The Cost of Staying Connected
Have you ever thought about what it takes to stay connected to the people closest to you? I hadn’t. Not until I started exchanging messages with someone behind bars.
In my last piece, I introduced you to Tremayne, an artist I met through a painting at a silent auction. We’ve been building a friendship through JPay, a prison communication app. Each message costs about $0.40 to send. I send a message to Tremayne. $0.40. He sends a message back. $0.40. One full exchange, $0.80.
That doesn’t sound like much. Until you look at what people in prison actually earn.
In state prisons, wages range from $0.14 to $0.63 per hour. Many people earn $0.25 or less. In six states, they earn nothing at all.
Do the math. At $0.25 an hour, sending one email costs nearly two hours of work. A short exchange with someone you love could cost a full day’s wages.
I pay for a cell phone plan. Connection costs me money too. But it doesn’t take me an hour of work to send a text.
I am able to send Tremayne a pre-paid reply so that he does not need to use what he earns to communicate with me. But not all friends and loved ones on the outside are in a position to do that.
Why Wages Are So Low
These wages aren’t an accident. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, except for one thing. It includes an exception for people convicted of a crime.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
That “except as a punishment for crime” loophole allows corporations to profit from prison. People inside work for pennies while companies benefit from their labor. It’s a system designed to extract, not rehabilitate.
If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend the documentary, The 13th.
But this isn’t just about exploitation. It creates a barrier to one of things that actually helps people heal: connection.
What Disconnection Does to the Person Inside
Connection is how people heal. We’ve seen this throughout this series. Sam built I OWE MORE around community and accountability. Tremayne created Colorful Transformations so men could heal together through art. The pattern of healing keeps repeating: freeing from fear, forming community, creating space for vulnerability, extending healing to others.
But connection costs money. And when you’re earning $0.25 an hour, you have to choose. Do I buy hygiene products or do I email my daughter? Do I call my mom, or do I save for something I need to survive in here?
Those choices add up. Over time, the connections weaken. The people who love you start to feel further away. The relationships that could help you heal begin to fade.
What Disconnection Does to Those on the Outside
When someone goes to prison, their loved ones go too. Not behind bars. But into a different kind of exile. The phone calls that don’t come. The messages that get less frequent. The slow erosion of a relationship that used to be central to both lives. It’s not because love disappears. It’s because the economics make staying connected really hard.
A mother loses her son. Not to death, but to silence. A child grows up without hearing their father’s voice. A friendship fades because one person can’t afford to respond.
The person inside isn’t the only one who suffers the disconnection. Everyone who loves them does too.
This Is Not About Excusing Crimes
I want to be clear about something. Nothing I’m saying is about excusing the crimes that led people to prison.
Almost everyone I talked to at Lawrenceville acknowledged they weren’t on a good path. One man said something that has stayed with me:
“I did not commit the murder that I was accused of that landed me in here. All the people who testified against me have recanted their testimonies. But that is not to say I did not need to come here. I was on a bad path in life. I needed to go someplace to heal some deep wounds.”
Sam has said something similar to me. “I am not advocating for getting rid of prisons. We need them. But we need them to be focused on rehabilitation and healing.”
I agree. This isn’t about abolishing accountability. It’s about asking what accountability is actually for.
The Tension
The system says it’s about rehabilitation. Preparing people to come home and stay home.
But rehabilitation requires connection. It requires community. It requires the relationships that remind you who you are and who you want to become.
The economics push in the opposite direction. They isolate. They sever. They make it harder to maintain the bonds that actually help people change.
A system designed for rehabilitation would make connection easier, not harder. It would recognize that the people on the outside are part of the healing, not obstacles to it.
This system isn’t designed for connection. It’s designed for disconnection.
Connection Is Love. Disconnection Is Fear.
Throughout my Heart-Strong Adventure, I keep coming back to this: connection is a form of love in action. It’s how we heal. It’s how we grow. It’s how we remember who we are and who we want to become.
Disconnection is fear. It isolates. It hardens. It cuts people off from the very thing that could help them change.
A system built on disconnection is a system built on fear. And locking up human potential doesn’t serve anyone except those in power who benefit from keeping people isolated and afraid.
What Would Love Look Like?
I don’t have a solution. I’m not a policy expert. I’m just a guy who started writing letters to someone in prison and stumbled into a question I can’t stop thinking about.
What would it look like if the system were designed for connection instead of disconnection? What if staying in touch with the people who love you wasn’t a luxury you had to earn with a day’s wages? What if the relationships that help people heal were treated as part of rehabilitation, not a barrier to profit?
I don’t know the answers. But I know what I’ve seen.
I’ve seen men inside Lawrenceville doing the hard work of transformation. Building programs. Choosing vulnerability. Helping each other heal. And I’ve seen how much harder that work becomes when you’re cut off from the people who love you.
Connection heals. Disconnection breaks.
If we actually want people to heal and become contributing members of their communities, maybe we should start by making it easier for them to stay connected to home in the first place.
This is the final piece in my prison series. If you missed the earlier ones: “There Are Two Kinds of Prisons,” “I Went to Prison. Here’s What Happened,” and “A Friendship That Started With a Painting.”
I enjoyed this series. Thanks Jeremy! Love, Jill