Since 2021, people incarcerated in California have enjoyed the privileges of free phone calls and affordable messaging services via state-issued tablets. Messaging is now much more convenient than in the days of smuggling illegal cellphones.
But soon users started noticing a problem. Messages were frequently delayed and given a “pending” status, sometimes for days. Some messages were never dispatched at all.
There was no instruction manual or state-issued announcement explaining that the issue was, in fact, the words in the messages.
The tablet’s operation is clunky. It feels like early 2000s-era technology. The free dashboard offers an unhelpful “Help” guide with videos depicting different tablets with different functions than ours, and a “Requests” section for questions related to tablet service or performance issues. Routine, non-tech questions are never answered.
When my family and several of my peers’ families directly queried the tablet provider, ViaPath Technologies, about the delayed messages, the company referenced an obscure passage from Section 3135 in the California Code of Regulations titled “Disturbing or Offensive Correspondence.”
The section explains that prison correspondence can be disallowed if it contains any threats of danger. A numbered list points out everything that will cause a message to be flagged: mentions of violence, weapons, contraband, escape plans, maps, gambling, obscenity, and perhaps the most odd, though less related to electronic mail, correspondence containing human or animal hair or fluids.
The list also mentions “coded messages.”
According to a manual provided to the incarcerated population, the stalled or pending messages are electronically placed in a review queue for staff evaluation by designated graveyard officers working the 10 p.m.-to-6 a.m. shift. Interceptions are color coded. Yellow interceptions are cleared daily by officers and the sergeant in charge. Messages flagged red are forwarded to the prison’s Investigative Services Unit, which determines if a communication will be approved or not.
A secret list of keywords and phrases triggers a yellow- or red-flag intercept. These include euphemisms for drugs, references to crimes, and any sentences suggesting nefarious acts.
But it’s not sophisticated. A simple communication to a parent could be intercepted. Consider the following:
“Hey Mom! I’m sending you an article I wrote for the prison newspaper. The piece is about Guns N’ Roses music…”
The offending word is obvious. But even the word “piece” is on the algorithm’s suspicious list for its use in drug- or weapon-related references. A rewrite requires a thesaurus.
We need a good handle on synonyms not just to find acceptable words, but to know the various words to avoid. For example, the word “gun” in my thesaurus spans a page and a half worth of potential keywords to steer clear of. Apart from the expected, the list includes “chopper,” “auto” and “Smith” — as in the brand, Smith & Wesson.
The Guns N’ Roses message has to be clunkily rewritten to pass through: “Hey Mom! I’m sending you an article I wrote about Axl Rose’s group and their music…”
Everyday words that are also used as slang for controlled substances cannot be used in a ViaPath message. “Grass” and “weed” are obviously out, but so are “candy,” “glass,” “rock” and “tar.”
Want to talk about how much something weighs? Better not use ounces and pounds, which are also intercepted for being potentially drug-related.
My incarcerated peers and their family members have become adept at paraphrasing. Someone might write home, “When I got my canteen issue, my rectangular choco treats were all melted.” “Snickers,” I gather, is too close to “candy,” a slang word for a certain white powder. Others use the style some media outlets take for expletives, omitting letters from the offending words. A letter may read something like, “My c***y was all melted from the sun’s rays.” (The word “heat” is also out for its association with guns.)
I have compiled a partial list of other everyday words that have been intercepted in messages between my incarcerated peers and their contacts. The suspect words include: “rent,” “physical” and “digital” (all considered crime-related); “secretary” (prison personnel); the colors “white” and “black” (gang- and race-related); “blood” (gang- and crime-related); “cut” (drug- and crime-related); “drop” (drug- and crime-related); and “tip” (weapon- and crime-related). There are countless more.
Imagine the naive prison yard-crew worker messaging a friend: “Hey Cody! I got a new job assignment. I’m on the yard crew. I pull weeds, cut grass and even cut my finger enough to draw blood when I picked up a piece of sharp rock. At least I make enough money to buy some candy at the canteen!”
There is no sure way to know which mysterious words and phrases will be forbidden. The prison won’t reveal a definitive list of flaggable words as that would defeat the purpose. So my peers and I attempted to compile an expanded master list based on our guesses of offending words in intercepted messages, but the possibilities are too numerous.
Innocuous words like “PayPal” and “canteen” have recently caused messages to be intercepted, though later messages containing them passed through without issue. It is impossible to know if it means these words are safe to use, or if the graveyard shift workers are just too overworked to actually review all the yellow-flagged messages.
For now, we avoid the common ones and keep our thesauruses on standby.