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]
"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.
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)
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.
A good place to start is to refuse to cooperate with evil. The justice system depends on the active and passive cooperation of the general public.
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 are the police going to do about your being mugged?
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.
I don't think the poster meant to literally call after he was murdered. But rather before it happens.
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?
That's a robbery or home invasion, which was not the particular case I picked out. Note that I didn't complain about calling them to stop a murder, either.
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.
>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?
> 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
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.
My brother, who is an awesome, gentle, smart, great dude, is training to become a police officer. I haven't talked to him much about it. I'm not exactly sure what to say. Your statements rings very true to me, though. For the first time, I'm a little worried for my little bro.
What's the difference between a gang member and a police officer? Social acceptance. They all engage in the same behavior, have their own rites and colors, and a shared identity and sense of loyalty to bend the rules for one another.
No- one set goes through an (at least semi-)standard training process, with public scrutiny upon their every action at a personal level with additional access to public records of most of their related actions, while the other is recruited through familial relations and contacts, with the media investigating the group with a view from a collective standpoint with far more limited resources available.
Perhaps it's useful to think of this as a spectrum rather than a stark distinction. In some places and at some times, police organizations behave in ways that we traditionally regard as "gang-like," while in other places and times, gangs behave in places that we think of as more "civic."
Not sure how it is in USA, but in Georgia (Europe), muggers are usually caught after 30-60 mins when you call police. And belongings are returned to you. Not necessary some luxury items... even your cheap cellphone [from 00s] counts.
If there is a rise in reported crime in a certain area, a good police department will increase patrol around there. Sure, you can say that it won't always happen but it actually does happen.
Call the police to report a crime. Pick another method of protest.
So the only proposed benefit of calling the police when you're mugged is that they have another source of information about where muggings are happening, to compliment others and help inform their police distribution?
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.
This is one of two things that I find upsetting about US the most. The fact that you don't call the police when you need it, and also(and more importantly) that a lot of people wouldn't call an ambulance unless they were literally dying. It's stupid, and I cannot even fathom not having friendly police or worrying about the bill for an ambulance.
The ambulance thing is a genuine risk in the US, but you're probably getting a very skewed view about American police.
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.
For most people it's that you are only familiar with what you grew up with. I was lucky enough(I guess) to grow up in a country where calling for an ambulance was a no-brainer, never ever seen a single medical bill for anything, and also where I've personally called the police about problems I've witnessed - all interactions with officers were polite and I wouldn't hesitate to call the police again. That's why it's so hard do understand for me that there are places like the US where it's not the case, and calling for an ambulance can put you in massive debt - it's just upside down when I think about it.
Not only can calling an ambulance put you in massive debt, which it does (not merely "can") in America, but interacting with the police is almost unanimously unpleasant in my personal experience. (Report a handgun discarded on the side of the road, get harassed because you don't carry photo ID every time you leave the house on foot, etc.)
Again, what do you think the police are going to do if you've already been mugged?
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.
Maybe the advice is don't call the police unless you absolutely have to. Now you might ask, well who calls the police just for fun or when they don't need them. Well when there is a family dispute I heard once a parent would call the police to "talk some sense" into their child who is throwing a tantrum. Then police come and child in a hysterical state swats at them with a spoon and gets shot and killed on the spot.
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.
Calling the police is like using regular expressions: now you have two problems. You shouldn't expect them to stop crime in progress: if you actually ask a cop she'll tell you that's not their job. Instead, they show up at some random time after the crime is over and do cop things: detain, intimidate, shoot pets, destroy property, confiscate, etc. Why would you invite anyone to your home or neighborhood to do those things? In some cases you have no choice because you're required by law to call the police. Those are the only occasions upon which you should call them.
Yeah was car jacked had my elbow ripped out of the socket police showed up... and left laughing at me, not even a joke. But given the laws in california if I had defended myself I'd likely still be locked up, some one paying $18 to send me an email
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.
Start a kickstarter campaign to create a not for profit, ethical competitor to JPay? Providing the prisons still get a similar commission (which according to the article isn't where the lion's share of the fees comes from), why wouldn't they opt to go with a payments firm that gives them good PR?
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."
That actually makes it easier. Build a non-profit competitor, get the press, charities & public behind it and shame the fuckers in to switching. With material like that it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
One would hope so, but I suspect that they don't care about public perception, and a surprisingly large slice of the public would actually be supportive of punitive treatment of prisoners' families.
> "Specifically, the stigma' of incarceration and the accusation of shamelessness are not reserved for offenders; as recent empirical and ethnographic research confirms, the families of convicted and incarcerated persons experience a significant stigma as well."
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.
Corrupt systems don't work that way. In a system which operates at this level of ease, corruption is so far deep into the system that nothing is out of it. It works more like a food chain, and every level co operates with every other level for its own survival.
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 decision makers are civil service types who are basically accountable to nobody. The Deputy Superintendent of Corrections Administration doesn't give a hoot.
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.
The fuckers have no shame to begin with, and as far as much of the public is concerned, if you're in jail your very life is expendable, and most people don't give a flying fuck about inmate's families, either.
JPay does have competitors and there are a few opportunities out there but the Request For Proposals that come out are for a lot more services than just payment.
The opportunities available for the future are ripe for a startup but no thinks of startups in Corrections.
This is what activists do. The world isn't what you learn in civics class. There's no benevolent bureaucrat or 4-year king who'll give you the tools to fundamentally fix such problems. If you need that, then you're trained in helplessness, like cult members. (Who may pledge allegiance to cult symbols, spend half their day in a communal workplace under a leader's command and watchful eye, etc.)
In the SF Bay Area there is a company called Telmate that has been posting job listings on Reddit and Craigslist at least for the past year or two. Telmate is a prison-phone company that charges slave-wage-earning prisoners a week's pay for a 20min call.
Start out by talking to your local representative. Raise the issue with them and keep at it. Encourage others to talk to your rep or the reps in their area.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Naming the competitors is irrelevant. What is relevant is that these states are not procuring contract services with a competitive process.
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.
It is a competitive process but like you said, once they get in it his hard to dislodge them. JPay has been dislodging other incumbents more rapidly in the past few years. There are a few other companies that are out there but their name isn't in the news like JPay.
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?
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?
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.
But when the government privatizes services, that agency problem always exists. Instead of contracting to one service like any other entity, government would always need to contract with several. You're just making a stronger argument for not privitizing government services.
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.
If you read the article you will see that they do it most likely cheaper than the prison can do:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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??
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?
It's an entire system designed around extracting maximum value from the prisoners. How much do you think prisoners get paid per hour when working for Big Corp? The public and private sectors have a nice, cozy, win-win relationship, and the voters don't really give a damn about that.
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.
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?".
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
> 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.
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.
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...