
The Big Business of Prisoner Care Packages - scarface74
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/12/21/the-big-business-of-prisoner-care-packages
======
essayist
I'm the point person for a church parish group supporting an incarcerated
prisoner who'll likely be in for another eight years and this is what we deal
with all the time.

Combine the ambivalence that people will feel about most offenders with
legitimate security requirements (especially those designed to defeat opioid
smuggling) with security BS with business profiteering, and you've got a toxic
mix that, usually, whittles away the outside support and community connections
most prisoners have.

We're a relatively wealthy group, with lots of retired people, and so there
are people who can take the time to know the correspondence and book sending
requirements, others who can make the 3 hour (each way) trip to visit with the
prisoner once a month, others who can take phone calls. We reduced the cost of
the calls for the calls from $25/fifteen minute call to "only" $3.50 through
some Twilio VOIP call forwarding.

And I know all about Jpay. $0.40 for each email message (slightly less with
the volume discount), plus the same again for each attachment (and at this
point, only 40 cents for email seems cheap). The 10% fee for cash for the
commissary (plus the prison takes a cut for the inmate's savings account).

We struggle to do what we need to do for our prisoner, and I can't bear to
think about all the prisoners who are depending on just a few family members
and friends who themselves are struggling to get by.

~~~
snuxoll
You’re a saint and make me feel incredibly guilty - I’ve got a friend who was
recently sentenced to 25 years and I haven’t even bothered figuring out how to
contact him or send him any money. Do you have any documentation on your
twilio magic? I’d love to speak to him but I can’t stomach how much they
charge for such basic things.

~~~
essayist
Thanks, and I'm so sorry about your friend. The Twilio magic is basic: buy a
Twilio number that's as local as possible to the prison (say 999-#######),
have it forward to the contact's real landline or cell (say 444-#######), then
pay through connectnetwork.com for the 999 number to receive what are
basically "collect" calls.

If you're just doing it for yourself, and you're not already using Google
Voice (GV) or have a Google user id to spare, you can get the 999 local number
through GV, and then have it forward to your landline/cell. That's a little
cheaper than Twilio.

For Twilio, I use a "Twimlbin" for each number, see below. An added benefit is
that the callee (the outside person taking the call) always sees the same
caller id, and so can put that in their address book with a suitable label.

Connectnetwork also has a protocol (a little more complex and finicky than
unattended collect calls) which require the callee to press the right keys to
accept the calls (or to reject them). I sometimes get that wrong (one out of
three times) and sometime the system seems finicky (I thought I did it right,
but it still treats me as if I rejected the call). So our prisoner knows to
call a few times.

If this is still complex, hit me up on email (in profile) or comment here. I'd
be happy to help.

    
    
      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
      <Response>
      <Dial timeout="20" callerId="1999#######">
      <Number>+1444#######</Number>
      </Dial>
      </Response>

------
hackermailman
Yes the massive fees of Jpay/iCare and all the other schemes like Union Supply
Direct. I've always assumed no cheaper alternatives because you'd need to
lobby some senator massive money to get your service allowed inside a state's
prison system.

One thing I do is send prisoners things they can trade instead of Jpay account
load fees, for example in a women's prison any magazine subscription that
includes a lot of perfume samples they are worth their weight in gold inside
the walls for trading. Good math books as well, such as Sheldon Axler's Pre-
Calc book because it includes fully worked out answers instead of just magic
answers, but unfortunately I can only find hardcover and some prisons still
don't allow hardcover. You also have to use certain book companies, like Books
A Million since they include invoices and you can be sure they are new books
instead of Amazon where I've been screwed many times sending to inmates where
even if it says 'fulfilled by Amazon' it ends up being a 3rd party vendor.

Best things you can have in jail is a radio to pick up local stations,
something to trade with such as coffee, and letters from the outside on mail
call because everybody waits for mail call. They have Jpay mp3 players now in
some states which are of course ridiculously expensive.

If you know somebody in jail doing hard time, a good idea is learn something
with them. Send them math books, do the books with them and trade letters.
It's motivation because often I'd lapse behind and find out the friend I was
writing had already slayed the next chapter and I didn't even start. My next
Saturday morning was spent catching up. Math education has a half life of
hundreds of years, perfect for prisoners.

I found vet books on animal care a great idea for prisoners who need a job
upon release. Lot's of kennel companies will hire ex cons to start at the
bottom cleaning kennels and administering meds, and they can take vet tech
exams from there to move up. I sent Saunder's guides since most vet tech exams
use these. Another good book is Kernighan's book 'D is for Digital' (renamed
in recent editions), it's an excellent book to teach inmates how technology
works when they've been in for a long time.

