Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should regulate release cards

PPI submits comment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau urging regulation of high-fee release cards.

by Aleks Kajstura, March 18, 2015

While the FCC is still considering the scope of its regulation to reign in the exorbitant costs of calling home from prison and jail, we’re tackling another fee-driven industry preying on people who can least afford it.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is now proposing tighter regulations of high-fee prepaid debit cards, and we’re lucky to have the help of volunteer attorney, Stephen Raher, to submit a comment from the Prison Policy Initiative urging the CFPB to extend its regulations to explicitly cover release cards.

The CFPB needs to act quickly because correctional facilities are increasingly using these expensive cards to repay people they release — money in someone’s possession when initially arrested, money earned working in the facility, or money sent by friends and relatives.

Before the rise of jail release cards, people were given cash or a check. Now, they are instead given a mandatory prepaid Mastercard, which comes with high fees that eat into their balance. These cards charge for basic things like:

• Having an account (up to $3.50/week)
• Making a purchase (up to $0.95)
• Checking your balance (up to $3.95)
• Closing the account (up to $30.00)

To put this into perspective, if someone is released with $125, a $2-per-week maintenance fee is equivalent to a finance charge of 77% per year. If that same hypothetical cardholder makes ten purchases of $12 each, then a $0.50 per-transaction-fee would amount to $5, or 4% of the entire card balance (on top of maintenance fees). If the cardholder wishes to convert a prepaid card into cash, he or she must pay $10 to $30 (8% to 24% of the entire deposit amount) merely to close the account.

Stay tuned here for updates on the CFPB regulations, and in the meantime, check out our comment.

And thanks again to Stephen for drafting the comment! (You may remember Stephen from his work in rebutting local government officials who insisted that jail phone kickbacks were necessary.) If you’d like to join our growing group of skilled volunteers, check out our Young Professionals Network.

Letter to the Editor: Cecil County, MD, should cancel jail letter ban plan

"Major correctional associations emphasize that letter writing and family communication are key to meeting correctional safety goals."

by Leah Sakala, March 17, 2015

The Maryland Cecil Daily just published my letter to the editor about why county officials should immediately cancel plans to ban letters from home in the county detention center:

Social science research is clear that one of the best ways we can help people in jail succeed when they return home is by allowing them to preserve social ties to their families and communities. My Prison Policy Initiative report, Return to Sender: Postcard-only Policies in Jails, finds that jail letter bans sever these essential ties by outlawing the affordable and confidential family communication that takes place via letter.

Major correctional associations emphasize that letter writing and family communication are key to meeting correctional safety goals. The courts and top correctional officials alike have also agreed that letters are critical lifelines for people in jail. Every single state prison uses mail security procedures that allow family letter correspondence, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s national standards explicitly prohibit letter bans in facilities that hold detainees.

For more on this issue, read the full letter and check out the Prison Policy Initiative resource page on protecting jail letter correspondence.

The demographics of computer ownership and high-speed internet access

The poor, the elderly, and African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to have computers or high-speed internet at home. Replacing regular jail visits with computer video chats is a bad idea.

by Peter Wagner, March 17, 2015

As we explained in our report about the video visitation industry that wants jails to replace free in-person jail visits with expensive computer video chats, not everyone has computers at home or high-speed internet. It’s clear — and should be no surprise to industry leaders — that access is the most restricted in poor households, in African-American and Latino households, and in the homes of older people.

We used the poverty data in our report, but we thought graphing all of this data might be useful for our colleagues fighting proposals to replace traditional government services with mandatory internet-based services. Without a doubt, the internet is a great tool, but we are not yet in a world where we can assume that everyone has access to this technology.

Click for larger versions:

Ending harmful driver’s license suspensions in Massachusetts

Massachusetts suspends driver’s licenses as punishment for crimes that had nothing to do with cars or road safety. Sound nonsensical? It is.

by Leah Sakala, March 17, 2015

Last week I attended a legislative briefing at the Massachusetts State House to present my research on what might seem like an unlikely policy: driver’s license suspensions for crimes that had nothing to do with driving or road safety. Sound nonsensical? It is.

