A few years ago, the Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC) gave tablets to all inmates who wanted one. But the experience of owning one has been mixed. When we have a problem we need fixed, we don’t receive the help we need.
For example, I bought a new tablet so I could own the device outright. But when I tried to download all the games and songs that I paid for and had on my free tablet, I wasn’t able to get 17 of my songs. Every time I tried to download those songs, my screen on the tablet would say, “Finalizing” in the bottom right corner. That would be followed by a message, “Download interrupted.”
When I wrote a repair ticket, the service provider JPay gave me an automatic response: “Do a hard reboot.” and “Download the music catalog to fix it.”
Nothing worked, so I deleted all of my songs and downloaded them again one at a time. This time, 45 of my songs did not load, which was worse than before. When I complained again, they gave me the same automatic response.
I overheard one man in the same wing as me saying that he had songs on his old tablet that would not download. They told him that they could not fix it and they would pay him back for the songs, but he could never buy those songs again.
I think that they should be held responsible for anything they sell.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.
The Problem With Free Tablets
