Updates

Resident communications update/memo #24: Tablet funding, videograms, and ViaPath tablet deployment schedule.

[Sent to IDOC residents over JPay Sept. 10, 2025.]

Tablet Funding:

1. This information will also be available during deployment. Please remember that Friends and Family cannot fund the tablet activities through ViaPath or GettingOut. Currently the two options for depositing funds are the Trust account or the IC Solutions Debit Account.

2. The monthly transfer limit is being increased from $80 per month to $150 per month. The request was submitted today and IC Solutions is working to update the system.

Videograms:

Securus (JPay) is working on a fix that will allow Videograms to be viewed on the JPay tablet without Wi-Fi. The solution will be deployed to Saguaro first, and if it works, it will be deployed to all kiosks!

Once the fix is deployed, you can download the Videograms that you would like to keep on your JPay tablet, and they will play when the JPay Wi-Fi is terminated.

Tablet Deployment Schedule:

The IC Solutions deployment teams are currently working at Idaho State Correction Center (ISCC) and Idaho State Correctional Institute (ISCI). Both facilities will have the new ViaPath tablets by Friday September 19th.

Then there will be a slight pause to allow for support of any issues or questions from the facilities with the new tablets.

Work at the remaining facilities is expected to begin as follows:

SBWCC — Wednesday October 1
TV CRC — Wednesday October 1
IMSI — Friday October 3
SICI — Monday October 6
MVTC — Monday October 13

Everyone should have a new ViaPath tablet by Wednesday October 15th!

Reminder:

After your facility transitions to ViaPath, the JPay tablets will no longer be on Wi-Fi. However, the Kiosks will remain connected to JPay services for a while longer. We do not have an official cut-off date for JPay services yet. The date of the cut-off of JPay services will also be communicated once we know.

If you have any other questions or worries that have not been addressed, you can fill out a Concern Form and send it to Central Office — Contracts.

Why 3 Idaho prisoners donated their commissary funds to support the Idaho Foodbank.

When I was seven years old, I remember my mom driving my family to the foodbank in Sandpoint, Idaho. We were very poor and my mom is a woman who doesn’t like to ask for help.

All five of us kids waited in the back of the truck as my mom went in through the big glass door that opened into the foodbank. She came out with a cardboard box brimming with food.

When we got back to our deep-woods house, my mom took that food and combined it with the sparse basic ingredients we had. She made an amazingly tasty meal and fed a family of six with the help of those donations.

That is why I donated. It is my way of saying thank you and helping someone in need.

— James Mancuso (donated $20 and a box of prison commissary food items with recipe instructions)

***

I feel incredibly blessed to have been born and raised in Boise.

But back when covid struck, I was battling the demons of addiction while working as a contractor. I remember the world shutting down, the weather creeping in, and the food in my family’s cabinets rapidly dwindling until I was desperate to feed my wife and child.

My wife and I sat down together and searched for community resources.

I remember feeling defeated, hungry and desperate while walking into the food pantry with my wife, and how quickly those feelings turned when we were welcomed with huge warm smiles.

One woman took us aisle by aisle to help us load a basket. When she found out that we had a bunny, she threw in extra, fresh vegetables to feed it.

She then walked us out to parking lot and helped us load the vehicle that once spoke to my success.

Not once did she pass judgement.

It was nothing short of a life-changing experience

— Jeff Lacy (donated $20 from his monthly kitchen pay — equivalent to 50 hours of work)

***

1) I’ve relied on the charity of food pantries several times over the years.
2) It always makes me feel good to buy a meal for someone else.

— Patrick Irving (donated $20 and is encouraging you to do the same)

Visit Idahofoodbank.org to instill a stranger with a valuable memory.

Freedom of Mind: Why Incarceration Doesn’t Have to Define You

By David Joseph Meister
[Shared here with his permission.]

Prison tries to tell you who you are. From the moment you are processed in, you are given a number, a uniform, a set of rules, and the subtle message that your identity is now property of the state. For many men, that message takes root.

