Proposed Biden junk fees rule provides lots of transparency but little protection for incarcerated people

We called on the Federal Trade Commission to strengthen its proposed rule to explicitly prohibit some of the most abusive junk fees.

by Mike Wessler, February 12, 2024

In 2023, with considerable fanfare, President Biden announced a new initiative to crack down on “junk fees” — those extra, often hidden charges that seem to do nothing besides jack up the price of a product or service while providing no extra benefit. At the time, we, along with 28 other groups, called on the President to put the junk fees harming incarcerated people and their families at the top of the list of things to be addressed.

As part of this initiative, the Federal Trade Commission recently released a new proposed rule to crack down on junk fees and asked for public comment. Last week, in collaboration with the National Consumer Law Center and our former general counsel, Stephen Raher, we submitted a 27-page comment explaining that these proposed rules will provide more transparency about junk fees but little actual relief for people entangled in the criminal legal system and their families.

Junk fees in the criminal legal system

Junk fees are pervasive in all aspects of the criminal legal system, from arrest through after one’s release from detention. These harmful fees are particularly insidious because they’re generally unavoidable, and people in the system often have lower incomes and are less able to absorb these costs.

We’ve written at length about these fees in the past, but some of the most common and troubling ones are related to:

• Money transfers: Increasingly, prisons and jails are shifting costs for necessities, like food and hygiene products, onto the people they incarcerate. As a result, having access to money is increasingly important for people behind bars. However, because of the paltry wages incarcerated people earn, their loved ones often have to send them funds. When they do so, the private company the facility contracts with to handle these money transfers usually keeps a cut of the money for themselves. Sometimes that cut is more than 20%.
• Release cards: When a person is released, the prison or jail that confined them often puts any money from their trust account — wages, support from family, or funds they had in their possession when arrested — on a prepaid debit card. These cards are riddled with fees including for using the card, not using the card, or seeking customer service.
• Communication services: E-messaging and tablets have become nearly ubiquitous in prisons and jails nationwide. They’ve opened new opportunities for incarcerated people to stay in touch with loved ones and maintain connections to the outside world through books, music, and other services. They’ve also created a new way for the companies behind these services to sap funds from incarcerated people through opaque “infrastructure” or “maintenance” fees and bulk pricing schemes.

The proposed rule is good for transparency but not enough for incarcerated people

The rule proposed by the Federal Trade Commission primarily focuses on making these junk fees more transparent — rather than prohibiting them altogether. For those on the outside, they’ll no longer be surprised by hidden fees when they’re in the final stages of making a purchase. Companies will have to put these unavoidable extra costs front and center. This will make the true cost of a product or service easier to know up front, empowering consumers to make more informed decisions.

Unfortunately, transparency about these fees isn’t enough for incarcerated people and their families. While it is true they’ll be less likely to be surprised by hidden costs, under this rule, they still usually won’t have any way to avoid unfair fees. Unlike on the outside, people in prison and jail can’t use a different business if they think a company is loading a service with excessive fees. For money transfers, release cards, e-messages, and more, they are usually stuck with one company that the prison or jail contracts with to provide the service. Because incarcerated people are literally captive consumers who can’t take their business elsewhere, this type of transparency isn’t likely to reduce costs and abusive practices in any real way.

Giving the rule more teeth

The rule, as written, does not go far enough to protect incarcerated people and their loved ones from junk fees. Transparency isn’t enough; stronger enforcement and explicit prohibitions on certain practices are needed, too.

The good news is that the rule isn’t yet final. The Federal Trade Commission is currently considering comments like ours as they prepare their final rule, so it still has a chance to strengthen it to protect people in prisons and jails.

