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March 4, 2020

Cell service: Yale students launch prison communications startup

PHOTO | File image Yale School of Management
By Michael C. Bingham

A group of students from the Yale School of Management and Yale College are working to launch a startup that helps prisoners better communicate with those outside of prison walls.

The enterprise, called Ameelio, is a non-profit technology company that says it is “committed to transforming the criminal justice system” in the United States. Its objective is to facilitate making voice and video calls, sending e-messages and other forms of communication for “those impacted by incarceration” (otherwise known as prisoners).

The underlying philosophy of the enterprise, which last week made a presentation to EMERGE Connecticut, a social-justice enterprise that seeks to ease to transition of former prisoners back into mainstream society, is to reduce recidivism and help the incarcerated remain connected to and engaged with their communities “on the outside.”

Ameelio is also building a nationwide database of prisoners to facilitate electronic and postal communication with and among them. In addition to making available free cellphone and Skype calls to users, the company hopes by June of this year to offer incarcerated users the ability to mail up to four free physical letters per month by supplying them with pre-stamped envelopes.

According to the Yale Daily News, Ameelio will kick off a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the company, which is currently engaged in prototype testing.

Ameelio’s co-founder is Uzoma Orchingwa, a first-year student at Yale SOM who also earned a JD from Yale and a fellowship from the George & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. (A native Chicagoan, Orchingwa’s parents came to the U.S. from Nigeria.)

Ameelio says that some 27 million Americans have a family member or friend currently behind bars. Those citizens spend up to $4 billion annually to communicate with imprisoned loved ones.

The prison telecommunications system, the startup asserts, is dominated by just two private companies valued at more than $1.2 billion. That duopoly compels prisoners to pay up to $1.22 per minute to call someone on the outside, according to Ameelio — 25 times what a non-incarcerated person spends for the same service.

“I’m hopeful that Ameelio will not only serve its primary function as a vessel for hope, friendship and knowledge for incarcerated people, but also that our success will draw attention to the American prison industrial complex and how it exploits and monetizes the challenges of some of society’s most vulnerable groups,” company communications director Adanma Raymond told the YDN.

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