It Takes Eight-to-Twelve Weeks for Delivery of Product Orders in Prison

 Another prisoner recently told me his wife complained to him that she had ordered shoes on the internet four days before and STILL hadn't received them. It made him (and me) laugh, because it struck such a stark contrast between the free world and prison. People in the free world are used to instant (or near instant) gratification. In prison, nothing is instant--except the coffee we can buy. 

Despite (long ago) having the technical capability to digitize prisoners' catalog orders, the Michigan Department of Corrections continues to hand-process every order. For a prisoner to order products from a catalog, the following steps must take place: 

1. The prisoner views the catalog from a handful of approved vendors on his Jpay tablet, or he borrows a print catalog from the block rep in his housing unit. 

2. After deciding what to purchase, the prisoner fills out a paper disbursement form listing the products and prices, calculating the tax, shipping, and final cost. He then turns this disbursement into the prison counselor (usually putting it in a mailbox). 

3. The prison counselor collects disbursements and approves them (or rejects them, if the prisoner ordered unapproved items). S/he then sends the disbursement to the business office for processing. 

4. The prison's business office receives the disbursement and further processes it, adding another approval signature to the disbursement. It is unclear whether the business office processes orders at this point, or if they are sent to the central business office in Lansing, Michigan. Either way, the order is held with other disbursements until the business office achieves some magical number of orders or a certain date is reached. At this point, the disbursement may sit on someone's desk for several weeks. It is common for these catalog orders to be "in process" for more than a month before the prisoner's money is deducted from his prison account. 

5. After the prisoner's money is deducted from his account, the catalog order is sent, with many other orders, to the retailer. It commonly takes 3-4 more weeks for the retailer to enter the order. The retailer may ship the order right away, or it may take another week or two.

6. Finally, the property room receives the prisoner's order, along with dozens of other orders. It takes another few days to a week for the property room to process the order and call the prisoner out to receive it. 

All told, catalog orders in prison take an average of 2-3 months to receive from the date the prisoner places the order. Simply giving prisoners the ability to order products (like shoes, socks, and electronics) from the store kiosk, as they do commissary items, would cut more than a month off the time it takes to receive an order. Sadly, changing the order process would also mean some MDOC jobs are no longer necessary. After all, it must take many hours to process so many catalog orders by hand.

If a vendor is out of stock on an item, or if the prisoner makes a mistake on his order, the process must start over again, sometimes weeks after it began. It's a frustratingly long process that could easily be made more efficient, accurate, and speedy. But who cares, really? We're just prisoners, after all. We can wait. We have no other choice.