United Reporting Incorporated (URI) was the first entity to use the term “Jail Mail”. At that time it entailed URI obtaining arrestee addresses from Government agencies and mailing marketing pieces to them at their homes on behalf of URI clients. Troy McCaslin, then CEO of URI came up with the name to describe the URI business model. In 1995, state legislation was enacted that prohibited obtaining an arrested person’s address for the purpose of direct marketing. URI, seeing that their business model would no longer be legal in California, sold the company and their proprietary software to United Reporting Publishing Corporation (URPC), a news gathering and publishing company based in California.
URPC purchased URI to acquire the very sophisticated and at the time, cutting edge software program. This allowed URPC to parse arrest news by region even breaking it down to the city the arrested person lives in. URPC also purchased the trade marked “Jail Mail” name from URI.
URPC dropped the direct mail operation of the acquired URI to comply with the law and focused on the software to target news delivery to individuals and syndication partners. URPC’s journalistic standing was challenged in court with the final decision being made by the U.S. Supreme Court in URPC’s favor in 2001. We believe that URPC‘s Crime Beat News, Crime Voice, and Metro Crime News are the only crime publications that fully complies with state law as it relates to publishing arrestee addresses. We are the only crime news source to have achieved Associate Membership in the California Newspaper Publishers Association. URPC sought an Attorney General’s Opinion (05-613) on the use of the content published by URPC and our clients and syndicated partners.
Over the years, the URPC began to realize that consumers of news wanted the ability to include certain geographical areas and exclude other geographical areas when reading news. In 2013, URPC embarked on half a million dollar project developing a new proprietary software program even more robust than the earlier version. With this new program we can tailor a news subscription to each individual subscribers needs. Delivery of the news is fully automated. All addresses listed in our news publication are checked against the U.S. Postal Services data base to ensure that they are valid (valid meaning that mail is actually delivered to the address listed). Many times government agencies will enter the same individual twice for the same charge. Our sophisticated software catches these duplicates reducing them to below the Direct Marketing Associations acceptable limits. Building upon the very successful original program we have been able to parse the news in such a way as to provide just the information wanted. Now there is no need to wade through endless verbiage to find just what you are looking for.
Contact us today to reach our sales staff and develop a news feed that meets your every need.
Jail Mail is a trademark held by United Reporting Publishing Corporation.