Locked up and left out: Formerly incarcerated people in the context of digital inclusion

Abstract

Digital inequalities disproportionately affect vulnerable and marginalized populations, including formerly incarcerated persons (FIPs), who experience compound vulnerabilities, such as advanced aging, disability, low incomes and education, gender-based marginalization, and in the United States also race and ethnicity. Building on existing frameworks of digital skills and Reisdorf and Rikard’s digital rehabilitation model, this article examines how FIPs navigate the digital society post-incarceration and provides support for the digital rehabilitation model. Examining data from focus groups with FIPs in the United States, we demonstrate that lack of access to ICTs and the Internet during incarceration deprives FIPs of necessary digital skills to navigate the various fields of everyday life (economic, social, cultural, personal, health) that are deeply embedded in digital technologies. Policies regarding digital rehabilitation need to increase limited Internet access during incarceration and provide comprehensive digital skills training tailored to FIPs to allow their full integration into the speed-of-light society.

Keywords

Digital inequality digital rehabilitation incarceration re-entry vulnerability

Introduction

Although incarceration numbers in the United States have been declining by about 1% annually over the past 10 years (Carson, 2020), in 2020, more than 2.3 million people (roughly 0.7% of the total population, the highest in the world) were incarcerated in jails, prisons, and other detention facilities (Sawyer and Wagner, 2020). Although imprisonment rates have decreased for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) populations since 2008, incarcerated populations are disproportionately concentrated among Black and Hispanic Americans (Carson, 2020). Those with physical or cognitive disabilities are also more likely to be incarcerated (Ben-Moshe et al., 2014). American Community Survey data show that 12.8% of the general US population have a disability (Kraus et al., 2018)—this number is three to five times higher among incarcerated populations, especially for women (Bronson et al., 2015). This makes (formerly) incarcerated people one of the most vulnerable groups in society, as they are faced with a number of compound vulnerabilities (Bunn, 2019).

Aside from some correctional facilities in Australia, Belgium, and Finland (Farley and Hopkins, 2017; Gilna, 2017; Yle, n.d.), incarcerated people have no access to the Internet and information and communication technologies (ICTs) during their time in prison (Bagaric et al., 2017). Although a growing number of correctional facilities in the United States offer educational and entertainment content through prison-sanctioned tablets from for-profit providers such as JPay and GTL (Finkel and Bertram, 2019), this access is not available across all correctional facilities, and where it is available, it is often expensive (Law, 2018).

Lack of access to and use of ICTs continues after incarceration (Reisdorf and Jewkes, 2016; Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al., 2019), as returning citizens often lack resources and time to find Internet access and to learn how to use these technologies. Re-entry goals such as finding housing, employment, and reconnecting with loved ones are much easier and mainly available through the Internet. The lack of access to ICTs and a lack of skills result in considerable barriers for re-entry (Reisdorf and Jewkes, 2016; Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018). Although locally organized programs focusing on re-entry and digital skills are increasing in number (e.g. Powell, 2019), digital literacy and access to the Internet or ICTs are not an integral part of re-entry practices across the United States.

In this article, we examine the vulnerability of formerly incarcerated persons (FIPs) and how their compound vulnerabilities affect their digital inclusion. We situate our work within the digital inequality literature, and more specifically the area of digital skills, which have been identified as a key driver of digital inclusion. In the context of this special issue on vulnerable populations and digital inequalities, we investigate the various barriers to using the Internet and digital devices among this under-researched group, with a focus on digital skills (Hargittai, 2002; Van Deursen et al., 2014, 2016) and Reisdorf and Rikard’s (2018) model of digital rehabilitation. This article contributes to the field of digital inequalities in two distinct ways. First, we examine the digital skills of an under-researched and highly vulnerable group, providing an insight into the (lack of) digital skills among formerly incarcerated men and women in the United States. Second, our results provide support for Reisdorf and Rikard’s model of digital rehabilitation, which posits that digital tools and digital skills training need to be a part of prisoner re-entry practices before and after release from prison in a highly technology-dependent world. Building on Helsper’s (2012) corresponding fields model, which describes the interwovenness of the online and offline realms of everyday life, Reisdorf and Rikard (2018) developed a model of digital rehabilitation, which applies this model to the (post-)carceral context. They argue that in addition to incarceration itself, the lack of Internet access and digital skills training during incarceration has a negative effect on a person’s economic, social, personal, cultural, and health fields during and after their incarceration. They further argue that the resources offered across these fields in the digital realm have the potential to contribute to successful re-entry back into society if (formerly) incarcerated people were able to learn digital skills and gain (limited) Internet access prior to release and immediately after release (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018: 1280).

