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Prison Bankers Who Profit from the Inmates

164 points by nthitz 12y ago

beloch 12y ago
This is a state-granted monopoly and it's being abused. The services JPay offers should either be government run or open to free market competition.
- innguest 12y ago
  How can we trust the government to solve this when it was the government that created the problem to begin with?
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Bullshit. As noted in the article, everything was fine (pay $1.50 for a money order and $0.50 for postage) until people pushed to get private contractors involved. You can say "government created the problem" but that's totally obtuse. Should people who commit armed robbery (like the man in the article) not be in jail? If they should be, someone has to take care of their logistical needs. The drumbeat since Reagan has been that private companies should handle the logistics, because government is inefficient. Well governments responded, and what we are seeing is that the svrice of the for-profit corporations dwarfs the inefficiency of government.
    - innguest 12y ago
      You're being myopic on purpose. > 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.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        There isn't "one company." Different departments of corrections have contracted to hire companies to handle deposits, just as your business might contract with a company to outsource some service. 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.
        innguest 12y ago
        > There isn't "one company." 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.
        rayiner 12y ago
        Is your assertion that there is no free market just because any given prison only contracts with one payment service? Is there no free market in cleaning services because my building only contracts with one provider? Is it only a free market if every individual transaction is put up for bidding?
        waterlesscloud 12y ago
        Who makes the decision to contract with that one payment serivce? Is it the government? If so, is it the government that's making the bad decisions or the payment service?
        rdtsc 12y ago
        Does it matter? It is the inmates and their family who get scammed in the end. 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.
      - S4M 12y ago
        The problem I see here is that the inmates and their families don't have a word to say in what company is managing the prison logistics. 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.
        3pt14159 12y ago
        How is the prisons deciding the free market? Shouldn't the inmates choose thier banks, toothpaste, etc?
      - rdtsc 12y ago
        > Companies! Plural! 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".
  - disposition2 12y ago
    I doubt the government would be doing this: "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
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      Who is confiscating the radios? JPay? No.
      - donaldsfone 12y ago
        You cant have two devices at a time (prison security) - so if inmate buys an mp3 player he has to give up his walkman
    - donaldsfone 12y ago
      Lack of marality? Do you not see the writer's total bias? The guy is just a regular entreprenuer who is being brought down by an over eager (crappy) journalist.
mercurial 12y ago
The cynical way prisoners are exploited is reminiscent of the way prisons in the middle ages were run, except they didn't have marketers back then.
- innguest 12y ago
  To me it is reminiscent of the way our government (and most others) works. 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. :)
  - mercurial 12y ago
    I was more thinking of how prisoners used to be nickel and dimed by gaolers back in the day.
jMyles 12y ago
The only question that rings to me anymore about these stories: What can I do? 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.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deadfall 12y ago
  I am a victim of these ridiculous fees. I thought about how someone was getting rich and I justified the fees because of the convenience. It most certainly cut back how much I sent and how frequently I used it. This directly affects the incarcerated person. Side note: PayPal allows you to send money to friends and family for free.
  - egwor 12y ago
    Question: why can't paypal be used here as a viable competing solution?
    - Swannie 12y ago
      Because the inmates need to convert their balance into goods in the prison. They don't have cash, just an "account" with the prison operator.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  Pretty much "diddly squat".
  - ajb 12y ago
    A genuine question: What do you think is utility of this reply? Have you thought about what effect this and similar comments might have (in aggregate) on the political process?
notahacker 12y ago
This looks like a nice gig to have too, running an app-store for a (literally) captive market of over a million people: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-14/the-apple-of-the-u-dot-s-dot-prison-system http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-14/the-apple-of...
noonespecial 12y ago
So they bribe and kick-back their way through the year and then throw a big party (ahh 'convention') in Vegas where they give each other awards while sucking down premium liquor, hand-rolled cigars, and no doubt metric tons of the stuff half of their inmates are in prison for. The pigs from 1984 would blush over this stuff.
- brudgers 12y ago
  Animal Farm is Orwell 's dystopia with pigs.
  - noonespecial 12y ago
    Doh. Dys-topia-phasia strikes me yet again.
breitling 12y ago
"He says he charges only as much as he must to maintain a razor-thin profit margin." 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.
- ajiang 12y ago
  I used to do work in this space and personally diligenced JPay for investment purposes. Their profit margins are low for the same reason most successful startups have no profit - growth. They're growing incredibly fast, investing in sales and marketing efforts (as well as the 'commissions'). Take out the growth aspects, you have a company with very high gross margins.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Is this company in any sense a startup? They seem like a utility to me. I've never seen any ads they've run, and I can't imagine an ad volume that would justify $6 emails, so "sales and marketing" seems to be a euphemism for "lobbying, bribery, and personal entertainment slush-fund". This much basically-stolen money being thrown around is bound to erode ethics. It will surprise no one if multiple principals of this firm get to use these services personally within the decade.
    - donaldsfone 12y ago
      pEOPLe you're all talking out of total ignorance. Jpay has huge capex - since none of you know anything about business ill explain - they spend millions upon millions of dollars deploying networks and computer banks in prisons for inmates to access these services. Now you know why their margins are high? Understand why they charge for email? If they were gouging customers people would send snail mail. You are all plain dumb. And I'm a former customer who used to pay these damn fees!
      - jessaustin 12y ago
