Using Facebook through TRULINCS circumvents the prison mailroom completely. All over Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, prisoners are posting photos of themselves straight from the penitentiary, with all their tattoos and gang affiliations displayed for the world to see. People in the real world are friending and following them, liking their posts and leaving comments, creating feedback and a dialogue with those trapped in the netherworld of corruption and violence. But not all prisoners are lucky enough to have a family member to act as proxy for their Facebook page and even fewer have enough money or underworld clout to obtain a contraband smartphone. So what do they do if they want to keep in touch with the world through social media?
“Being a federal inmate, it can often be difficult to hold down a social media page like Facebook, MySpace, etc.” Jesse Jongeward, a 42-year-old from Minneapolis who has been in eight and a half years on an 11-and-a-half-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute narcotics, says. “You have to find a provider that is going to get you your messages and post your pictures and text accordingly. I dealt with a company called voiceforinmates.com for three years and I was rarely satisfied with their performance. I paid $100 a year to get my messages and have my photos and updates posted, but it was rarely done. The whole experience stressed me out, but in the end it was cool to access some of my old classmates, musician buddies, and friends I haven’t talked to in a while. Plus it gave me a sense of still being out there in the mix of the free world.”
That is what social media is all about—getting out there and connecting with old friends and making new ones. I know in my case I thrived as I made connections and got my work published. It made me feel like I was living and transcending the mundane nature of prison life. But if TRULINCS has been a boon to prisoners, companies like Voice for Inmates have used it as an opportunity to exploit those trapped behind the fences of our nation’s correctional facilities. Without a proxy to administer the social media pages or a contraband cell phone to do it themselves, prisoners are bereft of the opportunity to connect. Prisoners will use anyone, even ex-wives or girlfriends, to set up their pages, even if that can cause trouble in their personal lives.
“It would be nice if I had a woman who didn’t have ulterior motives to keep me connected to the world, but I don’t, so I use what I got,” says Kevin Smith, a 48-year-old convict from Fort Worth, Texas, who is finishing up a 15-year sentence for a gun charge. “In a perfect world, I would have my Facebook page showcase some of my original songs and push my friends to a website I have created just for that. I have been gone over a decade and when I was out there, MySpace was the leading site. Twitter, Facebook and the others showed up later. It would be nice to be able to access our own account from here, but we are limited due to the sex offenders wanting to gain access and manipulate to their own sick desires. But I am still happy to have this expensive, slow, and monitored texting service which they refer to as emails.”