Cape Girardeau County Jail switching books for tablets
JACKSON, Mo. (KBSI) – The Cape Girardeau County Jail authorities are no longer giving books to inmates.
Instead, they switched to tablets.
Richard Rushin is a jail administrator. He says the tablets make it easier to jail staff to monitor and manage when it comes to making sure drugs, weapons and fire hazards do not make it into the jail.
“Well, it’s actually something we started months ago. We started having drugs like K-2 that were soaked in the books.”
Rushin adds, “If a family member wants them to have a new book or a different bible all they have to do is bring it to us in j-peg format, we give it to the secure tech, he’ll upload it and then they have access to it.”
Rushin says the switch has been positive for the jail, and crime rates have gone down.
“A lot of people think that when somebodies been arrested they just need to be thrown in and throw the key away, and if you’re sitting in here with nothing to do but look at the walls you become irritated, and you have problems and you can cause frustration that lead into fights and we got people getting injured and honestly since we put the tablets in and gotten rid of the books, things have calmed down quite a bit.” Says, Rushin.
