A reader whose grandson is serving a life sentence at Angola State Penitentiary recently gave The Informer a letter she received from the state Department of Corrections.

The letter, which bears no signature and is dated Nov. 1, notifies recipients that the prison on Dec. 31 will stop processing money orders sent to inmates. The work, it says, will now be done by Miami-based JPay Inc.

“If we receive a money order from you after that date, it will be returned to you,” the letter reads, “and the cost of returning the money order will be charged to the offender for whom the money order was intended for.”

The letter was accompanied by a JPay “money order deposit form” and a lengthy list of instructions on how to fill it out, including “PLEASE MAKE SURE MONEY ORDER IS PAYABLE TO ‘JPAY’.”

The reader thought the arrangement odd and wanted The Informer to look into it.

‘Put down your pen!’

JPay announced its deal with the state in a March 15 news release, which said Louisiana had awarded the company a contract “to provide electronic offender payments, release debit cards, offender email, kiosk services and MP3 players to the State’s 40,000 offenders and their families.”

The news release says JPay, founded in 2002, offers such services to more than 1.3 million inmates and their friends and families in 22 states.

The Louisiana contract, signed June 27, runs for three years — from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2014 — and, according to the accompanying purchase order, will cost the state nothing.

Under the terms of the agreement, JPay will require email senders to buy “electronic stamps” for 30 cents each and will pay the state a 30 percent commission on the fee. Each stamp covers one page of typed text, up to 10.8 kilobytes of data.

A five-stamp message, for example, would cost the sender $1.50, 45 cents of which would go to the state. A 10-stamp letter, at $3, would net the state 90 cents.

(Incidentally, this column, with 642 words and 159 lines, would come in at just under 16 kilobytes as an email and would require more than one stamp to send.)

The state will also earn a 15 percent commission on electronic fund transfers, which JPay encourages on its money order deposit form.

“Put down your pen! Put away your car keys!” reads the text of a large-type message set off by a box. “There’s a faster way to send money, go to JPay.com and sign up now.”

The rates for money transfers made online — with the state’s cut in parentheses, rounded up:

$0.01-$20 — $3.50 (53 cents).

$20.01-$100 — $6.50 (98 cents).

$100.01-$200 — $8.50 ($1.28).

$200.01-$300 — $10.50 ($1.58).

The rates for transfers made by phone:

$0.01-$20 — $4.50 (68 cents).

$20.01-$100 — $7.50 ($1.13).

$100.01-$200 — $9.50 ($1.43).

$200.01-$300 — $11.50 ($1.73).

“There has to be a charge to provide the service,” Pam Laborde, a Department of Corrections spokesman, told The Informer.

But she said inmates’ family members and friends can avoid the transaction fees if they follow the instructions in the letter and mail their money orders to JPay, which will process the transactions at no cost.

The money order processing was the first part of the contract to be implemented, and the other services will become available within the next few months, Laborde said.

In addition to the transaction and email income, the state will receive a 12 percent commission on each song prisoners download to JPay-provided MP3 players, which cost $39.99. Each song costs $1.99.

The Department of Corrections runs 12 prisons, which house 19,000 or so inmates.

• Online: http://doc.la.gov; www.jpay.com.

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com.