Stop Prison Profiteering

Join us in fighting the companies and governments that are financially exploiting prisoners and pushing the costs of mass incarceration on to the families of prisoners. This includes money transfer services, commissary companies, pay to stay fees, for-profit probation and parole, the bail bond industry and the other parasites feeding off the prison system.
The “Time is Money” documentary featured here was produced by theCenter for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative newsroom in Washington, DC. It was originally part of their “Profiting from Prisoners” series that originally appeared September 30, 2014.

Take Action

We are currently collecting information about the ways that family members of prisoners and detainees get cheated by the high cost of sending money to fund inmate accounts, and the ways that this money is given back upon release from custody (such as debit cards from private companies). There are pending federal actions where your stories could make a difference in these practices. Please fill out our survey to help us end prison profiteering.

The more stories we can collect the greater impact we can have.

If you or someone you know has been charged high fees to send money to a prisoner or to access money when released from custody we would like to know the following:

1) The name of the facility and state it is located in.

2) The name of the company processing the money or issuing the debit card.

3) How much money was taken from you? Were the fees disclosed? If so, how?

4) What documentation do you have?

5) When did it occur?

6) Did you object?

Please send your responses to: kmoses@humanrightsdefensecenter.org

JOIN THE CAMPAIGN

Prison Bankers Exact Fees, Profits From Families

Feb 17, 2015 | by admin

In Oklahoma’s prison system, inmates spend millions of dollars a year from their trust accounts, buying canteen items and paying restitution, fines and other costs.

OklahomaWatch.Org has a full series going on prisoners of debt and the prison profiteers who profit.

Much of that money comes from family members. They deposit funds into inmates’ “trust fund accounts” that are part of the Department of Corrections’ offender banking system.

The numbers are shocking when you start to think about how many people are impacted.

In an investigative report in September, the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity reported that JPay is the largest prison banker in the nation, providing money transfers to 1.7 million offenders in 32 states. JPay pulled in more than $50 million in revenue in 2013 and was expected to transfer more than $1 billion in 2014, the center reported.

Read the full story here.