        Nice sock-puppet, Shapiro. I hope you lose the rest of your hair.
Fjolsvith 12y ago
The prison phone systems are also bilking families. In the Alaska prison system, I had to call collect to my family. Phone calls were limited to 15 minutes and they cost my family $33 per call. I hated calling them because I felt so bad about that cost.
- cgag 12y ago
  They normally charge outrageous amounts for long distance calls, which is basically all their calls. Last year the FCC limited the max rate of calls to 25 cents a minute, or 3.75 for a 15 minute call. Still outrageous, but at least not as insane. They usually charge much less for local calls, and there are a lot of services that will set up a number local to the prison and forward calls to cell phones. It's easy enough to set a number yourself with twilio if you're technically inclined, but most people with family in prisons are unfamiliar with things like twilio or google voice. [1]http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long-distance-calling-rates-paid-inmates http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long-distance-c...
  - saalweachter 12y ago
    Yeah, there's outrageous and there's extortion. Like a $0.10 / kilobyte overage charge on cell phone data plans.
    - rhizome 12y ago
      Imagine not being allowed to own a cellphone.
  - Fjolsvith 12y ago
    Unfortunately, most prisons don't allow calling to a cell phone in their rules. Violating it can result in full suspension of your phone privileges.
Fjolsvith 12y ago
CCA (Community Corrections of America) is owned by a group of judges, I believe. They run for-profit inmate holding centers across the US.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  > CCA (Community Corrections of America) is owned by a group of judges, I believe. 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.
discardorama 12y ago
I don't understand. Why can't the state let a bank put a bloody ATM (or several) in a common area, and let the inmates use debit cards? 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.
- pan69 12y ago
  >> Why can't the state let a bank put a bloody ATM (or several) in a common area, and let the inmates use debit cards? 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_corporations_are_modern_day_slave_traders http://www.alternet.org/story/155199/private_prison_corporat...
  - discardorama 12y ago
    Is it any wonder then, that when the prisoners get out, they turn to crime? We are subjecting them to a selfish, dog-eat-dog world every day; we are harassing them, taking advantage of them (and their families) when they're the weakest; and then we expect them to come out and behave like model citizens??
    - EliRivers 12y ago
      It's worse than that. As an eye-catching example to lead in, the United States is the only country in the world in which more men are raped than women. The U.S. authorities know this is the case, and they know that they have created lawless societies in which they force people to live, without protection. 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?
penguindev 12y ago
Amateurs. We're all prisoners to ZIRP, QE, 'collectible' taxes on gold, and central banking which is all legalized counterfeiting for the .01%
mindcrime 12y ago
There is a lot that one could say about this, but let me throw this in the mix: a big part of the problem is simply that we (the US) have far, far too many people incarcerated and "in the system" to begin with. The US ranks second only to the Seychelles in terms of "prisoner count per 100,000 of population"[1], at 707. And many of those people are in jail for non-violent crimes, or crimes for which restitution would be a better consequence than jail. 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_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...
bliksem 12y ago
What an utterly sick, broken system. Cannot contain my despair at this.
jqm 12y ago
Another shameful story about the criminal justice system in the US.... I wish I were more shocked. 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.
concerto 12y ago
Two stories next to each other on the home page with someone called Ryan Shapiro in them, in both cases he is 37. One where he is an foia activist [1], and this one where he runs a company profiting from prisoner's families. Are they the same people or is this just a strange coincidence? [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642
- jonas21 12y ago
  Coincidence. This is the FOIA activist: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-fbi-files-lawsuit http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapir...
trhway 12y ago
making profit out of prisons, in all shape and forms, is a such unbelievable conflict of interests. It is the ultimate monopoly - monopoly of force and violence - that is being abused by existence of any revenue stream associated with prison system.
eltondegeneres 12y ago
The solution isn't making a more efficient competitor to Jpay. The solution is abolishing prisons. Angela Davis has written a good short book on this subject called "Are Prisons Obsolete?".
- mercurial 12y ago
  Well, that may be a bit of a stretch (are you really going to put seasoned killers in the street?). A first step would be ensure that inmates and their families are not treated like animals. Unfortunately, this is also a societal choice, and that's something often difficult to sensitize the citizenry to. A system like this prospers because both JPay and the authorities benefit from it, and because neither US citizens or the press, who could do something about it, care about what happens.
gergles 12y ago
They also operate the e-mail system that can be used to send e-mail to/from inmates (using a JPay tablet, of course). You have to purchase 'stamps'. For e-mails.[1] 1: http://www.jpayinc.com/email_videograms.html 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-Institutions/Kentucky-State-Penitentiary.aspx http://www.jpay.com/Facility-Details/Kentucky-Adult-Institut...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- hueving 12y ago
  >This is fucking extortion. Not to be too pedantic, but that's not extortion. Nobody is required to buy them nor are they threatened by not buying them.
  - tankenmate 12y ago
    In the EU this would be considered extortion because you have a right to a family life; unconscionable profit at the expense of this right might be considered illegal, especially if it was the only service available (e.g. banking, family visit, letters etc)
- Fuxy 12y ago
  I find it extremely hilarious since this is no different than the ridiculous data caps most american ISP's add to the contract. 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.
ajiang 12y ago
For the record, it's this exact injustice that kicked off Bayes Impact. Pyduan and I sat at dinner talking about my past life in private equity where I spent a lot of time looking at private prison companies, including JPay. There are huge barriers of entry into these markets, particularly in having close relationships with the decision makers: commissioners of the Department of Corrections. 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.
hyperliner 12y ago
There is a good lesson in this article that is getting lost in the debate. The lesson is don't go around committing armed robberies. You are screwing your family. More specifically, you are punishing your mother.

