Loaded on
July 15, 2025
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2025, page 14
Over five years ago, in May 2020, Washington prisoners Michael Linear and Lonnie Burton filed a complaint in state court against prison telecom JPay LLC, which held the exclusive contract with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide prisoners their “sole means of access to any electronic content, email, games, music, or internet access.”
JPay, the prisoners said, had “abused its monopoly by devising a scheme that baits inmates into purchasing excessively priced products and services, withholds the terms and conditions on those products and services from inmate review, and subjects inmates to a protracted sham trouble-shooting process that neither results in a repair or refund.”
As the prisoners noted, the firm’s kiosks provided access to the terms of service only after they clicked a button accepting them—at which point the kiosk “timed out” within two minutes, long before they had a chance to locate and read the relevant terms. Worse, one of those terms they were forced to accept before they could review it was an agreement to submit to arbitration to resolve any disputes—including challenging excessive fees, like a $8.95 for a $40.00 deposit into a prisoner’s account.
Sure enough, JPay responded with a motion to …
