Pound cats are paired with carefully screened inmates (no violent convictions, good behavior, not scheduled for release within the year) and the inmates are charged with caring for them, just as anyone on the outside would care for a pet.  Volunteers supply food, litter and toys.

And look at how cute these guys are!

The Better Business Bureau is one of the most highly visible business organizations dedicated to providing consumers with accurate, evenhanded information on the companies they deal with.  It’s mission, to create a marketplace where buyers and sellers can trust each other, is accomplished by encouraging trustworthy behaviors on the part of its member businesses; rewarding those businesses with transparent, objective ratings; and advancing the values of integrity and performance.

Receiving the BBB’s highest grade is an honor enjoyed by some of the world’s most trustworthy brands.  The fact that JPay has now joined their ranks is a testament to the hard work and commitment of every JPay team member, especially the front-line staff that spend each day creating memorable, positive experiences for our customers.

A handpicked group of inmates have messages posted to Twitter, Quora, and blogs by The Last Mile and their volunteers.  The organization distributes “Tweet Sheets” every week, according to the article, and the inmates draft their 140-character messages to be posted under the Twitter feed @TheLastMile.  Each tweet includes a hashtag that indicates the inmate-author.  Most of the tweets are poignant and articulate, and more than a few leave you with a sense of hopefulness and introspection.

We think this is a wonderful initiative.  As a company that specializes in using technology to bridge the communication gap between inmates and their families, we wholeheartedly applaud The Last Mile’s efforts to use the latest in social media to help achieve that goal.  While it is important to remember that unfettered access to social media can potentially be dangerous – we have tacked this issue before, specifically with respect to contraband mobile devices in facilities – the way The Last Mile approaches social media is a prudent, beneficial method.

We’re already following @TheLastMilesq on Twitter (we retweet them occasionally – you can follow us @JPay_com).  We encourage you to support this initiative as well.

It is the inefficiency of correctional systems that drives the drumbeat for privatization.  And this inefficiency can be countered with forward-thinking policies and service offerings on the part of correctional agencies.

JPay, at its core, is about providing needed, relevant services to the family and friends of the incarcerated. In many cases, JPay’s solutions relieve the supervising agencies (departments of correction, county sheriff’s offices) of the burden of providing these services themselves.  Electronic funds transfer, for instance, eliminates or partially eliminates the need for corrections staff to post and process physical money orders in order to deposit funds into inmates’ trust accounts.  Inmate email similarly reduces the labor and administrative costs associated with sorting and distributing traditional mail.  Media-based services like video visitation and inmate mp3 players create their own efficiencies (video visitation provides an alternative to visits at the prison, reducing supervisory burdens and decreasing inmate movement; mp3 players contribute to a calmer population) while providing social, rehabilitative, and recidivism-mitigation benefits.

Creating efficiency through technological innovation is the primary benefit enjoyed by correctional agencies that employ JPay’s services, even as those services are designed for the friends and families of inmates.  It is through this creation of efficiency that JPay provides an alternative to prison privatization.

JPay’s services also demonstrate that a free market approach to some aspects of the correctional system need not represent a descent into the corporatization of the penal system.  As a for-profit company, JPay implements a pay-for-service model that relies on friends and family members to pay a fair price for the convenience associated with JPay’s services.  This model is not dependent on increasing incarceration rates, but rather on the relevance and quality of the services provided.  Detractors of privatization are often distracted by the slipperiness of the slope they describe, citing an inherent incentive to grow the prison population; JPay’s communication- and reentry-focused operations stand as a refute to that argument.

Granted, JPay’s business model is just one in a sea of corrections-related vendors and providers.  There may be merit to the charge that private prison operators are incented to keep their prisons full, which leads them to oppose any legislative or social efforts to reduce the incarcerated population (though whether privatization or policy are the chicken or the egg in this scenario is unclear).  Other providers, like commissary companies, may have a different set of incentives altogether.  What JPay does represent, however, is an alternative approach, and an illustration of how technology can drive efficiency even in an industry as rooted in tradition as corrections.

