WAPO and Prison Commissary

Google kicked out a headline from The Washington Post I felt needed to be read: U.S. prison officials resist making inmates pay court-ordered victim fees. 

The opening paragrah led me to reading whole thing:

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has been pushing back against efforts to make inmates pay much more of their court-ordered restitution to crime victims, in part because the money they would use helps fund salary and benefits for hundreds of agency staff positions, documents and interviews show.

I had no victims in my case, so I did not directly experience this problem. My understanding was that the BOP did not consider itself a collection agency. All we were required to pay was the fee imposed by the court for convicting us. I forget the amount of this fee but $200 feels right.

Reading further the article turned to the Inmate's Trust Fund:

 Jack Donson, a retired Bureau of Prisons case manager coordinator who now consults on the federal prison system, said the issue highlights a “dysfunctional” culture at the prison bureau, with officials focused on preserving the flow of money through commissary accounts — known within the agency as the Trust Fund.

“At meetings, staffers often referred to the Trust Fund as a ‘slush fund,’ so I have always been suspicious of it,” Donson said.

My understanding of the Trust Fund was that profits from the prison commissary were to be used for the benefit of the prisoners. Frankly, we, the prisoners at Fort Dix FCI, saw nothing we knew of as being bought by the Trust Fund. At one point outdoor fitness equipment appeared, disappeared, reappeared, and then disappeared for good. Rumor had this equipment purchased through the Trust Fund. The televisions were said to have been purchased by the Trust Fund, then their purchase was said to have been transferred to the unit buildings.

Coming to this paragraph I felt a strong annoyance at the incomprehension of the writer for prison life:

 The second pool of money is the commissary accounts, or Trust Fund — a means for inmates to buy things, like phone or email access, sodas and candy, with money from their deposit funds.

Commissary carried food and clothing and over-the-counter medications. I saw home food services depended on commissary food sales to stretch their food budget. Commissary was closed for two to three weeks and food services began running out of supplies, scuttlebutt had a crisis in the kitchen remedied only by the re-opening of commissary.

As for clothing, the BOP provides only four shirts, four pants, four pairs of underwear, four pairs of t-shirts, and four pairs of socks. Cleanliness led to clothing purchases.

In short, commissary provides more than snacks.

Surely, the writer knows about the gouging imposed by those providing the phone services. Fifteen minutes cost maybe $10 - again, my memory of the amount has faded since my release - and this was how inmates kept in touch with their families.

Speaking of families, for most of us got our commissary funds from family and friends. Our prison jobs also paid into our commissary accounts. I think I had one paycheck that exceeded $40 for rhe month.

The article confirms the suspicions of us inmates: commissary paid the salary of those guards assigned commissary duty.

The Trust Fund also operates as a kind of business, using the significant markups it charges inmates on purchases to pay for agency staff. Last year, the Trust Fund paid $82 million to fund 652 positions at the Bureau of Prisons — $49.5 million in salaries and $32.5 million in benefits, according to agency records.

The mark up on the commissary goods was supposed to be 30%.  

The newspaper missed the real issue: where dies the Trust Fund money go?

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