NC Newsline: “I’ve been doing life in the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction (NCDAC) for almost 22 years. In 2021, the NCDAC made my life worse by contracting TextBehind to remotely scan and print our mail, supposedly to thwart synthetic drug smuggling, although it is widely accepted that prison employees are the main source of contraband.
Problems with TextBehind are too many to list. However, I once thought receiving a scanned copy of a birthday card three weeks late was as bad as TextBehind could get. But it’s about to become even worse.
Last month, people incarcerated at North Carolina prisons found out our scanned mail will be posted on prison-issued tablets. That translates to us viewing amateurishly scanned mail in tiny print on unreliable ViaPath tablets that regularly drop service….
This harmful issue is about more than us losing the experience of caressing a child’s first drawing or fingering a photo of a loved one. I survived this environment of hopelessness because tangible trinkets, like letters and cards, reassured me through bouts of depression, gave me a reason to live when I contemplated suicide, and humanized me when the violence and oppression of mass incarceration made me feel like a caged animal.
Now, no one wants to send me a personal letter through TextBehind.
Not only is it a mistake for the NCDAC to allow TextBehind to post mail on tablets, it is a mistake to continue monetizing our communication at all.”