The Cost of Staying Connected

Have you ever thought about what it takes to stay connected to the people closest to you? I hadn’t. Not until I started exchanging messages with someone behind bars.

Communicating with Tremayne costs money. Every message on GettingOut and JPay comes with a fee. Phone calls are expensive. Video visits, when available, cost even more. The families of incarcerated people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a year just to maintain basic human connection.

This is by design. The prison communication industry generates billions in revenue. Companies like JPay and their parent corporations have built business models on the back of human relationships. They’ve monetized the most basic human need: staying connected to the people you love.

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” That loophole created an entire economy built on incarcerated labor and captive consumers. The communication system is one piece of it. Commissary prices, medical copays, and phone call rates are others. The system extracts from the people least able to afford it.

I didn’t know any of this before Tremayne. I knew the prison system was broken in abstract terms. Now I feel it in specific ones. Every message I send has a price tag. Every connection we build is filtered through a system designed to profit from our relationship.

Connection is supposed to be healing. The research is clear on that. But what happens when the system turns connection into a commodity? When the thing that helps people heal is also the thing that drains their families?

Read the full piece on Substack

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org