Giving Compass' Take:

· Christie Thompson from The Marshall Project takes a look at yet another big scam targeting inmates with promises of an early release in exchange for payment for a product.

· What can be done to better vet these programs and ensure inmates are not victims of such occurrences?

· Check out this guide from Giving Compass on criminal justice. 

Last summer, Delores Wallace’s sister, who was serving a 3 ½-year sentence in federal prison, asked her to look into a company that was all the buzz on her cell block. The company, called Oaks of Justice, claimed it could help people get out of federal prison early and serve out their sentences at home while being monitored by a state-of-the-art surveillance system.

Wallace was skeptical. Her sister had just spent over $6,000 on another early release promise that went nowhere—one that claimed she could shave time off her sentence by enrolling in rehab. “At this point, I’m nobody’s fool,” Wallace said. But her sister was hopeful, so Wallace agreed to contact the founder of Oaks of Justice, a woman named Jo Morgan.

In emails to Wallace, some of which were shared with The Marshall Project, Morgan explained that her program allowed people convicted of nonviolent offenses to go home if they agreed to be tracked by an electronic monitor worn on their wrist like a smartwatch. It sounded like a good deal for everyone involved: Participants would return to their families while the federal government would save “billions” on incarceration. Morgan has claimed in emails and phone calls with potential customers that officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and President Donald Trump himself support the program.

But attorneys familiar with the federal prison system and a former bureau official said, based on their years of knowledge and experience, that a program of this kind would never happen. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email to The Marshall Project that the agency has no such deal with the company. And a reverse Google image search shows the photos of the company’s “proprietary” new tracking devices appear to be consumer GPS devices from the Chinese e-commerce site Ali Express, marketed to help monitor confused elderly people or teenage children.

Read the full article about this early release program by Christie Thompson at The Marshall Project.