Josh and Joel discuss prison (and jail) service provider Jpay

Technically, a regressive tax is a tax that decreases as the amount of money taxed increases. But, functionally, this means the poor are taxed more of their income (and certainly more of a percentage of their income).

Nothing has ever looked as friendly and unthreatening as Jpay's website .

For many of the families with a loved-one in prison or jail, the costs can be massive and often beyond their ability to pay. We quoted two reports on this topic: "Pays-FINAL.pdf">Who Pays, The Cost of Incarceration On families" and "The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the United States."

The breakdown of the changes from pre to post-Jpay was provided by the Center for Public Integrity. You can also find a great deal of additional information about Jay's usurious charges on that site.

There were two sources we used for the information about release cards: a ThinkProgress article and I read a v-jpay-complaint.pdf">court case filing for the class action suit against Jpay.

This contact information and profitability expectations came from this Syracuse.com article.