I have seen two types of prisoners in my decades here. The first group surrenders completely. Their experience is shaped entirely by others: the guards who bark orders, the administrators who cut programs, the clock that drags them from count to chow to lockdown. They go where they are told, do what they are told, and eventually stop imagining anything beyond these fences. They are alive, but not really living.

The second group chooses a different path. They recognize that while the system can confine your body, it cannot touch your inner world unless you let it. These men take ownership of their time. They read, write, paint, study, exercise, pray, or simply reflect. They refuse to hand over their minds. As I once put it to a friend: “Confinement does not have to define who you  are. Your actions shape how others treat you. Your mindset shapes how you see yourself.”

I know what it is like to teeter between the two. There are days when the weight of this place feels like it is pressing the air out of my lungs. It would be easier to give up, to let the bitterness rot me from the inside out. But I also know that when I choose otherwise, when I pour my energy into  creating something or into understanding myself a little better, I feel free,  even in here.

That choice is available to every person who wakes up behind these walls. And it is a choice that matters, not just for us, but for the world we will eventually reenter. Because men who let prison strip them of purpose often leave here broken. Men who hold onto their agency, even in the smallest ways, are the ones who still have something to offer when they walk out.

The walls are real. The time is real. But so is the freedom you claim inside yourself. The state can take years of your life, but it cannot take your mind unless you hand it over.

For more of my essays and artwork, visit MeisterArchive.com.

Medication alert for Idaho prisoners reliant on long-acting insulin.

[This message delivered over JPay to the Idaho Department of Correction resident population Aug. 29, 2025.]

There is a shortage of long-acting insulin (like Lantus and Semglee) across the country.

Because of this, you will be switched to a different type of insulin and follow a new schedule. The new insulin is called NPH. It needs to be taken twice a day. Unlike your current insulin, which works for 24 hours, NPH only works for about 12 to 18 hours. It also has a peak effect at 4 to 8 hours after you take it, which is different from your current insulin.

At first, your blood sugar might be a little higher. We will start you on a lower dose that can be increased if needed to help control your blood sugar better.

We do not expect your blood sugar to go too low, but because NPH can cause a peak effect, you might have mild symptoms like feeling shaky or sweaty. Please keep a snack nearby just in case.

If your symptoms last or happen a lot, seek medical attention and tell your doctor so they can change your dose.

This shortage is expected to last until the end of the year or into January.

Resident Communications Memo #22: Updated ViaPath Tablet Deployment Schedule

[This memo sent to IDOC residents over JPay Aug. 27, 2025.]

The IC Solutions deployment teams are currently working at Idaho Correctional Institution — Orofino (ICIO) and North Idaho Correctional Institution (NICI). The deployment is going well and we expect both facilities to be successfully transitioned by the end of this week.

Once ICIO and NICI are complete, work will begin at St. Anthonys (SAWC) and Idaho Falls CRC (IFCRC) on September 2nd. Those facilities will be quick, so the teams will then move to Pocatello Womens Correctional Center (PWCC) and Twin Falls CRC (TFCRC) on or around September 4th.

IC Solutions Team 1 will begin work at Nampa CRC on Wednesday September 10th with an anticipated completion date of Thursday September 11th. Once Nampa CRC is complete, they will begin work at Idaho State Correction Center (ISCC).

IC Solutions Team 2 will begin work at Idaho State Correctional Institute (ISCI) on Monday September 8th with an anticipated completion date of Thursday September 18th. Once ISCI is complete, they will begin work at Idaho Maximum Security Institution (IMSI).

Here is another view of the dates work is expected to begin at these facilities:

SAWC — Tuesday September 2 (Team 1)

IFCRC — Tuesday September 2 (Team 2)

PWCC — Thursday September 4 (Team 1)

TFCRC — Thursday September 4 (Team 2)

ISCI — Monday September 8 (Team 2)

Nampa CRC — Wednesday September 10 (Team 1)

TV-CRC, IMSI, SICI, and MVTC will follow. The start dates are tentative depending how smoothly the transition goes for the other facilities. All facilities are expected to be transitioned to ViaPath by September 30th.

