All the News that Fits the Prison

Article on money-saving, community-building prison newscasts echoes JPay

We came across an interesting article this week by Michael Rosenwald in the Washington Post – The News Behind Bars – which describes a closed-circuit newscast at the Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown, Md.  According to the Post article, the newscast, produced and conducted by inmates, has replaced a printed prison newsletter at a significant cost savings to the facility.

While this news may not touch on JPay services directly, it nonetheless hits on a couple of points that are important to us.

First is the author’s statement that “having an outlet in which to record and share information is, even among wards of the state, a primal need, if not a basic right.”  We couldn’t agree more.  Though the communications services JPay offers are aimed at facilitating the flow of information between inmates and their loved ones on the outside, we see firsthand the positive impact such communication has on both prisoners and their family and friends.  Being able to stay connected creates community, and a sense of community inspires the better angels of everyone’s nature.  The same can be inferred from the newscasts Mr. Rosenwald describes; the quotes from the prison “anchors,” in particular, reflect the positive effect this approach has had.

The second point that resonated with us at JPay is the cost savings incurred by the facility when it made the shift to televised inmate news from a circulated paper newsletter.  In a way, we have been helping corrections facilities make similar shifts for nearly a decade.  Our money transfer services, which allow the friends and family of inmates to electronically deposit money into trust accounts, reduce the amount of labor-intensive money orders a facility must process (once the only way to send funds to an inmate).  Our eMessaging service, which functions much like email for inmates and their loved ones, dramatically cuts down the amount of physical mail a prison must sort.

Like the Maryland prison newscasts, each of these services have both improved the quality of life for inmates and helped save cash-strapped facilities crucial dollars.

Correctional facilities across the country face similar challenges as the Maryland prison profiled in this article.  Those facilities would do well to consider similar solutions, solutions that instill a sense of community and facilitate the flow of information between inmates and their loved ones, as well as help close the budget gaps that have become all too common.