The company which owns the music provider
The catalog from which most prisoners order their music is Google’s self-censoring music app, Google Play. Google Play is used by Access Secure Media. Access Corrections is owned by Keefe Group which in turn is owned by TKC Holdings. TKC Holdings is a conglomeration of Trinity Services Group and Keefe Group which are two of the three major prison food and commissary companies. These companies are both owned by HIG Capital and this “. . . merger was expected to generate $875 million in annual revenue, amounting to more than half of the total $1.6 billion commissary market.”
At prisons where TKC holds both the commissary and cafeteria contracts, cafeterias have been known to serve poor quality food to prisoners to increase commissary profits. I am stating the case that a company which has shown no regard for prisoner’s physical health would be unlikely to show exception for prisoner’s mental health.
Furthermore, I contend that music censorship adversely effects prisoner’s mental health, personhood, and cognitive agency. Corrections departments have allowed private companies to profit off the abuse of prisoners. TKC is a private company who managed to form a monopoly and the conditions they required to flourish were furthered by voting taxpayers who are fed up with crime and susceptible to being misled by promises of easy solutions to complex problems. According to the Congressional Research Service, “the United States has only 5% of the world’s population but a full 25% of its prisoners.” If the department of corrections is open for business, solving the problem of mass incarceration would only undercut their bottom line. On top of the annual 1.6 billion dollar commissary market there is an annual 3 billion dollar private prison industry which lobby the majority of the country and have decisive influence when pushing “tough on crime” laws. The underlying question is do corrections administrators really want to reduce recidivism and mass incarceration?
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