Roger Clark Bretz, an inmate at the Polk County jail in Des Moines, spends time using a tablet on Friday, March 24, 2017. The tablets, powered by Android, feature limited online capabilities and cost the inmates five cents per minute of use. Bretz said he uses it mainly to keep in touch with his family.(Photo: Bryon Houlgrave/The Register)
It's a new and exciting time for inmates at Polk County Jail! Now they can watch movies, play video games and even access websites from personal Tablets provided free of charge by private company Telmate.
The company has provided 97 tablets to the jail at no cost. The company owns the devices and collects the cents per minute directly from inmates' jail commissary accounts.