How some US incarcerated people use contraband mobile phones to educate themselves, make TikToks, find love, publicize prison conditions, earn money, and more
Keri Blakinger / The Marshall Project : Tweets: @pdxlawgrrrl , @szarlotka , @marshallproj , @keribla , @marshallproj , and @shemkalegal Tweets: Pdx Law Grrrl / @pdxlawgrrrl : A man locked up in Georgia is using a group messaging app on a contraband cell phone to help educate people incarcerated in other states. “I run a group where we're teaching guys computer science. We're using Harvard's CS50 materials [which are online].” https://www.themarshallproject.org/ ... Charlotte West / @szarlotka : Also, don't miss @keribla's reported companion piece. She writes about a man using free online resources to teach others computer science. https://www.themarshallproject.org/ ... @marshallproj : “We have to acquire contraband phones from the people who are supposed to be watching us,” a man incarcerated in California told @keribla. “That's the only way we can do things to better ourselves because they damn sure don't offer that stuff here.” https://www.themarshallproject.org/ ... Keri Blakinger / @keribla : 3 yrs ago, a hot blonde lady slid into my DM's w/a juicy tip But as we chatted, I realized: She was actually a dude. In prison. With a contraband phone Since then, some of my best reporting has come from pppl w/contraband phone. Here's what I've learned https://www.themarshallproject.org/ ... @marshallproj : From education to activism to medical care, here are some of the unexpected ways people use cellphones in prisons. https://www.themarshallproject.org/ ... Lori Shemka / @shemkalegal : Keri's piece is so good that I had to go back and re-read last year's Michigan Supreme Court opinion (and dissents) about a forbidden cell phone in a Michigan prison. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Marshall Project's piece extends a story that has been building for years: prison officials have fought the illicit cellphone trade since at least 2015, yet the devices keep circulating — reportedly sourced from the very staff tasked with confiscating them. What began as Prison TikTok dance videos in 2020 has matured into group-run computer science courses built on Harvard's free CS50 materials.
The timing matters because official channels are finally catching up: prisons are rolling out tablets for calls and messages under new FCC price caps, while ex-convict-founded services like Pigeonly and Flikshop already formalized family contact. The article documents what happens when the sanctioned versions arrive late and metered while the contraband version offers the whole open internet.
First-order effects
- Incarcerated people in states like Georgia gain direct access to education, income, and public audiences — a man teaching CS50 to inmates in other states shows the phones function as classrooms, not just communication tools.
- Reports that phones come from corrections staff undercut interdiction programs: the supply chain runs through the institutions enforcing the ban.
Second-order effects
- Prison telecom vendors face an unmonetizable competitor — free online courseware and social apps make their per-message, per-minute paid tablets look expensive just as the FCC caps voice and video pricing.
- Publicized prison conditions give advocates and journalists primary-source footage, raising reputational and legal pressure on state corrections departments that can no longer control the narrative.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the policy fight shifts from confiscation to a structural question: whether connectivity is treated as rehabilitation infrastructure or a security threat — with the sanctioned-tablet rollout as the compromise both sides are converging on.
- A parallel track of inmate-facing tech startups and data practices (Pigeonly-style networks, messaging databases) suggests an industry forming around incarcerated users' digital lives, with privacy and oversight questions attached.
The trend: US prisons are losing their monopoly over inmates' digital lives as contraband smartphones and newly price-capped official tablets converge on the same functions.