The Vig Is the Point

Nevada passed Assembly Bill 35 in 2023 almost unanimously.

Tablets for people inside. Call home. Learn something. Not go crazy in a cell during a lockdown.

Then the booth arrived.

The vendor is ViaPath — formerly GTL, owned since 2011 by the private-equity firm American Securities. The Nevada Current reported in January 2026 that the smallest amount a family can load is $10, and loading it costs a $5 service charge.

No bulk plan like Minnesota or Illinois. A Fines and Fees Justice Center analysis put Spotify plus Netflix at about $360 a year. One movie and one album a day on the prison tablet runs on the order of $3,000.

You cannot hide behind they deserve it

Khan Academy. Wikipedia. Coursera on audit. A library card. A cheap Android and a PDF. The argument that education has to be expensive died the year the lectures went online.

So if a tablet inside costs a nickel a minute to hear a song, that is a gate on a road nobody else is allowed to use.

The person who gets the bill is usually not the person in the cell. It is a mother putting $15 on a card after rent. A partner skipping groceries so a ten-minute call doesn’t bounce. A kid who learns that love has a surcharge.

Sentence the body if the court said so. Do not sentence the family to a vending machine bolted to a locked door.

Booths love anonymity

• ViaPath / American Securities
  “No cost to the state.” Hardware for the agency. Invoice for the family. Love to hear the 50% load fee.
• NDOC
  Dzurenda: the cut “was not spelled out.” Miller: “$17 or $17,000.” Fees arrived. Commissions didn’t. Access without accessibility.
• The 2025 FCC
  Martha Wright-Reed said 6¢. Then delay. Then 2–1: 6¢ → 10¢, small jails to 18¢, plus a 2¢ facility fee. Love to hear the public-interest move.
• The legislature
  Nearly unanimous for the tablet. Silence for the surcharge. A ribbon on a booth.

Who is okay with that?

Nick Shepack called the pricing extremely exploitative. Lockdowns are high. Of course people lean on the tablet. That is how a booth works: wait until there is nowhere else to go.

In March 2026, Return Strong called the ViaPath Blackout — every Wednesday, twelve weeks. Jodi Hocking: this is not about eliminating technology. It is about a funding structure that leaves families subsidizing the prison through inflated communication costs.

D.P., at Lovelock, thought there would be a movie option for maybe $20 a month, or a penny a minute in bulk. None of those turned out to be true.

If it needs a 50% vig, the tablet is not the point

RAND found that every dollar spent on correctional education can save four to five dollars in reincarceration costs during the first three years after release.

Real education apps. Offline Khan Academy. Books. A call home that does not require a second job.

The vig is the point.

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