But for more than two decades Massachusetts law has been automatically suspending the driver’s licenses of everyone convicted of a drug offense — regardless of whether or not that offense involved driving or road safety. Then, if that wasn’t enough, this policy makes them wait at least six months and then charges them $500 or more to get their driving privileges back. Since the suspension policy is automatic, judges have no say in the matter.

As our report found, this suspension policy wastes taxpayer resources, makes our roads less safe, and fundamentally disrupts the lives of people with previous drug convictions who are trying to get back on track by meeting work, family, and other personal responsibilities. And we already have other laws that deal directly with road safety and illicit substances.

Fortunately, after more than two decades of losses under this failed policy, the Massachusetts legislature is poised to finally put its foot down. Massachusetts Senator Harriette Chandler and Representative Liz Malia are introducing legislation this session to end unnecessary drivers license suspensions for unrelated drug convictions.

Our friends at EPOCA are spearheading the effort to end unnecessary suspensions in Massachusetts, and you can learn more about the issue by reading our report: Suspending Common Sense in Massachusetts: Driver’s license suspensions for drug offenses unrelated to driving.

New Study: Maryland taxpayers spend $288 million a year to incarcerate people from Baltimore City

Groundbreaking report maps incarceration and spending, suggests more effective alternative investments

February 25, 2015

Groundbreaking report maps incarceration and spending, suggests more effective alternative investments

CONTACT:
Marie Yeager
717-817-3333
management@rodacreative.com

Washington, DC – According to a new report released today by the Justice Policy Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative, Maryland taxpayers are spending $5 million or more to incarcerate people from each of about half of Baltimore’s communities (25 of 55), with total spending of $288 million a year on incarcerating people from Baltimore in Maryland’s prisons.

Based on data recently made available by a new Maryland law, The Right Investment?: Corrections Spending in Baltimore City shows for the first time where people who are incarcerated are from, and how much Maryland taxpayers spend on their incarceration. The report includes detailed maps and information that can better inform investment decisions in these communities to help solve long-standing challenges and improve public safety.

“Spending $288 million every year to incarcerate people from Baltimore isn’t the right choice for Maryland taxpayers,” said Marc Schindler, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute. “This costly investment in incarceration can decrease public safety, and undermine the ability to redirect funds to better long-term solutions that could prevent crime from happening in the first place, including education, housing, drug treatment and employment opportunities.”

The Right Investment? shows that the 25 Baltimore communities where taxpayers spend $5 million dollars or more on incarceration are also the places that experience disproportionate unemployment, greater reliance on public assistance, higher rates of school absence, higher rates of vacant and abandoned housing, and more addiction challenges. The 25 communities also experience lower life expectancy, lower rates of educational attainment, and lower incomes than the rest of Baltimore. The Right Investment? illustrates how the money currently spent on incarceration could instead be better invested in treatment, housing, education, and employment services in these communities.

“This report combines never-before analyzed geographic data with key metrics on community well-being to allow policymakers to make informed choices about how best to allocate precious taxpayer resources,” said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative.

The report is particularly timely because legislators in Annapolis are currently considering a range of policy proposals that could significantly affect corrections spending. Pending legislation includes proposed bills to reduce mandatory minimum prison sentences, reduce the barriers to getting a job after having been convicted of a crime, and create a council to look specifically at how to reduce spending on corrections and reinvest in strategies to increase public safety and reduce recidivism. Fortunately, a proposal from 2013 that recommended the state spend a half-billion dollars on a new jail for Baltimore City has not been included in the Governor’s proposed budget, though the plan has not been explicitly taken off the table.

“This report should lead to a much more informed discussion on how taxpayer money is being spent in these communities,” said Delegate Jill Carter (D-Baltimore City-41). “Along with passing legislation that we know will help reduce the number of people going to prison, shorten their sentences and reduce criminal justice spending, policymakers and the public need better tools to help measure whether we are making the right investments in these communities.”

The Right Investment? is a collaborative effort between the Justice Policy Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative. This report is based on data and information generated by the state of Maryland and research organizations such as the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. Funding for the study was provided by the Open Society Institute–Baltimore, and other foundations that support the partners.

“I introduced the No Representation Without Population Act to provide better data for redistricting purposes, and I’m now looking forward to using all the data and information generated by this law to directly enlighten future criminal justice policy choices in Maryland”, said Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel-21), the lead sponsor of the law in the House of Delegates.