In what follows, we first provide a theoretical framing of digital skills and the importance of this “second-level digital divide” (Hargittai, 2002) in digital inclusion and the digital rehabilitation model by Reisdorf and Rikard (2018). This section is followed by a summary of previous research on the vulnerable nature of FIPs, and a discussion on how digital inclusion is related to incarceration and re-entry, and what types of technology are currently available to incarcerated people in the United States. This is followed by the methodology and results, and how the findings support the digital rehabilitation model. Finally, we critically analyze how formerly incarcerated people’s digital inclusion experiences fit within the digital skills literature and how this affects policies surrounding digital technology and incarceration.

Literature review

Digital inclusion and digital skills

Digital inequalities research has long examined the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and access to the Internet and ICTs, types of access, and how this intersects with digital skills (Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2011) and digital outcomes (Van Deursen and Helsper, 2015). Digital skills have been highlighted as one of the key barriers to digital inclusion, particularly among vulnerable populations, such as the elderly (Hargittai et al., 2019).

Early on, scholars identified skills as the so-called “second-level digital divide” (Hargittai, 2002). In his sequential model of digital access, van Dijk (2005) identified a lack of digital skills as the third barrier to digital inclusion, after motivation and physical access to devices and the Internet. In their classification of digital skills, Van Deursen and van Dijk (2011) identified four different types of digital skills that build on one another: operational, formal, information, and strategic skills (Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2011: 896).

In a more recent iteration, Van Deursen et al. (2016) developed the following five types of skills: operational, for example, being able to download a file; mobile, for example, being able to install an app on a mobile device; information navigation, for example, finding it easy to decide on keywords for an online search; social, for example, knowing which information to share online; and creative, for example, knowing how to make basic changes to content. Although many skills typologies have a sequential nature to them—for example, operational skills are needed before developing information navigation skills—recent qualitative research (Allmann and Blank, 2021) has found that Internet users need to apply various different types of digital skills simultaneously in order to navigate even seemingly simple tasks. This becomes important when we describe the skills of the participants in this study, which are often limited to (low) operational skills, and there is a lack of “higher-level” skills that are necessary to navigate the digital society successfully.

In the context of prison re-entry, two recent qualitative studies examined the role of digital technologies and digital skills among formerly incarcerated women. Gurusami (2019) found that the women lacked higher level digital skills that would allow them to escape the digital criminal record and surveillance from the carceral state, and that this made them susceptible to potential exploitation. Similarly, Seo et al. (2020) highlight access barriers and a lack of higher level skills that would allow formerly incarcerated women to protect their privacy online, leading to “nothing to lose” attitudes that left the women vulnerable to various threats. In a similar vein, Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al. (2019) found that formerly incarcerated men were lacking employment- and job-search-specific digital skills, as they did not receive formal training and depended on family members for digital skills support. Whereas these studies focused on a set of very important, but limited, types of skills, in this study, we use a broader understanding of skills derived from Van Deursen et al. (2016) that is more compatible with Reisdorf and Rikard’s (2018) model of digital rehabilitation. Focusing on operational, information navigation, social, creative, and mobile uses, Van Deursen et al.’s (2016) definition of digital skills includes a wide range of skills that are needed for participation in the economic, social, personal, cultural, and health fields that Reisdorf and Rikard (2018) identified for both the re-entry and digital realms in their digital rehabilitation model. In fact, many of the individual items used in Van Deursen et al.’s (2016) Internet Skills Scale (ISS) ask specifically about skills and outcomes in similar realms. Although we do not employ surveys in this article, this broader approach to digital skills across various fields allows for a more encompassing analysis of our qualitative data.

Compound vulnerabilities of FIPs

FIPs are disproportionately from low-income communities and communities of color (Pettit and Western, 2004), and are more likely to have a cognitive disability (Ben-Moshe et al., 2014; Bronson et al., 2015). Various studies have shown that those who are incarcerated age at an accelerated pace compared to non-incarcerated people (Rikard and Rosenberg, 2007), meaning that many FIPs are dealing with compound vulnerabilities that hamper digital inclusion upon release. Adding to that the stigma of a criminal record, returning citizens are dealing with “supercharged” digital exclusion (Reisdorf and Jewkes, 2016), difficulty finding employment, and housing insecurity.

