inmates to quickly and easily audioblog, using Asterisk.
Shawn Van Every provided sagacious advice and his
own special brand of humor along the way.
http://itp.nyu.edu/~mt245/freedom/freedom.php
One of the first things I've discovered in my research is that one of the biggest fears that prisoners face is the fear of being forgotten. By setting up an easy and completely free interface for prisoners to publish audio on the web, we are creating a way for them to maintain their presence in the outside world, to communicate with more friends and family than they otherwise would, to document the hardships of prison life, and to preserve these posts for posterity.
A good friend of ours, Shaina Feinberg, has been spearheading this project for RapHappy, and she's discovered some interesting stuff. One of the things she came across is the following site, which contains blogs purportedly by people in correctional facilities. There is some real powerful stuff in here, even though the comments are all spam:
But not all prisoners have access to computers, much less the know-how and inclination to publish a blog. One thing all prisoners do have, however, is the infamous PHONE CALL.
PHONES AND PRISONS
----or so I'd thought, but Shaina found out something important: Higher-security prisons don't actually allow for access to telephones. To do this project at all, we will have to focus on medium- and lower-security prisons. Here's a map of the different prison facilities, color-coded by security level, here in New York State:
http://www.docs.state.ny.us/facilitymapcolor.pdf
Shaina discovered another important thing, which is that in recent years prisoners have been smuggling LOTS of cellphones into jail. At one point, apparently, some 75% of prisoners had access to cellphones. Which means that, if we are going to do this project, we have to make it very clear that all phone calls we receive are coming from authorized prison payphones, not from any illicit cellphones. Prisoners need to feel safe using our service.
HOW THE PRISON PHONE SYSTEM WORKS
As it happens, prisons are like universities (and vice-versa :))---each is run totally differently. In one prison, inmates may only be allowed to RECIEVE calls at preappointed times; at another, inmates may be charged such exorbitant fees that making phone calls is an impossibility.
The New York State DEPT of Corrections list rules for phone usage on their website:
An inmate is only permitted to call persons on their approved telephone list and may only have up to 15 telephone numbers on their approved list at any time. Phone numbers may only be added or deleted at the request of the inmate. This is generally done on a quarterly basis when the inmate meets with his or her assigned Correction Counselor. If, however, you do not wish to receive telephone calls from an inmate, you need to notify the facility, in writing, and your name will be entered on the inmate's Negative Correspondence and Telephone List. The inmate will be immediately notified in writing that you have been removed from his/her "Telephone List" and that disciplinary action may be taken if the telephone is used in any manner to contact you. In addition, your telephone number will be removed from the telephone system.
I asked Shaina to inquire about the possibility of using call-forwarding to get around this limitation, and the response was that call forwarding is PROHIBITED. How, I'm not sure.
I had also been wondering about the possibility of using an 800-number, so prisoners wouldn't have to pay the extreme prices that prisons of charge them. But the NYS Corrections website was clear about this:
Inmate telephone calls and telephone conversations are restricted to the telephone number dialed or otherwise placed by or for the inmate. Telephone call forwarding, third party phone calls, and calls to 1-800 numbers are prohibited. Inmates are also prohibited from placing calls to wireless communication devices (i.e., cellular or PCS phone, pagers, etc.). Inmates will be subject to disciplinary action should they violate these rules.
Finally, and due to the bad influence of Shawn Van Every's mobile classes, I considered setting up a conference call application for inmates. This would allow them to talk to all of their friends at once, maximizing the interactions they get with their allotted phone time.
This, I was told, would be illegal.
INTERFACE/EASE OF USE
Aside from avoiding 800 numbers and conference calls, there was another important caveat to consider. Namely: the application will have to be very easy to use. If long telephone menu systems frustrate you, imagine how an inmate feels, when their precious telephone minutes are ticking away.
This poses an interesting challenge:
Because our application is an audio blog, users will each be given their own unique page with a private url (http://raphappy.com/username/). Hence, some sort of login process is necessary. In our prototype, we ask users to spell their user name out loud, and then enter a 4-digit pin. This is relatively quick and easy, but there's bound to be a better solution out there.
TECHNOLOGY
Our audio blogging application utilizes ITP's Asterisk server along with a voice-parsing service called LumenVox. AGI scripts allow us to query RapHappy's database for users' information, log new information, and to move audio off the school's Asterisk server and onto a web server, where people can hear it.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
While making the actual application didn't pose too much of a challenge, overcoming the bureaucratic obstacles to our project will take some time. At his point it looks like I will need to take the following steps:
1) Purchase DID numbers that are in the same local area as prisons, setting up a cheaper (free, ideally) way for prisoners to call loved ones, as well as audio blog.
2) Find a way around the "Call List" regulations. Shaina has been looking into this, and says that we can actually probably pull this off, if we go through a proper prison advocacy organization.
3) Start small. We are beginning with just 5 bloggers from a women's prison in upstate New York. If they and their loved ones appear to enjoy the service, then they will be great advertisement for getting our service approved in other prisons.
Hopefully within the next month or so we can figure out whether audio blogging is the sort of service that inmates would be willing to use. We also look forward to getting feedback on our phone system's ease of use. I'm sure some people will complain about the login process---hopefully we can conjure up a simpler and easier way to do this.
