Crony Banksters Have The Prison Money System Locked Up

Daniel Wilson at the Center for Public Integrity has a two part series out, where he informs:

Megabanks have prison financial services market locked up . On Wall Street, Bank of America plays a perpetual second fiddle to JPMorgan Chase & Co., the only U.S. bank that holds more assets. . A few blocks north, however, at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center, there exists a market that Bank of America has locked down, literally. For the 790 federal prisoners incarcerated at MCC, Bank of America controls the provision of money transfers, e-messaging and some telephone services.

The bank's monopoly extends across the federal Bureau of Prisons system - 121 institutions housing 214,365 inmates. Since 2000, Bank of America has collected at least $76.3 million for its work on the program. When inmates are released, JPMorgan steps in, issuing high-fee payment cards to distribute money from their prison accounts, which include earnings from jobs and money their families send them.The banks' exclusive deals came not from the Bureau of Prisons, but from the U.S. Treasury...

The agency awarded the contracts using a 150-year-old authority that allows it to sidestep the oversight, transparency and competition typically required for federal contracting.