Reminder:

After your facility transitions to ViaPath, the JPay tablets will no longer be on Wi-Fi. However, the Kiosks will remain connected to JPay services for a while longer. We do not have an official cut-off date for JPay services yet. The date of the cut-off of JPay services will also be communicated once we know.

If you have any other questions or worries that have not been addressed, you can fill out a Concern Form and send it to Central Office — Contracts.

Multiple murder charges filed over death at Idaho contract prison.

Five men incarcerated at the Saguaro Correction Center — an Idaho contract prison in Eloy, Ariz. — have been charged with first-degree murder for the May 4, 2024 death of 46-year-old Anton Myklebust.

Myklebust was one of roughly 860 men sent by Hawai’i to the CoreCivic facility as a result of the state’s prisons being overcrowded. According to Honolulu Civil Beat reporter Kevin Dayton, he was nearing the end of his 20-year prison sentence for methamphetamine trafficking and kidnapping when he was found beaten and strangled to death.

Idaho and Montana also contract the facility to house their prisoner overflow.

“The Myklebust murder and other violence at the Arizona prison last year prompted the ACLU of Hawai’i to call for a federal investigation of Saguaro. The ACLU has cited a variety of problems at the prison including the murder, a separate inmate stabbing last year and a drug smuggling and overdose deaths,” Dayton writes.

Read Dayton’s full article “6 Charged in Killing of Hawai’i Inmate At Arizona Prison” here.

Sister of man slain in Idaho prison argues for government transparency.

By Hallie Warnock Johnson

A shorter version of this story appeared in the Idaho Statesman on August 3rd, 2025.

Recently, Moscow police released hundreds of unsealed documents related to the University of Idaho murders case, just hours after the sentencing. While disturbing to read, the public has a legal right to access such information.

In April, it was reported that James Johnson was sentenced in the murder of his cellmate (my brother), Milo Warnock, at Idaho State Correctional Center. Weeks after the sentencing, I made a public records request to the Idaho State Police for the investigatory reports in that case. I received a denial citing that law enforcement investigatory records and Department of Correction records are exempt from public disclosure. In actuality, those records may be subject to release, but will require petitioning the denial. At best, the state wishes to impose obstacles to prevent the release of information. At worst, it hides its own incompetence, corruption and culpability. Either way, it is disrespectful to the citizens that it serves.

The right to records isn’t about sensationalizing a tragedy. It’s about ensuring transparency and accountability. Even if no one ever requests a report, the possibility encourages thorough investigations. While the release of records of a civilian murder may shed light on the incident, what outcome do we seek as a result?

When individuals entrusted in the care of the state are harmed, it is of utmost importance that the public has visibility into those transgressions. Incarcerated individuals are a vulnerable population, unable to exercise choices to maximize personal safety. Public access to investigatory reports of government agencies may influence changes that can be enacted to ensure that others are not similarly harmed. We cannot wholly trust that the system will do the right thing in the absence of unbiased oversight and influence of public opinion.

Irrespective of the varying viewpoints regarding justice and incarceration, I believe the majority of my fellow Americans agree that we have a right to information.

About the author:
Hallie Warnock Johnson was raised in Lewiston, Idaho and is a graduate of the University of Idaho. She developed a keen interest in prison reform advocacy after her brother, a non-violent DUI offender, was murdered by his cellmate in an Idaho prison in 2023. Her voice has been captured via letters to the editor in the Idaho Statesman and the Lewiston Tribune. She aims to continue writing and is interested in connecting with action-oriented advocacy groups, and is open to speaking engagements.

By day, Hallie works as a software developer at Amazon. She currently resides in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle with her husband and their (almost) four-year-old son.

Jason Glasscock covers GettingOut fiasco in Wisconsin prisons.

By Jason R. Glascock, Racine Correctional Institution

[Editor’s note: The Idaho Department of Correction is currently in the process of replacing its prison messaging and media provider, JPay, with GettingOut (formerly GTL). The agency’s residents and their loved ones are curious as to what to expect from the new service.

Earlier this year we heard from Wisconsin prisoner Jason Glasscock, who described extreme delays and confusion in a similar switchover. 