The full report includes specific analyses of each of Baltimore’s 55 communities, as well as additional data about the number and rates of people incarcerated in other Maryland communities. A complete version of The Right Investment? is available at https://justicepolicy.org/research/the-right-investment-corrections-spending-in-baltimore-city/ and PrisonPolicy.org/origin/.

For more information, contact Marie Yeager at 717-817-3333 or management@rodacreative.com.

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The Justice Policy Institute, based in Washington, D.C., is working to reduce the use of incarceration and the justice system and promote policies that improve the well-being of all people and communities. The Prison Policy Initiative, a national organization based in Easthampton, Mass. produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, and then sparks advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. For more information on the partners’ work and publications, visit their websites at www.justicepolicy.org and www.prisonpolicy.org.

Join our Young Professionals Network!

New opportunity for working people to improve our criminal justice system

by Bernadette Rabuy, February 18, 2015

Our new comedy videos taking on the video visitation industry’s outrageous claims that charging $29.95 for a crappy video visit is “just like Skype” are one of the first products from our new Young Professionals Network.

We’re building a list of working people who want to use their skills to improve our criminal justice system. Historically, most of our volunteer or internship opportunities have been based in our office around regular working hours. But our new network allows less frequent but more focused contributions.

We learn about your skills and then keep you or the whole group informed when interesting opportunities come up. Want to learn more and see examples of past collaborations? Fill out our form and introduce yourself! (MSWord) Then, send the completed form to pwagner [at] prisonpolicy.org.

New videos: Video visitation is not “just like Skype”

4 short comedy videos reject that video visits are "just like Skype"

by Bernadette Rabuy, February 18, 2015

Last month, we released a new report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails. Despite exciting press coverage and a victory in Portland, Oregon, where that sheriff agreed to bring back in-person visits, county jails and private companies are still conspiring to ban traditional family visits.

In response, we collaborated with NYC comedians to challenge the industry’s offensive claim that video visitation is “just like Skype” with 4 short videos. The comedians take on banning in-person visits, the high cost, how hard the systems are to use, and that these services make eye contact difficult.

Watch all 4 videos:

Thank you Siobhan Beasley, Phebe Szatmari, Haldane McFall, Luke Delahanty, Ben Rosen, Ted Alexandro, and Dewey Caddell for showing us that it’s possible to make people laugh while raising awareness about one of the most upsetting “innovations” to hit criminal justice in years.

Will the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau protect the public from high-fee “release cards”?

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seeks comments on whether formerly incarcerated people should be forced to pay high fees on "release cards".

by Stephen Raher, February 6, 2015

Many prisons and jails, citing budget pressure, are on a constant search for functions that can be outsourced. Facilities hire companies to cook food, provide medical service, and teach classes. One insidious wave of outsourcing that has been growing in popularity is using a contractor to pay incarcerated people money to which they are lawfully entitled. But the prison or jail doesn’t pay for this service—instead, the contractor makes money through imposing exploitative fees on people who have just been released.

When a person leaves jail or prison, they may be entitled to money for a variety of reasons (for example: money in their possession when initially arrested, money earned working in the facility, or money sent by friends and relatives). Facilities used to issue checks or give refunds in cash. But an increasing number of jurisdictions are now giving people their money in the form of pre-paid debit cards (often called “release cards”). These cards are often difficult to use and carry extremely high fees.

In 1968, when new electronic payment systems were in their infancy, Congress passed the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, which was designed to protect consumers who pay or receive money through electronic channels. The Act is implemented by detailed regulations that are currently overseen by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Over time the regulations have grown to encompass debit cards, and special protections have been added concerning prepaid debit cards. But because of the way that jails and prisons structure release cards, many of the most important protections do not apply.

In response to general complaints about abusive debit-card practices, the CFPB has announced that it will revise the current rules and has invited public comment. Although the CFPB has not specifically mentioned release cards, the problems arising from prison and jail outsourcing are precisely the type of abuses that the CFPB must hear about.

PPI will be submitting comments to the CFPB, but you can help too. Any individuals or organizations with examples of abusive release-card practices or opinions about whether release cards should be regulated by the CFPB should submit comments before the deadline of March 23, 2015. Anyone can submit comments through the docket on regulations.gov.

(For alternative submission methods, see the original notice in the Federal Register.)

