Wednesday, March 20, 2019// The Statement
6B
vice Agency have spurred programs that allow incar-
cerated fathers to spend several hour-long visits with their
children with room for activities.
Still, the barriers erected between the prisoners and
their families exposes a cynical distrust of not only the
incarcerated, but the relationships they have beyond pris-
on walls. States like Michigan could unburden families by
creating policies that place prisoners in facilities that are
closer to their homes.
However, the hardline policies comprise the central
problem of an institutionalized, overcrowded prison
industrial complex. These policies send prisoners away
in every direction to a network of facilities that resembles
something ecumenical in its disproportionate presence
and outsize influence on communities.
Since the 1980s and 1990s, state and federal legislators
have crafted policy such as habitual offender laws that
mandatesentencing that includes life without parole, even
if the offense is nonviolent. There are truth-in-sentencing
laws, which eliminate the possibility for prisoners to be
released on “good behavior.” There are the racist, seem-
ingly inexorable policies that disproportionately imprison
Black and Latinx individuals, and the classist bail policies
that favor the rich and ensure that those who cannot post
bail remain indentured to the criminal justice system.
The problem with distance is inextricably tied to these
esoteric policies long justified by the state and country to
incarcerate as aimlessly as possible. If the U.S. didn’t have
the highestincarceration rate in the world, perhaps seeing
a loved one would not be such a formidable endeavor.
***
Ashley Lucas is one of the University’s most prominent
voices on criminal justice reform. An associate professor
of Theatre & Drama, she also directs the Prison Creative
Arts Project, an organization run through the RC that cen-
ters around artistic collaboration between prisoners and
students as a means of restorative justice. She has written
extensively about the impacts of the criminal justice sys-
tem and moderated the most recent Carceral State Project
Symposium panel.
Lucas spoke with me over the phone about the unend-
ing list of costs associated with communication between
family members and their loved ones in prison. No matter
the channel through which a family member may contact
someone in prison, there is always some kind of payment
associated with it. One company that prisons contract
with for email services is JPay.
JPay is a private corporation that state and federal pris-
ons contract with to provide e-messaging services.
Despite the free email servers provided outside prison
walls such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, JPay users must pay
“stamps,” which are electronic tokens that fluctuate in
price, typically covering about a page of information for
anywhere from 35 to 47 cents per page. Prisons receive a
commission based on this spending. Lucas described how,
often, prisoners or family members will send a message
without any clear indicator of how much they will end up
being charged to send it.
“When you’re typing into the email textbox on your
screen (through JPay), you can’t actually see when you’ve
crossed onto another page,” Lucas said.“So right after
you send the email, it tells you how many digital stamps
it’s going to charge you … But because you can’t see where
the page starts and ends, you could be just one line of text
over and they’ll go ahead and charge you for that page,
but if you had known that then you would’ve been able to
edit your letter down a line or two in order to make it not
charge you more.”
Paying for these on a salary that is typically well below
a dollar an hour ensures that prisoners have to be extra
wary, and their family members may have to be the ones to
pay more. However, as Lucas said, often the person incar-
cerated was the one providing the most consistent source
of income for the family.
“When you lock someone up, you’re taking a person out
of the lifecycle of a family,” she said. “You’re taking away
a financial contributor, you’re taking away someone who
provides childcare, eldercare, you’re taking away a sense
of stability in the household.”
In an interview with Wired magazine, Holly Kramer, a
communications representative for the Michigan Depart-
ment of Corrections, said, “Maintaining a positive net-
work of support is really important to their future success
when they rejoin the community.” MDOC has contracted
with JPay since 2009.
In the same article by Wired, Jade Trombetta, JPay’s
senior manager, said, “Part of JPay’s mission is to pro-
vide technology … (that) empowers those individuals with
access to educational tools and assists in their overall reha-
bilitation process.” However, when asked by Wired to dis-
cuss the reasoning behind payments or price fluctuation,
she declined to comment.
JPay continues to be a central source for communicat-
ing with family members, proving that their model capi-
talizes off of this market specific to prisoners is lucrative.
