<story><title>When a Cartoonist Landed in L.A. County Jail, She Drew What She Saw</title><url>http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2014/12/31/when-a-cartoonist-landed-in-la-county-jail-she-drew-what-she-saw-using-only-a-golf-pencil?showFullText=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jtsummers</author><text>&amp;gt; After that, beyond basic bar soap, you’re on your own. You have to order supplies through the commissary system, a sort of monopoly drugstore run by the Keefe Group out of Missouri. This is where you purchase everything from hygiene supplies and chips to a Styrofoam cup. You place orders once a week, and the following week a delivery guy shows up with a cart piled high with plastic bags of stuff. If nobody on the outside puts money on your “books” (inmate account), you can order a second indigent kit. But as soon as someone sends you money, Keefe deducts that cost. And with a 20-cent pack of ramen costing $1.18, just like most monopolies throughout history, goods are sold at an inflated rate.&lt;p&gt;This is one of the parts of prisons I find particularly distressing. I&amp;#x27;m trying to find (but can&amp;#x27;t recall the name of the company) an article, perhaps posted here a few months ago, about a company that handles inmate &amp;quot;bank accounts&amp;quot;. The percentage they took was absurd. Between what the financial company took and the prisons, $100 sent to a prisoner might end up only being $50 by the time they could spend it. Paired with the high prices in the commissary they can barely afford &amp;quot;essentials&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:
JPay. Here&amp;#x27;s an article, but not the one I was looking for:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/30/15761/prison-bankers-cash-captive-customers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.publicintegrity.org&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;15761&amp;#x2F;prison-banke...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rhgraysonii</author><text>I can speak to this personally.&lt;p&gt;My father is currently in a federal prison. I do not want to reveal sentencing, names, etc. but I deal with Jpay on a daily basis.&lt;p&gt;Their core currency is &amp;#x27;stamps&amp;#x27; if you are technologically literate.&lt;p&gt;It is $4.50 to be able to buy 12 &amp;#x27;stamps&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;It takes one stamp to send an email, plus one stamp per attachment.&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, there are music &amp;#x27;credits&amp;#x27;, video call &amp;#x27;credits&amp;#x27;, etc.&lt;p&gt;It is a fucking racketeering ring. I literally keep a Windows laptop so that I can have video calls with my father because its incompatible with OSX and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 in my case)&lt;p&gt;Would love to hear a way to make a difference here...I&amp;#x27;ve thought of nothing.</text></comment>
<story><title>When a Cartoonist Landed in L.A. County Jail, She Drew What She Saw</title><url>http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2014/12/31/when-a-cartoonist-landed-in-la-county-jail-she-drew-what-she-saw-using-only-a-golf-pencil?showFullText=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jtsummers</author><text>&amp;gt; After that, beyond basic bar soap, you’re on your own. You have to order supplies through the commissary system, a sort of monopoly drugstore run by the Keefe Group out of Missouri. This is where you purchase everything from hygiene supplies and chips to a Styrofoam cup. You place orders once a week, and the following week a delivery guy shows up with a cart piled high with plastic bags of stuff. If nobody on the outside puts money on your “books” (inmate account), you can order a second indigent kit. But as soon as someone sends you money, Keefe deducts that cost. And with a 20-cent pack of ramen costing $1.18, just like most monopolies throughout history, goods are sold at an inflated rate.&lt;p&gt;This is one of the parts of prisons I find particularly distressing. I&amp;#x27;m trying to find (but can&amp;#x27;t recall the name of the company) an article, perhaps posted here a few months ago, about a company that handles inmate &amp;quot;bank accounts&amp;quot;. The percentage they took was absurd. Between what the financial company took and the prisons, $100 sent to a prisoner might end up only being $50 by the time they could spend it. Paired with the high prices in the commissary they can barely afford &amp;quot;essentials&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;EDIT:
JPay. Here&amp;#x27;s an article, but not the one I was looking for:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/30/15761/prison-bankers-cash-captive-customers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.publicintegrity.org&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;15761&amp;#x2F;prison-banke...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sremani</author><text>JPay et al. are the worst scum. One of the justifications though is that our dear leaders expand definition of &amp;quot;crime&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;criminality&amp;quot; but do not expand budgets for incarceration so it falls on the Jailor and&amp;#x2F;related staff to get finances. They typically bring in these JPay kind of shady dealers who promise a cut per person in jail. So JPay takes a cut but shares it with the Jail or department. To give the kind of commission promised to the Jails they rob the inmates - its that simple. So we not only hold an inmate for crime but his family for ransom. This is sad because people do not have empathy for in-mates. One of the many &amp;quot;criminal&amp;quot; faces of the Criminal Justice System.</text></comment>