So, yeah, when inmates at the Baltimore City Detention Center had access to cellphones, that was bad. But is it too soon to propose a program that gives inmates access to Android tablets? Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler doesn’t seem to think so. The gubernatorial candidate sees tablet computers as part of the solution to the “revolving door” of the prison system.
And revolve it does! According to the Baltimore Sun, somewhere around half of former inmates are back in prison within three years of their release. Gansler envisions a system in which tablet computers give inmates access to the Maryland library system and educational programs to better prepare them for a return to society.
In arguing against conventional prison libraries, Gansler asks that we look at a certain 1994 Tim Robbins / Morgan Freeman as a cautionary tale. He says the kind of contraband smuggling that characters in The Shawshank Redemption carry out through the brick-and-mortar library would be eliminated by switching to tablets.
