By Benjamin Justice
Despite being a progressive state with regard to carceral reform and support of education, New Jersey is far behind much of the country when it comes to integrating computer technology in the education and rehabilitation programs within its prison system. NJ facilities have no accessible Wi-Fi or modern computing resources available to teachers and learners in their high school, GED, and post-secondary educational programming, so that even teaching staff are not able to easily access the internet while at work. More importantly, from a policy perspective, the state has no comprehensive policy to implement and sustain modern computer technology use in New Jersey prisons.
Why is this a problem?
The vast majority of people incarcerated in New Jersey are first locked up in their late teens or early twenties, often after prior life histories that made access to computing technology difficult. They enter the system with low or no levels of computer skills and gather none while serving their sentences. While most adolescents and early adults are developing strong, up-to-date skills with the latest technologies, those held in prison fall further and further behind.
Even those men and women who fully take advantage of educational opportunities on the inside have little chance of leaving prison with the technology skills they need to successfully reenter society, pursue further education, find gainful employment, or engage such basic civic activities as navigate state and local government websites, register for college classes, access high quality information sources, and build strong social networks. The lack of modern technology imposes especially high costs for the incarcerated people who have learning-related disabilities, for whom modern computer technology offers many useful features. Everything we would want a person to do upon release from prison—find employment, build relationships, be a good citizen, live a healthy life—depends on basic technology skills.
Why should we care?
Whatever your theory of criminal justice and punishment, there is no rational reason for imposing punishments that extend beyond what the court ordered. Creating lifelong barriers to reentry and desistance from future criminal behavior are a lose/lose proposition. For people who have served their sentence, the added punishment of technological illiteracy is costly and unjust. Incarceration is the punishment; not permanent social disadvantage. Prisons are not at liberty to add extra, life-long punishments by preventing people from making healthy investments in their reentry. For society at large, releasing thousands of men and women into society without the basic tools of civic survival generates more crime and more cost.
What can we do?
Answers for why this problem exists vary depending on whom you ask, but the reason is, at heart, a matter of policy. This research project will review research literature and evaluate computing policies across the country to identify successful practices. The final product will be a policy brief to be presented to administrators at the NJ Department of Corrections.