How Securus' JPay makes millions via monopoly granted by prisons to charge inmates and their family and friends exorbitant per-message fees for email services
For companies like JPay, the business model is simple: Whatever it costs to send a message, prisoners and their families will find a way to pay it. Tweets: @issielapowsky , @wired , and @fittsofalexis Tweets: Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : “Stamp by stamp, companies like JPay—and the prisons that accept a commission with each message— are profiting from isolation of one of the most vulnerable groups in the country.” http://www.wired.com/... @wired : Inside prisons, e-messaging companies are quietly building a money-making machine virtually unhindered by competition—a monopoly that would be intolerable in the outside world. http://www.wired.com/... Alexis Sobel Fitts / @fittsofalexis : Inside prisons, e-messaging companies are quietly building a money-making machine virtually unhindered by competition, based in a simple truth: Whatever it costs to send an email, prisoners and their loved ones will find a way to pay it. - @@LVikkiml http://www.wired.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
JPay, owned by Securus, runs on a structure Wired lays bare: prisons grant it the e-messaging concession, then take a commission on every message, so the vendor has no competitor at the point of sale and no incentive to lower per-stamp pricing. The same commission-for-exclusivity logic was already spreading to adjacent services — jails were swapping in-person visits for paid video calls months before this report.
The story sits early in an arc the later coverage completes: rivals like Pigeonly, InmateAid, and Flikshop emerged as family-built alternatives, Telmate's exposed database showed what concentrating millions of inmates' messages creates, and by 2024 tablets plus FCC price caps on voice and video calls had reshaped exactly the revenue lines this business model depends on.
First-order effects
- Inmates and their families bear the cost directly: every message carries an exorbitant per-stamp fee, and the facility takes a cut of each one, making the prison itself a revenue partner rather than a neutral buyer.
Second-order effects
- The exclusivity-plus-commission deal invites challengers — Pigeonly, InmateAid, and Flikshop, founded by formerly incarcerated people, position themselves as cheaper connection channels outside the vending contracts.
Third-order effects
- Regulators are following the money across product lines: the FCC's price caps on voice and video calls pressure vendors like Securus to shift monetization toward messaging, tablets, and content — the very categories where per-message fees remain uncapped.
The trend: Prison communications is consolidating around contracted monopolies whose pricing power migrates from capped phone calls toward uncapped messaging and device ecosystems.