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Why do I have to register as a Visitor just to support a prisoner in Florida's prison system?

Content Warning

This post makes casual reference to various types of abuses that can happen in prison including threats of violence and sexual assault.
Reader discretion advised.

Several days ago, Mel lamented to me,

Requiring Visitation access to top up commissary is insanity, really.
I don't understand why giving someone money requires the same level of scrutiny and access as letting someone into a prison to see [a justice-impacted individual]...

I can answer the visitation/money thing, and figure it would be good to answer publicly!

So, this rule of only approved visitors can provide money to justice-impacted individuals apparently interrelates to why pen pals are also banned in Florida prisons:

You see... Once upon a past, people here would get pen pals from all over the place! They could put money on a resident's books without needing to register as a visitor. This was wonderful and good, and helped people afford the then much lower priced commissary items like deodorant, soap, envelopes, stamps, and gas station snacks.

Allegedly, some of these people inside the fences are liars (gee...), and bilked funds out of their pen pals, doing things like claiming "Oh, I get out real soon bby, so if you send me $500, I'll have enough money to take a Greyhound to come and see you, and we can be 2gether 5ever, OK bby??" -- they got the cash, and then ghosted the person. Never wrote them back again. There were complaints of that nature.

Also in the past, prisoners were also getting a lot of cash through a network of pen pals who might send $50 or $100 at a time. Five pals each sending even $75 was a lot of money for a prisoner back then, #justsaying. Some of them were just legit people who cared and were able to financially show that care to a justice-impacted individual. Others were family, close or extended, who want to see their loved one come home safely, so they made sure they could take care of needs. And others may have been their "homeboys" on the streets, for whatever implications take your imagination. This might technically violate the AML and KYC laws surrounding money services businesses -- do we really know our customers? is an unfortunately valid question to ask!

Additionally, there are people in prison that extort other prisoners for cockamamie reasons. Maybe the person has a sex charge of some flavor. Maybe he seems to be into same sex relationships. Maybe he sounds far too intelligent "for his skin tone". All of this was in the era of no registration required to send money, opening these targeted people up to unnecessary abuse:
Imagine getting cornered by three big, burly guys who do nothing but work out, in an area where no officer is nearby, and the cameras aren't working again. They tell you, your folks better put $50 on each of their accounts by end of week, or they're going to help you check your butthole, and if you snitch, you're going to need more than stitches.

People outside then complained that their loved one inside the fences keeps asking for cash to be sent to other people, and why isn't FDC doing something about this??

As such, FDC took action. FDC not only banned pen pals, ads for pen pals, and pen pal accessories, but required all people who send cash to register as visitors.

There, now little Johnny can't beg his family to put money on some other guy's account, and old Herbert can no longer catfish buxom young blondes into sending him a hundred bucks. FDC was proud of the havoc they've caused. :3

Blessington was in noncompliance with that rule for some years, and only turned it on in April 2025. No wonder people on the buses claimed Blessington was a "sweet camp" -- they could still grift the old way!

You know, though, if we were given access to jobs that paid something to us, even $3.00 an hour (state minimum wage here is $14.00, I believe), I would dare suggest it would start to curb that issue of needing to beg and plead for money. But it'd be a farfetched guess, to be honest -- I mean, spending a little of the $100 a day per head that is being spent in teaching us in prison how to earn a paycheck? And maybe throwing a financial literacy class that's up to date in our laps?

Nah, that's too much like rehabilitation.
FDC only wants CCC:

  • Control
  • Custody
  • Care (but only when someone is watching).

But that's just my distilled impression.