Prison Bankers Who Profit from the Inmates
time.com
time.com
1: http://www.jpayinc.com/email_videograms.html
"One stamp corresponds to one 6000 character message (about the length of one handwritten page), or one attachment."
"JPay’s correctional email service is faster than regular mail, with inmates usually receiving emails within 48 hours." (emphasis added)
Looking up the pricing for a random facility[2], it's $18 for 40 'stamps', each one of which is good for 1 small attachment or 'page' of text. This is fucking extortion.
2: http://www.jpay.com/Facility-Details/Kentucky-Adult-Institut...
Not to be too pedantic, but that's not extortion. Nobody is required to buy them nor are they threatened by not buying them.
Email doesn't cost more depending on the character count all email costs the same regardless of length same applies to America ISP's like Comcast.
It doesn't cost them more but they do certainly like to charge more what do they both have in common?
They are both for profit companies in an area where they are the only option due to intense lobbying and laws that price any potential competitor out of their market place.
There's a fine balance between regulation and for profit business and when the businesses are paying the regulator directly or indirectly it never ends well.
What code can I write? What broker can I call? What form can I sign? How can I register my civic will so as to undo this blight?
For me, this is the most embarrassing thing about being a United States citizen.
Side note: PayPal allows you to send money to friends and family for free.
More importantly - are those options peaceful? Is that a distinction even worth thinking about?
Also would probably be fraud, and potentially impact the inmate.
Do not call the police. If the police wish to speak with you, on any matter, politely decline. If a known police or corrections employee tries to do business with you or at a place you work, inform them that their kind are not welcome here.
Don't underestimate the extent to which people are driven by the need to be welcomed and accepted by society. Shunning is a powerful tool of social control.
If you're more the "positive" type, consider encouraging your company to drop its official or unofficial policy against hiring felons (I'm making a reasonably safe assumption here). There are subsidies, tax credits, and insurance programs that might help your case, but it's easier to just not bother. Be the troublemaker that makes it easier to do the right thing.
What? So if I'm getting mugged, murdered, or robbed I should just accept it?
Or maybe I should build a personal arsenal so as to protect myself from all possible threats from criminals?
This all sounds ridiculously Hobbesian to me.
I'm no fan of the police, but the alternative isn't a state of nature.
You might see neighbours across the street being loud, call the police and they come to your house instead and shoot your dog.
So by no means call if you have but know how to interact with them.
I find it interesting that out of three examples, you happened to list one where the police can't possibly intercede without already being there, and your calling only serves to start a pretend hunt for lost property (hint: finding your stolen laptop is not their top priority), but will serve as justification if they want to rough up some local tough later.
Again, what do you think the police are going to do if you've already been mugged? I'm genuinely curious as to why you listed that as a case you should call the police in.
Call the police to report a crime. Pick another method of protest.
That seems a) unnecessary because they have other channels for the same information, and b) easily replaceable by a one-way interaction, eg, throwing the fact at them without providing an official statement.
Mugging statements are used to create suspect profiles that often target people of the same race who only happen to have a passing resemblance (eg, being black with the same color shirt), and can lead to violence or death when the police chase the wrong person.
That you want the police to distribute themselves different is a pretty weak excuse to send them chasing off after potentially innocent people.
Your comment might me more meaningful if police didn't routinely chase, injure, and kill the wrong person because they got confused about a description.
There was a recent story about a lady who called the police when someone kicked in her door. She hid on the roof while the criminal looked for her. The police came and got the criminal and took her off the roof. Should she have not called the police when the guy kicked in her door?
The specific case I pointed out was mugging, which is when someone stops you on the street and steals from you, typically meant to include an implied threat of violence, eg, "Give me your purse or I'll fucking shoot you"
I found it interesting that out of three cases, I thought that calling the police was only the correct response to two of them, precisely because unless the police are already on their way when you get mugged, the mugging will be over before there's a chance for you to even call them.
My comment was meant specifically to point out that even when trying to list reasonable times to call the police, the person only seemed to get 2/3 being times the police would actually help the situation in any sense.
Did the thought ever cross your mind that the police may be able to get security footage from a nearby storefront to identify the assailant or that they might be able to give you a ride home after you lost all of your money, identification, and phone? Or did you just assume police are mobile morons who serve no purpose other than to shoot and beat people?
I'm aware that police do this when investigating crimes. However, this is also a source of misidentifying people, which often ends poorly. Young, black, and in a yellow shirt? Must be the first black guy we see in a yellow shirt!
I find it unlikely that your call is going to lead to a correct prosecution over a mugging, and further think that you need to counterbalance your want to feel better and more secure by calling big tough guys with guns with the very real prospect you're going to get someone else harassed, hurt, or killed.
> did you just assume police are mobile morons who serve no purpose other than to shoot and beat people?
I don't assume they're morons, nor that they think that's what their purpose is. However, they had to get investigated and forced in to a settlement by the federal DoJ for racially motivated policing and a record of unnecessary violence, including stomping a restrained man in a cell while screaming they'd beat "the Mexican piss out of him", regularly hassling the wrong black person who didn't even match the description given but just happened to be within a few blocks, and shooting a Native American woodcarver multiple times in the back while he was peacefully crossing the street because he was "armed" with a carving knife.
