Logic, Defied: The intentional crippling of prisoner-accessible hardware.
Welcome to another one of my thought processes, dear reader! Let's grab a thread and unravel, shall we?
In AD 2022, Prison Was Beginning
At the end of 2022, I came to prison here in Florida. At that same time, Securus, an Aventiv company, was migrating the state from their previous generation tablets which required inmates to purchase them, to their new JP6s hardware, which promised to be more resistant to inmate efforts to modify the onboard operating system, and began a loaner model in an attempt to de-stratify inmates.
Do not pass go; Go directly to gaol(break).
I learned that part of the hardware change could be attributed to inmates that were acquiring root on their tablets through a series of exploits (whose natures I didn't care to learn), and sharing apps and games they acquired through 'dark' market sources. These apps and games were good quality things that you all in the free world were getting from the Google Play Store for zero cost.
For example, if a group of inmates wanted to play a tabletop role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons in their dorm, they would need dice. In our authorized Media Store, we have two dice rolling apps. One is $4.48, and only offers d6, d10, and d20; the lack of d4, d8, d12, and d100 dice makes the app useless for play. The other app is $1.99, and offers the missing dice, but is so poorly written that it isn't even serviceable.
I am certain without being able to look that numerous dice rollers exist in the free world with varying levels of quality, and few as bad as ours.
Welcome back to the stage of Thistory, GPI Software Development!
This story points at GPI Software Development, a group that appear to produce apps possibly just for Securus. The content is 'cheap' in the relative scope of prices we pay, but the software quality is several tiers below half the free Android shovelware the free world receives.
Much of it is Baby's First Android App quality but Baby ate the psychedelics before hooning their Subie on the interstate. (cue Bellbottoms. :3)
To reason: a dice roller, when idle, shouldn't choke a tablet's meager resources. GPI's "RPG Dice Roller PRO" does just this.
Many of the GPI titles are apparently reskins of each other, including in one app an email address and a phone number in Bahrain to contact them if you would like to buy their reskinning services!
Engineered Disarray
To wit, our Media Store is a pile of largely poor quality game titles, and lacks musical diversity. The movies and TV shows are a strange mix of recent movie releases (Barbie is available, as is Gran Turismo; both are $7.99+tax to rent), older movies, and d-list TV series (like Big Bang Theory and Kevin Hart's Cold as Balls).
Making things worse, our ebook selection has dropped sharply, from 24,229 titles... to zero. That's right: for those of us who love to read, our reason to use the tablets has fallen into the well (with Timmy).
Couple this with a sorely lacking music selection, it engineers a problem similar to the one we had twenty-ish years ago:
- There is something for a few, but nothing for many.
I would be happy with a good stack of eBook novels, a decent selection of tunes to enjoy, and some games of decent quality to pass my time peacefully when I'm not in my programs.
What I have access to is none of that.
What this problem does for some, however, is generate a dark market of liberating tablets from their shackled existences, giving them back some of their original capabilities, finding better quality applications that serve a need of peaceful pastimes (such as quality gaming and apps that educate, like a dictionary), and filling the niches of literature-minded and musically inclined individuals.
I mentioned previously that I love reading, but our compound's library is minuscule and hard to access; our eBook library was similarly minuscule, but now doesn't even exist.
A friend lamented to me that he was trying to get the Holy Bible app someone else had. I had to tell him it was removed from the Media Store months ago; those who already got it get to keep it, and those who missed it missed out. We tried to go grab a copy of the ePub version of the Bible from our eBook library... and nothing is available there, at all.
Gone was his chance to get a large text, easier to search book matching his faith.
Similarly, this cuts Buddhists off from downloading the Dhammapada, and Muslims, their Holy Qur'an -- the store apps, while absolutely poor quality, are gone, and the eBook library that offered it is also gone.
It is a defective design being handed to us, and we face some kind of punishment if we attempt to fix it ourselves.
What kind of punishment?
60 days in The Box (that is, Confinement), plus the revocation of ALL of our gain time (which only lets us out of prison up to 15% earlier -- Florida requires 85% of a sentence to be served before you are let out on conditional release).
For me, that is a big, uneven punishment: getting hit with that would strip off what gain time I have earned in my year of time, plus isolate me for two months. But, for those with mandatory minimum or life sentences, the only punishment for them is... two months in the box**. No gain time is earned on a mandatory minimum sentence, so...!
Insert Stratifications Here
Yep, more stratification happens. Those with a mandatory minimum or a life sentence have no incentive to not root their tablets; those who are eligible for gain time are the ones complying.
With no incentive, the former group have little reason to not root tablets, steal tablets to root and sell, etc. You can't feasibly increase penalties levied for this without causing strife: A Life Sentence == A Life Sentence, and mandatory minimums are mandatory minimums. Gain time still doesn't apply, and now you're affecting only one demographic: The non-lifer with gain time earning capabilities!
To belabor the point, if outside charges for hardware tampering were brought against someone for modifying a tablet, it doesn't affect the lifer. The person on a mandatory minimum, or a person who earns gain time do stand to lose something -- if charges result in an additional sentence, two groups stand to lose; life sentences don't care, as they're already staying in the worst bed and breakfasts in the USA.
The penalties count 'possession' as a reason to fault inmates. What happens when an inmate goes to programs, and someone slips a modified tablet into their personal space? If that person had a grudge against them for some reason, they could be nasty, slipping word to an officer: "Hey, that tosspot in 99 up gots a broke tablet, prolly got some other stuff too."
If the officer pulls a search and finds it, well... Now that poor fellow who didn't even know about the tablet gets clapped with charges.
Now say "Oh, that doesn't happen, J!"
I've got beachfront property on Venus to sell ya dirt cheap -- 50 cheese squeezers. Payment must clear before property is surrendered. :')
What can be done about it?
From my position, not much. To check mail and messages, I need a tablet, or to check via kiosk in my dorm, where we only receive a 15 minute session with an hour wait.
- 96 people, Two Kiosks, lots of count time, and many of us are outside our dorms much of the day, cramming us into the narrow window of outside the cell time we get in the evening.
I repeat, I need a tablet to avoid that crush.
What can you do about it?
More than I, I am certain. Bringing attention to the Department of Corrections in the relevant states about the contracts they are signing, and bringing shame to their inaction would go toward goading them into Right Action.
It's a world we all live in. Let's take the time to work together, and bring back the acts of lovingkindness that heal us all.
Take care. :)