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Between the Bars/Funding

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Researchers

  • Charlie DeTar <cfd@media.mit.edu>
  • Benjamin Mako Hill <mako@MIT.EDU>

Problem

Despite having the world's largest per-capita prison population (and growing), American prisoners are routinely denied access to the Internet. While prisoners can communicate with friends and families through paper mail, they have little access to broadcast media of any type. Between the Bars is an effort to bridge this gap by allowing prisoners to blog, giving them a voice, a platform to tell their stories, and an opportunity to build and maintain positive social relationships while in prison. Prisoners typically do not have Internet access, but they can write posts in paper letters, which we subsequently scan and post to the Internet. Transcriptions of the letters are crowd-sourced from site visitors, and visitors' comments and responses to the posts can be mailed back to the prisoners. We currently are developing a technology prototype of the website and process, which is expected to be fully operational by late March. We will then begin an initial roll-out in local prisons around Massachusetts starting in April. After analysis and design iteration, we hope to open the platform to prisoners everywhere by the end of 2009.

Innovation

This project makes novel use of the existing paper mail system to bypass technological restrictions present in prisons. The software makes the process of scanning letters and posting the scans to the Internet as easy as possible. We employscrowd sourcing to make scanned letters electronically searchable. The crowd sourcing serves a second purpose as well -- by taking time and effort to transcribe scanned letters, users may become more invested in the personal narratives of the blogging prisoners and the conditions of prisoners in general.

Civic Engagement

The project helps to bring into public light the plight of a significant and underrepresented segment of the population. Research has shown that the systematic repression of civic participation by prisoners and ex-prisoners results in considerable depression of their long term economic and social well-being. Our hope is that by providing a mechanism that allows prisoners to maintain a source for identity and social participation, the prospects for meaningful civic engagement on release will improve.

Feasibility

The technological work necessary to complete this project is relatively simple and mostly complete. We have ample expertise to finish the necessary software for the website. The site makes use of preexisting open source software, and any extensions or modifications we write will also be released as free and open source, well documented and available.

The more substantial and challenging portion of this project will involve networking with local community and prisoner support groups in order to make contacts with prisoners and develop momentum for blogging. Under the proposed timeline, this portion will consist of the majority of the project. We will leverage existing contacts within the Center for Future Civic Media and cultivate new relationships with local University affiliated prisoner support organizations, as well as other local community groups involved in prisoner support.

Community Integration

There are several ways community might integrate this project, depending on the level of control and involvement the community desires: first, they might simply use the project in its existing installation on our servers. All that is necessary is that a participant send a letter to the PO Box for the project. A participant could also set up their own mail drop and scan letters, emailing the scanned documents to our server. Finally, the community could download source code for the project and set up their own server to host content.

Timeline and Budget

Projected costs:

  • PO Box at Kendal post office: $132.00: (5 IN X 5.5 IN) for 12 months
  • Postage for correspondence with prisoners: $100

Timeline:

  • March 31: Software 99% functional
  • April 30: In contact with community groups, receive first letters
  • through summer: Iteration and increasing number of prisoners
  • January 2010: Open to general public and prisoners everywhere

Other Sources

We will be using preexisting server infrastructure provided by the MIT Media Lab, as well as graphic designer already funded by C4FCM.

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