Photopatch app improves prison communication among families

Twelve-year-old Jay’aina Patton was 3-years-old when her father was sent to prison.

During her early years, she spent a lot of her time attempting to communicate with her father, Antoine Patton, who was serving a jail sentence for possession of an illegal weapon.

“My daughter would send me letters and photos,” Antoine said. “Wanting redemption so bad is what really helped change my life.”

Following his release, Antoine and his daughter found a way to use their experience to help other families in a similar situation.

Child Trends, a Maryland-based research center, found that more than five million children in the United States, or 7 percent, have had a parent who lived with them go to jail as of 2015. It often leads to poor mental and physical health in adulthood. But a new app can improve upon the outdated communication system between families when a parent becomes incarcerated.

“My dad is the one who actually inspired me to create this app,” Jay’aina said, a 7th grader at Trafalgar Middle School in Cape Coral. “What steps it takes and the process it takes to be able to talk or stay in contact with your incarcerated parents. I just wanted to make a more convenient way for them.”

Jay’aina’s solution is an app called, “Photopatch.” The free app allows children to send messages to their loved one in jail, similar to how a child texts his or her mother on a smartphone.

Volunteers with the Pattons’ Photopatch non-profit then print the photos and deliver them — free of charge — to jails. But with any innovation, there is abuse, and prisons have already applied the foresight to have the photos undergo the same review process as other deliveries to jails.

That hasn’t impeded the success of Photopatch. Since its launch in April, it has over 9,500 downloads.

The goal moving forward: To expand the reach of Photopatch. The daughter and father team plan to incorporate virtual reality in a future version of the app.

“We’ve helped over a thousand families communicate with their loved ones,” Jay’aina said. “We hope to just help more families.”