On January 30, the Department of Corrections and Community (DOCCS) announced its plan to provide tablets to all inmates within New York State prisons. The DOCCS has partnered with JPay, a private company involved in the correctional system, which will provide these tablets for free. Although they will come with educational material already on them, the DOCCS also plans to let inmates submit reports, file grievances, and even place commissary orders through the tablets. The tablets will not have any internet connection, but the inmates can plug them in at designated areas to send monitored emails. In lieu of charging DOCCS for the tablets, JPay will instead charge the inmates’ families for any music, videos, ebooks, or other kinds of media that the inmates purchase.
Although the inmates’ families will ultimately be the ones to pay for the inmates’ use of these tablet, many people are still outraged by the DOCCS’ plan. Of course, some of those who are outraged falsely believe that their “hard-earned tax dollars” will be used for these tablets. A more emotionally driven objection, however, is that the inmates don’t deserve to have tablets in the first place. To address this objection, I have to go full-on philosophy student and ask you to consider a simple question: what is the point of prisons, anyway?
Now, you don’t need to know Bentham’s Panopticon or read Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” to understand the basics of the correctional system. If you break the law, you’re arrested. If you’re arrested, you possibly go to court. If you go to court, you might be given a prison sentence. If you’re given a prison sentence, you spend a specific amount of time in prison, before being released. Simple enough, right? It’s like “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,” but way more depressing.
But why is someone imprisoned when they break the law? The answer is usually punishment and/or rehabilitation. If you break the law, you need to be punished to deter both you and your fellow citizens from future lawbreaking. Depriving someone of their basic freedoms seems to be the greatest punishment of all, which is probably why it’s been the foundation of the penal system for so many centuries. Rehabilitation, on the other hand, has a somewhat more humane but arguably idealistic goal. Those who are imprisoned for their crimes are often seen as requiring rehabilitation, in order for them to cease being “a menace to society” and to successfully rejoin society upon their release.
I think it’s safe to say that the American penal system is more focused on punishment than rehabilitation. But I’d argue the DOCCS’ plan to issue tablets to inmates within New York State is focused on the latter. And I believe that’s ultimately a good thing. If inmates are better prepared to reenter society after their prison sentences, they have a better chance of contributing to society and avoiding future lawbreaking.