------
ec109685
Bleh, the worse thing in the article are examples where the same goods are 2x
the cost in one jail versus the other, despite being from the same provider.
Allowing the gauging of families of folks in jail is foolish.

~~~
tyingq
In the US, at least, they milk the prisoner's families every way they can.
Charges for phone calls, web-to-paper letters, commissary items, and so forth.
They also withhold basic necessities like soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, etc,
to drive up sales. And, policies like 2 meals a day (instead of 3) on
weekends. They even take the first $100 of your prison account for health care
charges. It's an embarrassment for a first world country.

Combined with the now ubiquitous cheap online background checks, one felony is
enough to ruin your life forever. You end up being dependant on family members
for life. The justice system in the US is built around some Puritan idea of
punishment, with no notion of rehabilitation.

Source: Am one of those family members supporting a felon.

~~~
drefanzor
It's especially fun when they do inmate-led fundraisers, which means that they
can get Subway, Pizza Hut, or other "street food", and charge the inmates
triple, and then the fundraiser money goes into the yards pockets. Or the fact
that they have their prison workforce doing jobs in small towns by the complex
for $8 - $10 an hour and the inmate gets $0.50 - $1.00 of it. Prison labor
like that is also something a "first world" country should be ashamed of. For-
profit prisons should be outlawed.

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
Elections have consequences. US voter turnout is abysmal.

~~~
tyingq
About 0.71% of the US population is incarcerated. It's much, much, higher than
any other nation. But, still low enough that it doesn't get much attention
from voters....even if they turned out in record numbers.

Media attention might make a bigger impact. I'm not sure the general public
knows how bad the system is. Even if you're a "punishment" fan, the system is
cranking out people that are more likely to commit further crime, since they
have little chance to support themselves in a legal way.

~~~
pjc50
Let's not forget the substantial chunk of voters who want the system to be as
brutal as possible.

~~~
rectang
Especially when the prisoners are minorities, who are easily dehumanized as
evil "others".

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gamechangr
A rich founder should take this companies on and bleed them dry.

This is one place I would love to see Amazon undercut the competition and give
real value to the people who need it most.

~~~
mcherm
> A rich founder should take this companies on and bleed them dry.

It can't be done. The way to win the contract is to offer the biggest kickback
to the prison. One cannot pay such a big kickback without gouging prisoners
and their families.

~~~
shostack
Sounds like the only option is to abolish for-profit prisons, which is
obviously easier said than done.

~~~
essayist
It's not unique to commercial prisons. My friend has been incarcerated only in
state prisons or regional jails, and you still have to rely on Jpay,
ConnectNetwork, and other pay systems for most contacts.

------
sandworm101
Anyone else want one of the clear neo-steampunk typewriters?

~~~
peterburkimsher
I'm curious to know more about the clear electronics. Are iPods allowed? What
if they have their hard drives replaced by an iFlash SD adaptor, and run
Rockbox?

------
Khelavaster
Why not use investor money to fund lawyers to break into the system with a
pre-baked highly competitive business model? Silicon Valley investors could
legally bleed most correctional facilities dry and into submission.

~~~
anigbrowl
Why do you think this is an open market? where consumers have meaningful
choices?

------
dogruck
This article, and the comments to it here on HN, are written from a
perspective that seems to ignore:

1\. These prisoners are in prison for a reason, and

2\. The severe, of then horribly violent, result of contraband in prisons.

This isn’t an article about care packages to nursing homes.

I await your immediate downvotes.

~~~
essayist
Let's argue in the realm of "should" for a bit.

Justice: What should a society permit itself in punishing prisoners (and let's
stipulate that the ones we're talking about are guilty as charged, even though
many many many are not.)

Is it ok to malnourish them? Is it ok to punish their families and friends,
who haven't been convicted of crimes? Is it ok to deprive prisoners of outside
contact? In other words, where to you draw the line? (And if you don't draw
the line, Abu Ghraib is the next stop.)

Pragmatism: As others have noted, if you're going to admit a prisoner back
into society in, say, five years, does it make sense to reduce their coping
and job skills in prison so that they will likely do worse when they get out?
And again, where do you draw the line?

Regarding contraband: it's even worse than you hint at, today. Prisons are
taking all sorts of measures to keep opioids from getting in. You can soak a
greeting card or letter paper in water soluble drugs which can then be
extracted once the document is inside. So my friend now only get printed out
scans of letters and cards, not the cards themselves.

So, yeah, security is an issue, too, but I don't think that justifies
$25/fifteen minute phone calls, do you?

