I've linked to it elsewhere in this thread (as a response to someone who appears to be ignorant that prison services are an industry), but here's a YC announcement for Pigeon.ly, a YC15 batch that "is building a profitable new category of services for the 20M ppl with family in prison":
Pigeon.ly's creator is an ex-convict who served 4 years of prison time for marijuana business. His first-hand experiences with the cost of telecommunication services is apparently what sparked his startup idea:
> One of these ideas was a way to make prison calls cheaper. There are only a couple of companies that handle the vast majority of communications in and out of prisons because messages and letters need to be carefully screened. Because of this market concentration among players like Securus and JPay, it means that prisoners — who are already vulnerable and often lower-income — get gouged.
> Three hundred minutes can cost $70.
> “While I was there, my eyes really started opening up. I started noticing how grossly inefficient everything was,” he said. “I thought, I know I can solve this problem. This is a real market.”
While I support any effort to improve the situation of anyone being denied communication with their family, lowering the bullshit vendor costs of such a system seems like a cynical approach to what should be a human rights issue. The free market by definition can't operate on a population of a captured sub-population that can't weaponize their own capital to buy better rates.
We need to elect politicians that recognize the horrors inflicted upon incarcerated folks and their families and provide communication with family as a cheaply-provided right, not as a strange sub-contracted service provided within the silly prison economy.
You and the OP article (The wonderful Erica Bryant) both make smart reference to
> family in prison
Too many people have no compassion for prisoner, so it's important emphasizing that exploitation of prisoners rolls over into exploitation of innocent family members.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-...
https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/24/pigeon-ly/
Pigeon.ly's creator is an ex-convict who served 4 years of prison time for marijuana business. His first-hand experiences with the cost of telecommunication services is apparently what sparked his startup idea:
> One of these ideas was a way to make prison calls cheaper. There are only a couple of companies that handle the vast majority of communications in and out of prisons because messages and letters need to be carefully screened. Because of this market concentration among players like Securus and JPay, it means that prisoners — who are already vulnerable and often lower-income — get gouged.
> Three hundred minutes can cost $70.
> “While I was there, my eyes really started opening up. I started noticing how grossly inefficient everything was,” he said. “I thought, I know I can solve this problem. This is a real market.”