{ "title": "How far does $120 go when sent to a Virginia prison inmate?", "unit": "USD", "sent": 120.0, "recipients": [ { "id": "jpay", "label": "JPay", "kind": "company" }, { "id": "state", "label": "Virginia Department of Corrections", "short": "The state", "kind": "state" }, { "id": "inmate", "label": "Left to spend", "kind": "remainder" } ], "steps": [ { "id": "transfer", "amount": 8.95, "to": "jpay", "label": "JPay money transfer fee", "note": "What JPay charges to move $120 from a debit card into the account. $8.95 on $120 is 7.5%; on smaller sums the rate is worse." }, { "id": "savings", "amount": null, "to": "state", "rate": 0.1, "of": "after:transfer", "printed": 11.1, "label": "Mandatory savings account", "note": "Withheld by the state and held until release. The money still belongs to him; he cannot reach it." }, { "id": "restitution", "amount": null, "to": "state", "rate": 0.05, "of": "after:transfer", "printed": 5.55, "label": "Fees, fines and restitution", "note": "Court-ordered deductions, taken from the deposit before he sees it." }, { "id": "medical", "amount": 5.0, "to": "state", "label": "Medical visit", "note": "A co-pay for seeing the doctor." }, { "id": "scrip", "amount": 2.0, "to": "state", "label": "Prescription", "note": "What the doctor prescribed, charged separately from the visit." }, { "id": "email", "amount": 6.95, "to": "jpay", "commission": 1.0, "label": "JPay emails, 20 stamps", "note": "Email is sold in stamps. Twenty of them cost $6.95, and the state takes a commission on each." }, { "id": "music", "amount": 36.0, "to": "jpay", "commission": 1.8, "label": "Two album downloads from JPay", "note": "$18 an album on a JPay tablet, against roughly $10 on iTunes at the time. The state takes a commission here too." } ], "commissary": [ { "item": "Denim long-sleeve shirt", "price": 25.22 }, { "item": "Sensodyne toothpaste", "price": 5.64 }, { "item": "Antacid", "price": 4.18 }, { "item": "Batteries for JPay tablet", "price": 3.01 }, { "item": "Washcloth", "price": 2.4 }, { "item": "Boot laces", "price": 1.71 }, { "item": "Lip balm", "price": 1.2 }, { "item": "Two packs of ranch salad dressing", "price": 1.08 } ], "original": { "title": "How far does $120 go when sent to a Virginia prison inmate?", "outlet": "The Center for Public Integrity", "article": "Prison bankers cash in on captive customers", "article_url": "https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/prison-bankers-cash-in-on-captive-customers/", "reporter": "Daniel Wagner", "illustration": "Colin Owens", "published": "2014-09-30", "data_source": "Virginia Department of Corrections and JPay; commissary list provided by inmate Keith Miller", "image": "virginaFinal_5-1024x597.png", "image_w": 1024, "image_h": 597 }, "discrepancies": [ { "id": "two-arithmetics", "what": "The 2014 graphic computes its running balance two different ways. Its endpoints — 51.90, 23.66, 44.44 — and the commissary list are exact, carrying the state's deduction at its true 16.6575. Four of the intermediate balances across the top were worked out from the rounded line items instead, so 99.95, 94.40, 89.40 and 87.40 each sit about a cent above the exact chain.", "effect": "It is why the figures look as though they do not add up. They do; the picture just shows two arithmetics at once. This redraw carries full precision throughout and rounds only at the moment of printing." }, { "id": "commission", "what": "The 2014 graphic labelled the two commission flows $1.00 and $1.80, summing to $2.80, but labelled the band receiving them $2.90.", "effect": "A typo in the original, per Colin, 25 October 2026. The two itemised figures are correct and $2.80 is the total.", "resolved": true } ], "sources": [ { "id": "cpi", "title": "Prison bankers cash in on captive customers", "url": "https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/prison-bankers-cash-in-on-captive-customers/", "retrieved": "2026-10-25", "note": "Daniel Wagner for the Center for Public Integrity, 30 September 2014. The reporting the graphic was drawn for." }, { "id": "graphic", "title": "How far does $120 go when sent to a Virginia prison inmate?", "url": "https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/prison-bankers-cash-in-on-captive-customers/", "retrieved": "2014-09-30", "note": "The original illustration. Sourced to the Virginia Department of Corrections and JPay, with a commissary list provided by inmate Keith Miller." } ], "note_on_method": "Every figure is carried at full precision