I didn't assume that they were psychotic thugs on a powertrip, no, they demonstrate that the police agency is completely unwilling to deal with these psychopaths in their ranks and instead will shield them from consequence. (They fought federal reform of their criminal policing tooth and nail - and still do to this day.)
When I go a month without hearing about how the local police brutally assaulted or murdered an innocent person, I'll stop acting like the local police force routinely assaults or murders citizens.
And until then, people calling the police need to realize that some police are psychopaths who will brutally assault or murder citizens in response to their call.
Any time someone creates a throw-away account to post a pro-government opinion, I immediately assume it's GCHQ/JTRIG.
I'm not in the US, but my brother got his cellphone back after it was stolen (not even mugged, so he didn't even see the thief). It probably helped that it was a device with built-in localization systems, though.
But in general, filing a police report is mandatory around here if you want to activate your insurance policy.
The vast, vast majority of American police are friendly and helpful to the average citizen. I've called the police about all sorts of things and had professional interactions each time. I wouldn't hesitate to do it again if I needed to, and I live in a city with a reputation for iffy cops. In my personal experience, that's not how it's been.
Of course, I'm middle class and white. When I had long hair and drove an old car, my experiences were somewhat different, but not that bad even then. Enough, though, that I can imagine if I was a different race or economic class my experience would be different.
Edit: alternatively, maybe the stripe guys could fund/seed a philanthropic off-shoot to tackle this?
"To impress state corrections officials and gain their business, JPay spends heavily on industry conventions attended by agency heads with contracting authority. During a 2012 convention of the American Correctional Association, the company threw what it called an “END OF THE WORLD PARTY” at a Denver wine bar that bills itself as “about you, and your inalienable right to the unbridled enjoyment of food and wine.”
The invitation, printed on a disposable beer coaster, promised “a bash, JPay-style: fuerte tequila, hand-rolled cigars, a live mariachi band.” Conventioneers could catch a JPay shuttle leaving from the hotel “ALL NIGHT LONG,” it said."
I refuse to believe this.
AUSTIN, R. 2004. Shame of It All: Stigma and the Political Disenfranchisement of Formerly Convicted and Incarcerated Persons, The. Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev., 36, 173.
Corrections officers have strong unions with ironwood support from their legislators, so it is very difficult to get the executive branch in most states to care about anyth that pisses the unions off.
Most common people have no incentive apart from the moral appeal of it unless they are directly effected by this injustice. The press is largely a privately owned business these days and rest of the system has a lot of vested interest in keeping this unjust system up and running.
The opportunities available for the future are ripe for a startup but no thinks of startups in Corrections.
Do not sell to police.
https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/aclu-national-prison-p...
Regardless of whether you're inclined to give them your money/time, their site is worth reading to get an overview of the specific issues here.
[1]http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long-distance-c...
Like a $0.10 / kilobyte overage charge on cell phone data plans.
We need to decriminalise drug possession and sales, and focus on restitution for cases of theft, fraud, etc. The people in jail should be mostly murderers, rapists, and people who have shown themselves to be an active threat to society. And even then I'm not actually convinced that jail is the best solution, but let's tackle one problem at a time.
(Sidebar: a different Wikipedia page says the US incarceration rate is actually the highest, not second. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...)
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...
The pigs from 1984 would blush over this stuff.
> The drumbeat since Reagan has been that private companies
Companies! Plural! The free market cannot exist when there is One True Company that the government let operate and Oh! See! The One True Company is charging too much so clearly free markets don't work.
Please.
More generally, I'm not saying that the free market doesn't work. I do think market solutions are merely tools to be used in appropriate situations. And when the potential for abuse is high, as with prisons and other traditional functions of government, private organizations are not appropriate, because private industry has the wrong values and the wrong culture for the situation.
Ok, so lest we shift the conversation - as right now we're talking about the specific prison and the specific banking corporation that this prison is using as described in the full article - please tell me who is the competitor to JPay.
Don't give me "different departments of corrections" blah blah blah. I'm arguing the system as explained in the article is broken specifically because JPay is not competing in a free market, i.e. it has no competitors. You seem to disagree. So please tell me the names of JPay's competitors.
Thank you.
Arguing between "oh is it the government, or the market? don't know let's have a long discussion about it". The article clearly shows there isn't much of a separation between. These companies (in this case single company) is heavily lobbying and bribing government officials with kickbacks and such tricks.
I wouldn't be surprised that when some prison official retires she/he gets to work as a "consultant" for JPay.
Hell, these people are infants compared to what is going on in the rest of the industries -- military, healthcare, agrobiz, telecoms.
Repeat after me "the there is no effective difference between the governmental agencies and the large companies and conglomerates". It is the same people just playing musical chairs. FDA chairman worked for Monsanto (as an example). Ex procurement general works for Northrop Grumman and so on.
Objectively, can anyone say that isn't a rational outcome of a the "free market"? I can't. The best and easiest way to turn a profit at that scale is regulatory capture. A few millions in bribes have a chance of getting back billions in profits in the future.
