Facing Bankruptcy, Securus Promotes Prison Tablets
Lenders to Aventiv Technologies, parent of prison telecom Securus Technologies, have given it until 2025 to sell or face bankruptcy. The company owes $1.3 billion in debt that it hasn’t been able to refinance, since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began preparations to slash call prices behind bars and cap fees for ancillary services like video calling; the FCC issued that rule change in July 2024, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1.]
Aventiv’s owner, billionaire Tom Gores’ Platinum Equity LLC, has already tried without success to refinance the debt, currently backed by bonds that crashed to just 47 cents on the dollar in March 2024, as the FCC prepared its rule change. Platinum Equity has had no luck selling off the firm, either, leaving few options except trying to juice sales of services that the FCC didn’t regulate—especially messaging, music and podcasts delivered to prisoners on prison-issued tablets.
Against this backdrop, Securus launched a new podcast series on May 21, 2024, which purports to chronicle the successful reentry of released prisoners. However, almost nothing about the announcement or the series, Come Home Ready, was what it seemed. For starters, host Theresa Hodge, 61, was introduced as a former prisoner who chairs Aventiv’s “Advisory Board.” But this is not the firm’s actual Board of Directors, which Platinum Equity appointed. Nor is Hodge a typical former prisoner; after finishing a 70-month sentence for mail fraud in 2017, she co-founded a firm called R3 Score, which calculates “alternative” credit scores to help lenders make more loan customers out of nearly 80 million Americans who now have an arrest record.
Hodge also has a reentry nonprofit, Mission Launch, which co-brands podcast episodes. There’s more selling in Episode 2, when a former prisoner named Kim praises a degree program completed on her Securus tablet. Talk of tablets also consumes Episodes 3 through 5, along with more about R3 Score and its products. No one mentioned feeling exploited when Securus profits off the generally poor families of those caged in lockups where the firm has a government-issued monopoly on communication services.
Credit for the formerly incarcerated was also the subject of a rule change issued by the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) on May 1, 2024, which removed a blanket ban on eligibility for those on probation or parole. The rule change also included a “Ban the Box” provision removing questions about criminal history from SBA loan applications. See: SBA 13 CFR Parts 109, 115, 120 & 123, RIN 3245-AI03; pub. 2024-09009 (89 FR 34094).
Sources: The Appeal, Inc. Magazine, Securus Technologies
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