Here’s how we told the Commission they could strengthen the rule:

• Explicitly prohibit fees that provide little or no value to consumers: If a company charges a fee, there should be some benefit to incarcerated people. If not, it is simply a mechanism to sap money from them unfairly. While the rule currently relies on transparency to pressure companies to move away from these useless fees, more is needed.
• Ban junk fees that exceed the cost of providing a good or service: Many companies charge fees that significantly exceed their costs to provide the service. For example, some release card companies charge a $9.95 fee to close an account. This is far more than it costs the company to close the account, indicating it is just a way to get a little bit more money out of incarcerated people while they still can.

Watching the Watchers: Vera releases national census on electronic monitoring

A new report from the Vera Institute of Justice finds that the number of people subjected to electronic monitoring in the U.S. increased fivefold between 2005 and 2021 and nearly tenfold by 2022.

by Emmett Sanders, February 8, 2024

In their new report, People on Electronic Monitoring, the Vera Institute of Justice completes a massive undertaking. Collecting data from all 50 states, more than 800 counties, and the federal court and immigration systems, this report offers the most comprehensive picture of the U.S.’s electronic monitoring population to date. Ultimately, their findings provide concrete evidence to support what activists and impacted people have long argued: Electronic Monitoring (EM) is not an effective way to reduce reliance on incarceration but is “often a crucial component of highly punitive, deeply entrenched criminal legal systems.” In other words, Electronic Monitoring is a form of incarceration, not an alternative to incarceration.

Vera’s data collection reveals that EM usage has increased significantly in all sectors since 2005, culminating in more than half a million adults under surveillance nationwide by either the criminal legal system or the immigration system.

EM usage in the criminal legal system is up significantly, with more than 150,000 people on EM at any given time in state and local monitoring systems. At the state and local level, EM is most heavily used in the Midwest, at a rate of 65 per 100,000 residents, more than a third higher than in the South, the next highest region of use, where it is used at a rate of 41 per 100,000 people. However, every region across the country has seen an increase in EM usage.

Immigration accounts for roughly two-thirds of the total EM population, with around 360,000 people monitored under ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). Much of this astounding increase occurred between 2021, when ICE monitored around 103,000 people, and 2022. This expansion is particularly concerning as ISAP’s EM conditions can be dehumanizing and physically and mentally taxing for people seeking asylum.

Overall, this increased usage has translated to big business for the 11 EM companies that control roughly 99% of the EM industry. Vera notes this translated to more than $1.2B spent on EM in 2023 alone. In many jurisdictions, EM programs are “primarily sustained by user fees,” which can range upward of $900 per month and shift the burden of funding to those least positioned to pay it – low-income individuals and families. As we have noted, however, this massive investment in digital incarceration has not replaced our reliance on more traditional “brick and mortar” incarceration in jails but rather serves as an expansion of overall state surveillance. Vera’s researchers note that an increase in EM usage can often accompany an increase in jail population, as in the case of Detroit, Michigan, which saw a 41 percent increase in EM use coincide with a 60% increase in jail population. Indeed, the report finds that “the majority of local jurisdictions with a high EM rate also had a high jail incarceration rate.”

While some EM expansion can be traced to COVID-19 pandemic response, Vera also notes that evolving technology is a large driver of increasing EM usage. The report points out that the use of GPS devices ¹ increased thirtyfold between 2005 and 2021. Advancing technology has also increased the use of programs like cell phone apps to track and monitor people, which has impacted EM populations while raising new areas of concern, such as the potential for highly personal data to be shared and compromised.

Vera finds that other problems with EM usage include limited public accountability due to the “patchwork nature” of EM programs, which operate at multiple often tangled levels; this makes it difficult to track where public jurisdiction ends and private control begins, limiting programmatic accountability to the public and elected officials. Minimal oversight, heavy privatization, and lack of regulation also enable potential corruption, and some claim opens the door for abuses and extortion.

Ultimately, Vera finds that, though EM is touted as an alternative to incarceration, this massively expanding technology “acts as another form of incarceration, relies on technology rife with defects, shifts costs onto people with low incomes, and creates harm for directly impacted people and their loved ones.” We hope advocates can use Vera’s groundbreaking research to oppose the expansion of EM in their own communities.

