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Between 2016 and 2025, Michelle Shoemaker spent more than $1,000 on songs and games for her tablet — a rudimentary, prison-approved device she purchased from JPay, a subsidiary of the massive prison communications company Aventiv. Her tablet also held hundreds of emails and photographs, including treasured photos and messages from her deceased father, daughter, and mother. One email contained the final words her mother ever wrote to her.

But in March 2025, Shoemaker’s tablet was abruptly confiscated by the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), which had signed a new tablet contract with ViaPath, the prison communications giant formerly known as GTL. None of Shoemaker’s music, games, emails, or photographs were transferred to her new device. The new contract added Tennessee to a growing list of states where incarcerated people have lost purchased digital content due to tablet changes beyond their control. In most cases, the companies profiting off these tablet contracts — including Aventiv and ViaPath — are the same giant corporations that have been exploiting incarcerated people and their families for decades.

In March 2026, Shoemaker and another incarcerated woman, Linda Whitaker, filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada. Their allegations hinge on the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which bans the government from taking a person’s private property “without just compensation.”

“The government can’t take your property without compensating you for it,” Thomas Harvey, an attorney representing Shoemaker and Whitaker, told Truthout. “And in this instance, they not only took their property without compensating for it, they took it in order to enter into a contract with a different provider, so that the state can profit more.”

Under the old JPay contract, Shoemaker and others in Tennessee prisons owned their digital files, paying for a song once and retaining it on their tablets. Under the new ViaPath contract, people have to pay $0.03 to $0.05 per minute to access entertainment via a streaming service. According to the complaint, TDOC receives commissions when people place phone calls or access entertainment on the tablets, with a guaranteed minimum annual payment of approximately $2,225,000.

Free Phone Calls Saved Incarcerated People and Their Loved Ones $622.5 Million

People incarcerated in other states have similarly lost beloved content. In Virginia, Shebri Dillon said the women in her prison had their tablets confiscated without warning in May, and were issued different tablets the following day.

“This switch over has been traumatizing,” Dillon wrote in a message to Truthout. “Some may think that is too strong a word because it’s just music, emails, and pictures. But when one is incarcerated, this is the essence of what we have. It is our coping mechanisms, our connections to family, and memories with our children or those who have passed on.”

Although Dillon said some of her photos transferred over to the new device, “more than half my pictures have not shown up. And I don’t know if they ever will. My children’s graduation pictures, pictures of them as they grow, and pictures of things they wanted to share with me along the way.” She noted that her family had to pay via digital stamps each time they sent those photos.

As of June, she said, officials continue to assure that their purchased music might eventually transfer over to the new devices. “We paid for all these things,” she wrote. “Most institutional residents make $.27 to $.45 an hour. I had over 700 songs at mostly $1.99 a piece. Gone. Still don’t have them back.”

“This is robbery. Of our money, our connections, and our family’s investment. And, most painfully, our hearts,” Dillon said.

People in California prisons are also in the midst of losing their stored photos and messages, as the prison system switches from ViaPath to Securus tablets. And last year, the same thing happened in New Jersey, when the prison system switched from JPay to ViaPath. Like in Tennessee, under New Jersey’s new ViaPath model, people are charged by the minute instead of a flat fee to purchase games, movies, and music outright.

“By changing vendors, I will lose access to photographs from my son’s high school graduation and videos of my grandchild saying his first word, taking his first step and riding his first bike.”

“By changing vendors, I will lose........

© Truthout