A Captive Market

Private businesses are thriving in American prisons.

For millions of families, incarceration does not end at the prison gate. It follows them home in the form of phone bills, tablet fees, money-transfer charges, inflated commissary prices, and the constant pressure to pay for basic human connection and survival. What looks like a set of routine correctional services is, in practice, a captive-market economy built around people who cannot shop elsewhere and families who cannot simply walk away.