How Much Money Do You Make In Jail
Earning and spending coin in prison
- Russell Webster
- March 1, 2016
New Prison Inspectors written report on earning and spending money in prison reveals a number of injustices including the fact that pay has been frozen for 14 years.
Life in prison
The Prison Inspectorate's findings papers inevitably make for an interesting read. The nearly contempo i (published in January 2016) is titled: Life in prison: earning and spending money draws on a large number of inspections of individual establishments to examine how the reality of earning and spending money inside compares with the inspectors' expectations.
Context
How people earn and spend money in prison differs from the exterior earth. The most obvious deviation is the absenteeism of any physical coin. Prisoners may accept money from what they themselves bring into prison, what is sent in by family or friends or what they earn in prison. They can simply spend coin upwards to approved weekly limits depending on their remand or convicted status and their behaviour as assessed under the incentives and earned privileges scheme. Any money that is paid to prisoners for work, or sent in from their family, is stored by the prison and and so transferred electronically to the prisoner on a weekly basis depending on their weekly spending limit. Although prison wages are low, prisoners do non take to pay for accommodation, their meals, basic toiletries or clothing if required. Some may be able to bring some approved items into prison with them or have them sent in by families or friends. Prisoners must provide for everything else themselves. They must purchase telephone credit themselves and pay rent for a TV. Everything else must exist purchased from the prison 'shop' or 'canteen'. In public sector prisons this consists of a list of items, such as tobacco, non-prescribed medication, additional nutrient and toiletries, hobby materials and jotter, chosen to meet the item needs of individual prison populations from a national product listing (NPL) of approved items. Prisoners may besides purchase other items such as clothing or religious artefacts from approved retail catalogues for which prisons charge an administration fee. Private sector prisons have their own canteen arrangements. The money that a bedevilled prisoner can spend is likewise restricted based on their behaviour and level on the incentives and earned privileges (IEP) scheme which has four levels: entry; basic; standard and enhanced. The maximum a convicted prisoner is able to spend per week is £25.50 although nigh prisoners are limited to £xv.50 (the limits are higher for remand prisoners) — these amounts have not inverse since 2008. 
Earnings
The rate of prison pay has not been increased since 2002(!) and is set out in Prison Service Club 4460 which requires:
- that all prisoners who are in some grade of employment take to earn the minimum of £four a week, although they tin earn more; in 2010 the average working prisoner earned £10 a week
- a mandatory rate of pay of £iii.25 a week for those who are unable to work for wellness reasons or accept reached retirement historic period
- that those who wish to piece of work, but are unable to due to a lack of action places in the prison, are paid a minimum of £2.50 a week
- that unconvicted prisoners who choose to work are paid the aforementioned as bedevilled prisoners.
The price of calling dwelling
Prisoners buy phone credit, which they can purchase in £ane increments through the canteen. Despite official recognition that maintaining contact is important, the price of making a phone phone call from prison can be expensive. Calls to mobiles — the merely option for many prisoners — at a prison recently inspected were advertised as costing 20.4p per minute on weekdays and 13.2p per minute at weekends. Therefore, a thirty-minute phone call costs £six.12 during the week and £iii.96 at the weekend. So a prisoner on maximum earnings could not afford to call his/her family unit twice per calendar week for an 60 minutes in total.
Canteen
Prisoners rely on ordering appurtenances from the prison canteen for all but the barest necessities of life. Inspectors found that many new prisoners have very limited access during their first days and weeks in prison:
Fewer than a quarter (23%) of prisoners surveyed said that they had access to canteen when they beginning arrived in prison. In local prisons, where nearly prisoners begin their sentences, the proportion vicious to 21%. For many individuals, this is their first experience of prison life and they may not be sufficiently aware of the need to avoid borrowing and the associated debt. It can ofttimes take upward to two weeks for a prisoner to receive their beginning bottle order.
[For more than details on prisoners' first experiences of prison life, see another recent Findings report: The outset 24 hours in prison.] Inspectors also found that fewer than half the prisoners they surveyed (47%) felt that their canteen had a broad enough range of goods to meet their needs. There was a lack of healthy foods and both Black and Muslim prisoners felt that their option was even more than limited with many basic culturally appropriate toiletries and foodstuffs unavailable. Additionally, on the whole canteen items were dearer than they would be in mainstream supermarket. The inspectors' table below does non include any supermarket special offers or promotions: 
Conclusions
The inspectors admit that prisoner pay is always likely to be a controversial consequence but still make five strong recommendations:
- In that location should be a review of prisoner pay and money in possession rates, which have not changed since 1992 and 2008 respectively.
- Allowances for older prisoners and others who are unable to work should be reviewed and should provide sufficient income to cover new Television receiver rent charges and other reasonable basic items.
- Pay should be linked to performance and effort in work, instruction or grooming and not disincentivise education or offender behaviour work.