Expanded prison privatization may or may not be the answer for increasingly cash-strapped state and municipal governments.  The argument, however, should be about how to best encourage efficiency in corrections operations, and in that argument, there are many sides.  There are alternatives.

JPay makes all stamps ‘forever’ stamps

JPay stamps will no longer expire, regardless of facility, DOC, or agency.  Going forward, any stamp purchased by a customer to send an email, add an attachment, or provide an inmate with a prepaid reply will not expire.

JPay has used digital “stamps” for years for its inmate email service.  In the most common case, customers purchase a stamp in order to send an email to their loved one – provided, of course, that their loved one is in a state or county facility that allows JPay emails.  Photo attachments (which are available at certain facilities) also cost one stamp, as do other attachments.  Inmates must use a stamp – either purchased by their friend or family member as a prepaid reply, or purchased with funds from their inmate trust account – to respond via email.  JPay stamps are the backbone of the JPay email system, and are what make one of the most popular corrections-related services possible at all.

The price of one stamp ranges, but most are around $0.40 – $0.50.  Stamps are often also sold in bulk, with discounts for 20 or 50 stamp blocks.  And until last week, some stamps had to be used within a certain period of time, or they would simply expire.

A ‘forever’ stamp option has always been available to all customers, but for those customers who also had the option of purchasing stamps with expiration dates, this could present a dilemma.  Should the customer purchase expiring stamps at a discount, knowing if they didn’t use them within a month they would disappear?  Or should they buy the slightly more expensive ‘forever’ stamps, that they could use at any time?

So JPay decided to make a change, and make the process of buying stamps the same for all of its customers.  From now on, any stamps purchased by JPay customers are ‘forever’ stamps; they can be used two days from purchase, or 20 days, or 20 months, no matter where their loved ones are housed.

This reflects JPay’s longstanding commitment to its customers.  Many JPay users expressed concerns over the stamps that expired, and the decision to get rid of expiring stamps was due in part to this feedback.  JPay has always tried to provide services that are convenient, easy-to-use, and relevant to our customers.

Having one kind of stamp for the one company that provides the widest array of corrections services to the family and friends of inmates just makes sense.  JPay believes its customers will feel the same way.

Marie Jean-Baptiste

A Dispatch from Customer Service

By Marie Jean-Baptiste

I like the night shift.  During the day the customer service department buzzes like a beehive, but at night it’s quiet.  I can hear my customers better.  I can hear their accents better.

One night a couple of weeks ago I got a call from a customer in Nevada.  She was trying to send money to her son who was incarcerated in a Florida prison, and needed some help figuring out the JPay.com website.  I guided her through the money transfer process – which is really pretty straightforward, especially online, but I know it’s comforting to have someone walk you through anything the first time you do it – and after we were done I stayed on the line to chat with her a bit.

Her story was interesting, for sure.  She was from Florida, but had moved to Nevada for work.  Her son went back down south, though, and got himself into a little bit of trouble.  This was the first time she had to deal with anyone going to jail, and she was glad that a company like JPay was there to help her through it… but you know, most of our customers have stories like that.

Then it hit me.  It wasn’t what she was saying, necessarily, but how she was saying it.  Her accent.

I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on it earlier!  That little drip of French honey over her vowels. That singsong that stressed some syllables and swallowed others. She was speaking English with a Creole accent.

She was clearly Haitian, or of Haitian descent.

Just like me.

Tentatively, I asked: “Madame, ou pale kreyol?”  Do you speak Creole?

I think if she could have jumped through the phone and hugged me, she would have.  She erupted into a stream of extremely rapid Creole that I could barely keep up with.  She was from Port-Au-Prince, and moved to Miami as a child.  She had her boy and raised him in a neighborhood I was familiar with.  She didn’t want to leave South Florida, but she had to go where the work was, but she missed it, and she missed Haiti besides.  I got the feeling that she hadn’t had the opportunity to speak in her native tongue in a long time.

She told me that she was pou kontan (so glad) to know someone at JPay spoke her language, that it meant a lot to her to have some familiarity when so much of the corrections process was unfamiliar.  She said she’d call back every month to put money on her son’s account.  She said she’d ask for me at this time every time she did.

I find myself looking forward to next month.