Now that Wisconsin’s switchover is complete, Glasscock provides a thorough review of the service. ]

The IC Solutions Getting Out platform is poorly conceived, poorly designed, and poorly implemented across the board; and staff think that it’s inappropriate for prisoners to remark on the system.

The physical devices are eight inch screen tablets that are underpowered and have a high defect rate. While some are just setup incorrectly, others come damaged. The headphone jacks pop and crackle, sometimes painfully, in your ear. Some of the jacks broke after only a month of use.

On the plus side, the screens seem to be calibrated well.

As to network performance, the devices require a consistent Wi-Fi connection. If there is any interruption, the device sends the user back to the login screen.

The servers regularly go down. When they do, the user will experience what they think is content buffering, but the buffering will go on indefinitely. When communications fail through server or networking faults, the included apps hang when they don’t get the expected system messages. On pay-per-minute services, this burns through the users’ funds. Sensible system error handing provisions for imperfect communications and software issues appear to be missing, leading the apps to be stuck in an indefinite state. All we know is that the system stops providing content.

The software can simply be described as bad. It fails often. Screen real estate is taken up by huge headers that do nothing. Virtually all the apps are slow, have poor response time, and are prone to losing history and context. For example, the Westlaw library app has a full third of the screen used for a header. The app will either send the user back to its Home screen or shutdown completely after a few minutes, making research practically impossible.

The email app uses a message thread structure where each contact gets one thread. I can’t start a new thread for the same contact. Also, the number of messages in the threads appear to be related to response time.  After only a month of emailing, some of these threads take 10-12 seconds to load. What will it be after a year? Five years?

Each email is limited to 2,000 characters, but keyboard response time begins to degrade at only 1,000 characters, strongly deterring longer messages. At 1,600 characters the lag badly impedes typing. One aspect of the lag is when backspacing will pause on-screen making the user think that’s the current cursor location, and then it will start again and wipe out several words beyond the intended deletions.

The system uses a keyword scanner to approve or flag messages. If flagged, the email goes to a “pending” status for staff. Staff report that some emails that passed their review are not not being forwarded, and they don’t know why. Emails have been seen to sit in the pending state for up to four days.

The pay-per-minute profiles begin charging the user as soon as the profile is selected. In order to halt the charges the user must log off the tablet. If the tablet loses its Wi-Fi or server connection without logging off, the system will continue to charge the user even though the tablet has become unresponsive. People naturally just turn their devices off and walk away, and the meter remains running.

There is a mechanism for staff to post memos to the tablet such that the user must acknowledge having read them. These memos stay and each require three taps minimum to navigate through, so as these memos increase over the years the number taps and screens will likewise increase. Currently, it takes seven taps to get through what we have, and each memo lags and hangs as the app communicates with the server.

We are still having problems with Pluto TV buffering. Sometimes it buffers for a longer time than it shows content. Buffering appears to be related to network traffic at times, but at 2 AM there aren’t that many people awake using the network and it still buffers, indicating that other causes are also present.

From awkward, burdensome logins to losing context, the entire system gets a 1 out of 5. A fail.

 

James Mancuso covers Idaho beta test of Scandi-neato prison model.

The Idaho Department of Correction’s new Restoring Promise program has received plenty of local media coverage. But none from the nuanced perspective of a journalist embedded in the prison where the program is currently running.

For information you can trust, check out James Mancuso’s latest Prison Journalism Project article, “The Progressive Scandinavian Prison Model Comes to an Idaho Prison.

Idaho prison writer George Thornock shares from his experience as a prison hospice worker.

In the Prison Journalism Project article “The Long Walk Back to My Cell After Watching My Friend Die,” George Thornock brings awareness to hospice work in Idaho prisons.

Thornock is one of my closest, most trusted friends in prison. I remember finding him hours after the events in the article took place, attempting to process the experience by typing it up in the computer lab. It may have been the only time in the last decade that we’ve visited without us both laughing. He told me it was important to make clear that he has always respected and appreciated the staff member involved. But in the moment, the divide between them, supported by protocols, damaged him deep in the soul.