Race and ethnicity

The most debated dimension of vulnerability and incarceration is the overrepresentation of Black and Hispanic/Latino people in the US correctional system. In a cohort study of men born between 1965 and 1969, Pettit and Western (2004) found that by the time they reached their early 30s, only 3% of White men had served a jail or prison sentence, but 20% of Black men had. These numbers were higher for those who did not have college education (30%) and especially for those who had dropped out of high school (60%; Pettit and Western, 2004). The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that one in three Black men will spend time in jail or prison throughout their lifetime (Lyons and Pettit, 2011).

In addition to losing valuable time with families and loved ones, incarceration has an economic cost, resulting in lower post-incarceration wages for Black men compared to White men. Black men are not just more likely to be incarcerated in the first place, but they also experience more negative repercussions after release (Lyons and Pettit, 2011). Alexander (2012) describes this as the new racial caste system, which replaces more overt types of segregation and racism. Instead of discriminating against Black people by denying them the right to vote, subsidized housing, education, and so forth, the same type of discrimination is continued under the guise of criminality, whereby a disproportionate number of Black people are incarcerated, which excludes them from the abovementioned rights and activities post-release (Alexander, 2012). Recidivism rates in the United States are generally high, with 68% of FIPs being re-arrested within the first 3 years. When the data are disaggregated by race, the rates of re-arrest for Black RCs are much higher—by the ninth year of release, 87% of Black RCs are re-arrested (Clarke, 2019). Much of the blame is often pointed to a lack of rehabilitation programs during incarceration and after, but also that existing programs may be ineffective.

Income and poverty

Lower income and unemployed persons are more likely to be incarcerated (Rabuy and Kopf, 2015). Low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be subjected to higher rates of surveillance, policing, and arrests than higher income neighborhoods (Butler, 2018). Many low-income people are unable to post bail or pay a lawyer to defend them in court, so they await trial in jail, rather than at home—which means they may lose their job and potentially their children—and often depend on public defenders. These compounded disadvantages are reflected in incarceration rates and worsen post-release, when FIPs have to find new work with a criminal record, which will likely be reflected in jobs that do not pay a living wage, perpetuating the vicious cycle (Rabuy and Kopf, 2015).

According to the 2010 US Census data, Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic/Latino Americans disproportionately live below the poverty line (Macartney et al., 2013). Whereas the poverty rate was just above 10% for White households, it was over 25% for Black households and 22% for Hispanic/Latino households. In a longitudinal study, Akee et al. (2019) demonstrated that Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American households had significantly lower incomes than White and Asian households.

Disability

An additional factor that plays a role in incarceration in the United States is disability, loosely defined as a broad range of disabilities, which includes both cognitive and physical disabilities. Whereas 12.8% of the US population report any kind of disability (Kraus et al., 2018), “[a]bout 40% of females and 31% of males in prison and 49% of females and 39% of males in jail reported a disability” (Bronson et al., 2015). In part, the mass incarceration of people with disabilities has been fueled by the general “tough on crime” policies that the United States implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, but also by the mass closure of state mental hospitals and other institutional facilities that serve people with disabilities (Ben-Moshe et al., 2014). Post-release, a criminal record also exacerbates issues in getting economic and clerical support on the outside, adding to an already difficult readjustment.

Gender

Although women are incarcerated at lower rates than men in the United States, numbers have been increasing over the past decade at twice the pace of men’s incarceration (Kajstura, 2019). Nearly a quarter of incarcerated women have not yet had their cases heard in a criminal trial, but because their incomes are often lower than men’s, they cannot afford bail (Kajstura, 2019; Rabuy and Kopf, 2015). This leads to various consequences prior to a potential conviction, including the possibility of losing jobs, custody of their children (Allen et al., 2010), and connection with their families. During incarceration, women receive less rehabilitative and re-entry programs, and post-incarceration, women are more likely than men to be homeless (Kajstura, 2019), which exacerbates the very issues that contributed to incarceration in the first place.

