Key Points 

• Tablets in state prison remain central for inmates despite lack of access

• Inmates report months-long delays for repairs and replacements

• Health care lawsuit claims emergency, medical access failure follow 

Every inmate at the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry is issued a tablet. The black screen, encased in clear plastic, becomes the world. 

An inmate needs a table to request medical assistance, report an emergency, make phone and video calls, send or receive emails or physical mail, to bank, access education and rehabilitation programs and legal resources, raise a grievance, buy food, clothes, hygiene products from commissary, to parse through job listings before release, and to access any type of media.

But many go without – for weeks or months on end.

Neither the Department of Corrections, nor Securus Technologies, the department’s communications vendor, could give a firm number of outstanding requests to repair or replace broken tablets across the state’s prisons. 

But in monitoring visits to two units, attorneys involved in the long-running health care class action lawsuit reported dozens of inmates lacking access to a functioning tablet. And complaints over tablet technical difficulties from family members and inmates across the state “constantly” stream into an advocacy group’s inbox.

“It is a major component of functioning within the Department of Corrections for an inmate. When it doesn’t work, you don’t have any other option … you’re stuck,” Donna Hamm, founder and executive director of Middle Ground Prison Reform, said. “You’re at the mercy of either the Department of Corrections … or the company that they contract with, if the department can be depended on to get on top of problems that may be caused by the contractor.” 

The Department of Corrections, contracting with vendor Securus Technologies, created the inmate tablet program in April 2020. 

Applications and features rolled out gradually, starting with media, email, ecards, department communications, video visits, banking, education programs and employment listings. 

Then came the addition of health needs, grievance management and inmate commissary. By August 2024, Securus had rolled out a feature allowing inmates to make phone calls. And, now the department has moved to digitize all general mail, allowing inmates a scan, not a physical copy. 

But, according to advocates, attorneys, families and a former inmate, a working tablet can be hard to come by. 

A former inmate recently released into community supervision spoke on the condition of anonymity. He remembers the tablet roll-out as faulty from the start. 

“The disappointment started in the beginning, and it was one after another, after another, after another. And granted, it’s really nice to be able to have this stuff that’s on there, but if the system is failing?” 

The inmate estimates he shuffled through two dozen replacement tablets in four years. He remembers dealing with faulty hardware and persistent network connectivity issues, which complicated his access to medical care and his ability to pursue higher education. 

And when he or fellow inmates would put in a support ticket to request a repair, they’d be met with a form response, and no real fix. 

“Quite often, they can’t seem to figure out what the problems are … The system is basically put together with nothing but Band Aids.” 

Hamm said Middle Ground “constantly” fields complaints from inmates’ families, with months-long waiting periods for replacements. 

In one instance, an inmate continually asked for a new tablet, and then, when he got his replacement, it malfunctioned. Hamm said it took about two months to finally get a working tablet, but noted some inmates had waited much longer. 

“We begged repeatedly … He had no way to submit commissary, he couldn’t submit his HNR forms, he couldn’t call his family. I repeatedly had to go all the way up to the director’s office,” Hamm said. “It’s ridiculous that I have to take it to that level to get someone to respond.” 

Corene Kendrick, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, said the decision by the department to import key functions onto the tablets, as opposed to the prior paper-form system, now intersects with the long-running health care class action, Jensen v. Thornell. 

The court’s injunction does not require the department to use tablets, but because the department has chosen to utilize tablets as a means of compliance for health care requests and an emergency call button, it’s become a key issue. 

Kendrick said the facilities are supposed to have paper forms as a back-up, though in past visits, when she asked, the paper forms are not immediately available. 

“That’s obviously extremely problematic, because with a broken tablet and long delays and getting them repaired or replaced. It means people can’t request medical care or mental health care,” Kendrick said. 

In a visit to Arizona State Prisons Complexes Lewis and Eyman, Kendrick spoke of the scope of tablet access. In one unit of 70 people, she estimated 35 to 40 inmates reported having a broken tablet or lacking one entirely. 

“More than half in one building said that their tablets were broken, not working at all, or had been stolen or destroyed,” Kendrick said. 

In a report to the court in December, co-counsel Maria Morris raised the fact that inmates reported that, “ despite repeated requests, they had been without a working tablet for weeks or months.

“Many showed us their tablets and demonstrated that they were not working. Numerous people informed us that they had been told there is a three- to six-month waitlist for new or replacement tablets, along with a fee of $150 or more for a replacement,” Morris wrote. 

In a letter to the court monitors, ACLU counsel David Fathi said the injunction portal on the app did not work and the creation of an emergency call button for more isolated housing units failed to allow “immediate contact” with staff, as required by the injunction. 

“(W)e do not believe that even a functioning tablet allows the ‘immediate’ contact required by the Injunction, given the need to turn the tablet on, wait for it to activate, and then carry out the several steps required to submit an emergency call,” Fathi wrote. “It is simply not plausible that a person being assaulted or experiencing an acute medical crisis would be able to timely carry out these multiple steps, in sequence, in order to submit an emergency call.” 

Declarations from inmates submitted to the court backed up the claims across the board. One incarcerated person called tablet access “horrible.” Another said it would sometimes take staff 20 to 30 minutes for staff to respond to a medical emergency and claimed the tablet lacked an emergency call feature. 

“The officers are not always staying at their posts, and we would have to bang on windows and doors to try to get someone to respond,” another declaration read. “The tablet has a way to make calls, but we would have to call our families to get them to call 911.” 

Kendrick said when counsel has brought up the issue before on monitoring visits, attorneys have submitted lists of people lacking tablets, and the department has acknowledged the problem, sought lists of people lacking a tablet and said they would take it up with the vendor. 

The department could not immediately provide data on the number of outstanding tablet requests, nor did Securus. 

A statement from the department read,“Recognizing that, similar to any electronic device, inmate tablets may experience issues from time to time, had nothing significant to report regarding the inmate tablet system that is outside its expected functionality or availability to inmates.” 

It continued, “ADCRR understands the importance of tablets to the individuals in our custody. As such, inmate tablets are distributed, repaired, and/or replaced as efficiently as possible.”