and rounded only when printed. The state's deduction is 15% of the balance after JPay's transfer fee — 10% to mandatory savings, 5% to fees, fines and restitution — which is where the original's rounding seam came from.", "families": [ { "id": "jpay", "name": "JPay", "what": "A private vendor. It is paid for moving the money, and then paid again for what the money is spent on." }, { "id": "state", "name": "The state", "what": "The Virginia Department of Corrections. It deducts from the deposit, and takes a commission on what JPay sells." }, { "id": "inmate", "name": "What is left", "what": "The remainder, spendable at the prison store." } ], "page": { "title": "How far does $120 go when sent to a Virginia prison inmate?", "description": "A graphic I made for the Center for Public Integrity in 2014, redrawn. $120 sent to a prison account, and the $75.56 taken out of it before he chooses anything.", "poster_line": "Every deduction in order, and what the remainder buys.", "body": ":standfirst\n$120 goes in. **$44.44 reaches him.**\n\nSomeone's family puts $120 on a debit card for a man in a Virginia prison.\nBefore he can spend a cent on anything he chose, $75.56 of it is gone. Not\nstolen, and not hidden — every deduction below is published, and each one\nhas a reason attached. They just run one after another on the same money.\n\nI drew this for the Center for Public Integrity in 2014, to run with Daniel\nWagner's reporting on prison banking. The reporting holds up. My execution\nof it didn't, so I redrew it.\n\n:label Who these three are\n\n{{parties}}\n\n:label How to read it\n\n:key **Red is the private vendor's cut.** JPay moves the money and then sells\nhim things to spend it on, and it is paid for both.\n\n:key **Black is the state's.** The Virginia Department of Corrections deducts\nfrom the deposit, and is also paid a commission on what JPay sells.\n\n:key **The tinted band is what is still his.** It starts at $120 and ends at\n$44.44, and every step down is a band leaving it.\n\n:key **Nothing crosses anything.** A deduction leaves the balance at the\nheight it was taken and runs straight to the edge. If two bands never meet,\nthe picture does not need a single curve to explain itself.\n\n{{diagram}}\n\n:label The commission is the part worth sitting with\n\nOf the $51.90 JPay takes, $2.80 goes back to the Department of Corrections —\na cut of the email stamps and the album downloads. The state earns more when\nJPay charges more. That was not the original intent.\n\n:label What I got wrong the first time\n\nThe 2014 version is below. It was built from the same figures and it reaches\nthe same total, so nothing here is a correction of fact. What it got wrong\nwas the reading.\n\nThe bands were S-curves that crossed each other in the lower half, so you\ncould not follow one from left to right without losing it. Every amount sat\nin a row underneath, so you read a number and then went hunting for the band\nit belonged to. There were three colours doing three unrelated jobs, and the\ngreen one read as *good* when all it meant was *not taken yet*. And the\ncommissary list — the eight items that are the entire point, because they add\nup to exactly what is left — was a column parked beside the picture instead\nof the end of it.\n\n:label What it could not tell you, then or now\n\nThe two commission flows were labelled $1.00 and $1.80, and the band\nreceiving them was labelled $2.90. The itemised figures are the right ones\nand the total was a typo. It is $2.80 here.\n\nThe original also looks as though its arithmetic does not close, and that is\nworth saying plainly because it was mine. Virginia takes 15% of the balance\nafter JPay's fee — 10% to mandatory savings, 5% to fees and fines. On\n$111.05 that is $11.105 and $5.5525. The 2014 graphic printed those rounded,\nthen used the rounded figures for some of the running balances across the\ntop and the exact ones for the totals at the end. Two arithmetics in one\npicture, about a cent apart. Here everything is carried in full and rounded\nonce, at the moment it is printed.\n\nOne thing neither version can tell you: whether $120 is a typical deposit. It\nwas the figure the reporting used. The percentages hold at any amount; the\ndollars do not.\n\n:label The original\n\n{{original}}\n\n:label Sources\n\n{{sources}}\n\n:footer Redrawn October 2026 · The diagram is generated from [data.json](data.json), which carries a basis for every figure" }, "generated_from": "content/prison-banking/" }