164 points by nthitz 12y ago

This is a state-granted monopoly and it's being abused. The services JPay offers should either be government run or open to free market competition.

innguest 12y ago
How can we trust the government to solve this when it was the government that created the problem to begin with?
- rayiner 12y ago
  Bullshit. As noted in the article, everything was fine (pay $1.50 for a money order and $0.50 for postage) until people pushed to get private contractors involved. You can say "government created the problem" but that's totally obtuse. Should people who commit armed robbery (like the man in the article) not be in jail? If they should be, someone has to take care of their logistical needs. The drumbeat since Reagan has been that private companies should handle the logistics, because government is inefficient. Well governments responded, and what we are seeing is that the svrice of the for-profit corporations dwarfs the inefficiency of government.
  - innguest 12y ago
    You're being myopic on purpose. > 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.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      There isn't "one company." Different departments of corrections have contracted to hire companies to handle deposits, just as your business might contract with a company to outsource some service. 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.
      - innguest 12y ago
        > There isn't "one company." 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.
        rayiner 12y ago
        Is your assertion that there is no free market just because any given prison only contracts with one payment service? Is there no free market in cleaning services because my building only contracts with one provider? Is it only a free market if every individual transaction is put up for bidding?
        waterlesscloud 12y ago
        Who makes the decision to contract with that one payment serivce? Is it the government? If so, is it the government that's making the bad decisions or the payment service?
        rdtsc 12y ago
        Does it matter? It is the inmates and their family who get scammed in the end. 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.
    - S4M 12y ago
      The problem I see here is that the inmates and their families don't have a word to say in what company is managing the prison logistics. 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.
      - 3pt14159 12y ago
        How is the prisons deciding the free market? Shouldn't the inmates choose thier banks, toothpaste, etc?
    - rdtsc 12y ago
      > Companies! Plural! 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".
- disposition2 12y ago
  I doubt the government would be doing this: "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
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Who is confiscating the radios? JPay? No.
    - donaldsfone 12y ago
      You cant have two devices at a time (prison security) - so if inmate buys an mp3 player he has to give up his walkman
  - donaldsfone 12y ago
    Lack of marality? Do you not see the writer's total bias? The guy is just a regular entreprenuer who is being brought down by an over eager (crappy) journalist.

