“Prison Banking”

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Anna VanCleave now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

People in prison have no choice but to use the banking systems that prisons operate.  Rather than use any outside bank account or have family or friends meet their daily needs directly, people in prison must rely on what are often called “inmate trust accounts” to pay for goods and services within the prisons.  These accounts have long been vulnerable to asset seizure by the prisons that run them. The money in these accounts comes from prison wages and deposits by friends and family members of incarcerated people, and prisons take this money in a variety of ways: Prisons impose fees for a wide variety of services (like making a phone call, receiving mail, participating in educational programming or treatment, or even using the banking system itself), sell commissary items at highly marked up prices, impose fines as punishment for disciplinary infractions, divert the money at the behest of courts and criminal system agencies to pay other fines and fees, and collect the interest from the pooled accounts. Sometimes prisons seize large portions of a person’s inmate trust account balance under the rationale that the individual owes the prison system for their daily room and board. Sometimes, the money simply disappears as a result of embezzlement or error.

In 2021, the problems inherent in prison management of individuals’ money became apparent when COVID stimulus checks intended for incarcerated people began disappearing from their accounts.  Prisons and jails offered a variety of rationales, and some individuals raised legal challenges, but few questioned the basic authority of prisons to disburse money to themselves and other government entities, or the legitimacy of the prison banking system overall.

Prison systems have a significant conflict of interest in managing these banking systems, and the accounts are subjected to little transparency and oversight.  Statutory and administrative regulation of these accounts is minimal, compared to the tightly controlled regulation of money management in the free world.  Given the direct access that prisons have to these accounts, and the ease with which they can seize funds, prison bank accounts are a site of substantial wealth extraction, often with the blessing and penological deference of the courts.

This article examines the history and legal status of inmate trust accounts and the vulnerability of these funds.  The article places prison banking within the broader landscape of racialized wealth extraction through the criminal system and challenges the assumption that prisons and jails should be permitted to operate a low-transparency banking system over which they have exclusive control, are subjected to little regulation, and act with a high degree of conflict of interest.