The Impossible Math Behind Pay-Per-Minute Prison Messaging
Slate, June 19, 2023: The Impossible Math Behind Pay-Per-Minute Prison Messaging
“It’s 7 p.m. at Central Prison in North Carolina, and I find myself in a familiar dilemma. I’m nearing the end of my last bundle of the prepaid minutes I use to send messages, which I bought from the private company ViaPath on the promise of communicating with the outside world at a rate of 1 cent a minute. I could purchase another bundle—but I’d be left without money for toothpaste or deodorant.
“Throughout North Carolina, incarcerated people are forced to make similar calculations as they try to connect with kids, parents, spouses, friends, and professors. We pay for every minute we spend using messaging services, whether we’re typing, reading, or looking at photos. A 1,500-minute package costs $15 in North Carolina prisons, and if you can’t afford the bundle, you’re stuck paying 3 cents per minute. These prices might not seem exorbitant, but prison jobs in North Carolina pay 40 cents to $1 a day, and not every prisoner has access to a job. It could easily take a month’s worth of work to afford a $15 bundle without support from friends and family on the outside.
“I’ve been incarcerated since 1997, when I was 19 years old. So, in 2020, when the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections contracted with ViaPath Technologies (formerly known as GTL) to provide prisoners with tablets, we were excited, skeptical, hopeful, and cautiously pessimistic. This is prison, after all—good things always have a catch. The technology was so alien that no one really understood what it would mean for our lives in prison, especially those of us who had been in for decades, but we hoped that it would allow for better communication with friends and family.”
Additional reading:
Prison Policy Initiative, March 2023: SMH: The rapid & unregulated growth of e‑messaging in prisons
Scalawag, September 29, 2022: 'A modernized, streamlined incarceration experience.' New prison technology surveils life on both sides of the wall.
Prison Policy Initiative, December 2022: State of Phone Justice 2022: The problem, the progress, and what's next