12 of our most important reports, briefings, and tools in 2023

New data on the overuse of probation and parole, insights into the racial disparities in prisons and jails, and much more. Here are the highlights of our work in 2023.

by Danielle Squillante, December 21, 2023

2023 was a big year at the Prison Policy Initiative. We exposed how the overuse of probation and parole serves to extend the prison walls into our communities, produced new datasets and graphics that show just how vast the racial disparities in prisons and jails actually are, and highlighted how the same companies that profited off of over-priced prison phone calls have moved into the e-messaging industry. Didn’t catch everything we published in 2023? We’ve curated a list of some of our best work from this year below.

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023

We released an update of our flagship report, which provides the most comprehensive view of how many people are locked up in the U.S., in what kinds of facilities, and why. It pieces together the most recent national data on state prisons, federal prisons, local jails, and other systems of confinement to provide a snapshot of mass incarceration in the U.S.

Women experience a dramatically different criminal legal system than men do, but data on their experiences is difficult to find and put into context. To fill these data gaps, we also released an updated Women’s Whole Pie report in partnership with the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice, which includes richly-annotated data visualizations about women behind bars.

Punishment Beyond Prisons 2023

Our report shows the full picture of correctional control in the U.S., with a particular focus on the overuse of probation and parole. It includes data for all 50 states and D.C. on the number of people under correctional control, including community supervision. We’ve designed this report specifically to allow state policymakers and residents to assess the scale and scope of their entire correctional systems. Our findings raise the question of whether probation and parole systems are working as intended or whether they simply funnel people into prisons and jails — or are even replicating prison conditions in the community.

SMH: The rapid & unregulated growth of e-messaging in prisons

To better understand the explosive growth in e-messaging, we examined all 50 state prison systems, as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), to see how common this technology has become, how much it costs, and what, if anything, is being done to protect incarcerated people and their families from exploitation. Our review found that, despite its potential to keep incarcerated people and their families connected, e-messaging has quickly become just another way for companies to profit at their expense.

Updated data and charts: Incarceration stats by race, ethnicity, and gender for all 50 states and D.C.

We released new data visualizations and updated tables showing the national landscape of persistent racial disparities in state prisons and local jails. Unlike other datasets, ours provides apples-to-apples state comparisons in three formats: counts, rates, and percentages. Using this data, we’ve updated over 100 of the key graphics on our State Profile pages, showing prison and jail incarceration rates by race and ethnicity, and how the racial composition of each state’s prisons and jails compares to the total state population.

What is civil commitment? Recent report raises visibility of this shadowy form of incarceration

Twenty states and the federal Bureau of Prisons detain over 6,000 people, mostly men, who have been convicted of sex-related offenses in prison-like “civil commitment” facilities beyond the terms of their criminal sentence. This deep dive into recently-published data from a survey of individuals confined in an Illinois civil commitment facility sounds the alarm about how these “shadow prisons” operate and the high rates of violence and trauma that people detained in the facilities are subjected to.

The aging prison population: Causes, costs, and consequences

Our briefing examines the inhumane, costly, and counterproductive practice of locking up older adults. The U.S. prison population is aging at a much faster rate than the nation as a whole — and older adults represent a growing portion of people who are arrested and incarcerated each year. And while prisons and jails are unhealthy for people of all ages, older adults’ interactions with these systems are particularly dangerous, if not outright deadly.

How 12 states are addressing family separation by incarceration — and why they can and should do more

Our briefing assesses the legislative action taken by 12 states and the federal government to address the growing crisis of family separation caused when a primary caregiver is incarcerated. All too often, incarceration destroys family bonds as parental rights are terminated or children end up in foster care. We explain how advocates across the country are fighting for creative and holistic solutions.

No Release: Parole grant rates have plummeted in most states since the pandemic started

With parole board practices in the news, we thought it was important to look around the country and evaluate the direction in which state parole boards are moving. We surveyed 27 states and found only 7 saw an increase in their parole approval rate since the pandemic began, and almost every state held substantially fewer hearings than in years past.

