Prison Email Service

[themrbt]

This already has already been done by “JPay,” but I am going to improve it.

JPay Article:
How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send An Email - WIREDhttps://apple.news/AXF5ncBZlQkGvxtzWn5encQ

JPay changes clients (prisoners) for each email they send. This pay-per-message- business model has been relaxed in numerous industries by the subscription business model. For example, iTunes was beat out by Spotify, so they made Apple Music.

What is keeping prisoners and their families from physically mailing cards and letters?
As the article explains, some prisons simply did not allow mail to go in and out due to the increase in contraband, which is often smuggled in through mail.

JPay often charges clients less than a dollar to send a single email, but the rate changes constantly. Likewise, phone calls are charged at a fee (usually under a dollar per minute). The issue with this is that neither the company or the consumer know their projected costs/revenue. That is a major pain in ass, and totally unnecessary.

Idea:
Create a company that provides prisoners he opportunity to email, audio call, video chat, or send electronic gifts to other people through a subscription service.

With the typical prisoner hourly wage being between $0.08-0.95 (average of $0.52), and let’s say they work 10 hours a day everyday, that’s around $156 per month per prisoner. Assuming they’re wiring most of that money to family, I would say a subscription fee of $10/month isn’t unreasonable. Do you all agree?

Questions, comments, critiques?

 

[nina723]

@themrbt Your link is to a Reddit thread about LSD.

The fact that they’re charging prisoners for email at all tells me it’s likely not a technological/competitor barrier, since there are free email services. But more likely a purposefully implemented barrier to either get more profit for the prison or prevent prisoners from sending too many emails, and this they likely won’t let you bring your solution to their prisons as it will decrease profits and allow prisoners to send more emails.

 

[blondie268]

@nina723 Yeah, your challenge isn’t in creating the service, it’s getting it into prisons. You know they’re getting a cut off the top. You have to believe the wardens or other folks that source the stuff are getting goodies or something too. No ones going to take a meeting with you unless your business plan shows more money going to the prison than they’re making currently AND you treat a lot of people to a lot of fancy dinners.

 

[themrbt]

@nina723 Haha that’s a funny mix up. I fixed it, thanks.

There are free email services, but not for prisoners. The service has been privatized, versus state/federal funding so it’s going to cost money. For obvious reasons, private business need to charge consumers for their services. JPay is the only company that is doing this in select prisons that are partnered with them.

I would need to find some incentive to make my business more attractive to the prisons.

 

[613jono]

@themrbt You need to find an incentive to make it more attractive to the prison management. The prisoners have no say in the matter.

 

[freetobeme2012]

@themrbt The fee charged by JPAY also covers some of the cost of the tablet provided by JPAY to inmates at a very low rate. There are a lot of unique challenges within the corrections industry and you need someone with experience to help you.

Going directly against an incumbent with deep pockets is never a smart idea. If you have not read it invest in a copy of blue ocean strategy.

Blue ocean strategy generally refers to the creation by a company of a new, uncontested market space that makes competitors irrelevant and that creates new consumer value often while decreasing costs.

 

[themrbt]

@freetobeme2012 Thank you for the info.

 

[613jono]

@themrbt First I would Develop a way to easily monitor the emails going in and out.

If you really want to sell it, you might have to make a program that may detect basic patterns or have code breaking capabilities. This is how you are going to sell this to prisons. Prisons are going to come to you and ask you, "what is the benefit to our prison?" (not prisoner, huge difference) Most prisons dont care about prisoners.

Off the top of my head, I would say this should be your major benefits in order.

1. Streamlined monitoring of gang and coded emails going in and out with digital programs doing the hardlifting detection.
2. Digital documents of prisoner letters in case they need to be used as evidence
3. Better behaved prisoner (find a case study online that claims prisoners on average behave better and save prisons money when they are more in contact with their family)
4. Finally, saves prisoners money

For the email monitoring, I would develop a database of keywords that are commonly used. Each prison has their own established list of code words.

Then for code breaking. I would develop some easy programs that allow for streamlined codebreaking. I.e. some prisoners they think they are smart using ciphers like every fifth words spells out a message. To sell your product. I would also offer the prison an added service where they can manually use digital programs to quickly scan through messages. If a prison guard gets an alert to a suspicious e-mail or person. They can look at the prisoner's emails. Use commonly used ciphers i.e. "Computer, please form a sentence for me using every 4th word, 5th word and 6th word." Maybe every 4th word is gibberish, 5th word is also gibberish but then the every 6th words deciphering returns a coded message.

I know I come off as very big brother with all this monitoring and decoding, but this would be the way to sell your product and for them to use your product. Prisons are more worried about guard safety and gang violence than prisoner's rehabilitation.

Otherwise good idea. Best of luck.