After being issued a uniform, a bunk bed and a blanket, Kentucky inmates are issued a sturdy tablet computer. They can use it to purchase digital media products, such as email and video chat with loved ones, as well as games, music and movies.
The tablets generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue, which is split between Securus Technologies, which supplies the tablets, and the Kentucky Department of Corrections, which provides the tablets to the public.
According to financial records obtained by the Herald-Leader under the Kentucky Open Records Act, the company has paid $22.3 million to the state since 2020.
Securus’ financials are not made public. The company is owned by Platinum Equity, a private equity firm with more than $48 billion in assets.
“For me, the tablets are a double-edged sword,” said Lottie Tanner, the wife of a Kentucky prisoner and an activist with the nonprofit Advocacy Based on Lived Experience, which works to restore voting rights to ex-convicts, among other causes.
“On one hand, in-person visits have become more difficult since COVID. And with the tablets, our son can visit his dad via video three times a week, which is nice,” Tanner said.
“On the other hand, it’s $5.30 per video visit, plus tax. It cost me $7.70 last night when I bought 10 stamps for email, plus a $3 service fee — and why do we need stamps to send emails, except that Securus can force us to buy them? No one else needs stamps to send emails. And why are they charging us a $3 service fee just to buy stamps?”
Tanner said her husband earns only $30 to $40 a month cleaning at the Roederer Correctional Complex in Oldham County, so most of the money in his cafeteria and Securus accounts comes from her.
“It’s very expensive to live this way, and most of the costs fall on families — families like mine who often rely on one income,” she said. “Securus takes a big chunk of my salary. That’s true for a lot of us.”
Sen. Whitney Westerfield, chair of the Kentucky Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was surprised recently when he learned from the Herald-Leader about a hacking incident in the state prisons last year in which hundreds of inmates figured out how to use their tablets to transfer more than $1 million into accounts that didn’t actually exist.
Westerfield said he was also irritated that the Department of Corrections kept the hacking incident a secret instead of making it public.
Westerfield says that given the prices Securus charges inmates to use its tablets, he’s not entirely sure who the real victims of the theft are in this case.
On Securus tablets, TV episodes can cost up to $10, games up to $13, and movies up to $15.
“I firmly believe that companies like Securus are exploiting prisoners and their families,” said Westerfield, a Christian County Republican who has held hearings to investigate privatized prison phone services.
“It’s a highly targeted environment, with desperate clients, relying on equally desperate families and their resources, with exorbitant rates,” he said.
“And because people generally don’t care that much about criminals in prison, it’s one of the last places people look or care about stopping abuse and exploitation.”
Securus, headquartered in Plano, Texas, did not respond to requests for comment.
Cookie Crews, Kentucky’s commissioner of prisons, and other state officials declined to be interviewed for this story.