Breaking news from inside: How prisons suppress prison journalism

In response to a move by New York prison officials in May to introduce a policy to effectively suppress prison journalism, we released a briefing building off of data from the Prison Journalism Project that detailed restrictions on prison journalism in prison systems across the country. Prison journalism affirms some of our most basic democratic principles — the exercise of speech free from government influence — and is an essential check on the extreme power these institutions wield over life and death.

A profile of Native incarceration in the U.S.

Adding to our 50 State Profile pages, we’ve created a profile of Native incarceration in the United States to illuminate what data exists about the mass incarceration of Native people. Native people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at a rate of 763 per 100,000 people. This is double the national rate and more than four times higher than the state and federal prison incarceration rate of white people. In publishing this profile of Native incarceration, we are hoping to make the existing information more accessible, while also acknowledging the layers of systemic oppression impacting Native people in the criminal legal system.

States to the Census Bureau: You created prison gerrymandering, you need to end it.

Prison gerrymandering is a problem created by the Census Bureau’s policy of counting incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than their home communities. In a May blog post, we reviewed a new National Conference of State Legislatures report that outlines the experiences and recommendations from states that implemented anti-prison gerrymandering reforms in the 2020 redistricting cycle. The report makes clear that state officials agree that prison gerrymandering is important, worth fixing, and the Census Bureau should be responsible for ending it. With roughly half of U.S. residents now living in a state that has taken action to end prison gerrymandering, the emerging consensus on this issue is clear. But will the Bureau listen?

Advocacy Toolkit

We continue to update our Advocacy Toolkit, a collection of web-based resources designed to improve advocates’ skills (such as locating data and conducting public records requests) or to plug directly into their campaigns (such as fighting new jail proposals). New this year is a guide to help advocates identify ways public housing policies can be more inclusive to people with criminal histories, as well as a guide that explains why charge-based carveouts are problematic and provides messaging to combat justifications for including them in criminal justice reforms.

This is only a small piece of the important and impactful work we published in 2023 and our work is far from over. We’ve got big things planned in 2024, when we’ll continue to expose the broader harms of mass criminalization and highlight solutions that keep our communities safe without expanding prisons, jails, and the carceral system.

Ten statistics about the scale and impact of mass incarceration in the U.S.

A curated list of some of the most useful statistics to help the public comprehend the magnitude of criminalization in the U.S.

by Emily Widra, October 24, 2023

The United States’ reliance on incarceration outpaces most of the globe: every single state incarcerates more people per capita than virtually any independent democracy on Earth. But the sheer magnitude and impact of a system so large can be hard to fully comprehend. We looked back over some of the best criminal legal system research and chose these ten statistics as some of the most handy for advocates, policymakers, and journalists working to help the public appreciate just how far-reaching mass incarceration is in this country.

A note on our sources: All of the following statistics come from different sources and have been calculated using different methodologies, and are not necessarily compatible with one another. In addition, some of these statistics have been calculated by the Prison Policy Initiative, while others are from academic research and other organizations’ work in the field.

Half of all Americans have an immediate family member who has been incarcerated. 1 in 5 people have had a parent incarcerated and 2.6 million children have a parent who is currently incarcerated.

Webinar: Combating “carveouts” in criminal justice reforms

Learn strategies to convince policymakers to adopt reforms that help all people tangled in the criminal legal system.

by Sarah Staudt, October 12, 2023

In this webinar presented on November 1, 2023, staff from the Prison Policy Initiative and a panel of criminal justice experts have a discussion on how advocates for reform can talk to policymakers about carveouts, with a particular focus on addressing fentanyl and sex offense-related charges.