mercurial 12y ago

The cynical way prisoners are exploited is reminiscent of the way prisons in the middle ages were run, except they didn't have marketers back then.

innguest 12y ago
To me it is reminiscent of the way our government (and most others) works. 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. :)
- mercurial 12y ago
  I was more thinking of how prisoners used to be nickel and dimed by gaolers back in the day.

jMyles 12y ago

The only question that rings to me anymore about these stories: What can I do? 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.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deadfall 12y ago
I am a victim of these ridiculous fees. I thought about how someone was getting rich and I justified the fees because of the convenience. It most certainly cut back how much I sent and how frequently I used it. This directly affects the incarcerated person. Side note: PayPal allows you to send money to friends and family for free.
- egwor 12y ago
  Question: why can't paypal be used here as a viable competing solution?
  - Swannie 12y ago
    Because the inmates need to convert their balance into goods in the prison. They don't have cash, just an "account" with the prison operator.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Pretty much "diddly squat".
- ajb 12y ago
  A genuine question: What do you think is utility of this reply? Have you thought about what effect this and similar comments might have (in aggregate) on the political process?

notahacker 12y ago

This looks like a nice gig to have too, running an app-store for a (literally) captive market of over a million people: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-14/the-apple-of-the-u-dot-s-dot-prison-system http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-14/the-apple-of...

noonespecial 12y ago

So they bribe and kick-back their way through the year and then throw a big party (ahh 'convention') in Vegas where they give each other awards while sucking down premium liquor, hand-rolled cigars, and no doubt metric tons of the stuff half of their inmates are in prison for. The pigs from 1984 would blush over this stuff.

brudgers 12y ago
Animal Farm is Orwell 's dystopia with pigs.
- noonespecial 12y ago
  Doh. Dys-topia-phasia strikes me yet again.

breitling 12y ago

"He says he charges only as much as he must to maintain a razor-thin profit margin." 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.

ajiang 12y ago
I used to do work in this space and personally diligenced JPay for investment purposes. Their profit margins are low for the same reason most successful startups have no profit - growth. They're growing incredibly fast, investing in sales and marketing efforts (as well as the 'commissions'). Take out the growth aspects, you have a company with very high gross margins.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Is this company in any sense a startup? They seem like a utility to me. I've never seen any ads they've run, and I can't imagine an ad volume that would justify $6 emails, so "sales and marketing" seems to be a euphemism for "lobbying, bribery, and personal entertainment slush-fund". This much basically-stolen money being thrown around is bound to erode ethics. It will surprise no one if multiple principals of this firm get to use these services personally within the decade.
  - donaldsfone 12y ago
    pEOPLe you're all talking out of total ignorance. Jpay has huge capex - since none of you know anything about business ill explain - they spend millions upon millions of dollars deploying networks and computer banks in prisons for inmates to access these services. Now you know why their margins are high? Understand why they charge for email? If they were gouging customers people would send snail mail. You are all plain dumb. And I'm a former customer who used to pay these damn fees!
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Nice sock-puppet, Shapiro. I hope you lose the rest of your hair.

Fjolsvith 12y ago

The prison phone systems are also bilking families. In the Alaska prison system, I had to call collect to my family. Phone calls were limited to 15 minutes and they cost my family $33 per call. I hated calling them because I felt so bad about that cost.

cgag 12y ago
They normally charge outrageous amounts for long distance calls, which is basically all their calls. Last year the FCC limited the max rate of calls to 25 cents a minute, or 3.75 for a 15 minute call. Still outrageous, but at least not as insane. They usually charge much less for local calls, and there are a lot of services that will set up a number local to the prison and forward calls to cell phones. It's easy enough to set a number yourself with twilio if you're technically inclined, but most people with family in prisons are unfamiliar with things like twilio or google voice. [1]http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long-distance-calling-rates-paid-inmates http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-reduces-high-long-distance-c...
- saalweachter 12y ago
  Yeah, there's outrageous and there's extortion. Like a $0.10 / kilobyte overage charge on cell phone data plans.
  - rhizome 12y ago
    Imagine not being allowed to own a cellphone.
- Fjolsvith 12y ago
  Unfortunately, most prisons don't allow calling to a cell phone in their rules. Violating it can result in full suspension of your phone privileges.