Digital exclusion, incarceration, and re-entry

Digital inequalities are strongly connected to the same kinds of compound vulnerabilities as incarceration: communities of color, poor communities, those with disabilities, and the elderly are less likely to have Internet and ICTs at home, and they are more likely to depend on cell phones to access the Internet (Reisdorf et al., 2020; Gonzales, 2016; Turner, 2016). In addition, there is no Internet access for incarcerated people in correctional facilities in most countries (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018). Notable exceptions are prisons in Belgium, Finland, and Australia, who are granting many incarcerated people (limited) Internet access to enable an easier transition and a more successful rehabilitation process (Farley and Hopkins, 2017; Gilna, 2017; Yle, n.d.). This means that even if someone had access to the Internet and was able to use it before being incarcerated, they are offline during their time inside. Research has shown that short spans of disconnection can have detrimental effects (Gonzales et al., 2016), so even comparatively shorter sentences will set back digital skills levels, especially as technology and software continue to develop at a rapid pace. Although literature pertaining to incarceration, re-entry, and digital technology has been sparse, there is an increasing interest and understanding in this area of the potentially severe consequences of digital disconnection (Bagaric et al., 2017; Hunter and Bagaric, 2016), especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic (Knight, 2020; Robinson et al., 2020).

Building on Reisdorf and Rikard’s (2018) model of digital rehabilitation, we can assume all five fields—economic, social, cultural, personal, and health—to be affected negatively by incarceration. During incarceration, people often lose their work (economic), connections to family and friends (social), experience explicit segregation and “prison culture” (cultural), are only able to participate in select activities (personal), and experience potential physical and mental health issues (health), to name just a few examples. Post-release, FIPs have to rebuild their lives in each of these fields. Although Reisdorf and Rikard (2018) only specifically mention digital skills training as a potential resource in the economic field, a broad range of digital skills are needed to handle the digital fields that correspond to the world that returning citizens need to navigate upon release. Developing or improving digital skills requires both access to the Internet and access to digital devices, neither of which is available during incarceration.

Digital inequities continue post-release, as most FIPs face the same structural issues as those left behind by the digital divide, but also because they have a plethora of things to deal with, and many have not had computer training or access to digital devices prior to, during, or after incarceration. In their qualitative study of returning citizens and employment-related computer literacy, Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al. (2019) found that lack of stable access to devices and lack of digital skills are key obstacles to digital equity. Many FIPs rely on family and children to close this digital gap for everyday uses of smartphones and the Internet, but have a little knowledge of what to do when it comes to more complex tasks, such as finding and applying for a job online (Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al., 2019). Given the importance of digital connectivity and skills for almost any area of everyday life, disconnection during incarceration and the resulting “supercharged digital exclusion” that follows (Reisdorf and Jewkes, 2016) make it crucial to understand technology’s role in the re-entry process.

Currently available technology in correctional settings

In the United States, tablet programs (for personal use) have been the most popular option to enable some forms of ICT access (Law, 2018). However, technology in prisons is used as a justification for eliminating free or low-cost services that incarcerated people rely on heavily: libraries are replaced with digital books, mail is replaced with email, and in-person visits are replaced with video calls (Lee, 2019). Often, prison tablet programs are more oppressive than beneficial, requiring incarcerated people to spend money on the device and the services (Law, 2018). For instance, West Virginia’s correctional system decided to charge incarcerated people 5 cents per minute to read an ebook (McNamara, 2020). In Missouri, making a 30-minute video call costs a month’s worth of prison wages. To justify these Draconian measures, prison systems argue that paper items (books, letters, etc.) can be used to smuggle in contraband (McNamara, 2020), requiring the digital replacement. Prison tablet programs are not used to improve the lives of incarcerated people, but they are used as further punishment by limiting (or eliminating) access to books, letters, and in-person visits (Riley, 2018). In addition, prison-sanctioned tablet programs bear potential privacy risks as well as issues related to power, such as compliance and coercion (Knight and Van De Steene, 2019).

FIPs are unable to navigate things including email, Microsoft Office, finding employment, securing housing, and applying for government services (Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al., 2019). Since these are often requirements of parole, digital literacy skills are crucial for reducing recidivism. In recent years, there have been initiatives to introduce coding and software development training (Stolzoff, 2019), which teaches incarcerated people coding skills during incarceration in order to enable them to find well-paying work post-incarceration. These programs, currently running at San Quentin State Prison in California and a small number of facilities in other states have so far served 622 students (The Last Mile, n.d.). Although a noble (yet somewhat misguided) endeavor, the issue remains that many returning citizens lack basic digital skills that are needed for successful re-entry. The importance of digital literacy and digital skills has also been acknowledged by studies examining the delivery of higher education via digital technologies in prisons in Australia, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Nigeria (Farley et al., 2015).

