Delaware prisoner details failed attempt to boycott internet
David Holloman describes why he sought to boycott internet-connected tablets behind bars in Delaware.
Xerxes Wilson, Wochit
- Internet-connected tablets give prisoners new ways to educate themselves and stay connected to family.
- But they come with costs in the form of per-minute rates to operate and per-message fees to communicate.
- One man imprisoned by Delaware tried to organize a boycott of those fees and has been confined to maximum security since.
For the past year, David Holloman has been imprisoned in the harshest portion of James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, stripped of his prison job and confined to a two-person cell for all but two and a half hours each day.
His in-prison offense? Organizing fellow prisoners to boycott the use of internet-connected tablets and the exploitative costs prisoners are charged to use them, according to an interview and a lawsuit he filed himself in federal court.
“It boils down to a consumer complaint,” said Holloman, who before the planned boycott was treated as a model prisoner: confined to the most comfortable portion of Vaughn and free to come and go from his private cell for several hours each day.
“I was stripped of everything,” he said. “I am being punished and retaliated against for exercising my First Amendment rights.”
For years now, small internet-connected devices, known in prison as “the tablets,” have given people imprisoned by the state new ways to entertain and educate themselves, as well as another bridge to maintain family and friendship bonds in the outside world.
But with that comes fees in the form of per-minute rates to use the tablets and video chat with family members, as well as per-message fees to communicate via text messages – all collected in a monopolistic system operated by a private-equity-owned company that has likely reaped millions from its contract with the state’s prison system.
Customers of the tablets, prisoners and their families on the outside, have praised the opportunity created by them: picture a father being able to digitally attend if for just a few minutes, a child’s birthday party for the first time in years.
But they’ve also lamented the fact that their desperation to keep in touch is being exploited by fees that the marketplace in the outside world simply does not tolerate.
“The tablets are necessary,” Holloman said. “But don’t take advantage of our desperation.”
Leaders of Delaware’s prison system declined to comment on Holloman’s claims of retaliation, but defended the tablet system, stating that the combination of tablets and telephones provides affordable ways to connect people while minimizing costs to taxpayers.
The internet comes to prison
Delaware joined a national trend introducing internet-connected tablets into its system in 2016. Now, those tablets operate on similar fee structures in each of Delaware’s prisons and probation lockups.
Local corrections officials have lauded the tablets as offering a “higher quality of life” for prisoners and reducing “tension” and improving “safety and security” in the prisons − all while costing taxpayers nothing.
Under the contract signed by the state and ViaPath, the prison telecommunications giant installed technology infrastructure in the prisons and provided the devices at its own cost. In return, they get to charge fees for use. The contract also allows prison leaders new ways to surveil prisoners’ communication, devices to detect contraband cell phones and other technology services.
Generally, tablets are available to “check out” when prisoners have recreation time, which varies depending on an individual’s security classification and housing location. Video visits are conducted strictly on tablets anchored in prison common areas.
The tablets are connected to the internet, but prisoners do not have free reign to use internet browsers. Instead, they select from a list of preloaded apps and features curated by prison officials. Communication is the primary feature.
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Instead of competing for phone time, waiting for snail mail or a once-weekly or a once-monthly, hour-long visit, the tablets open near-instant communication with family and friends, Holloman said. And research has shown: the more people in prison see their families, the less likely they are to return to prison after release.
“It is definitely something we need and definitely something that is vital,” Holloman said in a video interview.
But it comes with a cost.
It cost 25 cents to send a text message for both prisoners and those in the outside world sending a reply. Photographs sent into prisoners’ inboxes cost the same. Video chats also cost 25 cents per minute.
Some prisoners feel these rates exploit their need to stay connected, noting such fees do not exist in the outside marketplace.
“Nobody is paying 25 cents a minute to be on Facetime,” Holloman said of the outside world.
The non-profit Prison Policy Initiative has studied the implementation of tablets in other prisons and criticized both the prices, as well as corrections systems where such technology has replaced in-person visits and availability of law libraries.
Such services have not been replaced by technology in Delaware. And Delaware’s cost to send text messages is lower than some others. California’s prison system has the lowest fees for texting, charging five cents per message, according to data gathered by the Prison Policy Initiative.
In response to criticisms of the cost, Delaware corrections officials pointed to the telephone, stating the phones and tablets go together in creating a system that connects people, is affordable and doesn’t impose on taxpayers. Officials cited Prison Policy Initiative surveys that found the state has the eighth-lowest cost to place a phone call in the country.
Prison-reform advocates have compared the nationwide emergence of prison tablets to the early days of telecom companies charging sky-high rates for telephone calls out of prisons before lawsuits and federal authorities put downward pressure on these fees.
It is unclear precisely how much revenue ViaPath is able to derive from local prisoners’ use of the tablets.
In response to a public records request sent in 2020, officials did not provide any documents detailing how much the company makes off charges to inmates. In an email, a spokesperson said Delaware prisoners participated in 454,000 video visits and sent or received 8.4 million text messages over the past year.
Doing back-of-the-napkin calculations that assume each of those incurred the standard charge:
- Text messages would be a $2.1 million potential revenue stream for the year.
