Unique Opportunities to Promote Digital Equity Among Incarcerated Individuals

At first blush it may seem that the cloistered nature of the custodial context within which incarcerated individuals live and the total control of incarcerated individuals' digital access exercised by custodial agencies would preclude community-based digital inclusion and literacy programs for incarcerated individuals. In fact, there are ample opportunities for advocates, service providers, and a variety of other stakeholders to extend their efforts beyond prison gates and jailhouse doors to increase digital inclusion and literacy among incarcerated individuals.

Opportunities for community organizations and individuals to impaxe the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals fall into four broad categories:

• Opportunities to create a shared understanding and raise awareness of the benefits, barriers, context, opportunities, and strategies associated with the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals
• Opportunities to increase the quantity and quality of the universe of digital content, services, and applications available to incarcerated individuals
• Opportunities to integrate digital inclusion and literacy messaging into existing incarcerated individuals inreach programs
• Opportunities to advocate for policies that increase the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals

Opportunities to Create a Shared Understanding and Raise Awareness of the Benefits, Barriers, Context, Opportunities, and Strategies Associated with the Digital Inclusion and Literacy of Incarcerated Individuals

A shared understanding of the benefits, barriers, context, opportunities, and strategies associated with the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals will empower all stakeholders to make more informed and more fruitful decisions regarding the digital lives of incarcerated individuals.

Device vendors and service providers will be empowered to make digital equity-aware decisions about the features, applications, content, and services to make available on their products. Custodial agencies will be empowered to make digital equity-aware decisions about the digital access policies, underlying their regulations, their decisions about allowable content, applications, and services, and their procurement decisions. State administering agencies will be empowered to develop SDEPs that include accurate descriptions of barriers to access faced by incarcerated individuals and better informed objectives and strategies for documenting and promoting digital inclusion and literacy among incarcerated individuals.

Finally, a shared understanding will empower advocates, service providers, and other stakeholders to design, develop, and implement more effective digital inclusion and literacy programs or otherwise participate in the promotion of digital equity among incarcerated individuals.

Interested organizations and individuals can contribute to a shared understanding of the digital equity issues related to incarcerated individuals by:

• Researching, investigating, and documenting the digital policies, regulations, and contracts of custodial agencies and/or the digital devices, connectivity, applications, content, and services available to incarcerated individuals in those custodial agencies
• Designing, developing, implementing, or managing an online community for advocates, service providers, and other stakeholders to share and learn about the digital equity issues of incarcerated individuals
• Participating in such a community by documenting, summarizing, and commenting on digital equity issues related to the custodial context
• Raising awareness of such a community among like minded advocates, service providers and other stakeholders

Opportunities to Increase the Quantity and Quality of the Universe of Digital Content, Services, and Applications Available to Incarcerated Individuals

Access to digital devices and information alone cannot increase digital inclusion and literacy or contribute to improved outcomes of incarcerated individuals. Realizing these benefits requires actual access to 1) a variety of trustworthy health, employment, economic, education, social, civic, and reentry content that meets the needs of incarcerated individuals and 2) bug-free, feature-rich applications that enable incarcerated individuals to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate information.

Because the digital devices available to incarcerated individuals contain a dearth of such content and apps, increasing the quantity and quality of such content and apps promises to be an effective and fruitful technique for increasing digital inclusion and literacy among incarcerated individuals.

In general, the content and apps available on the digital devices available to incarcerated individuals are created and/pre-approved NY a combination of the digital vendor/service provider and the custodial agency. The dearth of contents and apps available on these devices arises as a consequence of the convergence of the effort required to develop and/or vet content and apps and the lack of vendor and custodial agency resources and motivation to do so.

Community efforts to develop and/or curate appropriate content and apps and advocate for their adoption by vendors, service providers, and custodial agencies have the potential to increase the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals by increasing the quantity and quality of the content and apps available to them. Organizations and individuals can contribute to this effort in numerous ways, including be helping:

• Create or adapt open educational resources or other content that meet the information needs of incarcerated individuals and are appropriate for their access and use
• Design and develop or adapt open source mobile applications that are appropriate for use by incarcerated individuals and enable them to practice finding, evaluating, organizing, creating, and communicating digital information
• Suggest and/or review digital content, services, and applications that meet the information and digital literacy needs of incarcerated individuals and are appropriate for their access and use
• Create, curate, and/or maintain asset maps of digital content, services, and applications that meet the information and digital literacy needs of incarcerated individuals and are appropriate for their access and use
• Create, develop, and/or maintain an online community and repository to facilitate these activities
• Advocate for the adoption of asset maps by vendors, service providers, and custodial agencies

Opportunities to Integrate Digital Navigator Services into Existing In-Reach Programs

Digital inclusion activities aim to connect more people to more internet resources. Digital navigator programs help accomplish this goal by raising awareness of digital inclusion programs and resources and aiding in the process of accessing those programs and resources.

Advocates and service providers sometimes offer in-reach programs that connect with incarcerated individuals where they live. Such programs may include sending newsletters into prisons, offering mail-based information or referral services, uploading digital content to digital services that are available to incarcerated individuals (e.g., Edovo), sponsoring self-help groups, or bringing group activities into prisons and jails.

As communication channels to incarcerated individuals, these in-reach programs are perfect conduits for digital navigator services. Advocates and service providers can contribute to the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals by integrating the following digital navigator services into their existing in-reach programs:

• Raise awareness of affordable broadband plans and digital devices for those planning for release
• Encourage digital engagement by raising awareness of the benefits of digital information while in prison and upon release
• Raise awareness of available digital resources for education, healthcare, government services, civic and social engagement, employment, rehabilitation, and reentry
• Make referrals to available digital skills training and/or provide digital literacy training materials

Opportunities to Advocate for Policies that Increase the Digital Inclusion and Literacy of Incarcerated Individuals

None of these advocacy activities can effectively promote digital inclusion and literacy among incarcerated individuals without digital-equity-friendly policies, procedures, regulations, statutes, and contracts in place that ensure the availability of free or affordable, user-friendly digital devices that contain bug-free, feature-rich digital-literacy-enabling applications with access to discoverable, navigable, usable content and services that meet the information needs of Incarcerated individuals.

Policy advocates can, therefore, contribute to the digital inclusion and literacy of Incarcerated individuals by engaging in the following policy advocacy activities:

• Provide administering agency accurate, detailed information about the digital context of custodial agencies in order to inform the barriers, objectives, and strategies included in the State Digital Equity Plan
• Provide custodial agencies with accurate, actionable information about the benefits, barriers, and strategies associated with the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals
• Encourage custodial agencies to adopt digital-equity-friendly policies, procedures, and regulations
• Encourage custodial agencies to include digital-equity-friendly requirements in the competitive procurement of digital technologies and services for incarcerated individuals
• Encourage custodial agencies to allow incarcerated individuals access to particular content, services, and applications or all content, services, and applications contained in asset maps
• Encourage custodial agencies to adopt and implement digital navigator services
• Sponsor or support digital-equity-friendly bills in state legislatures