The majority of jobs in the US require the use of computers. This is only expected to increase over time. According to the Washington Post, only four states allow inmates access to the internet. Not only is this denying inmates the ability to communicate with their friends and relatives, which might ease their transition back into society, it is denying them the opportunity to learn essential skills for modern jobs.
The main argument against giving inmates access to technology is that it may enable them to facilitate criminal activity from behind bars. Incoming and outgoing letters to prisons are screened, for good reason: mobsters have ordered hits from jail by mail. However, there are technological solutions to this problem. For one, it’s possible to enable read-only access to sites such as Wikipedia and news sites by using a local cache. The idea is that a local server copies the requested website, and serves this copy to inmates. This local server can simply block certain kinds of outgoing HTTP requests (like PUT) which might enable an inmate to engage in illegal activity. It’s a bit more complicated than this, but not much more. There may also be a legitimate reason to block sites that detail how to build explosives using common chemicals that might be found in a prison, make improvised weapons, etc., but there are existing filters that do quite a good job at this.
In any case, we need to weigh the potential benefits against the potential harms. Our society has undergone some quite radical changes over the past twenty years, from the codification of gays rights, to the exposing of rape culture. It does not serve the interests of inmates, nor of society, for inmates to lack the ability to research these issues on their own. Most people who enter prison will one day re-enter society. The question we should be asking ourselves is: do we want these people to feel connected with the broader world or not?