Filed
10:00 p.m.
12.16.2021
A software change in my prison-issued electronic tablet ate up my drafts and eliminated basic writing tools. That may sound minor, but try sending a poem to your kid without line breaks.
Josie Portillo for The Marshall Project
Back in August, six of my essays, four of my short stories and a bunch of half-written poems that were perhaps worthy of francine j. harris disappeared from the JPay electronic tablet I use to write and stay in touch with my loved ones.
For the most part, the JPay system is a relief. Along with sending and receiving messages, the tablets allow us to get music, games and books from a catalogue on the kiosks that we use to download materials.
There are just two kiosks for over 80 people in my unit. When it’s your turn, you pick up where your conversations and jokes left off. You pore over the hard-to-decipher letters your young children write to you. When JPay is working properly, it makes connection with the outside world more possible. But there are downsides, like losing features.
I lost my works-in-progress because the prison and JPay reduced the tools available to men in the so-called security threat group (STG). Those changes also impacted prisoners like me, who aren’t in the STG.
Suddenly, my box for drafts was gone, and the sentences I typed appeared in one long line across the screen. Without line breaks, I couldn’t create paragraphs i
