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| E-mail to Replace Letters for Inmates |
| By The Philadelphia Inquirer |
| Published: 03/20/2006 |
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Inmates at New Jersey's Gloucester County Jail will become the first in New Jersey - and possibly the nation - to get all their personal mail via the Internet. E-mail will be sent to a central computer at the jail, inspected for coded gang messages, printed, and distributed. The jail will phase out U.S. Postal Service "snail mail" by the summer and handle all correspondence, with the exception of mail involving the inmates' legal cases, through a service called Jpay, authorities said. In addition, Jpay will be used to manage inmate commissary accounts by the end of this month. The Miami-based company already operates in 10 state prison systems, including Pennsylvania's, and multiple county systems, president, Errol Feldman said. According to him, the Gloucester County facility will be the "first to go all electronic." The system will create a safer environment for inmates and corrections officers, Freeholder Director Stephen M. Sweeney said. It also will allow officers to spend less time inspecting mail and more time in the yard at the 150-inmate jail. Jpay only collects its fees and does not pay anything to the county, Feldman said. In years past, heroin and LSD have been smuggled into the jail through the mail, although officials could not recall any recent cases. Stationery can be soaked in the liquid forms of the drugs and be reconstituted by inmates, corrections officials said. Mail inspectors often cannot detect the illicit substances. "Drugs and other contraband, like tobacco, are sent from outside of the jail to inmates constantly," Sweeney said. "Once the mail can only be sent to a prisoner via e-mail, it will diminish the chances of these substances coming into the jail. The service is being touted as a convenience, but it has its price. Each e-mail will cost the sender 50 cents, about the same as a stamp, an envelope, and a piece of paper. Corresponding with an inmate will require setting up an account with Jpay and composing the e-mail through a form at Jpay.com. That means anyone wanting to write a prisoner must have access to a computer. More than a third of American homes are not connected to the Internet, according to the latest National Technology Scan report by Parks Associates. "It seems unfair to inmates, because many of their loved ones won't have the ability to send e-mail," said Jeffrey Winter, the county's deputy public defender. Michael Pinsky, a criminal defense lawyer who often has clients at the jail, put it more bluntly: "How do they expect poor people to do e-mail?" Pinsky said there had been no recent reports of drugs mailed into the jail on stationery. "If they're really concerned about drugs getting in, they should buy a dog," Pinsky said. "There has to be some humanity in the jail. They're not supposed to be gulags." He stressed that many inmates in county jails only had been accused of a crime, not convicted. The new system will also increase the cost of crediting money to an inmate's commissary. Traditionally, family and friends have mailed money orders - which cost about $1 at convenience stores - to inmates for snacks and toiletries. To send more than $20 with a credit card using Jpay will cost $5.95 online, $6.95 by phone. In Pennsylvania, cash transactions require individuals to go to a MoneyGram outlet or a Wal-Mart. The Jpay system puts the costs of transferring the money "on the prisoner," Sweeney said. The fee is deducted from the deposit. Since an officer will no longer administer the prisoners' accounts, it "creates an ultimate saving to the taxpayer." Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's National Prison Project, said most people in jail remained there because they were not able to afford even low bail. She called the Jpay plan "an outrageous policy." "It's a government-sponsored scam," she said. "And just another way to gouge already poor people." |
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