First of all, never give up of trying to help people in spite of the obstacles.
Imagine you are one of those people who have resources, big or small, and want to help by donating to a person, in this case an inmate that you feel has been wrongfully imprisoned. You want to help him/her, and donated to their commissary, send a care package, which is equally important, and you have arrived at a site or service approved by the prison.
Important to notice:
The service to deliver the care package has to be approved by the prison. You know the service is approved by the prison when a) the prison is listed on their website and b) the service is listed on the prison's website, the bop.gov explains extensively how to use Western Union, for example, and c) you contact the prison.
Some services like Connect Network offer Pin Debit, which is a way to deposit funds into inmates phone accounts, when they manage to have one, so he/she may place phone calls to anyone on an approved contact list. And, this was a service I was able to use, meaning I was able to put some money on a inmate's phone.
However, still on the Connect Network's website, I had discovered that benefactors from outside the US can't deposit funds into the commissary of an inmate. The reason I continued my search for a service I could use, as I was trying to deposit funds to an inmate in a specific prison. And, I haven't found one as of this moment.
Unfortunately, in order to donate from outside the US a person has to relay on services like Western Union, and the inmates have got to be lucky enough that their prison is listed there because WU is indeed a good service. This is the kind of obstacles and difficulties a person encounters when trying to donate some money, the time and effort put into it is enormous to the point a person feels compelled to donate more so they only have to do it again the next year.
In regard to the commissary, the prison can only make available a certain amount of money per month, more information is available on this website, any exceeding income can be used by the inmate to pay outstanding fines, assessments or restitution. [I made sure to correct the original article to include this piece of information.]
I can imagine many campaign organizers are not aware of these obstacles that people have to face. Also important, regular folks need more information. I leave below some snapshots to illustrate my case.
I list my frustrations below:
- MoneyGram, trust fund deposit service not available in my country.
- Western Union, trust fund deposit service available for many orisons, but not all prisons.
- JPay, trust fund deposit service available for many orisons, but not all prisons.
- ConnectNetwork, you need a US postal address and US-Based credit or debit card.
- Access Secure Package, a service to deliver care packages, also asks for a US postal address and US-Based credit or debit card. And, I believe their website is not currently working properly.