- Prisoners should not exist charged an administration fee for catalogue orders.
- National and international charges for telephone calls from prisons should be reviewed to achieve equivalence with similar charges in the community.
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Source: https://www.russellwebster.com/earning-spending-money-prison/
Posted by: chaconpith1999.blogspot.com
Russell,
Good piece and informative as always. You may wish to know that there is a limit put in place on a time limit on how long the telephone call can final. In most prisons information technology is 5 min maximum then ane has to look ten mins to bee connected. The maximum an offender can down in i day is also constrained.
The one flake of relief is for those foreign national prisoners as the prison recognises that calls away are expensive who can access funds from their individual account for telephone calls and this will not bear upon their bottle account.
My question would exist to meet if the prison service made money of the telephone arrangement
Of course they practice. You recollect information technology costs 50 cents to make a telephone call? That's literally almost all profit for the prisons
How-do-you-do TC
Thank you very much for the comment. I know some of the new build prisons have in cell phones which makes the business of keeping in touch with family unit and friends much more human.
I'm so concerned my partner is in jail ..I've bin sending 60 poi d a month he's inappreciably ringing the phone I even had a landline fitted ..I suspected hi, of cheeting …how cam I fonf out of he'southward ti hullo grand her he'southward telling me its only 1560 a week merely vie bin told u vs spend ptivsyr spends on his phone is that the truth..plus has g wing gut double orvdingle cells
Your sending in £60.00 a month? Your clearly getting too much in your benefits love!!
I near had a stroke reading that
Ha
No sympathy for the prisoner with their £two.l a week. All the sympathy in the globe to the families…. I spend over one-half my life showing pity and sympathy to prisoners and their familoes, exercise them or their family take sympathy or pity to my family that I dont encounter? No? Thought so
PRICK !! – What Earth Are You lot Living In ???
I'm pleased to hear prisoners can rent a idiot box and buy snacks. Tin can families and friends send in gifts for Christmas and birthdays, or can they society gifts from approved sites/prison bottle?
Why can yous buy a PlayStation ii for £30 nevertheless in prison they take to pay £90. Extorting prisoners who will put pressure level on family for money is not very upstanding.
Seriously like, fs they're in jail, it's 3 meals a 24-hour interval, a bed, a hot shower, a gym, association etc, and pure peace from the outside earth, total bliss, can't cry about your time, if you committed a law-breaking, end of.
You make information technology audio lovely. I had a friend who got sent to prison, nothing vehement. When he came out he was a wreck, lost a lot of weight and had to see a psychiatrist. He said it was the worst experience of his life.
My son has been falsely accused during a family court proceeding His EMU won't even expect at his testify proving his innocence as did the police force or cafcass. He works in the prison has washed courses of NVQ and shows he is a good citizen been done over by his ex she has used the whole system to spite him in this cruel manner. Why is there not help for these innocent men all they try to practice is brand them acknowledge something they never did. At weekends he spends 29 hrs in his cell earlier he's allowed out for xx -40 min to practise everything eat shower telephone calls. I think the existent criminal is his ex and her accomplices who put him there not him.
I was wondering something. If you don't spend the money you earn in prison house do y'all become to accept it with you when you leave? Do yous pay tax on it?
What sort of jobs practise women do in prison?
Are you immune mobiles? Is there an internet ban?
If you get a PlayStation when do you play it?
You lot become your coin in cash on release. No tax.
No mobiles.
You play your playStation whenever y'all want. If you have a cellmate you play it when they dont wanna watch tv.
Society has locked upwards some of the all-time brains in the Country Why non Turn Prisons into the Skillful Bad and Ugly League With Points make Prizes the Costs of Keeping Them Warm and Fed with clean Clothes Shoes Free Idiot box they Need Brain Stimulation Maybe Running their Contributed efforts into Stock Exchange or online BitCoin Software Games that do good society and Help their Costs that increase their well being , I fully understand the Feeling in Society for Families who have been Traumatized with Thieves Actual Impairment or Murder Rape Drugs plus all the Scammers What ever we all Think in our own Way, We do need to find a More than Productive Plan to Benefit Both Sides of the Spectrum, Plus Perhaps simply correct to Recoup their Victims. The UK Prison Leagues of Repaying Lodge Points Make Prizes in Humanity Welfare Maybe they can Leave Prison with a % turn a profit from their Commonage efforts. Seek a New Way to Assist
Hey my partner has been locked upwardly on remand since October and they still no releases him he told me he only gets allowance of £7 a week how atrocious I mean he calls me every week just said he can only call longer duringa weekdays cos it cost him lot of money on weekdays I merely he is ok as he'south innocent and waiting for his courtroom date next month and so they have locked him upward all this time without proving he'due south guilty the justice organization seems confusing to me?