Webinar resources

The slides for the webinar are available here

Prison Policy Initiative has two publications on this topic:

• Contending with Carveouts: How and Why to resist Charge-Based Exclusions in Reforms — a toolkit of arguments and strategies for resisting carveouts in criminal legal system reforms.
• Reforms Without Results: Why states should stop excluding violent offenses from criminal justice reforms — a 2020 report about the consequences of excluding violent charges from criminal legal system reforms.

Additional Resources:

• Chicago 400 Alliance produced this video about people on public registries in Illinois, which is a great example of how to bring the stories of impacted people to legislators. To learn more about the Chicago 400 Alliance, coordinated by Laurie Jo Reynolds, you can view their website: https://www.chicago400.net/
• To learn more about Drug Policy Alliance’s work advocating for a health-focused approach to fentanyl, you can find their website on the topic here. https://drugpolicy.org/campaign/build-a-health-approach-to-fentanyl/. To sign onto Drug Policy Alliance and Broken No More’s open letter from people who have lost loved ones to overdose, click here.

Highlights from a busy year at Prison Policy Initiative

In our new annual report, we share examples of how we armed the reform movement with the data it needs to push for real change

by Danielle Squillante, September 29, 2023

We just released our 2022-2023 Annual Report, and I’m thrilled to share some highlights of our work with you. We’ve had an incredibly productive year, releasing 19 major reports and 24 research briefings, including updates to our Whole Pie and Women’s Whole Pie. We also expanded our Advocacy Toolkit, provided technical support to advocates on the ground, and continued working with journalists on both sides of the wall to influence the national dialogue about criminal legal system reform. Here are a handful of successes we’re particularly proud of:

• Publishing a major report on community supervision showing that all states — even those that consider themselves progressive leaders — put significant numbers of their citizens on probation and parole, systems that often replicate prison conditions in the community.
• Releasing a groundbreaking report showing how companies in the commercial bail industry and their deep-pocketed insurance underwriters make huge profits, even when they fail to do their one job: ensuring their clients’ appearance in court. We also released a companion tool for journalists who want to investigate their local bail bond industry.
• Advancing our campaign to protect incarcerated people and their loved ones from price gouging by private telecommunications companies who are raking in millions off of phone calls, video visits, and electronic messaging. Our work helped pass the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act in 2023, which clarifies the FCC’s authority to regulate all phone and video calls from correctional facilities.
• Helping Montana and Maine end prison gerrymandering. Progress on this issue has been so rapid that the National Conference of State Legislatures recently called state efforts to end prison gerrymandering “the fastest-growing trend in redistricting.”
• Expanding our resources for advocates in counties with plans for new jail construction by developing a guide on understanding jail assessments and developing arguments to push back against jail construction proposals. We also held our first webinar, bringing together organizers to discuss strategies they employed to prevent new jails from being built.

These publications only scratch the surface of what we produced this past year. We are proud of our accomplishments and look forward to sharing new projects with you in the year to come.

Welcome, Sarah Staudt!

Please welcome our new Policy & Advocacy Manager, Sarah Staudt!

by Danielle Squillante, May 9, 2023

We’re excited to introduce our new Policy & Advocacy Manager, Sarah Staudt! In her role, Sarah will provide support to state and local advocates working on issues where we have expertise and connect them with data and resources that can strengthen their campaigns.

She holds a B.A. in Law, Letters and Society from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to joining the Prison Policy Initiative, Sarah was the Director of Policy at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts where she worked intensively on the Pretrial Fairness Act in collaboration with the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice. She also worked as a Staff Attorney at the Lawndale Christian Legal Center where she represented young people accused of crimes in juvenile and adult court.

Welcome to the team, Sarah!

A sledgehammer instead of a scalpel: New rules proposed by the Biden Administration on money earned by or sent to people in federal prison are the wrong way to go

Federal prison officials are proposing to garnish 75% of any deposits made into incarcerated people's personal accounts if those people have court-related debts. It's an extremely harmful policy that will keep incarcerated people from buying basic needs.

by Mike Wessler, March 13, 2023

The Biden Administration’s Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) recently proposed new, draconian rules on how and when the government will seize money earned by or sent to people in federal prisons. We signed on to a 37-page letter written by the National Consumer Law Center and former Prison Policy Initiative staff member and volunteer Stephen Raher opposing this proposal.