Moreover, laying all the blame at the feet of government for these companies being scumbags is precisely why I said private industry has the wrong culture for this sort of thing.
No, the government is the entity making a selection among several choices, and is the entity in the position to negotiate the rates.
Therefore they could bargain for lower rates if they wanted.
Misrepresenting the choices isn't making your case.
The government is the entity with power here. The government regularly dictates all kinds of terms for their contracts. All the time.
JPay’s rapid rise stems in part from the generous deal it offers many prison systems. They pay nothing to have JPay take over handling financial transfers. And for every payment it accepts in these states — prisoners typically receive about one per month — the company sends between 50 cents and $2.50 back to the prison operator.
The government does have the power, and they most likely are outsourcing this part of their non core infrastructure like most other companies do, to save money.
But Lower rates for whom? Inmates. Why would prison officials care if inmates get lower rates?
You can't answer the question for a reason bub.
There are a lot of prisons out there, state, local, federal, private and public and they use a wide range of companies. However, they have little incentive to allow multiple venders at the same time so there is little real completion after the fact.
In other payment related areas where honest procurement happens, there are a number of companies in the market -- for example welfare EBT card systems are managed nationwide by 5-7 different large payment processors.
Sounds to me that JPay found a loophole in contract law that allowed them to burrow into the bureaucracy. Once a vendor digs in as an incumbent, it's hard to dislodge them.
The ones who decide are the prisons themselves, so they don't care if the inmates and their families get even more milked, all they are incentivized to care is their commissions (so JPay and consorts are encouraged to milk even more the inmates to please the authorities).
So it's an example where the free market doesn't work.
JPay or JPay? What will the benevolent invisible hand pick. It is anyone's guess really.
> The free market cannot exist
That much I agree with.
> ... when there is One True Company that the government let operate and Oh!
Guess what happens if there there is a second JPay? Yes. It gets gobbled up by the first and becomes The One True Company.
It is as if the invisible hand of the market is really invisible, maybe even a fantasy. And in reality it needs a very visible hand of lobbyists and government. To either exert laws in its favor. Or constant "adjustment" via monopoly laws to prevent showing the obvious failure with the "free market".
"JPay is protected from other market forces, as well. When states offer its music players and tablet computers for sale to inmates, they often confiscate radios that people already own, according to inmates in Ohio. This leaves inmates dependent on JPay’s music downloads, which can cost 30 to 50 percent more than the same songs on iTunes, inmates say."
I'm confused, are you defending this company and its practices are merely railing against government? Atleast with the government, there is a bit of oversight. It seems like JPay is a monopoly thanks to bribery and their CEO's lack of morality.
Edits: spelling
No.
The answer we came up with was a nonprofit that could develop strong relationships with civic institutions and be free from conflicts of interest and profit motives. This is a very poorly incentivized market, and startups will have a tough time disrupting the existing players because such perverse incentives exist. If anyone is interested in learning more, feel free to shoot me a message, and I'm happy to chat.
FYI, JPay is moving into all modes of communications and media, including email, video chats, music, etc. For families looking to keep in touch with their loved ones in jail, they are essentially the Apple in jails.
Both involve a monopoly on banking, granted by the government, to enrich government-selected corporations, at the expense of non-bankers.
No need to go back to the middle ages to find analogies. :)
My blood pressure was shooting up as I read that article. I don't mind people charging a fee for providing better service. But in this case, this human leech is just spreading more misery. Why must these people abuse others this way? I hope, when he is on his deathbed, this fucker suffers the most unimaginable amount of pain for a long time.
This is what you get in a privatised system. Money must be made and an ATM in the common area is not going to do that.
http://www.alternet.org/story/155199/private_prison_corporat...
You take a man and you spend ten years teaching him that he is beyond the law. That the law does not apply to him. That he can rape someone and the law will look the other way, or that he can be raped and the authorities will offer him no protection, no respite. Theft, robbery, assault, murder. Crimes committed regularly, all around this man, and he sees every day that he can commit these crimes and the law will not apply, he can be a victim of these crimes and the law will not apply. The U.S. teaches a man for a decade that none of the rules apply to him; that he is above the law is demonstrated to him over and over and over again.
And then when he's released, having been taught this day in, day out, brutally, every damn day for a decade, it's a fucking surprise that he commits a crime?
I'm not a sociologist and I'm not going to look for links, but I'm pretty sure there is a strong correlation between poverty and crime. Now certainly correlation doesn't mean causation... but is keeping people in poverty more likely to cause or to prevent crime? But this question might make the bad assumption that the intent of the criminal justice system is to prevent crime in the first place.
We all pay for crime. Something to keep in mind. Social justice is more than just feeling good and being fair. It's about practicality also.
I have a hard time believing this. Does any one have experience in this space? The way I understand it, it really shouldn't cost $6+ for an electronic transaction.
CCA, Corrections Corporation of America, is publicly-traded REIT, as is GEO Group. Anybody here with access to the American public equities markets can purchase shares of stock in CXW or GEO.