Tennessee records show that money sent by families can move through deposit fees, phone charges, commissary sales and, in some county jails, commissions that flow back to the facility. The person incarcerated uses the service. Someone outside often supplies the money.
By Brandon L. Burley
Systems Explained
The money might come from a mother.
A wife.
A grandfather.
Someone who has already bought gas for visitation, missed work for court and taken a phone call they never expected to receive.
Now they are sending $20.
Maybe their son needs to call home.
Maybe he needs deodorant.
Maybe he wants ramen noodles or a snack from the commissary.
To the family, the transaction is simple.
Send $20.
Inside the correctional system, the money can enter something much larger.
Tennessee records provide an unusually clear example.
In a 2025 Tennessee Business Enterprises document advertising the commissary operation at the Henderson County Jail Complex, the state projected about $209,120 in annual commissary sales.
Then, deep in the operating notes, comes another detail:
“Jail receives a 20% commission from each order.”
The same document says the jail receives a monthly commission from video visitation and email or text services.
That does not prove the arrangement is improper.
It does show why “putting money on someone’s books” is not the end of the money trail.
It is the beginning.
Tennessee does not have one correctional marketplace
The first distinction matters.
Tennessee state prisons and county jails do not all operate under one identical financial system.
The Tennessee Department of Correction uses ConnectNetwork for telephone accounts in its state prisons. County jails can have their own communications, commissary and payment arrangements.
So there is no responsible way to say that every Tennessee family pays the same fees or that every jail receives the same revenue.
The system has to be examined facility by facility.
But the basic structure repeats.
Someone outside provides money.
A private or state-affiliated system moves it.
The incarcerated person uses an approved service.
And multiple organizations may have financial interests somewhere along the path.
The first cost can arrive before the first phone call
TDOC says ConnectNetwork allows families to fund AdvancePay accounts for calls to a particular telephone number or PIN Debit accounts that an incarcerated person can use to call approved numbers.
The department also warns that funding transactions may carry fees, with the terms disclosed during the transaction.
That distinction is important.
If Grandma wants $20 available for telephone calls and the payment system adds a transaction fee, her cost is not necessarily $20.
It is $20 plus whatever fee applies.
Small deposits can make fixed transaction costs particularly important.
A family putting a large amount into an account once may experience the fee differently from a family capable of sending only $10 or $20 at a time.
The person incarcerated has not made a call yet.
Someone may already have been paid.
Then the money buys minutes
Tennessee has lowered the price of calls in its state prisons.
TDOC says the ConnectNetwork rate dropped to 7.5 cents per minute effective July 1, 2024.
At that rate, a 20-minute call costs $1.50, apart from any separate cost involved in funding the account.
The federal government has also pushed correctional communication rates downward. Congress expanded the Federal Communications Commission’s authority through the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, and the FCC adopted reforms aimed at lowering audio and video communication costs for incarcerated people and their families.
Why regulate this market differently?
Because it is not a normal cellphone market.
If your wireless bill gets too high, you can usually change companies.
A person inside a prison cannot shop among competing telephone providers.
The institution selects the system.
The incarcerated person and the family use what is available.
The customer may pay without choosing the vendor.
That changes the normal marketplace.
The commissary reveals even more
Now move from the phone to the commissary.
Tennessee Business Enterprises, part of the Department of Human Services, gives legally blind vendors opportunities to operate businesses on public property. Under state law, TBE has priority to operate many public vending facilities, including inmate commissaries.
TBE says it currently operates approximately 45 inmate commissaries.
Its own public FAQ gives a remarkably candid explanation of the economics.
Counties cannot require a commission as a condition of allowing a TBE manager to operate a commissary.
But TBE also says it understands counties have revenue needs and works with them to offset costs.
One method is a transaction fee assessed on each inmate order in certain drop-ship commissary systems.
TBE says those funds can generally be passed to the county.
Read that from the family’s perspective.
A mother sends money.
Her son places an order.
The commissary operator sells the merchandise.
A transaction charge may be attached to the order.
And some money associated with that transaction may return to the county operating the jail.
That money trail is not an allegation.
The state describes the mechanism itself.
Henderson County makes the system visible
The Henderson County document goes further.
The 216-bed jail’s 2025 TBE opportunity projected approximately $209,120 in annual commissary sales.
It also said the jail receives a 20% commission from each order.
And the financial relationship does not stop with potato chips and toothpaste.
The same document says the jail receives a monthly commission from video visitation and email/texts.
That makes Henderson County worth examining more closely.
How much did incarcerated people actually spend?
How much commission did the jail receive?
How much came from families outside the facility?