These proposed rules are complex, legally dubious, and far-reaching, so we wanted to explain what they would do and their devastating consequences. This proposal is the latest in a trend that we’ve followed closely for years: prisons and jails, which already lock up some of the most financially vulnerable people in the country, making their lives even more difficult. Our research on this topic offers important insights into why these policies harm not just people behind bars but also our communities and the nation as a whole.

What do the proposed rules do?

The proposed rules, which apply to people who owe outstanding court debts and participate in the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP), would allow the government to take a huge portion of the small amount of money that people incarcerated in federal prisons earn or have sent to them by loved ones on the outside. On paper, the IFRP is a voluntary program. But while people in federal prison may not be forced to take part in it, there are consequences if a person doesn’t participate. Most notably, if an incarcerated person doesn’t participate, they likely won’t receive their “release gratuity” — the small bit of money the prison gives to an incarcerated person upon their release; essentially saying, “Give us the money you’re trying to save for your release, or else we won’t provide you with a little bit of money when you’re released.” In this situation, people in federal prison are damned if they do participate and damned if they don’t.

The proposal is a response to recent and sensational stories about ultra-wealthy people in federal prisons who have amassed unusually large amounts of money in their prison trust accounts while failing to pay legal fees and restitution. These examples are the exception, not the rule; most incarcerated people are poor before prison and even poorer once they get there. Rather than crafting rules that target these outliers, the BOP has written them in a way that will make it harder for people in prisons to survive today and more difficult to establish a life after they’re released. They’ve effectively taken a sledgehammer to a problem that requires a scalpel.

As prisons across the country increasingly force incarcerated people to purchase many of their daily basic needs, money plays a more important role in helping them obtain essentials like hygiene products, over-the-counter medication, and food, not to mention covering the costs of phone calls with loved ones on the outside. This proposal would take four steps that would make it harder for incarcerated people to access and save the little money they have:

1. Confiscate at least 75% of money sent to incarcerated people from their loved ones on the outside. One of the main ways incarcerated people get money is through money transfers from their loved ones on the outside. Under this change, if a person wanted their incarcerated loved one to have $25 to make phone calls to their child, they would actually have to send that person $100 — four times more than they actually will get.
2. Seize roughly 25-50% of wages earned from work. Prison wages — including federal prisons, where wages are regularly as low as 12-23¢ an hour — are notoriously bad. Under these proposed rules, a quarter or half (depending on what type of job they had) of the money earned by an incarcerated person would be seized, making these already abysmal wages even worse.
3. Eliminates protections that ensure incarcerated people have the money to call loved ones. Currently, the first $75 that a person in federal prison earns or receives every month is exempted from being taken to pay for legal financial obligations, so this money can instead be used on phone calls between the person in prison and their loved ones on the outside. These proposed rules would eliminate this exemption completely, making it much more challenging to maintain these social connections, which are critical for incarcerated people’s mental health and success after prison.
4. Pressures incarcerated people to make a one-time payment to pay off obligations, with the threat of notifying the U.S. Attorney’s Office if they don’t. Under the proposal, if a person has enough money in their trust account to pay off their financial obligations completely, they will be encouraged to pay off the entire balance in one lump sum payment, even if that leaves them with essentially no money for other essentials. While people would not be required to make the lump sum payments, the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be notified if they don’t, an implied threat that is significant enough to be considered coercive.

These rules are a bad idea

For many people, there is a self-evident, moral reason that these rules don’t make sense: They make the lives of tens of thousands of people in federal prisons — some of the most disadvantaged people in our country — even worse, in order to punish a handful of wealthy people in prison skirting their responsibilities. However, for those not convinced by this moral argument, there are other important reasons President Biden and the BOP should trash these rules.

