{"id":11144,"date":"2014-06-29T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-06-29T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/?p=11144"},"modified":"2014-06-29T03:55:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-29T07:55:38","slug":"the-economics-of-prison-monopolies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/2014\/the-economics-of-prison-monopolies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Economics Of Prison Monopolies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/062914_0751_TheEconomic1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"641\" height=\"318\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenbergjune wrote that prisons are allowed to operate monopolies that charge prisoners unreasonable amounts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In one prison a telephone call starts at $3.15, each email costs 33 cents, and money transfers require a fee of $4.95.<\/li>\n<li>Companies that offer products to prisoners are able to charge such high amounts because they are often granted a monopoly to operate the service.<\/li>\n<li>Local governments have little incentive to change the system since they get a cut of the profits. In one county the sheriff&#8217;s office gets 84% of the revenue.<\/li>\n<li>The prison businesses are expanding their services. One is offering a $50 tablet which will allow prisoners to listen to MP3s and read books. Those who get their family to pay money for the device will, of course, be charged additional fees.<\/li>\n<li>Even once prisoners are released the government may continue to charge fees. Any saved up prison earnings, for example, are put on a pre-paid debit card which imposes fees.<\/li>\n<li>The companies note that the fees are used to offset the cost of monitoring prison communications.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read more about the various fees that are charged, the companies that charge them, and the burden they impose on the families of prisoners over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/27\/business\/in-prisons-sky-high-phone-rates-and-money-transfer-fees.html?_r=0\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/27\/business\/in-prisons-sky-high-phone-rates-and-money-transfer-fees.html?_r=0\">The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenbergjune wrote that prisons are allowed to operate monopolies that charge prisoners unreasonable amounts: In one prison a telephone call starts at $3.15, each email costs 33 cents, and money transfers require a fee of $4.95. Companies that offer products to prisoners are able to charge such high amounts because they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bulletin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/062914_0751_TheEconomic1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11149,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11144\/revisions\/11149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}