KY inmates and their families spend millions on for-profit computer tablets
After they’re given a uniform, a bunk and a blanket, Kentucky prison inmates get a sturdy computer tablet from which they can buy digital media products, such as email and video visits with their loved ones, plus games, music and movies.
The tablets generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue that is split between Securus Technologies, which provides the tablets, and the Kentucky Department of Corrections, which provides the captive audience.
Since 2020, the company has paid the state $22.3 million, according to financial data the Herald-Leader obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act.
Securus’ finances are not publicly disclosed. The company is owned by Platinum Equity, a private equity firm with over $48 billion in assets.
“To me, the tablets are a double-edged sword,” said Lottie Tanner, a Kentucky prisoner’s wife and activist with the nonprofit Advocacy Based on Lived Experience, which works to restore voting rights to former felons, among other civic causes.
“On the one hand, since COVID, in-person visitations have been more difficult. And with the tablets, our son can visit with his father three times a week by video, which is nice,” Tanner said.
“On the other hand, it’s $5.30 per video visit, plus tax. It cost me $7.70 last night when I bought 10 stamps for email, plus a $3 service fee — and why do we need stamps to send emails, other than Securus can force us to buy them? Nobody else needs stamps to send emails. And why charge us a $3 service fee just to buy stamps?”
Tanner said her husband earns only $30 to $40 a month doing janitorial work in Roederer Correctional Complex in Oldham County, so most money in his commissary and Securus accounts is deposited by her.
“It is very expensive to live this way, and most of the cost falls on the families — families, like mine, that often are supported on a single income,” she said. “Securus gets a big chunk of my paycheck. That’s true for a lot of us.”
Sen. Whitney Westerfield, chairman of the Kentucky Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was surprised recently to learn from the Herald-Leader about a hacking incident in the state prisons last year involving several hundred inmates who figured out how to use their tablets to create more than $1 million in their accounts that didn’t really exist.
Westerfield said he was also annoyed the Department of Corrections kept the hacking incident a secret rather than publicly disclose it.
Given the prices that Securus imposes on inmates to use its tablets, Westerfield said he’s not entirely sure who the real theft victims are in this case.
On Securus tablets, television episodes can cost up to $10, games up to $13 and movies up to $15.
“I wholly believe that companies like Securus are exploiting the inmates and their families,” said Westerfield, a Republican from Christian County who has held hearings to investigate privatized inmate phone services.
“It’s a target-rich environment, with desperate customers, relying on equally desperate families and their resources, with exorbitant rates,” he said.
“And because people generally don’t care so much about felons in prison, it’s one of the last places people look for, or care about, stopping abuse and exploitation.”
Securus, with headquarters in Plano, Texas, did not respond to requests for comment.
Kentucky Corrections Commissioner Cookie Crews and other state officials declined to be interviewed for this story.
This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 10:54 AM.