They exacerbate existing inequalities

On the first day of his presidency, President Biden ordered all executive branch agencies — including the BOP — to work to redress inequities in their own policies and programs, including ensuring fair and just treatment of “Black, Latino, … and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.” Rather than addressing these inequities, these proposed rules would make them worse, particularly for women of color. Rather than targeting the assets of a few ultra-wealthy individuals, they will impact all people in federal prisons — people who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. However, the pain doesn’t end there. If the proposed rules were adopted, family members of incarcerated people would lose at least 75% of the funds that they send to their incarcerated loved ones. This change would dramatically increase the burden borne predominantly by women — disproportionately women of color — on the outside trying to provide for their families.

They undermine successful reentry

A person’s successful transition from incarceration is something we all have a stake in. However, this punitive proposal would work against this goal in two ways.

• Research has consistently shown that one of the strongest predictors of whether someone will end up back behind bars after their release is whether they have strong family and social connections on the outside. These rules would make it much more difficult and costly to maintain these connections by making it harder for people to secure the money needed to make phone calls and send letters to loved ones on the outside.
• Additionally, when a person is released, they need money almost immediately to secure housing, buy food, purchase clothing for job interviews, and secure transportation to those interviews and other appointments. These rules would make it harder for people in federal prisons to earn and save money to help them upon their release. Poverty is one of the greatest indicators of a person’s likelihood of taking part in criminalized behavior and ending up behind bars. This proposal would almost certainly condemn tens of thousands of people in federal prisons to poverty, even after their release.

These misguided rules would harm nearly all people in federal prisons to address a handful of extreme cases. They’re not just cruel, though; they also undermine the Administration’s stated goal of addressing racial and economic disparities while making it harder for a person to reenter society after their release. President Biden and the BOP should abandon this deeply flawed proposal.

Introducing our profile of Native incarceration in the U.S.

New page provides data and visualizations about the overrepresentation of Native people in the criminal legal system.

by Emily Widra, February 14, 2023

Our 50 state profiles, plus one for D.C. and another for the nation as a whole, draw on graphs made from reports issued as part of our National Incarceration Briefing Series. Adding to this body of work, we’ve created a profile of Native incarceration in the United States to illuminate what data exists about the mass incarceration of Native people.

In the United States, Native people¹ are vastly overrepresented in the criminal legal system. Native people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at a rate of 763 per 100,000 people. This is double the national rate (350 per 100,000) and more than four times higher than the state and federal prison incarceration rate of white people (181 per 100,000). These disparities exist in jails as well, with Native people being detained in local jails at a rate of 316 per 100,000. Nationally, the incarceration rate in local jails is 192 per 100,000, and for white people, the jail incarceration rate is 157 per 100,000.

Even when government data on incarceration are disaggregated by race, the way that Native incarcerated people are counted is inconsistent and often underreports their numbers, because people reporting two or more races are lumped into various categories depending on who is publishing the data. In publishing this profile of Native incarceration, we are hoping to make the existing information more accessible, while also acknowledging the layers of systemic oppression impacting Native people in the criminal legal system.

Visit our profile page on Native incarceration in the United States.

Incarcerated people must be at the forefront of Biden Administration and Federal Trade Commission efforts to end “junk fees”

We joined the National Consumer Law Center and 27 other organizations to call on the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on abusive fees incarcerated people and their families are forced to pay.

by Mike Wessler, February 8, 2023

In February 2024, we sent a new comment to the Federal Trade Commission in response to its proposed junk fee rule and its impacts on incarcerated people. You can find this letter and an overview of our comments here.

“Junk fees,” those hidden charges attached to purchases or transactions, are something we’ve all faced. For those outside the prison walls, they are an inconvenience that may force them to find another company to do business with or grumble as they pay more for a product than they expected.

