Faced with all this pressure, over the course of 2020, Gores and Securus announced a number of new measures. They would give away $3 million to reduce recidivism and improve prisoner reentry,64 they would continue to reduce the cost of calls,65 and Gores himself would give away his personal profits from the company.66 Gores told the Detroit Free Press, with considerable self-importance, that “ultimately it’ll be a blessing that I’m in there and that somebody cares about what’s happening.”67 But Tylek responded, “We’re not asking you to come save people; we’re asking you to stop taking from them.”68 She added, “So before you can argue that you want to do something good and all these things, you have to stop doing the harm that you’re trying to unwind. Those two things can’t operate in the same space.”69 Thus far, Gores hasn’t heeded Tylek’s direction: he has not yet sold Securus—now rebranded Aventiv Technologies—nor has he shut it down. It remains, as of this writing, a part of Platinum Equity’s portfolio.70

Finally, as part of their rollup, private equity firms are expanding their carceral reach beyond prison itself and into prison release cards. These are debit cards that facilities give inmates when leaving jail or prison, in theory holding the money that the inmates brought with them, that they made inside, or that the facilities gave them. But multiple lawsuits allege that the business model of these companies was largely to extract fees from prisoners. For instance, one plaintiff, Jeffrey Reichert, was arrested for driving while intoxicated.151 When he was detained, the local jail confiscated the $177.66 he had in cash. He spent just four hours in detention but upon his release was not given his money back. Instead, he was given an ironically named Access Freedom debit card.152 Reichert quickly found that the card, which he had not previously agreed to take, was slowly draining him of his money: there was a weekly maintenance fee, an inquiry fee to check the balance, and an issuer fee to withdraw funds.153 This, it turned out, was company policy: the Keefe Group, which issued the card and which was owned by H.I.G. Capital, charged fees for card activity, for card inactivity, to request too much money, to ask about how much money there was to request, to replace a card, and to close the account. “Clearly, these cards are designed to make it impossible to avoid fees,” wrote Lauren Sanders of the National Consumer Law Center.154 A portion of the case was settled, and Keefe agreed to pay a percentage of the fees it took from prisoners, but much of the litigation remains ongoing.155 Additionally, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) eventually fined JPay, which issued many of these cards and which was owned by Tom Gores’s Platinum Equity. The CFPB said that JPay’s tactic to attach fees to credit cards after people were released from prison was abusive.156 In the settlement, JPay agreed to give the former prisoners $4 million and pay a penalty of $2 million, as well as limit the fees that it would charge in the future.157