August 5, 2024: On Wednesday, August 5, 2024, at 3 PM EST, we’ll host a panel of advocates to discuss the importance and challenges of helping people in prison testify at legislative hearings, and introduce our new legislative testimony toolkit.
Panelists include: Anthony Blakenship of Civil Survival, Jesse White of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, and incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell.
August 14, 2024: Many jails nationwide are now video-visit only, meaning there are no longer in-person visits allowed between incarcerated people and their loved ones, including children. Communications Strategist Wanda Bertram will be a panelist on a webinar hosted by the Center for Just Journalism to discuss the impact of these bans and how journalists can cover them.
Nils Christie, the world-renowned criminologist, a member of the Prison Policy Initiative advisory board, and one of my personal inspirations, passed away on May 27 at the age of 87.
I’m saddened to report that Nils Christie, the world-renowned criminologist, a member of the Prison Policy Initiative advisory board, and one of my personal inspirations, passed away on May 27 at the age of 87.
Christie came to my attention in 2001 when I tripped over a reference to his provocatively titled Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style. The book reframed how I thought about both prisons and the movement to end them.
Even the title provided a completely new way to look at the problem. Rather than a “prison industrial complex”, which evokes an Eisenhower-era critique but little in the way of an organizing strategy, the framework of an industry seemed spot on:
Only rarely will those working in or for any industry say that now, just now, the size is about right. Now we are big enough, we are well established, we do not want any further growth. An urge for expansion is built into industrial thinking, if for no other reason than to forestall being swallowed up by competitors. The crime control industry is no exception. But this is an industry with particular advantages, providing weapons for what is often seen as a permanent war against crime. The crime control industry is like rabbits in Australia or wild mink in Norway–there are so few natural enemies around.
Christie later told me that he considered the book “sad”, and I tried to explain why, as someone living in the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world, the book was liberating: You simply can’t change what you don’t understand; and like the light at the end of the tunnel, Crime Control as Industry provided both hope and a path.
Last night, comedian John Oliver did a great segment last night on bail (NSFW):
And on that topic, don’t miss Daniel Kopf’s article from two weeks ago on Priceonomics: America’s Peculiar Bail System. (Dan is a member of our Young Professionals Network. Stay tuned for the results of his research collaborations with us.)
And on Friday, Sally Herships on Marketplace did a great piece on the role, number and challenges of private police in the U.S. (Spoiler: There are more private police in the U.S. than public police, which raises troubling questions about who benefits when most policing isn’t in the public interest. Her story starts 13 minutes in.)
When we want to be persuasive, we are more effective if we buffer our case with visuals like charts and graphs. For example, I can tell you that the United States incarcerates five times as many people as most nations despite having similar crime rates. I can cite sources and link to essays and research. Or, I can show you this:
The immediate, visceral reaction we have to charts like this one, which was created by the Prison Policy Initiative, is no accident. Visual perception research has established the fact that visual information is powerfully and inescapably persuasive in a way that text and speech aren’t.
The Prison Policy Initiative has become known for our use of graphics to tell the story of mass incarceration, but what is so gratifying our being singled out in this way was that Berinato’s article wasn’t the typical discussion about the difference between a good data visualization and a bad one. Instead, he focused on the most basic point in communication that is all too often absent when talking about visual communication: Audience matters.
Basic factors like whether the audience agrees with you, their mood, and many other factors all change whether visualizations are even the right tool. For example:
The user’s attitude matters.Research from Ansul Pandey and colleagues at New York University indicates that the persuasive power of dataviz may not be perfectly universal. The success of a visualization seems to be dependent on the initial attitude of the person assessing it. When participants in their study didn’t have strong opinions about the message being conveyed, visuals persuaded effectively. But they were less effective when participants held strong opinions in opposition to the message being conveyed.
This makes sense. It takes more to convince someone who doesn’t believe you than someone who simply doesn’t know or doesn’t care. But there’s more. Those with stronger opposing views were more likely to be swayed when a disagreeable message was presented in the form of a table. Even now, good old-fashioned rows and columns sometimes outperform charts.
