“It eats up the money, but you don’t want your loved ones to go without,” Davis said. “If you miss the window, even by one day, you can forget it,” she said.ĭespite her frustrations with the industry, Davis estimates that she spends as much as $600 of her monthly budget on staying in touch with her husband through things like phone calls, visits and care packages. The timelines are strict, said Joi Davis of Clarksville, Tennessee, whose husband has been incarcerated since 2003. In some facilities, inmates who are eligible to receive packages (usually those who are lowest risk and have good behavior) can get a care package once every three months at others, inmates are allowed weekly deliveries. So some families may consider ordering through authorized private vendors, which only offer pre-approved goods, to be more convenient than navigating a prison’s byzantine gifting rules.īut others say sending packages through these companies can be onerous and expensive.Ĭorrections agencies set different rules for how many gifts inmates can receive and how often they can receive them. And where packages from home are allowed, workers have thrown away those that contained forbidden items. Prisons and jails have long restricted the types of items inmates can receive from the outside - nothing with poppy seeds, for example, or no boxer shorts with patterns on them. Keefe Group and Union Supply Direct did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Correctional facilities determine the prices, nutritional guidelines and labor model used in their contracts with the company, she said. “We deliver experiences that enrich and nourish millions of lives every day,” Karen Cutler, vice president of corporate communications for Aramark, wrote in an emailed response to questions. (Source: 2014 Union Supply Direct contract bid in West Virginia.) Projected annual pay for one inmate working fulltime in package program. (Food typically must be in hermetically-sealed and tamper-proof packages, which rules out most fresh options.) Most snacks and meals are heavily processed and packed with sugar, fat and sodium. Perhaps because prison meals often leave much to be desired, food tends to dominate care package offerings. It would be so nice to send a pair of socks or something I went and picked out for him.” “It’s hard to do that through the calls and brief visits. We don’t love their crime, but we love them,” says Julie Tyson of Morehead City, North Carolina, whose son is incarcerated in a state prison. The privatization of services at correctional facilities generally leaves prisoners and their families with fewer choices, forcing them to do business with certain vendors or go without, says Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for incarcerated people and their families and has conducted research on predatory practices in the prison and jail communication industry.Īlthough catalogs can contain hundreds of items, some relatives lament their inability to send a personalized gift. In its bid for the West Virginia contract, Union Supply Group, which oversees Union Supply Direct, projected that the state stood to earn about $95,000 in one year, based on a 17 percent commission of annual care package sales. Capital.Ĭompanies often offer their services at no charge to corrections agencies along with a share of the profits. Keefe is a wholly-owned direct subsidiary of TKC Holdings, which is indirectly controlled by the Miami-based private equity firm H.I.G.

Louis, Missouri, is comprised of several companies that provide services to prisons and jails nationwide, including care packages, commissary, video visitation and surveillance technology.

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