Multnomah County Sheriff reverses ban on in-person visits in Portland jails!

Portland jails will now let families visit via video or in-person

by Bernadette Rabuy, January 29, 2015

Yesterday we received some very exciting news! Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton is reversing the ban on in-person visits in Portland jails and announced that families will now have the opportunity to visit incarcerated loved ones via video or in-person.

This is a tremendous victory that was made possible by powerful and consistent investigative reporting done by Street Roots — which first broke the story about video visitation in Portland earlier this month — as well as pressure from the public and county legislators who asked the sheriff to reconsider the elimination of in-person visits.

As we explain in our new report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails, families have been extremely unhappy when video visits are implemented to take away traditional visits. Unfortunately, some of the biggest companies in the industry like Securus claim that they must ban in-person visits in order to be profitable. In our report, we found that another company TurnKey Corrections has actually had the opposite experience: if facilities give families more visitation options, they will be more likely to use the paid, remote video visits. Preserving in-person visits can be better for not only incarcerated people and their families, but also for facilities and companies.

The Portland victory is so important because:

• Multnomah County is amending a contract it had already signed with Securus that explicitly banned in-person visits. According to the sheriff’s press release, “The contract amendment has been verbally agreed to and will be completed by the end of the week.” Apparently, correctional facilities can bring back in-person visits if they really want to.
• Just like we saw in Dallas County, we have further proof that if the public is activated, we can protect families by beating back harmful visitation policies!

Hopefully, the following Oregon counties will follow Multnomah County’s lead and reverse their bans on in-person visits:

• Clackamas County
• Deschutes County
• Josephine County
• Lincoln County
• Northern Oregon Regional Correctional (NORCOR) Facility (serves Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman, and Wasco counties)

Other facilities that have Securus video visitation should also take note and reconsider whether restricting traditional visits is necessary or, rather, unnecessarily punitive.

Department of Justice study: Video visitation is not an invitation to ban in-person visitation

DOJ study on video visitation: In-person visits are a best practice that should be protected

by Bernadette Rabuy, January 28, 2015

In the busy days following the release of our newest report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails, we stumbled upon another report on video visitation by the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Corrections, Video Visiting in Corrections: Benefits, Limitations, and Implementation Considerations. While we were unable to include the study’s findings in our report, I wanted to point out what I found to be particularly valuable.

Like our report, the DOJ breaks the industry’s products down into three categories depending on where the technology is used: home-based video visiting, facility-based video visiting, and community-based video visiting. We find this terminology to be very helpful and are thinking about using it instead of the terms we use in our report: offsite visits, onsite visits, and regional visitation centers.

I also found the benefits and limitations section to be extremely important as the study presents creative uses for video visitation systems as well as spells out why “video visiting is not for all families.”

Video visitation can:

• Expand communication options for child welfare-involved families, which can then prevent the termination of incarcerated parents’ parental rights.
• Connect incarcerated youth and their incarcerated parents who are confined in separate facilities.
• Help families stay connected when travel conditions are poor. For example, the Oregon Department of Corrections found that in-person visitation declined during the winter months.

Video visitation also has limitations:

• Families dislike facility-based video visiting because it requires the same time and expenses as traveling to a facility for an in-person visit, with none of the benefits of an in-person visit.
• Video visitation can be difficult for individuals with visual or hearing impairments or developmental delays as well as for those that that lack computer skills.
• Illiteracy may make setting up a video visitation account difficult.
• Video visitation companies’ websites may not provide scheduling instructions or customer service in multiple languages.
• Some research has found that video visitation is less effective than in-person communication. For example, research has found that an incarcerated individual’s credibility was questioned more often when the individual appeared via video for a bail or immigration hearing than if the individual appeared in-person.

Overall, the study stresses, “the value of video visiting can be maximized when the goals of the facility are balanced with the needs of incarcerated individuals and their families.” The study describes why families are dissatisfied when facility-based video visiting is their only visitation option and establishes, “Traditional in-person visiting is a best practice that should continue in all correctional settings when possible.”

The report is an especially valuable resource for state prisons and county jails considering video visitation as it includes sample checklists and surveys that should be utilized when evaluating video visitation proposals or implementing video systems.

For the report: http://nicic.gov/library/029609
For more on video visitation: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/