So while we’re proud of the diversity of communications skills we’ve developed over the last 14 years, what we think really matters most is the ability to tell anengagingstory that inspires people to think and then to act.
The goal needs to always be on effective communication to the intended audience. None of this work is done for us, after all. It’s done for you.
Securus will no longer require that jails ban in-person visits, shifting moral responsibility to the sheriffs
May 6, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 6, 2015
Contact:
Bernadette Rabuy
(413) 527-0845
Easthampton, MA — On Monday, Securus, the video visitation industry leader, announced that it will no longer explicitly require county jails and state prisons to replace traditional family visits with video visits. Securus CEO Richard A. Smith stated that the billion-dollar phone and video visitation company “found that in ‘a handful’ of cases,” Securus was including a clause that “could be perceived as restricting onsite and/or person-to-person contact.”
But Securus’s new policy is much more significant than Securus’s announcement implies, says Bernadette Rabuy of the Prison Policy Initiative. “There is clear language banning in-person visits in 70% of the Securus contracts we examined for our report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails.” The contracts plainly read: “For non-professional visitors, Customer will eliminate all face to face visitation through glass or otherwise at the Facility.”
This offensive clause was brilliantly challenged by comedians Ted Alexandro and Ben Rosen, arguing about whether video visitation lives up to the industry’s claims that it’s “just like Skype:”
While many of Securus’s competitors have worked with sheriffs to replace in-person visits with video visits, Securus was the only video visitation company that dictated correctional visitation policy in the contract. This clause has been controversial. After public protest, the Portland, Oregon Sheriff was the first to successfully amend an existing Securus video visitation contract, and in Dallas County, Texas county legislators were able to eliminate the clause before signing a contract with Securus.
Video visitation is a promising technology that could make it easier and more affordable for families to stay in touch despite the challenges of incarceration. But as it is too often implemented, going high-tech has been a step in the wrong direction.
“This announcement won’t necessarily bring back in-person visitation,” said the Prison Policy Initiative’s Bernadette Rabuy. “Traditionally, video visitation companies and sheriffs have played the blame game, neither has been willing to take responsibility for banning in-person visits. Now that Securus is shifting moral responsibility to the sheriffs, the Prison Policy Initiative will be working with concerned families across the country to ensure that sheriffs reverse these draconian policies.”
We are very excited to introduce the newest member of the Prison Policy Initiative board: Jason Stanley. Jason Stanley is a Professor of Philosophy at Yale and an author of four books. His fourth book, How Propaganda Works, will be coming out this May. Check out the interview below to learn why Jason joined the board:
Why did you decide to join the PPI board?
Jason Stanley: During my research for my book over the past several years, I was astonished at the number of complicated ways in which mass incarceration is embedded into the moral, political, and economic life of our country. I decided I wanted to get involved, and went looking for an effective organization that untied the complex knots for me. I started from scratch, looking at a number of organizations, local and national. I chose PPI for many reasons. My research suggested that they are the organization that does the most with the least; they are incredibly effective, and they need funders.
I had no personal connections with them, but I reached out and asked how I could help. There has been a 500% increase in my lifetime in the US prison population. My view is that this is an issue where my generation has some moral responsibility in causing the problem, and maybe we can get together and contribute to trying to solve it.
I’ve done the research to find this organization — I really started with a lot of potential ones, and ended up with PPI. This is a great organization that really puts donations to effective use.
What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?
JS: First, as academics can appreciate, they are drawn to the complexities of mass incarceration, rather than the obvious stuff that draws funding. For example, PPI is the nation’s leader on prison gerrymandering, which incentivizes rural communities with few residents to bid for prisons and push for harsher sentencing; they regularly uncover and litigate the most devious ways in which the impoverished prison population is used as source of cash for the unscrupulous; and they have become perhaps the central source for online information about mass incarceration.
