Felons already forfeit plenty of rights when they enter correctional facilities, but now inmates at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail (ACRJ) can add to that the lost privilege of paying the right price for a stamp. They pay 44 cents to purchase a first-class stamp, 3 cents more than those of us on the outside. That’s because at the ACRJ, the Keefe Supply Company, a large private business that supplies products to the jail’s commissary, sets the price of a stamp.
"There are a couple of things we don’t get a profit margin on, and stamps happen to be one of them," says the jail’s business manager, Tom Robinson. He explains that on certain items, Keefe passes a commission on to ACRJ. Other commissary items include shoes, bar soap, candy, soft drinks, toothbrushes, beard trimmers and more. "The extra 3 cents [on a stamp] goes to Keefe. They’ve got to build in something. Somebody’s got to go to the post office and buy these, and someone’s got to send them to the inmates. There are some fees and charge involved in doing that."
Founded in 1975, Keefe first made a name for itself selling single-serve coffee packets to a Florida prison, according to an official company history. Keefe is now a key asset of the Centric Group, a holding company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car in St. Louis, Missouri.
An ACRJ inmate recently wrote to C-VILLE to complain about what he deemed the excessive cost of items, including presumably the stamp he used to send to his letter to us, that are being sold through the jail’s commissary. Officials from Keefe had no comment on commissary pricing.
According to Robinson, ACRJ’s commission from Keefe must, by law, go into a special account for inmate services. These funds are used to buy recreational equipment, linens, uniforms and other supplies for inmates.
"We have a lower [commission] than a lot of places do because we don’t want to take advantage of the inmates," says Robinson.
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