In this study, we focus less on technology within correctional settings and more on how FIPs navigate digital skills upon release and during re-entry. Research that examines the impact of the lack of digital skills training during incarceration and its effects on the re-entry process is still in a nascent stage, necessitating further inquiry into the impacts that these digital inequalities are having on FIPs to better inform policies and regulations that provide digital skills training during and after incarceration. How the lack of digital skills adds to the already existing compounding vulnerabilities returning citizens face was of key concern to us while conducting this study. In the interest of contributing findings that support existing frameworks of digital inequalities and, more specifically, Reisdorf and Rikard’s (2018) model of digital rehabilitation, we were guided by the following research question:

RQ1. How do returning citizens navigate digital skills during the re-entry process, and what kinds of barriers do they face?

Methodology

Analyzing data from a qualitative study of digital inclusion of returning citizens, we examine how compound vulnerabilities affect them in their post-incarceration adjustment. We conducted focus groups in a large Midwestern US city in spring 2018, and we gathered information and experiences of FIPs who had recently been released (within 4 months of the focus groups). In total, the five-person research team conducted focus groups with 73 male (N = 64) and female (N = 9) returning citizens. We ran six focus groups with men and two with women, totaling eight focus groups, averaging about nine participants per focus group. The women’s groups were smaller than the men’s groups: one focus group included six women, the other one two, and we conducted an additional one-on-one interview with a female FIP. The groups were diverse in age, length of sentence, and race and ethnicity of the participants. It is noteworthy that 70% of our participants identified as Black/African American, whereas only 16% identified as White. A fifth of our participants had spent 20+ years incarcerated (20.5%), another fifth served a sentence between 11 and 20 years (919.2%), and 13.7% were incarcerated for 6–10 years. More than a third served comparatively shorter sentences of 2–5 years (35.6%), and 8.2% spent less than 2 years in jail or prison. More than two-thirds of our sample (68.5%) had either a high school degree/General Educational Development (GED) or less, and a little less than half of our participants were unemployed at the time of the focus groups (see also Reisdorf et al., 2021: 6).

Participants were recruited through word of mouth and flyers that were shared at community centers, with parole officers, and with re-entry program facilitators. Using a semi-structured approach, the questions focused on ICT use, barriers, and the types of ICTs that they were using or felt they needed during re-entry. Focus groups were audio and video recorded (as a backup), with video cameras facing away from the participants or only facing the focus group facilitators in order to ensure confidentiality.

Participants were assured that none of their responses would be shared with the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC), and they were provided refreshments during focus group sessions and compensated with US$50 in cash. Per IRB (Institutional Review Board)¹ requirements, all identifying information was removed from questionnaires and transcripts. Participants were assigned pseudonyms for the coding process. Three researchers coded the transcripts in NVivo, using a combination of an open and thematic coding approach to identify overarching themes. We first used an open coding approach to capture recurrent patterns, and then discussed consistencies and differences within the coding. Although we anticipated themes from our focus group topics and questions, using an open coding approach allowed us to be open to the possibility of themes we did not anticipate. After discussions, the researchers came to an agreement about the major themes, and then engaged in additional, selective coding within those major themes.

Results

In our analysis, we focused on how FIPs perceive the importance of ICTs in their re-entry and how they overcome barriers to digital inclusion. Three common themes that emerged were a lack of access, a lack of digital skills, and potential solutions proposed by FIPs to address these issues. All three themes relate directly to the realm of re-entry and the realm of the digital as articulated in Reisdorf and Rikard’s (2018) model of digital rehabilitation, as lack of access and skills affect the resources that returning citizens can and cannot gain in the economic (e.g. jobs), social (e.g. connection with loved ones), personal (e.g. identity as an “ex-con”), cultural (e.g. identity as a digital immigrant), and health (e.g. looking up health information online) fields.

Access

One common theme that emerged was a lack of access during and after incarceration. Participants had no access to the Internet or ICTs during incarceration, and they also reported a wide range of issues in accessing and using these tools post-release.

Some of our participants had access to JPay tablets during incarceration, but what is of significance about US-based tablet programs for correctional facilities is that they are not just eliminating crucial services, but they are a monopoly. JPay and GTL are two companies that control nearly all of the tablet programs in the country. Both companies compel users to pay for the devices and for programs, such as emails, music, and books, creating a closed market. Some participants confirmed that the tablets forced out some of the things that made their situations more humane:

You can get your email through the JPay system, from your family, for letters and everything, and, like I said, that’s another thing, and I see a lot of areas as being forced on us [. . .] It’s like you can’t get any mail from your children with crayons on it, anything, [. . .] so they’re trying to make it to a point to where people’s got to use this—our computer systems and spend money with us [JPay]. (Ted)

The loss of an analog, physical letter being replaced with the digital materializes in a loss of a feeling of connection, as Ted mentions earlier; the smell of a loved one, the crayon scribble of a child, are all replaced with digital text and screens, creating more distance.