- Conservatively assuming each video visit lasted 15 minutes, that’s another $1.7 million in potential revenue. Note that video visits are capped at 30 minutes in some facilities and 15 minutes in others and in some special cases prisoners are provided a free video visit.
Per-minute price for entertainment
And that doesn’t touch the cost of using the tablets as entertainment.
Currently, prisoners log into the tablets and choose between three sections: a promotional section, which costs three cents per minute to use; a standard section, which costs five cents a minute to use; and a free portion.
The free portion includes access to bulletins from prison officials, educational programming, a library curated by prison officials, a law library, access to personal photo galleries and other informational programming.
The paid portions include access to games like Candy Crush, music like the iHeartRadio app, free video streaming apps like Crackle and national news services − local news like DelawareOnline.com is not part of the offerings.
Prisoners describe the promotional section as more bare bones with the more-expensive standard login featuring more access to different apps and more content within the apps themselves.
Prisoners say they feel the per-minute charges to use the tablets exploit their free time and inability to seek a better service. These complaints are exacerbated by the fact that Delaware prisoners with institutional jobs are paid an average of 28 cents per hour.
Using the 5-cents-a-minute option, by the time a prisoner streams three one-hour-long episodes of a television show, they will have paid more than what it costs for a monthly subscription to Hulu and nearly as much as a monthly subscription to Netflix.
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Assuming they make the average prison wage for an eight-hour per-day job, it would cost them four days of work to watch those three episodes.
Prisoners must also pay one of the per-minute rates to read and compose messages, which the Prison Policy Initiative has referred to as a “literacy tax” as some people take longer to read and compose messages.
Plans for protest
Last year, Holloman and others got their hands on the state’s contract with ViaPath and came up with a capitalistic way of bargaining for better service: a boycott. The ultimate goal was to gather evidence and arguments for a lawsuit, he said.
Notices were printed with a call to action: Starting on June 1, don’t use the tablets at all for two weeks. After that, resume only video visits. It also included information needed to file a complaint with federal consumer protection authorities.
It listed demands partially aimed at reducing per-minute charges and making the service similar to what is offered in the real world:
- Allow prisoners to purchase their own tablets, as other states allow, and pay a flat, monthly fee to use them.
- Fix technical disruptions that see the tablets crash or freeze while prisoners are being charged per minute for use.
- Allow greater choice in content by providing the full list of apps available on ViaPath tablets elsewhere.
- Streamline prisoner banking, commissary and tablet accounts to do away with fees to add money.
“There is nothing violent, no order to destroy property,” Holloman said. “Nobody made suggestions to do anything like that.”
The protest that wasn’t and the solitary that followed
Fliers had made their way around the prison and days before the boycott was to start, Holloman was escorted to the maximum security portion of the prison where he has remained for nearly a year.
He was charged with a disciplinary infraction known as demonstration, as well as possession of non-dangerous contraband for the notices.
In disciplinary paperwork he mailed to DelawareOnline.com/The News Journal last year, correctional officers wrote they investigated the start date of the boycott as a possible “C Building situation.” That refers to the 2017 prisoner uprising at Vaughn in which inmates used coordinated violence to take over a prison building, hold three officers and a counselor hostage, and murder one of those officers.
Holloman said that is an overreaction and mischaracterization.
“I’m just saying: don’t use the tablets,” Holloman said.
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His lawsuit claims that the disciplinary charges don’t fit his actions and that officials did not follow their own procedures in processing the charges.
The bottom line: He went from living in the most comfortable portion of the prison − an area reserved for workers that live in single-person cells and enjoy hours of time outside their cell each day − to living in what is known as the SHU or secured housing unit.
There, his recreation time is limited to 2½ hours each day and he spends the rest of the time in his cell with another person. He also lost his job, which helped him earn 10 days of so-called “good time” each month that went toward reducing his sentence. He also lost 30 days of good time he already earned.
He can’t participate in certain programs and is no longer a facilitator for programs he’s already completed. He also lost his “honor visit,” which is an annual outdoor picnic visit with family, as well as his ability to attend congregational prayer services.
Others involved in the boycott plan were also written-up, but his lawsuit states that his overall disciplinary record technically should see him housed in a lesser-security portion of the prison, but he remains in the SHU on an administrative override of that system.
The litigation includes paperwork in which a prison counselor tells him: “you were overridden to maximum security due to your recent disciplinary infraction for demonstrations. This is all the information I have for you.”
He said officers overseeing his disciplinary proceedings said they needed to make an example of him to deter others from similar actions and that his appeals up the chain of command were all rejected.
“We still have rights,” Holloman said. “What they did is not justified.”
Holloman turned 44 last month. He’s been in prison since he was 26 years old serving a sentence for second-degree murder.
He’s about halfway through his sentence and beginning processes to ask for early release based on his good behavior, participation in prison programs and the fact that he is a different person than he was when he was convicted.
He fears disciplinary documents equating the boycott plan to the 2017 hostage takeover will paint him as “diabolical” and undeserving of mercy. He said he has taken responsibility for his crime, has been sober throughout his prison sentence and has a different “moral compass” than when he went in.
“I want a chance to prove how I changed,” he said.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com. Follow @Ber_Xerxes on Twitter.
