Florida prisons add for-profit services, consider visitation cuts
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Department of Corrections is receiving an influx of cash from a private vendor that facilitates all monetary transactions inside the prisons — at a steep cost to inmates’ loved ones. Now, with multimedia kiosks coming to every facility, it stands to gain even more.
Wives, mothers, daughters and fiances pleaded with corrections officials at a public hearing on May 31 not to reduce their chances to see their loved ones in prison.
But the Florida Department of Corrections is proposing a rule change that would allow them to do just that — cut prison visitation in half at facilities under certain conditions.
At the same time, the department in the last six months has been phasing in multimedia kiosks at virtually every one of its facilities that would allow different kinds of contact, emails and video calling, which will be available at a significant cost to friends and families.
With the backdrop of a contentious fight over visitation rules, revenue from money transfers used to purchase for-profit services offered inside the prisons has spiked in recent months. The Florida-based company contracting with the department, JPay, offers prison banking and other services in 35 states.
The department brought in a record high $350,000 last month in commissions from inmates and their loved ones exchanging funds to purchase everything from bars of soap in the commissary to electronic “stamps” used to send emails that can take several days to get to their recipient. In the last year, the agency received about $3.5 million in commissions, according to a Times-Union review of contracts and internal records. That’s up from about $2.3 million four years ago.
With the statewide expansion of multimedia kiosks, the department — which gets $2.75 for each money transfer into an inmate’s private bank account — stands to bring in more cash as inmates will have greater access to email services. Video calling, however, is purchased directly by inmates’ loved ones and will not lead to more commissions for the department.
If the department does in fact reduce in-person visitation, loved ones will be more reliant on either traditional postage stamps or the new electronic services.
“The fact that they’re implementing a policy that allows facilities to reduce in-person visits suggests to me that what they’re actually doing is trying to funnel people into these for-profit video calling systems,” said Lucius Couloute, a policy analyst at the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative.
Couloute said video calling services are in use at more than 700 facilities across the country, most of them local jails. At those jails, about 74 percent of them eliminate or reduce in-person visits, he added.
The department has strongly contested that it is planning to ultimately swap out in-person visits for video calling, saying the calls are merely a supplement to visitation.
Critics of the department, however, are not convinced. They’re concerned the department is looking for new revenue streams while exploiting prisoners and their families who have no other options for contacting each other.
In-person visits, experts say, are crucial to maintaining support networks for inmates who will need to rely on them when re-entering society in order not to re-offend and end up back in prison.
THE LIFECYCLE OF AN INMATE MONEY TRANSFER
A common complaint from people using JPay is that high fees dramatically reduce the amount of the money actually getting to their loved ones, who then pay steep prices for basic comforts such as shampoo and shaving cream and fees for virtual services such as sending emails.
For instance, if someone wanted to send an inmate $20 online, they would need to pay $24.95. The $4.95 fee goes to JPay, which funnels some of the money back to the department at a rate of $2.75 per money transfer. The JPay fees are even higher if you pay by phone.
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