More than eight in 10 men and women incarcerated in Massachusetts prisons are using computer tablets for basic education and vocational learning, the state’s Department of Correction announced Wednesday.
The state praised benefits of the technology, citing increases in hours logged and courses completed with the tablets, as a tool for easing people’s return from prison and lower recidivism. Educators and advocates for prisoners welcomed the tablets to expand prison education but also stressed the need for in-person classroom instruction.
“Massachusetts is using innovative tools to expand access to education and job training inside our correctional facilities,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a written statement.
The state prison agency first introduced the tablets in a pilot program four years ago. Since then, it’s expanded the virtual learning tool to reach more than 5,300 people serving sentences across all its prison facilities in 2025.
“We celebrate the expansion of educational access in many forms — and we don’t want to replace what we know is the most potent form of personally transformative education, which is in-person learning,” said Mneesha Gellman, director of the Emerson Prison Initiative at Emerson College.
Gellman, whose program currently teaches 18 college courses to more than 40 men incarcerated at MCI-Norfolk, said that educational research on virtual learning during COVID shutdowns exposed gaps in teaching via screens, instead of in live classrooms.
The Department of Correction did not immediately share the current enrollment or waiting lists for its in-person educational programming, saying that information would require a public records request.
The executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts said that many of their clients have complained about long waits to access classroom learning.
“We’ve heard lots of complaints and challenges about long waiting lists and inaccessible programming, especially at the higher security level facilities,” said Dave Rini, who leads the Boston-based legal services nonprofit.
Rini said the tablets are a welcome addition to educational programming but fall short of the socialization that people in prison need as they prepare to reenter communities.
“There are limitations of [tablets]. They just don’t do all the things that in-person programming do, including some emotional and socializing things, but also some real hard, crunchy things like making sure folks can get certain types of job training,” Rini said.
He added that tablets are not equipped with programming such as violence reduction that are critical to helping people win parole decisions.
Gellman said her teachers have used the tablets to help students in the Norfolk prison access articles for classroom research.
The latest reports show recidivism — or people returning to prison after being released — has been falling in Massachusetts. Advocates and prison officials often point to low recidivism as a key measure of successful support and rehabilitation while incarcerated.
State prison officials said that tablet-users logged more than 446,000 hours on the screens last year, a 20% increase over 2024, posted more than 40% increase in course completions last year compared to 2024.
The tablets’ content offer basic education, vocational courses, resume building, job training and reentry programming and preparation.
In 2022, the correctional department decided not to reapply for more than $2 million in state educational grants that helped fund prison programs. Those state grants had covered 80% of the correctional department’s expenses for educational programs at a high school level or below.
Exiting that grant program also meant that state educational regulators no longer oversaw or inspected the prisons’ classroom programs to make sure they met standards set by the grant.
A GBH News investigation in 2023 found more than half of all those incarcerated in Massachusetts prisons were waiting to get into academic, vocational or technology classes taught in prison. At that time, just 15% of prisoners were actually enrolled in a class, the investigation found.
