Between the Bars

Between the Bars is a blogging platform for one out of every 142 Americans---prisoners---that makes it easy to blog on paper, using standard postal mail. It consists of software tools to make it easy to upload PDF scans of letters, crowd-sourced transcriptions of the scanned images, and the usual full-featured blogging tools including comments, tagging, RSS feeds, and notifications for friends and family when new posts are available.

How might communities use it?
We are designing this system for prisoners in the US, a growing population that is routinely denied access to broadcast media. We hope that prisoners will be able to use this platform to tell their stories, to maintain social connections to the outside world, and to retain a sense of identity and humanity through the process of their incarceration.

Source code will be freely available in a public repository, as well as documentation on how to use the code.

At what stage of development is it?
Early code available on local server; networking with prisons still in early stages.

Next steps include:
(*) Finishing the core functionality of the code and to improve the visual presentation of the site
(*) Networking with local prisoner support organizations who can help evaluate the design and connect us to initial users (expected to be accomplished within 6 months)
(*) Bringing the site live to the general public (expected by year's end).