For companies like JPay, the business model is simple: Whatever it costs to send a message, prisoners and their families will find a way to pay it.
… Prisons are notoriously low-tech places. But urged on by privately owned companies, like JPay, facilities across the country are adding e-messaging, a rudimentary form of email that remains disconnected from the larger web. Nearly half of all state prison systems now have some form of e-messaging: JPay’s services are available to prisoners in 20 states, including Louisiana.
Inside prisons, e-messaging companies are quietly building a money-making machine virtually unhindered by competition—a monopoly that would be intolerable in the outside world. It’s based in a simple formula: Whatever it costs to send a message, prisoners and their loved ones will find a way to pay it. And, the more ways prisoners are cut off from communicating with their families, the better it is for business. Which means that stamp by stamp, companies like JPay—and the prisons that accept a commission with each message— are profiting from isolation of one of the most vulnerable groups in the country. And, with prisoners typically earning 20 cents to 95 cents an hour in jobs behind bars, the cost of keeping in touch most likely falls to family members and friends.
This year, Jones decided against choosing from the 24 electronic birthday card designs that JPay offers. Instead, she waited for her son to call, paying 21 cents a minute to JPay’s parent company Securus, which provides phone services to Louisiana’s prisons. “I just talked to him on the phone and cried,” she says.
JPay began in 2002 as a prison money-wiring service, offering a quicker alternative for families who wanted to mail a money order to incarcerated loved ones. The expediency came with a price: The fees for each transaction could be as high as $11.95. When JPay launched its e-messaging services in 2004, it pitched it as a way of fostering closer relationships between prisoners and the outside world. “Part of JPay’s mission is to provide technology…[that] empowers those individuals with access to educational tools and assists in their overall rehabilitation process,” says Jade Trombetta, JPay’s senior manager of brand marketing and social media. She declined to explain the reasoning behind JPay’s prices or price fluctuations. “We have nothing more to say on the matter,” she told WIRED.
I am a software developer and had an idea on how to help reduce the cost for these inmates so instead of sending an email to every person they wish to contact, they’d instead just send one email with aliases descrety included in the message.
If someone such as myself setup an email system where each inmate is given an email address to send mailto, but then have aliases designated in the email itself with messages for each contained within then 1 email out could result in many emails being forwarded to the individual parties.
I would open source so anyone can use it.
Basically it would working like this:
Email to [email protected]
Hi Mom
I hope you are doing well. Blah, blah blah.
Hi Dad,
Could you start my car for me every two weeks, thanks.
Dear Brother,
Leave my XBOX alone.
It would take only a small code script to make this work and an email provider that supports passing email to a script. (Called an “email pipe”).
Each email would be stripped out of it’s block and sent as it’s own email from [email protected] direct to the email behind the alias. No two persons.
The configuration file would be something like:
Mom,\n = [email protected]
Dads,\n = [email protected]
Brother,\n = [email protected]
I can program it, but I don’t communicate with inmates or family members so I would not be able to advertise it. It would cost virtually nothing to setup and use.
I’m pretty certain that re-directs or forwarding are disallowed.
The prison “email” systems are not true email. They aren’t delivered to the receiver’s email account. The communication is done on the company’s website. The inmates don’t have an email address to send messages to. They can only write a message to a person who has registered them on an account. The receiver is then notified by email that an inmate has sent them a message, but you have to go and login to the company’s site (JPAY in Michigan) in order to read the message.
I’m glad someone is bringing this to light. But, in a related matter, when is someone going to take on the companies that supply canteen items to jails and prisons. They are obviously a monopoly and guilty of blatant price gouging. In Florida many of their items are twice the price (and some four times the price) you would pay on the outside…i.e. a Ramen noodle soup, a staple for inmates, 27 cents at Wal Mart, 79 cents in prison. Since in Florida,where few inmates are able to earn any money, the cost of canteen items comes from families and friends. Inmates and families are being taken advantage of. Someone needs to address this.
I would also add that their “email” service is sometimes no faster than regular old snail mail, because prison employees have to read them for prohibited content first. The amount they charge you to send money to an inmate is outrageous. And when they screw up an inmate’s commissary order placed on their kiosk, it takes a long time for them to rectify it, if they bother trying at all. How they are assisting “in their overall rehabilitation process” is a mystery to me. Perhaps it teaches inmates to beware of corporate con artists once they get out.
My question for everyone is these companies do not have a monopoly cause you do not have to use them but a convenience for people who would like it faster then the normal way. As someone who did 7 years in doc I wish we had emesaaging services. Our families are to busy to write snail mail alot of time. I currently write 8 people still on the inside with Jay messaging. I dont have the time or the effort and normally they get it the same day. The speed is way quicker then a 6 to 8 day turn around on snail mail. People that want to keep bringing down the stuff private companies are putting in our system that our state will not do or cant afford needs to spend a few months inside before they make there opinions.