, and it’s done using technology.” 

Incarcerated students in California, with Silicon Valley and home to many of the world’s leading technology companies, and with access to technology and research resources is better than almost anywhere else in the world, regularly face dead ends trying to achieve their educational goals using the support of educational technology.

Bidhan Roy, the director of the prison education program at Cal State Los Angeles, has studied the restorative approach in Norwegian prisons and highlights the contrast. “The concept in Norway is that the time that you serve is the punishment, and the job of the prison is to prepare the resident to become your neighbor again. When you think about it like that, it changes the goal of what you do in there. Why would you not give research skills and internet access?”

Suzanne Carlson, 42, got her GED in prison and then went on to get two associate degrees before joining the bachelor’s degree program Roy oversees. When she first started taking classes, they were with textbooks and paper only. “It was awful,” she said. She loves and appreciates the laptop she has now at the California Institution for Women in Chino, but the EBSCO database gives her access to only pre-approved resources and “the library here is very small in comparison to the things that we need,” she said. She finds herself wishing she had a Google equivalent to do her work. 

“I understand why [that’s not available] and I wouldn’t want to open any avenues for criminal behavior to happen,” Carlson said, but she is sure there’s a way to prohibit criminal activity while still opening up more of the web to people who are incarcerated. 

In fact, other states have figured it out. Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin all have firewalled internet options for students on a separate network that keeps the prison’s network safe and still gets students access to educationally relevant websites. 

It’s time for the Tech Titans in California who are failing prison education programs in their backyards to live up to their reputation.

You can read the full article “California inmates can take college classes, but often with no internet and limited tech” at the CalMatters website. CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.