“There are 2 million-plus inmates incarcerated in America at this time. We haven’t tapped every one of them, but we’ve seen more sales every year,” said Ed Michael, general manager of Swintec, a New Jersey company that has offered electronic typewriters to inmates since 2003.
According to a June 24 NBC News report, U.S. inmates are increasingly buying electronics such as MP3 players and flat-screen televisions – spending about $750 million annually on these gadgets. Appliances built for prisoners are often in transparent plastic, so guards can inspect them for drugs, weapons or contraband.
Swintec sells as many as 5,000 typewriters annually. They sell in San Quentin as well as prisons in 46 states, including Sing Sing in New York and Leavenworth in Kansas, Michael said.
The company’s highest-end typewriters contain enough memory to store 50 pages of text, making them word processors – without Internet access. Prices for these machines range from $192 to $748. “We don’t foresee an end to this,” Michael said.
The corrections-approved electronics include name brands such as Sony and Casio. Items include headphones, radios, and 15-inch flat-screen TVs.
Sales to prisoners in catalogs are modified to be “prison safe” i.e. “see-through” and with “security screws,” according to the website for Union Supply Direct, a company based in Rancho Dominguez.
Keefe Group has offices in 10 cities and calls itself “the nation’s leading supplier” of prison-ready products and electronics that run the gamut from televisions, typewriters, CD players, portable radios, fans, and clocks.
Keefe Group cites security concerns, preferring to stay out of the media, said spokesman Paul Scherer.
U.S. prisoners, this year, will purchase an estimated $750 million in clear electronics, according to Lucas Isakowitz, an industry analyst at IBISWorld, a market research organization.
“The prison electronics market will likely become larger in the coming years as states are allowing prisoners access to more electronics such as electronic tablets,” Isakowitz said.
Isakowitz cited seven states (Ohio, North Dakota, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Michigan, and Washington) that now allow prisoners to purchase mini-tablet computers.
While some people on the outside might disagree with giving inmates access to tech toys, Swintec’s Michael contends this growing market is helping convicts improve themselves.
“They (the gizmos) give inmates something good to do on a daily basis, rather than sit there and be idle…” he said.
A famous owner of a Swintec typewriter, according to company officials, was Stanley “Tookie” Williams, an ex-Los Angeles gang member.
Convicted of four murders, he wrote a series of anti-violence books. In 2005, he was executed by the state of California. Archbishop Desmond Tutu lauded Williams’ writing.
“Narcotica,” a novel Daniel Genis created in prison, was also tapped out on a Swintec. It will be published later this year.
This introduces the reader to an alternate version of the world, one in which drugs, rather than alcohol, have become the legal and socially accepted inebriant of choice.
Genis was addicted to heroin before his incarceration in New York state prisons. He was sober when his sentence began in 2004.
“I wrote the book in solitary confinement. They gave you five pieces of paper a week in there. So the book was written on … paper, plus pieces of cardboard and on the backs of official forms… all I did was write,” Genis said. “When I brought all those papers out, it just looked like a horrible mess.”
He later typed it up on the typewriter. Genis, 35, now lives in Brooklyn. He said that the old-fashioned typewriter can still crank up potent profit.
He claims some inmates use them for gambling operations – typing tiny betting stubs to distribute for sports wagers.
However, other prisoners complete legal work in their cells. “Now, there is a great perk to that,” Genis said. Though not allowed to do legal work for others, it happens anyway.
For a jailhouse lawyer, the typewriter is a tool for earning money. “They earn … couple hundred bucks for every legal brief they write, and the typewriter pays for itself.”
In this black market of a prison, those legal briefs are paid in packs of cigarettes or by Western Union. Someone on the street pays real money into someone else’s account, Genis said.
Electronic typewriters in prison may mean income for some. What they are not, Genis said, is trouble. “Nobody ever takes apart a typewriter to make a weapon because the thing is just too expensive,” he said. “… the kind of people who have typewriters are not the kind … who need weapons.”
