Until yesterday, unless you had a family member or friend in prison[1], you most likely had never heard of JPay. That’s because all of its services are directed toward inmates and their families.
Since 2002, JPay has been quietly moving into prisons across the country, first by providing quicker (though pricier) ways for family members to send money to loved ones behind bars and, since 2004, by providing limited email systems in prisons. Those systems are often touted as an innovation that keeps incarcerated people connected with support networks on the outside. In keeping up with the technological times, JPay also offers prison-specific tablets on which users can access their e-messages, buy music, and play electronic games.
But this week, Idaho prison officials announced that these tablets became the means for 363 inmates, across five state prisons, to create nearly a quarter million dollars of credits. Collectively, the prisoners created roughly $225,000 in JPay credits, which they added to their respective accounts to pay for e-messages, music, and games. In a statement to the Associated Press[2], Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff Ray said that, of the 363 imprisoned hackers, 50 men credited their accounts in amounts exceeding $1,000 with the largest amount falling just under $10,000.
Idaho is just one of a number of states across the country offering tablets to incarcerated populations. Nearly half of all state prison systems offer some form of e-messaging, a basic form of prison email provided by a single company that controls both software and hardware. In Idaho, that company is JPay. One of the largest purveyors of prison messaging, JPay contracts as the sole provider of these services in 20 states across the country.
Nearly half of all state prison systems offer some form of e-messaging,