Second, because they are drawn to the ignored complexities, they are unafraid to go after wildly popular policies, such as school drug zone laws, that in fact function as mechanisms to allow prosecutors to indiscriminately sentence residents of dense urban centers with extremely harsh sentences (I have heard that every place in New Haven except for somewhere on the Yale Golf course is in a school zone, defined here as ‘within 1500 feet of a school’).
While Jason just joined our board a few days ago, he’s already been hard at work to support PPI. Jason is generously donating royalties from the sales of his upcoming book How Propaganda Works to PPI and on Monday, May 11, 2015 we’ll be holding a book launch party in Harlem, New York. Ticket sales will also support PPI’s work. We hope that you’ll consider joining us! For more information and tickets, visit: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/stanley/
According to an article published yesterday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Arkansas Department of Correction has approved a contract with Securus Technologies. You might remember Securus as it’s one of the private companies that dominates the prison phone industry and leads the for-profit video visitation industry.
While Arkansas will not be the first state to adopt video visitation, it is the first state that we know of to contract with Securus for video visitation services. Our January 2015 report on the video visitation industry found that most states that have large video visitation programs contract with JPay.
In addition to leading the video visitation industry, Securus’s video visitation contracts are unique because they often explicitly require the elimination of in-person family visits. Thankfully, the Arkansas Department of Correction will be implementing Securus video visitation as a supplement and not a replacement. DOC spokesman Cathy Frye told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “We do not, however, want it to become a replacement for face-to-face visits.”
But according to the DOC’s Frye, Securus does not market its video system as a supplement for families who have difficulty visiting in-person. While the video visitation industry often claims that correctional facilities alone decide to limit in-person visits, the language in Securus’s contracts suggested otherwise, and Frye has now confirmed our fears:
“We agreed to the cut in audio commissions and to forgo the video commissions because the other option would have been to strongly push inmates into using video visitation instead receiving in-person visits from their families,” Frye said.
“Because this is such new technology, many of the companies providing it are pressuring correctional facilities to strongly encourage video visitation. That’s what you’re seeing at some of the county jails around the state. Those facilities have either limited or cut off in-person visitation entirely to ensure that the video-visitation venture can support itself, bring in revenue, or both.
Frye’s comments are telling. They confirm that private companies are setting correctional visitation policies and that the motive for banning in-person visits is money, not safety.
In other breaking news: Securus is acquiring JPay, which leads the market for sending money into prisons and, as I mentioned earlier, provides video visitation in state prisons. We’re not sure how exactly this will change JPay, but we are concerned. Will JPay raise the prices of its video visits from its typical rate of $0.33/min to Securus’s typical rate of $1/min? Will getting refunds from unsuccessful JPay video visits still be possible or will it follow in Securus’s footsteps in providing a customer service experience so frustrating that families give up on refunds? We will be developing a response strategy so stay tuned!
And if you’re in Arkansas, Arkansas Voices for the Left Behind will be holding its 21st annual event at the State Capitol Rotunda on Friday, May 8 at 11am, in which it will launch a campaign: “Erase the Stigma. Stop the Hurting and Begin the Healing for Children of Prisoners.” The Arkansas DOC video contract will be one of the topics discussed at the event.
John Oliver does it again! Watch Last Week Tonight: Municipal Violations and learn more about municipalities that are senselessly locking people up for failure to pay traffic tickets.
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 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.
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.
August 5, 2024: On Wednesday, August 5, 2024, at 3 PM EST, we’ll host a panel of advocates to discuss the importance and challenges of helping people in prison testify at legislative hearings, and introduce our new legislative testimony toolkit.
Panelists include: Anthony Blakenship of Civil Survival, Jesse White of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, and incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell.
August 14, 2024: Many jails nationwide are now video-visit only, meaning there are no longer in-person visits allowed between incarcerated people and their loved ones, including children. Communications Strategist Wanda Bertram will be a panelist on a webinar hosted by the Center for Just Journalism to discuss the impact of these bans and how journalists can cover them.