Adding to these issues, post-release, many of our participants were living in temporary housing and noted that it was difficult for them to access ICTs due to concerns about having devices stolen, a lack of reliable WiFi, and issues related to cost, as the following interaction shows:

Interviewer:

“So, what’s the main reason that you don’t have internet at home?”

Sarah:

“I can’t afford it.”

Beth:

“Nope. I can’t.”

Sarah:

“I know I can’t afford it. I can’t even afford a laptop.”

Although some participants went to libraries or community centers, they mentioned barriers regarding transportation. In the city where we conducted the focus groups, the only public transit available was a semi-reliable bus system, and concerns around access were related to cost and lack of free time, like Garrett explains,

[. . .] most of the services I receive are at the Samaritan’s Center. It takes two hours each way on the bus, and I don’t have a laptop at home. [. . .] I’m looking, basically, for apartments to rent. I was looking to buy a car, and then I’ll be doing a full-time job search. If I had a laptop at home with internet access, the screen is big enough to do some real research. (Garrett)

Participants stressed the amount of time it took them to find employment and to meet with their parole agent, among other factors that are typical to the re-entry process. Taylor explains, “It took me two and a half months to find a job . . . But if I had access to the internet, I could have had a job in 24-72 hours.”

Digital skills

Lack of access was a less significant issue than the lack of digital skills, particularly among older participants or participants who had served longer sentences, like Wayne explains,

You know, before I went away, they didn’t have—they were just starting out with the email back in ’94, just starting that’s just within office. [. . .] Coming out of prison, you are so far behind if you did a lot of time.

But even those who served comparatively shorter sentences were struggling to work phones and other devices, as Jack laments, “Like he said, when I was out five years ago, just having a regular phone, call somebody, texting, the internet, whatever. So, when I came home, it was kind of new for me.”

Some reported a minimal level of digital skills training they received during incarceration, but noted that it was often insufficient:

[. . .] one thing about coming out of prison, they don’t really prepare—they tell you to go out and, here you go, take this one class, there’s your literacy, and the truth of the class doesn’t prepare you nearly close to as far as you know how to use a telephone. I still could barely use my telephone. I’ve been out two months, I can barely use it. (Joseph)

The necessity of knowing how to use computers and the Internet upon release also came with a fear of stigma for not knowing how to use ICTs, and often our participants reported a lack of confidence that stymied their efforts to gain competency, as Taylor describes, “Everything is gonna turn to that, so I’m gonna have to do it. I’m just intimidated by it. I get frustrated.” Thus, the negative impacts of a lack of access and skills included not only physical, material issues (employment, finding housing, etc.), but also emotional and mental stress. One of our participants shared that his parole officer asked why he was not answering emails, and he said that he did not know how:

[W]hen I picked up a phone, I was like, I didn’t know because, I mean, I only did 15 years, but the phones weren’t touch. So, I’m holding the phone, I can hear them [. . .] My sister’s like, idiot, turn the phone around, and I’m like, oh, yeah, I’ll just put it on speaker, and the little boy’s like, man, give me the phone. Let me show you how. So, actually, a kid actually showed me how to get to—I didn’t know how to get to my—my parole officer’s like, why don’t you answer emails? And I’m like, because y’all didn’t teach me. (Landon)

Participants spoke often of issues such as not knowing how to use basic functions including email, texting, calling, social media, and navigating software like web browsers or Microsoft Office.

Lack of access to technologies and lack of digital skills prevailed as major themes. Despite the issues, participants were hopeful about ICTs and generally perceived them to have a positive impact on their lives, as the following interaction exemplifies:

Ned:

“Google is amazing. I love Google. . . . There’s nothing you can’t find.”

David:

“I find YouTube really useful because they have a lot of different job skills and training and things like that. They actually show you step by step.”

Although they struggled to use their devices, they believed that asking their children and grandchildren for assistance helped to strengthen relationships, that social media allowed them to be in touch with friends and family, and that communication through technology was overall easier. This pattern generally applied to most of our participants regardless of their age or gender. Only a few FIPs mentioned that it also led to friction between them and their children or grandchildren.

