Is There Screen Time In Prison?

You don’t have to click on your favorite social media app very many times before you end up in a feedback loop about how screen time is ruining society. There is a line of thinking, quite prominent on online content platforms, about how electronic devices and the noisy, fast-paced videos they play, are zapping our attention spans, to the point that an eight-second attention span, allegedly the length of time a goldfish can focus or remember, now sounds aspirational. The devices that, a generation ago, we enthusiastically welcomed into our homes and classrooms a generation ago, high on promises that they would open up new worlds of information, now seem more like a source of menace. Yes, people have been using computers and their successor, the smartphone and the tablet, to commit crimes since the earliest days of the World Wide Web? At first it was just old-fashioned financial crime, the Spanish prisoner scam remixed as the Nigerian prince scam. Then people started to use digital media to distribute child sex abuse material; once again, it was an old crime adapted to new media. Today, the doomsayers are saying that the devices and their brainless content are making criminals of us all, feeding our appetite for violence, exploitation, and Schadenfreude and destroying our capacity to evaluate, contextualize, or empathize. You might be one of these doomsayers, but the thought of going without screen time for even one day fills you with panic. If our devices are pushing us toward prison, does prison even offer a respite from the devices? If your devices have gotten you into legal trouble, contact a Pittsburgh Internet crimes lawyer.

How Much Contact Do Prison Inmates Have With the Outside World?

Criminal penalties tend to involve a loss of freedom; since United States law considers liberty a fundamental right, the state cannot take away a person’s liberty without due process of law. If you get convicted of a nonviolent felony, the restrictions on your freedom will not be absolute; you might get a probation sentence, or you might go to a minimum-security prison, where inmates sleep in dormitories instead of cells, and where they may move freely around the prison complex during the day. You can receive visitors, within certain limits, and most inmates have access to devices.

In the News

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has purchased thousands of tablets for use by inmates. Inmates using the tablets must sync them every 30 minutes by connecting them to a charging port, or else they will become inoperable. The devices do not connect to WiFi, and they cannot take photos. Inmates may use the devices to read e-books, play video games, and listen to songs, of which the prison system has a large library. They may also exchange emails with their contacts outside the prison.

Contact Gary E. Gerson About Criminal Defense Cases

A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges related to using an iPad or other electronic device for illegal purposes.  Contact the law offices of Gary E. Gerson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania about your case.

Source:

pa.gov/agencies/cor/find-or-contact-inmate/commissary-lists/tablets