But these residents benefit from connectivity, said April Feng, CEO at Ameelio, a technology nonprofit that serves incarcerated individuals. About 2 million U.S. residents are incarcerated on any given day, she said, and 95 percent of them will eventually be released.
“This is a huge missed opportunity, to think of how much talent you can add to the workforce,” Feng said during a panel at the Expanding Digital Opportunity: Charting a Path Toward Full Inclusion conference Feb. 19. The event was hosted by the Urban Institute.
Prisons and jails are often filled with barriers to connectivity, Feng said, ranging from lacking in basic broadband infrastructure to being short on modern, functioning devices to having high costs related to using Internet services, if they exist at all.
“There are facilities that have computer labs, but it’s pretty limited,” she said. “We need more modern devices that look like the devices we’re using … into these facilities so people can get used to them, and actually start exploring how that works.”
The $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program being administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) could help with that. A signature piece of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it directs money to states to help bring connectivity to rural areas, tribal communities and other underserved locations. Public institutions and community-based organizations have been vocal about noting their role in expanding digital equity.
“That’s something that we’re going to continue to prioritize beyond the pandemic, to keep hammering how many people are impacted when you don’t have connectivity, and how important it is for people to have it now,” said Cristal Mojica, senior program manager for the Digital Equity Initiative at the Michelson 20MM Foundation, in comments during the panel. A private nonprofit, the Michelson 20MM Foundation aims to expand education and employment opportunities.
Observers of the BEAD program’s work have concerns around moves the new Donald Trump administration is making, in particular actions to eliminate policy positions and funding that could advance diversity, equity and inclusion, and freezing or slowing grants.
“Is BEAD funding going to be one of those things that’s on the chopping block?” Amy Hinojosa, president and CEO at MANA, a national Latina organization, said at the conference. “The fear is that all the progress we made, through the course of the pandemic, what we learned, how to get folks connected, all those things are going to start to be scaled back and rolled back.”
Feng, at Ameelio, took comfort in acknowledging the company’s communication technology services and software are now in a handful of states, with others coming.
“It’s a very healthy mix of red and blue states,” Feng said. “And I think that goes to show, really, the bipartisan nature of this issue. And the potential it has by including a population that has been formerly excluded from the workforce, and [bringing] them back to the community and the workforce.”