The need for digital skills training

Something that came up across focus groups without us prompting our participants were solutions to the issues described earlier and ways to develop the necessary skills for digital rehabilitation. Whereas our topic guide for the focus group discussions focused on barriers to access and how this affects re-entry, our participants suggested the need for skills training as well as for more knowledge about the differences between different kinds of devices:

I would like to say send them to a class, like when you first get released from prison or whatever, like have a class you can go to to learn—for you to learn how to use different devices on the phone, learn how to use computers. (Pete)

This type of request for classes immediately after release was echoed by most participants across our focus groups, such as Sarah from one of our women’s groups:

Yeah. Just like she said, there are people in there that have been doing 20 and 30 years. You have to get them ready for the outside world because they don’t know what’s going on out here unless somebody writes them and tell them, “Look, we got this. We got that.” But they still have to learn about it. (Sarah)

Some went further to explain that upon release, it is almost too late and that classes would be most beneficial during the last 6 months of incarceration, like Devin explained,

We don’t have telephones like this [smartphones] inside the prison system, even though we’re in the reentry program. To get into the reentry program, I believe, you’ve got to be at least six months [from release]—[. . .] I think they should implement a program where we are able to use these and that we get a better understanding of how to use this before coming home. (Devin)

This sentiment found a lot of support from other members of that focus group who agreed that “Four five, six months or less to a whole, nice facility, and train them as” (Brody), “As a released citizen” (Ned) so that they would know how to use a number of different devices by the time they were released.

Whether prior to or directly after release, our participants considered it crucial that FIPs undertake some sort of training in how to use a variety of ICTs and the Internet to be able to fully function in society. The fact that these themes were repeated in the discussions across all groups without prompts from the research team emphasizes the importance of being able to fit in post-release—and that ICTs are an increasingly important part of that.

Discussion and conclusion

Correctional facilities in the United States have become revolving doors, with approximately 95% of incarcerated people released back to their communities (Hughes and James Wilson, n.d.). Of these, two-thirds are re-arrested, and nearly half return to prison in the 3 years following release (Clarke, 2019). Most FIPs come from impoverished backgrounds and return to economically distressed communities (Morenoff and Harding, 2014). The same factors (income, education, and race) are associated with less digital access and more limited digital skills (Reisdorf et al., 2020; Gonzales, 2016; Robinson et al., 2020; Turner, 2016). The barriers to re-entering society successfully are fraught with challenges, including finding employment, securing housing, and avoiding criminal behavior. All of these tasks have mainly moved to online spaces, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began, which makes connectivity and digital skills increasingly important (Robinson et al., 2020).

Per Reisdorf and Rikard’s (2018) framework of digital rehabilitation, various digital resources can aid FIPs in navigating a technology-dependent world, and in particular, help build strong digital skills across the economic, social, cultural, personal, and health fields, which is what our participants’ discourses confirmed to a significant extent. Since Reisdorf and Rikard’s digital rehabilitation framework was originally articulated in a 2018 article, which did not contain data that was collected explicitly for the purpose of supporting the model, this study’s findings contribute to the larger digital inequality literature by providing findings that support the model of digital rehabilitation while also incorporating the lens of compound vulnerabilities that impact the acquisition of digital skills. This is discussed further in what follows.

Compound vulnerabilities, digital skills, and digital rehabilitation

FIPs are disproportionately from low-income communities (Rabuy and Kopf, 2015), report a disability at higher proportions than the general population (Ben-Moshe et al., 2014; Bronson et al., 2015), age faster during incarceration (Rikard and Rosenberg, 2007), and are disproportionately Black or Hispanic (Alexander, 2012), reflecting the same kinds of factors associated with digital exclusion.

These compound vulnerabilities became especially clear in our group conversations about barriers to digital inclusion during the re-entry process. In addition to a criminal record, our participants negotiated multiple aspects of their identity, which are connected to both re-entry and their ability to access and use digital devices. The majority of our participants were not earning a living wage, so buying devices, data plans, or home access to be fully immersed in the digital world was impossible. Age, income, and education have been identified as key factors affecting digital skills levels (Hargittai et al., 2019), in addition to continuous access to functioning digital devices and the Internet (Gonzales et al., 2016). In addition to advanced age and lower levels of education, long sentences—a disruption in access to digital devices and the Internet—affected the digital skills of our participants. Yet, they are expected to fully participate in the digital society upon re-entry (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018). Whereas participants who had strong family connections were able to learn skills from their children and grandchildren, those who were more isolated did not. In contrast to other vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, there are a few digital literacy programs that are specifically designed for FIPs, although localized efforts have been increasing over the past few years (e.g. Powell, 2019). In addition, digital literacy programs need to go beyond basic levels of digital skills (Farley and Hopkins, 2017), especially given recent findings that various types of digital skills are required simultaneously to complete seemingly simple tasks, such as applying for benefits or a job online (Allmann and Blank, 2021).