The Execution of Nathan Hale

The first in a three-part series examining the death penalty in America.

In order to understand the death penalty in America, it’s important to look at its position in the nation’s history.  The practice of putting an individual to death as punishment for a crime did not originate with the our New-World culture; in fact, it was as much a feature of the ancient justice systems (Babylonian, Greek, Roman) as it was of systems that directly influenced the development of the American laws and penalties (17th century Britain and 18th century France).

The history of the death penalty in America predates the history of the United States.  The first state-sponsored execution in what were then the British Colonies occurred in 1608, with the death (by firing squad) of George Kendall, a suspected spy.  In those early days, the crimes that merited capital punishment ranged from treason, as in Kendall’s case, to more minor offenses, including stealing grapes and killing chickens in Virginia (Thomas Jefferson himself introduced legislation to reform these Virginia laws, which also listed trading with Indians as grounds for execution).  Just as today, the laws regarding the application of the death penalty varied from colony to colony.

As the United States came into existence in the late 1700s, a movement to reform and even eliminate the death penalty gained momentum.  It was at this time that execution was ruled out for many less egregious offenses, and states began to codify degrees of murder.  Many of the philosophical arguments against the death penalty that still resonate today first gained momentum in this post-colonial period, including the idea that capital punishment, far from being an effective deterrent, actually increases criminal conduct by creating a culture of brutalization.  Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Benjamin Franklin each advanced this argument, which ultimately resulted in the new state of Pennsylvania abolishing the death penalty for all offenses except first degree murder.

The late 1700s also introduced the first and most persistent legal argument against the death penalty: the US Constitution.  While the document does not explicitly allow or disallow capital punishment, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger;… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without the due process of law.  Basically, this means that an individual cannot be subject to punishment without first being indicted, and that no punishment, including execution, can be handed down without proper indictment, trial, and conviction.

The most familiar argument, however, is based in the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment outlined in the Eighth Amendment.  The Amendment states: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel
and unusual punishments inflicted.  This ban on cruel and unusual punishment was cited by the US Supreme Court in 1972 in its decision in Furman v. Georgia, when it found that capital punishment (in a particular group of cases) to be unconstitutional.  This resulted in a suspension of the practice in the United States from 1972 to 1976.  Eleven states had already abandoned the death penalty by this time, but with Furman v. Georgia, the rest of the country was effectively compelled to halt executions.

This Supreme Court ruling was narrow, however, and by 1976 thirty-four states had sufficiently augmented their trial and sentencing rules to satisfy the Court’s constitutionality tests.  On January 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore was sentenced to death by firing squad in Utah, resuming the death penalty era in the US.

The trend since 1972 has been toward a more restrictive death penalty.  In the time between Furman v. Georgia and 1984, only 11 people were actually executed, thanks to a more liberal appeals process and other litigation tactics.  Moreover, the Supreme Court has issued several rulings narrowing the constitutionality of capital punishment even further, often using the Eight Amendment as grounds.  In 1977, the Court effectively barred the death penalty for any offense other than first-degree murder, treason and espionage.  In 2002, the Court held that executions of mentally retarded individuals was unconstitutional according to the Eight Amendment.  In 2005, the Court held the same for persons under the age of 18 at the time of the crime.

As a result of these restrictions – and due to other philosophical, popular, and technical factors – fourteen states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty outright: Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.   Four other states had their death penalty statutes declared unconstitutional by their state supreme courts: Nebraska, New York, Kansas and Massachusetts.  Oregon has effectively suspended the death penalty following Gov. John Kitzhaber’s moratorium last month.

The death penalty continues to exist in this country, though its application has become more restrictive over the years.  The framework of the US Constitution leaves open the possibility of effective suspension – or even abolition – of the practice under the Eighth Amendment, while individual states are taking their own approach to reducing or eliminating capital punishment.

In the next articles in this series, we’ll look at why some states are limiting their executions and actively reducing their death row populations, and why some states continue to rely on capital punishment as a cornerstone of their justice systems.

To read more about the history of capital punishment in the US, visit the following links:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty#intro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/constfaq_q8.html
http://www.antideathpenalty.org/history.html