Fjolsvith 12y ago

CCA (Community Corrections of America) is owned by a group of judges, I believe. They run for-profit inmate holding centers across the US.

7Figures2Commas 12y ago
> CCA (Community Corrections of America) is owned by a group of judges, I believe. 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.

discardorama 12y ago

I don't understand. Why can't the state let a bank put a bloody ATM (or several) in a common area, and let the inmates use debit cards? 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.

pan69 12y ago
>> Why can't the state let a bank put a bloody ATM (or several) in a common area, and let the inmates use debit cards? 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_corporations_are_modern_day_slave_traders http://www.alternet.org/story/155199/private_prison_corporat...
- discardorama 12y ago
  Is it any wonder then, that when the prisoners get out, they turn to crime? We are subjecting them to a selfish, dog-eat-dog world every day; we are harassing them, taking advantage of them (and their families) when they're the weakest; and then we expect them to come out and behave like model citizens??
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    It's worse than that. As an eye-catching example to lead in, the United States is the only country in the world in which more men are raped than women. The U.S. authorities know this is the case, and they know that they have created lawless societies in which they force people to live, without protection. 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?

penguindev 12y ago

Amateurs. We're all prisoners to ZIRP, QE, 'collectible' taxes on gold, and central banking which is all legalized counterfeiting for the .01%

mindcrime 12y ago

There is a lot that one could say about this, but let me throw this in the mix: a big part of the problem is simply that we (the US) have far, far too many people incarcerated and "in the system" to begin with. The US ranks second only to the Seychelles in terms of "prisoner count per 100,000 of population"[1], at 707. And many of those people are in jail for non-violent crimes, or crimes for which restitution would be a better consequence than jail. 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_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...

bliksem 12y ago

What an utterly sick, broken system. Cannot contain my despair at this.

jqm 12y ago

Another shameful story about the criminal justice system in the US.... I wish I were more shocked. 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.

concerto 12y ago

Two stories next to each other on the home page with someone called Ryan Shapiro in them, in both cases he is 37. One where he is an foia activist [1], and this one where he runs a company profiting from prisoner's families. Are they the same people or is this just a strange coincidence? [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8390642

jonas21 12y ago
Coincidence. This is the FOIA activist: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-fbi-files-lawsuit http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapir...

trhway 12y ago

making profit out of prisons, in all shape and forms, is a such unbelievable conflict of interests. It is the ultimate monopoly - monopoly of force and violence - that is being abused by existence of any revenue stream associated with prison system.

eltondegeneres 12y ago

The solution isn't making a more efficient competitor to Jpay. The solution is abolishing prisons. Angela Davis has written a good short book on this subject called "Are Prisons Obsolete?".

mercurial 12y ago
Well, that may be a bit of a stretch (are you really going to put seasoned killers in the street?). A first step would be ensure that inmates and their families are not treated like animals. Unfortunately, this is also a societal choice, and that's something often difficult to sensitize the citizenry to. A system like this prospers because both JPay and the authorities benefit from it, and because neither US citizens or the press, who could do something about it, care about what happens.

gergles 12y ago

They also operate the e-mail system that can be used to send e-mail to/from inmates (using a JPay tablet, of course). You have to purchase 'stamps'. For e-mails.[1] 1: http://www.jpayinc.com/email_videograms.html 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-Institutions/Kentucky-State-Penitentiary.aspx http://www.jpay.com/Facility-Details/Kentucky-Adult-Institut...

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hueving 12y ago
>This is fucking extortion. Not to be too pedantic, but that's not extortion. Nobody is required to buy them nor are they threatened by not buying them.
- tankenmate 12y ago
  In the EU this would be considered extortion because you have a right to a family life; unconscionable profit at the expense of this right might be considered illegal, especially if it was the only service available (e.g. banking, family visit, letters etc)
Fuxy 12y ago
I find it extremely hilarious since this is no different than the ridiculous data caps most american ISP's add to the contract. 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.

ajiang 12y ago

For the record, it's this exact injustice that kicked off Bayes Impact. Pyduan and I sat at dinner talking about my past life in private equity where I spent a lot of time looking at private prison companies, including JPay. There are huge barriers of entry into these markets, particularly in having close relationships with the decision makers: commissioners of the Department of Corrections. 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.

hyperliner 12y ago

There is a good lesson in this article that is getting lost in the debate. The lesson is don't go around committing armed robberies. You are screwing your family. More specifically, you are punishing your mother.