St. Louis County Will Provide Tablets To Jail Inmates
St. Louis County is expecting to provide tablets to approximately 900 inmates in its jail, but it won’t need to purchase them.
An undisclosed private company will pay for the tablets — and at least one staff member to maintain them — in exchange for charging inmates for the services offered on the devices, said Doug Moore, spokesman for County Executive Sam Page. Those services are likely to include email-like communication, photo exchanges, video chatting, law library access and educational classes.
They will replace the county’s former contract for inmate phone services, which has expired. The new contract is being offered for five years, with a one-year extension, Moore said. It is not expected to cost the county any money, but it won’t make money off the services either, he said.
Currently, the jail gets a portion of the money inmates spend on phone services, but the jail won’t get that from the new tablet programs. The county is not going to take a share of the tablet charges in order to keep the rates lower for the inmates, Moore said.
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