County OKs agreement with debit card provider for jail

LAWTON – The Comanche County Detention Center is moving forward with plans to switch to a new system for handling inmates’ cash.

On Monday, the Comanche County Facilities Authority, which consists of Comanche County Commissioners Alvin Cargill, Gail Turner and Johnny Owens, approved an agreement with RAPID Financial Solutions on behalf of the jail. Under the agreement, RAPID will provide debit card services at the jail for newly released inmates, at no cost to the facilities authority.

Detention Center officials are phasing out the system in which inmates who have finished their jail sentences receive a check for the money in their trust account when they are released. But Jail Administrator William Hobbs said recently that some inmates abused the system by using information on the jail-issued check to create new checks and cash them, prompting officials to adopt a debit card system instead.

“We’ve had problems with inmates with our checks, and this is a safer way for us to deposit those funds back to the inmate on a debit card,” Hobbs said Monday.

The CCFA approved the first part of the new system on Oct. 3, when the authority approved a three-year agreement with Global Tel*Link Corp. to install and maintain an inmate kiosk in the jail’s booking area. The service allows booking officers to deposit any cash that inmates have on them when they are arrested into a trust account on their behalf.

When the new system is in place, booking officers will use the kiosk to deposit inmates’ cash into a trust account for them. When inmates have finished serving their sentence and are ready to be released, the jail will use a different kiosk to give then a debit card instead of a check.

The new system will eliminate the need to issue checks for most inmates, Hobbs said recently. He said the jail would still have to write checks for inmates who are sent to the state Department of Corrections or another facility, since many of those jails either don’t accept the Comanche County Detention Center’s debit cards or use a different system.