Prisons make a five cent commission off each message,
which generated about $710,000for prisons in 2014. This
continues to be profitable in Michigan, as 800,000 to 1
million messages are sent a month. Should families choose
an alternative, such as phone calling, they will have to
pay about 20 cents per hour, which goes to JPay’s parent
company, Securus. This is essentially extortion. Ironically,
when Flores called me to conduct his interview, the pris-
on’s operator told me to hang up should he try to extort me.
The state budget for prison service that one would asso-
ciate with paying for these services does not have money
allocated for these communications. This is despite the
$1.95 billion allotted to MDOC, making up a fifth of Michi-
gan’s general fund. However, in the fall 2019 to 2020 list of
appropriations, on which there were 21 changes in budget
allocations, there was nothing regarding outside commu-
nications.
Even if prisoners are paying for their messages to be
sent, correctional officers still peruse everything sent.
Lucas spoke briefly about this, saying, “All the emails are
still being read or censored or vetted by the prison mail
room. It’s all being filtered through the prison for informa-
tion control before it sees the outside world.” Whatever is
being sent, prison officials are entitled to read non-privi-
leged messages sent to and from facilities.
For those trying to keep in constant contact with the
incarcerated family members, companies such as JPay and
Securus ensure costly hurdles to communication. There
seems to be little rationale for erecting such factitious
monetary obstacles for something as crucial as maintain-
ing contact with those on the outside.
***
Family savings groan under the weight of institutional
costs from incarceration even after the family member
leaves prison, especially if it’s on parole. This issue is some-
thing Gourlay and Campbell were forced to familiarize
themselves with after their son was released from prison.
“When you’re on parole, you have to pay specific fees
every time you do something,” Campbell said. “There’s
the supervision fee of $600. There’s the $50 a year fee. We
spent probably, I’m guessing, over $25,000 in lawyers’ fees
that our son use the appeals lawyer to get some things on
his PSI changed.” A PSI is a pre-sentence investigation
report and is used by judges when sentencing an offender.
“And lo and behold, that was $775 that he had to pay back.
You know, we didn’t even know that there was going to be a
charge on that. You know it’s just one thing after another.”
In the case of their son, they mentioned they were lucky
they could provide for these costs. However, for someone
whose family may struggle in this regard, the likelihood
of recidivism may increase. Probationers and parolees are
often required to pay the costs for parole advisement, as
well as for programs they may enter for drug treatment or
rehabilitation after their time in prison.
Though the Constitution protects those who have
exhibited indigence to the extent that they cannot pay
whatsoever, those who demonstrate that they may have
the means to pay are often required to do so.
In Massachusetts, there are 67,000 people on probation.
They are charged $50 to $65 monthly, depending on their
“tier” of probation, which is either supervised or admin-
istrative. Failure to pay these fees can result in jail time.
These probation service fees total to over $20 million a
year. This is just one state example of the laws states have
put in place that have the potential to reincarcerate parol-
ees.
This becomes an issue for those wishing to re-enter
society with a fresh start, something that is already
impossible considering the numerous barriers that pro-
hibit those with criminal records from working. With new
financial burdens to consider, recidivism becomes a more
likely outcome.
This is something that causes Flores’ sister, Stefanie
Veselaneck, frequent concern.
“I’m not sure how he’s going to look like, I don’t know
how he’s going to feel about trying to go back to doing what
he does, like painting and stuff,” she told me, her voice
wobbly over the phone. “I don’t know. I just really worry
about him getting out and not being able to adjust back to
being an everyday, normal-life person.”
Despite the endless systemic pressures that supporting
a loved one in prison entails, and the knowledge that even
Flores’ release doesn’t mean the end of such concerns,
Flores strives to be hopeful for his family. In a written let-
ter sent to his son Andrew for his 20th birthday, he wrote,
“I’m sorry for having to have made it so you and nan are
take (sic) care of me now. I know how expensive all of this
is an (sic) trust me Andrew it means the world to me. With-
out everything you do I prob wouldn’t make it or struggle
really bad … I will get out of here and change my ways and
be by your side and be the dad/best friend I am supposed
to be! You are my everything Andrew!”
“There seems to be
little rationale for
erecting such fac-
titious monetary
obstacles for some-
thing as crucial as
maintaining contact
with those on the
outside.”