I don’t understand why the Department of Corrections is pushing so hard to make electronic fund transfers mandatory for all families who send money to their incarcerated loved ones.
Until two weeks ago, family members could purchase certified money orders from any U.S. post office for 90 cents (up to $500 in value) and mail them to the prison. Now, they’re required to use electronic fund transfers through JPay or Western Union, and the minimum fee is $5 to send a sum as small as $25, but it could cost as much as $11.95.
Last week, I attended a public meeting at which Joe Ortiz, executive director of the department, and several members of his staff defended the policy. The setting was a regularly scheduled, twice-annual meeting between high-ranking prison officials and Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE). Ortiz and his staff patiently answered questions about a wide variety of issues for more than two hours.
Regarding transfers, L.D. Hay, department director of administration, described the slow, multistep process for handling a paper money order and explained that electronic transfers would handle the transactions much faster.
Speed is nice, but it’s largely irrelevant to people sending money on a regular basis. They care mostly about consistency. If it takes eight days to process a money order, then they’ll plan accordingly. For most inmates’ families, a faster transaction simply isn’t worth a 500 to 1,200 percent increase in the fee.
Both Hay and Ortiz insisted that the department had studied this issue at great length before instituting the new policy, yet they were not able to answer questions about how much money they expected to save. It’s strange to sit through a meeting in which cost-savings and efficiency are touted as the rationales for a policy, yet no evaluative calculations seem to have actually been performed.
Ortiz complained that he doesn’t have the staff to both “man the yard” and handle the 179,000 paper money orders that arrive in the mail each year. He explained that guards have to open all the envelopes and inspect them for contraband before delivering the money orders to the administrative staff.
Ortiz said the transfer policy is designed to get these officers out of the mail room and back on the yard. However, we have to assume that nearly all of those 179,000 money orders was accompanied by a personal letter (hence the need to inspect it for contraband before giving it to the inmate). So even if money orders are eliminated, the guards will still have to open thousands of letters.
The department says it has received positive feedback from family members who like electronic transfers, but people at last week’s meeting complained that the costs were prohibitive, particularly for poor families, and they asked the department to continue to accept paper money orders in addition to transfers.
Ortiz responded, “I’m trying to manage what’s statutorily placed on my shoulders. I can’t solve every social problem. I made this decision after considering all the issues and coming to a conclusion that would be most efficient for the most people.”
Given the the department’s insistence on transfers, and the exclusive contracts it signed with JPay and Western Union, I suspected that the department was getting something from the two providers. After all, if efficiency is the goal, there are less expensive ways to electronically transfer money.
Hay stated that the department initially was going to receive $1 per electronic transaction, “but we decided against that, because we wanted to get the best possible rates for the families.”
The best possible rates can be found at the post office. The department should drop the word “mandatory” from its transfer policy, because the service is outrageously and unnecessarily expensive for families, and it’s not clear that it will produce savings for the department.
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.
