Who owns jpay

Your current session is about to expire. For your security and protection, JPay sessions automatically expire. Your current session will expire in:. At JPay, we realize the corrections process can be challenging, whether you are dealing with the absence of an incarcerated friend or family member or feeling the pressure of making your next restitution or supervision payment.

By providing convenient, relevant services and building strong customer relationships, we hope we can make this process both easier and faster. JPay, a Miramar-based technology company that provides prisons with electronic payment services, email and a host of educational and entertainment apps, is being acquired by Securus Technologies of Dallas.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. JPay, with employees, operates in 33 state prisons serving more than 1. JPay was founded in as a payments company and later evolved to include a digital platform that combines tablets, kiosks and an inmate cloud, giving inmates access to email, music, books, games, shopping and education. Shapiro said the entire team is staying put in South Florida, and Shapiro will continue to run JPay, but as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Securus.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the second or third quarter of this year, the companies said. In return for doing business, JPay gives the state a cut of its revenue. JPay's fees vary based on such factors as how much the state takes and fees paid to third parties like banking software companies, Shapiro said. States vary as to what services they will allow businesses to sell to inmates "It really depends on the 'political mood," Shapiro said.

At the North Dakota State Penitentiary, where over 50 percent of the population uses JPay in some form, all of the company's services are allowed, Warden Colby Braun said. Critics, though, question a model where states and companies benefit on the backs of prisoners and their families. The sentence is the punishment. Read More Fake wine collector gets 10 years. Technology also plays a role in behavior modification—an inmate that is engaged during the day is less likely to act out in violence," he said.

Shapiro also claims that the state's cut of JPay's business goes back to the inmates, whether in the form of recreational activities or building infrastructure to support educational programs. Donson, who now runs a private prison consulting business and serves as an advocate for prison reform, disagrees. Another important issue is how these fees impact families outside the prison who pay them.

Shapiro says its fees are too low to affect inmates' families.