For incarcerated people, though, there is no escape. They don’t have the option to use a different service or company. And their ability or inability to pay these fees often has dramatic consequences, determining whether they can stay in touch with a loved one or buy food at the commissary to supplement the paltry meals the prison provides. And considering the unconscionably low wages they earn for their labor, these fees are no minor inconvenience.

As part of a broader effort by the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an independent agency charged with protecting consumers and enforcing antitrust laws, is currently considering new measures to crack down on these fees. This week, along with the National Consumer Law Center and 27 other organizations, we explained to the agency that because of their low incomes and uniquely constrained position as consumers, providing incarcerated people relief from junk fees should be at the top of their list.

In an 18-page joint letter, this coalition highlighted some of the most abusive financial practices in prisons and jails and the ways incarcerated people are especially vulnerable to these junk fees.

Money transfers

As facilities increasingly shift the costs of incarceration to the people who are locked up, money plays a more important role than ever in the lives of people in prisons and jails. They now often have to pay for essentials like hygiene products, food, and paper from the commissary. As a result, many families have to send money to their incarcerated loved ones to help them make these purchases.

Sensing an opportunity for profit, companies have sprung up to facilitate these money transfers. Our 2021 analysis of this industry found that these companies charge steep fees — up to 37% — and have complex pricing structures that make it hard to know exactly how much it’ll cost to send money to your loved one.

These fees are tough to justify at a time when services like Venmo and Zelle make transferring money outside of the prison walls easy and free.

Communication and technological services

As prison and jail phone rates recently came under increased scrutiny, the companies behind these services have evolved to offer new services that have, thus far, largely evaded government regulation and oversight. As these companies moved into these unregulated industries, they packed their products with unfair and unclear fees that sap money from incarcerated people and their loved ones.

• Electronic messaging: In recent years, electronic messaging has exploded in popularity in prisons and jails. While the service has immense potential to strengthen connections between incarcerated people and their loved ones, unreasonably high costs and hidden fees have, thus far, made this yet another way for these companies to reap immense profits off the backs of some of the poorest people in society.
• Tablets: Similarly, so-called “free” tablets offer the promise of maintaining stronger connections to the outside by allowing incarcerated people to access music, videos, and other digital content, but are often little more than a tool to sap money from incarcerated people. For example, one tablet provider charges incarcerated people a $14.99 fee for a 14-day digital music subscription. For comparison, Spotify’s standard price is $9.99 a month, and its most expensive plan, the “family plan” — which provides six accounts that can stream music at the same time — is only $15.99 a month.

Release cards

Even when a person is released, they’re still not free from the exploitative grasp of these companies, thanks to the advent of “release cards.” These prepaid debit cards, which we’ve covered extensively, are often given to people as they leave prison or jail. They’re loaded with any funds they had in their trust account — wages earned while behind bars, support from family members, or money the person had in their possession when arrested.

At first, this may sound like a convenient way to give someone their money when they’re released, until you learn of the complex and costly fees that quickly drain their value. This includes fees for:

• Using your card for a purchase,
• Not using your card recently enough,
• Declined purchases,
• Using your card at the wrong ATM or bank, and
• Closing your account.

Often the only way to avoid these fees is by closing your account almost immediately upon your release, a time when you’re likely to be looking for stable housing and employment — things that are often necessary conditions for someone’s release to be approved.

Other junk fees in the criminal legal system

Our comment goes on to explain that beyond these services, junk fees are baked into the mass incarceration economy, with incarcerated people and their loved ones being subjected to fees for:

• Commercial bail,
• Pretrial diversion programs,
• Private probation,
• Electronic monitoring,
• And more.

This push by the FTC and the Biden Administration to address junk fees is laudable — and long overdue. However, if it is to be successful, they must recognize that you can’t truly address the worst impacts of junk fees without addressing how they harm incarcerated people and their families.

The nearly two million people behind bars (and their loved ones on the outside) are unfairly exploited by corporations and governments every day. Addressing these junk fees will not end this exploitation entirely, but it will be a significant and meaningful step toward economic justice.