To digitally “rehabilitate” FIPs to allow them to participate in today’s technology-dependent societies, we need to address multiple layers of social and digital inequalities simultaneously. We do not claim that digital connectivity will solve all problems for FIPs. Instead, we emphasize that they cannot succeed in the current society without also being digitally included (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018). Such a model of digital rehabilitation must include digital skills training specifically tailored to the needs of FIPs prior to release as well as support FIPs in obtaining devices, Internet access, and developing and improving digital skills post-release.

Policy recommendations

Given the importance of digital skills in finding employment (Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al., 2019), providing one of the most vulnerable societal groups with the tools to successfully access and navigate ICTs and the Internet may provide a crucial step in reducing recidivism. Below, we discuss two layers of policy that are affecting FIPs’ digital inclusion.

First, incarceration policy needs to shift away from the idea of punishment and incapacitation and focus on that of rehabilitation, as has been shown to be successful in other countries (e.g. Farley et al., 2015; Yle, n.d.). Sending returning citizens back into their communities without the skills to find gainful employment sets them up to fail before they have had the chance to try. This includes basic educational and vocational training opportunities.

The second shift pertains to computer and Internet access during or immediately after incarceration. FIPs want to participate in the digital society. The vast majority of our participants were eager to “better” themselves, but most of them were lacking access and the skills to find and apply for jobs online. Providing comprehensive digital skills training alongside access and within the umbrella of other educational opportunities during incarceration can help provide FIPs with at least a basic level of digital skills needed to—at minimum—survive in our speed-of-light society.

An increasing number of programs are developing in the United States that are teaching incarcerated people basic digital skills, and some provide refurbished laptops upon release (Powell, 2019). However, these classes often run only for a week or a few weeks, and outside of the classroom, incarcerated people cannot keep improving their skills due to lack of access. As even short spans of disconnection come with negative consequences (Gonzales et al., 2016), DOCs and correctional facilities should consider (limited and potentially monitored) access to computers and the Internet, as is done in Finland (Yle, n.d.).

Conclusion

The digital realm has become an integral part of our everyday lives. We cannot think along the lines of online and offline any longer, as these realms are inextricably entangled in one another (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018). This has shown especially true during the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen vast parts of societal life move completely online (Robinson et al., 2020). This is no different for FIPs. However, their status as people with criminal records, combined with various compound vulnerabilities, leave returning citizens digitally excluded. During re-entry, the digital realm must be considered just as much as the non-digital realm to ensure that FIPs have a fighting chance at a post-incarceration life (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018).

Although we do not claim that our study can be generalized to all FIPs across the world, the data give us an important insight into the issues that returning citizens face when they re-enter a society that depends on ICTs and the Internet. Learning from their experiences and considering FIPs’ compound vulnerabilities can help us develop feasible solutions to enable the digital inclusion of this population. This study provides critical data to support the model of digital rehabilitation (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018), as well as data that can be used to inform how activists, organizers, criminal justice workers, and policymakers approach digital skills during incarceration and, more urgently, the re-entry process. Among other things, future studies examining this phenomenon should examine other country contexts, female FIPs, specific fields of digital rehabilitation, such as the economic or social field (Reisdorf and Rikard, 2018), and the digital maturity levels of carceral organizations across the world, as well as their readiness to assist FIPs in developing important digital skills.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Michigan State University. [Grant Number S3 Funding (no award number)].

ORCID iDs

Bianca C Reisdorf

Notes

Author biographies

Bianca C Reisdorf, DPhil, is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her work focuses on the intersection of inequalities and digital media and the Internet, with a focus on digital inequalities among marginalized populations. In her recent research, Dr. Reisdorf has been focusingon internet access in correctional settings and how returning citizens navigate a technology-dependent world after release.

Julia R DeCook, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Advocacy and Social Change in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago. Her research examines online hate groups, platform governance, race and gender, digital culture, and social justice and technology.

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