Where did the county put the money?
What did it pay for?
Those are no longer philosophical questions.
They are accounting questions.
A commission does not automatically mean profiteering
This distinction matters.
Correctional commissaries cost money to operate.
Products have to be purchased, stored, processed and delivered under security restrictions.
TBE says its managers can provide software and hardware to counties without charge and often provide indigent supply packages at no cost to the county. It also says its prices are required to remain competitive with prices in the surrounding area and that market comparisons are conducted.
Those benefits have economic value.
A county receiving revenue or avoiding expenses does not by itself prove that families are being exploited.
But it does establish something the public deserves to see clearly:
The commissary is both a service and a business.
And government can have a financial interest in how that business operates.
Tennessee lawmakers have said the quiet part plainly
That financial role appears elsewhere in state government.
A bill introduced during the 2025-26 General Assembly would authorize TRICOR, Tennessee’s prison-industry program, to operate commissaries in state prisons.
The General Assembly’s official summary describes the policy rationale directly.
Existing law identifies part of TRICOR’s mission as offsetting incarceration costs by generating revenue rather than relying entirely on state appropriations. The proposed legislation would add prison commissary operations as another way of generating that revenue.
That language is important because it removes the need to speculate about the incentive.
A commissary can serve incarcerated people.
It can also generate money that offsets correctional costs.
Both can be true.
The question for the public is where cost recovery ends and revenue generation begins.
Even unused phone money can have another destination
There is another piece of the system most customers will probably never encounter unless they read the fine print.
ViaPath, which operates ConnectNetwork, announced a new AdvancePay inactivity policy effective June 1, 2026.
Unless another law or contract requires something different, an AdvancePay account becomes inactive after 180 consecutive days without use.
The account holder then has another 90 days to request a refund.
After that, ViaPath says the remaining balance is no longer available to the customer and is automatically converted to purchase audio minutes through the company’s Free Calling Program.
The money does not simply vanish.
But its purpose changes.
A customer deposited it for calls involving one account.
After the inactivity process runs its course, the remaining value can help fund calls elsewhere.
That is another reason to follow the dollar beyond the deposit screen.
A federal watchdog found what can happen when correctional money gets complicated
Tennessee is not alone in confronting questions about how correctional communication money moves.
In May 2026, the Justice Department’s inspector general examined how the federal Bureau of Prisons used First Step Act funding.
The watchdog found that BOP had used approximately $258.7 million to reimburse itself for free telephone calls without clear authority to do so.
More strikingly, the inspector general said about $106 million of that reimbursement exceeded BOP’s own calculated cost of providing the telephone service.
That is a federal system, not Tennessee’s.
But it demonstrates why the accounting matters.
A phone call can look simple from outside the institution.
The money behind it may not be.
The people paying are often outside the jail
Correctional economics are usually discussed as though the incarcerated person is the only consumer.
That misses part of the transaction.
A child who wants to talk to his father did not receive a sentence.
A mother depositing money did not receive one.
A wife paying for communication did not receive one.
None of that erases the responsibility of the person who is incarcerated.
It identifies who may actually be reaching for the debit card.
When government and private companies design correctional payment systems, part of the financial burden can extend beyond the prison wall.
That is why transparency matters.
This investigation is sitting in public records
The next step does not require guessing about motives.
It requires records.
Take Tennessee county jails one at a time.
Obtain the commissary agreements.
Obtain the communications contracts.
Get the transaction counts and annual sales.
Identify the phone, video and messaging rates.
Determine what families pay to deposit money.
Determine what the vendors receive.
Determine what the counties receive.
Then find where that government revenue is spent.
Henderson County already shows why the exercise matters.
The state’s own document says the jail receives 20% from each commissary order and commissions connected to other communication services.
The next question is how much money those percentages produced.
Follow the $20
Grandma sends $20.
Maybe she pays something to fund the account.
Her grandson uses the money to make calls or buy commissary goods.
The telephone company can receive revenue.
The commissary operator can receive revenue.
Depending on the arrangement, the jail can receive money or avoid expenses.
If telephone money later goes unused long enough, even that remaining balance may ultimately serve another purpose.
None of those facts alone proves the system is unfair.
They prove it is a system.
And the person sending the money sees only the entrance.
Grandma knows she sent $20.
The public deserves to know who gets paid after that.
I am a retired detective and criminal justice / government educator based in Tennessee. I am a commentary write for Tennessee Lookout and a weekly columnist with Knox TN Today. My work examines public policy, public safety systems and civic responsibility. My reporting and commentary have also appeared in Governing, The Arizona Capitol Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Police1, among other state and regional outlets.
