MORGANTOWN, W. Va. – When prison technology company Global Tek Link, or GTL, announced in October that it was providing hundreds of free electronic tablets for West Virginia prisons, it sounded like a compassionate gesture.

But the program comes with a hitch. People who use it have to pay 3 cents per minute to read e-books on the tablets.

That's even though the reading material comes from Project Gutenberg, a free online source, according to Lydia Welker, social media coordinator for the Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP).

"Permanent usage fees are an exploitative way for GTL to say they're providing 'free books' while charging incarcerated people by the minute to read those books," she states.

In a statement, GTL contends its tablet e-books offer "a supplement to facility libraries," and will be moved to free content with education and career resources.

Welker says with the introduction of tablets into correctional facilities, people in prison and their family members end up paying huge amounts of money, and private companies make millions.

She points out that reading with a meter running just adds financial anxiety to what should be a beneficial experience for the reader – particularly those with low literacy levels or dyslexia.

In West Virginia, the average prison job pays between 4 cents and 58 cents per hour, so reading a long book could be an expensive undertaking.

"At a reading rate of about 30 pages per hour, it would cost $20.16 to read the first Harry Potter book, or about $19.80 to read George Orwell's ‘1984’" Welker states.

The West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation receives a 5% commission on the tablet revenue, which it says will go into an "inmate benefit fund."


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A recent report from the Prison Policy Initiative calls for better state laws to keep incarcerated parents close to their kids. It finds 12 states including New York have measures designed to improve a child's access to incarcerated parents, but not all of these laws have the same protections.

New York has a proximity law, which means there's a maximum distance allowed between a child and an incarcerated parent. While this does make in-person visits more accessible, Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, noted there are better ways to keep parents and kids together, and said caregiver mitigation laws can be more beneficial to parents facing prison time.

"Caregiver mitigation laws work by creating diversion programs that parents of children can go to instead of prison to serve their sentence," she said, "or, simply by authorizing judges to sentence people to those programs as opposed to prison if they are the primary caregiver of a child."

While these programs can be beneficial, Bertram said, the biggest challenge is ensuring there's sufficient funding for them. Lawmakers in Washington debated The FAMILIES Act in 2020 and 2021, which aimed to create a federal diversion program, but it failed to advance out of committee.

A 2022 report from The Sentencing Project found that 2.7 million American children have a parent in prison. Almost twice as many have had a parent incarcerated at some point in their lives. Outside of more funding for diversion programs, Bertram said community investments are needed to keep parents from ever being incarcerated in the first place.

"We need to invest heavily in the communities that are the most incarcerated communities in this state, and just make sure that parents don't get caught up in this system in the first place," she said, "because prison is not the answer for families that are being torn apart."

Bertram added that New York's geography can make its proximity law hard to enforce. The report from the Prison Policy Initiative showed that about 41% of prisoners in the state are from New York City. But most of the state's prisons are in Upstate New York, meaning parents and kids are separated by more miles than is ideal.

A large percentage of Missourians who could to have their criminal records "expunged" have not done so, despite the effects expungement -- referred to as "clean slate" -- can have on earnings and opportunities.

Missouri House Bill 352 would make the expungement process automatic for eligible individuals.

Lindsey Baker, research director for the Missouri Budget Project, stressed expungement already exists, and making it automatic would not change the type of qualified offenses.

"Folks who are eligible, for the most part, are going to be folks with lower-level, nonviolent offenses," Baker pointed out. "Violent crimes, higher level offenses, are not eligible for expungement."

Baker explained once records are expunged, they do not appear on public records but are still available to law enforcement.

Research shows the average annual wage increase for those who have their record expunged is more than $4,000. A Missouri Budget Project report estimates this could lead to an additional $2.9 billion in economic activity for the state.

Opponents believe potential employers and others have the right to know a person's criminal history, and some fear it increases the chance a person will commit another crime. Currently, 10 states have clean-slate laws in place, including Oklahoma, and others have legislation pending.

Baker noted many individuals whose records are not expunged struggle to get hired at all, leading to high rates of unemployment.

"For those who are able to secure employment, often they're prevented from reaching their full earning potential because they may only be able to get hired in those fields with lower wages and lower benefits," Baker emphasized.

The Missouri Budget Project's report showed the percentage Missourians' wages would increase after expungement would vary, with women experiencing the highest increase of roughly 30%, compared with 17% for men. For Black Missourians, the increase would be an estimated 25%, compared with 18% for white Missourians.

Baker added the 2022 changes in the state's marijuana laws contribute to it being the perfect time for enacting Clean Slate.

"What really makes sense about this is that we already are putting together an automatic expungement system for marijuana here in Missouri," Baker remarked. "The courts are already going to have to do this."

In 2021, more than 500,000 Missourians were eligible to have their records expunged, but fewer than 1% of them did so. House Bill 352 was introduced by Rep. Phil Christofanelli, R-St. Peters.

California will soon become the first state in the nation to offer health insurance to income-eligible individuals who are incarcerated - starting 90 days prior to their release. The feds just agreed to match funds spent on Medi-Cal or CHIP for people leaving jail, prison or juvenile correctional facilities.

Hagar Dickman, senior attorney at the nonprofit Justice in Aging, said it is in everyone's interest to set justice-involved people up for success.

"The idea is to ensure that people are connected with services prior to their release, and individuals with mental-health needs and substance-abuse disorder also can have their medication given to them prior to the release," Dickman said.

Previously the feds would only reimburse the state's Medi-Cal expenses for people upon their release. In addition, the state passed a law last fall put people's Medi-Cal into suspension instead of terminating it while incarcerated. Now their status will be reactivated without them having to reapply.

This is not just a health initiative, it's an equity initiative - since a disproportionate number of people of color face incarceration, Dickman said. And it puts people on stronger footing as they re-enter society.

"This is really an important way to combat the significant effects of mental illness, mental health issues, and substance abuse in the jails particularly in light of both high rates of homelessness and also suicide and overdose as people are released," she said.

The move is part of the larger project called Cal AIM
which will modernize Medi-Cal - and allow it to cover things like housing supports, since secure housing is considered a social determinant of health.