While the rest of us went to the polls this week to vote on various tax measures, the Colorado Department of Corrections imposed, without a vote, a fee increase of more than 500 percent on families who send money to their incarcerated loved ones.
In prisons, the state pays for food, lodging and a few other basic services, but inmates are required to purchase their own toothpaste, shampoo, shaving supplies, soap, other toiletries, and over-the-counter medications from the prison commissary at regular retail prices. Inmates also must pay $5 to visit a health care professional if they’re sick or injured.
Many convicts are unable to make these commissary and medical purchases on their own, because state law caps their income at 60 cents per day. Therefore, they rely on family members to send them a few dollars each month.
Under the system that was in place until last week, a grandmother on a fixed income who wanted to deposit $25 into her incarcerated grandson’s commissary account could have gone to any post office, purchased a money order for 90 cents, and mailed it to the prison.
However, as of Tuesday, the DOC announced it “will no longer accept paper money orders sent by mail,” according to a memo the department sent to families. Instead, “all incoming deposits to inmate accounts from family members and/or friends will be required to be sent by Electronic Fund Transfer,” or EFT.
The DOC has made a deal with JPay and Western Union so that inmates’ families can either walk into a wiring location with cash, or use their credit cards to make commissary account deposits by phone or Internet.
If Grandma walks into a JPay location (available only in Ace Cash Express Stores), she’ll have to pay $5 to send $25 to her grandson. If she makes the deposit online, the charge will be $5.95, and by phone it’s $6.95.
If Grandma uses Western Union (with outlets in most King Soopers and Safe- way grocery stores), the fees are even higher. If she makes the transaction during her regular shopping trip, she’ll pay $7.95 to send $25. Online, the charge will be $9.95, and by phone it will be $11.95.
I don’t blame JPay or Western Union for their rates, because they’re for-profit enterprises, and consumers can choose to use them or not. If you’re desperate to send or receive money within hours, wire services are quite useful. However, if you deposit money into someone’s account on a regular basis (e.g., a student in college or an inmate in a prison), wiring it every month would be foolish because the fees are so high.
The DOC is forcing every inmate’s family, regardless of their financial circumstances, to use a foolish and expensive mechanism to make regular monthly deposits.
Dennis Diaz, Controller for the DOC, said, “We started this out as a pilot program back in August. We made [EFT] an option for families to send money in, and it was working so well, and we got great feedback, so we decided to make it mandatory.”
The DOC memo announcing this new policy is dated Sept. 6, so the pilot program must have been brief. But if Diaz is right about the feedback, there’s no reason to make this rule mandatory. The DOC should simply keep EFTs on the menu as an option, but continue to accept postal money orders. If families are willing to pay the higher fees, then they’ll naturally select EFTs.
However, I suspect that most inmates’ families already are suffering financially and emotionally, and they can ill-afford to pay 500 to 1,200 percent more just to make a deposit. The DOC should reconsider this unfair policy.
Former Bronco Reggie Rivers is the host of “Global Agenda” Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KBDI-Channel 12. His column appears every Friday.
