4/6/2023 0 Comments Jpay visits![]() "Without them, there is no way to make sure our loved ones are staying on the right path." "These visitation cuts are going to affect us immensely," she said, her dog "Bob" at her side. DiTullio, who pays for her husband to take college classes, said she is worried it may all be a waste of money. Then the facilitator had a medical emergency and rather than replace him, the warden stopped the program.Īfter six weeks without therapy, her husband relapsed. After her husband had been attending drug treatment meetings with a facilitator in the last year, he was sober for six months. "There's so much contraband brought in by the prison staff, it's a full-time job to stay clean," she said. To cover the hole, FDC last week finalized cuts of $28 million to dozens of privately run inmate transition and treatment programs that had a proven track record of preventing offenders from returning to crime and drugs.Īggy DiTullio, whose husband is in prison for life without parole, said that he did not have a drug problem until he was incarcerated and now is addicted to K2, the synthetic marijuana. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature passed and signed a prison budget that had nearly a $50 million deficit, forcing the agency into deep cut mode. The reduced prison visits are only one of the deep cuts the agency is making this summer. "It's important to note, they (JPay) are implementing this technology in our institutions at no cost to Florida taxpayers, and they also provide monitoring for these services which is necessary in a correctional environment," said Patrick Manderfield, FDC spokesperson.įDC held a second hearing on the visitation cutbacks Thursday, and nearly 100 family members spoke. It's all about money."įDC, however, said that while it is encouraging the video visits, the agency "does not make any commission off of video visitation." "This whole thing is about pushing video visitation at a price of $2.95 for 15 minutes. "This whole thing is not about being safer if we cut back on visitation," Thompson said. The agency has prosecuted some officers, but will not detail the extent of its staff-induced problem.) (FDC publishes reports related to visitor contraband and also blames "throw-overs" - people who throw contraband over the perimeter fence - for its problem. Shortly before the JPay deal was cut, FDC announced the new visitation policy, blaming staff shortages and a continued increase in illegal drugs, cellphones, weapons and other contraband.īut Thompson, and many in the Campaign for Prison Reform, cite FDC statistics that show that 2.5 percent of the illegal drugs and other contraband introduced into prisons comes from visitors and, they say, the remaining 97.5 percent comes from staff - many of them as young as age 18 who the family members say are easily manipulated by the inmate population. To transfer $20 to an inmate account to purchase food from the commissary and other provisions, for example, the family pays $4.95. "That's going hurt in the groin, where it should," she said.īoth FDC and JPay charge a fee for the transactions. Rather than letting JPay profit off cash transfers and purchases, families will now send money to the accounts using wire and bank transfers and circumvent the programs, Thompson said. In addition to boycotting the video visitation program used at the kiosks, the families of the 97,000 inmates will also boycott the JPay program used to transfer money to inmate accounts set up by the Florida Department of Corrections. FDC then started encouraging families to replace the in-person time with video conferences, arguing it will be safer and easier to handle because of prison staff shortages.īut the families are pushing back. The new prison visitation policy, expected to be implemented this summer, will allow inmates to meet with visitors every other weekend instead of every weekend.Ī year earlier, in April 2017, FDC signed a single-source contract with JPay to install multimedia kiosks and tablets for use by inmates no cost to the state.
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