The company ViaPath, which sells secure devices and telecommunications services for use in prisons, has announced that inmates across the country will soon be able to enroll in virtual classes through a partnership with Promising People, an education technology company, and American High School, a private online school based in South Florida that will grant the diplomas.
The classes will be available for free on ViaPath’s tablets, 700,000 of which the company says are already in use in nearly 2,000 prisons and jails.
Tony Lowden, Chief Social Impact Officer for ViaPath said, “If you get a high school diploma, you get a secondary education along with some trades and skills, the likelihood of you recidivating back into our prisons are very small.”
Lowden said the high school diploma program will offer a more comprehensive education than existing GED courses and provide inmates with greater earning potential once they’re released. The company said it will also offer career and technical education through virtual reality headsets.
ViaPath maintains that its tablets are free for inmates to use and that it won’t charge for the educational programming. Still, prison telecoms is a lucrative industry, with state and local governments signing multimillion dollar contracts for phone services, tablets and apps that inmates can use for a fee.