USA Inmates will be Allowed to Purchase MP3 Players and Music

A new program will allow USA federal prison inmates to listen to music on personal MP3 players.

More than 200,000 prisoners will be allowed to have MP3 players, which will be sold to them in the prison commissionaires, and choose from an in-jail house library of about 1 million tracks.

“The MP3 program is intended to help inmates deal with issues such as idleness, stress and boredom associated with incarceration,” bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley told USA Today, adding that “keeping inmates constructively occupied is essential to the safety” of prison staffers and prisoners.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is currently testing out the music program at a women’s unit in West Virginia, but the program is expected to expand to the rest of the system later this year, according to Billingsley.

The program will be managed by an internal system, so the prisoners will not have access to the Internet.

(BG)