all family communication with inmates at Hays County goes through Securus, which charges Jones about $10 for a phone call and about $8 for a video visit.
Source: Inside the Shadowy Business of Prison Phone Calls
This is just straight-up evil. It’s capitalizing on people who have a loved one in prison.
This is just another way it’s expensive to be poor: a poor person might not themselves be a criminal, but they are still more likely to know someone who is in jail.
this is one example of why i don’t get libertarianism, if it supports private contractors monopolizing industries and perpetuating injustices like this toward ordinary people struggling to survive, with little regulation. human nature, left to its own devices, can be unethical and greedy. i’m glad to see people like cory booker and bernie sanders fighting to make the so-called ‘justice’ system more just and less predatory. the pay-day-lender greed mentality is alive and well in conservative places such as where i live in ohio, where people are poor, undereducated, and under-paid, while their conservative politicians fight oversight and regulation and exploit poverty.