Read Ray Hrdlicka Transcript

Richard: This is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Authority Marketing and today I’m here to interview Ray Hrdlicka. He’s the editor-in-chief and originator of a magazine that gets distributed to people that are in jail actually across the whole United States. The name of the magazine is “Crime Justice in America.” Do you I have that right?

Ray: You do, Richard. Nice to talk to you today.

Richard: Yes, thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I had recently met you through an attorney in Las Vegas that I guess you had spoken to and when I first saw the magazine that you provide to the jails, I kind of was shocked that you were even allowed to do that. Can you tell me first how is it that you’re allowed to send the magazine to people in jail and what are the laws surrounding it?

Ray: Well, it’s really interesting because there’s only, as you well know since you deal with attorneys and criminal attorneys in particular, the general public at large have no idea what it’s like to be involved with the criminal justice system in reality. They watch it on TV or they hear about it in the news, but unless you’re involved with it and only about 5% of the people are actually involved with the criminal justice system. The Constitution protects us from ending up like Russia or Nazi Germany and so with those protections as a publisher I have the 1st Amendment Right to reach those readers who are in need of the information. Now that all sounds great when you say it, but in reality you have jails who say well I don’t want to distribute that. Why would I; this is wonderful. This is a good quote. I’ve had a jailer say, Captain or maybe even assistant sheriff say to me, “Why would I want to provide them with this information?” Because it’s the same thing a public defender or a private attorney would give to them if they had unlimited access.

Richard: Right.

Ray: It’s a really interesting view point that it’s us against them and I’m not talking about from our perspective here, but I’m talking about from the jail’s perspective. What I learned back in 2002 is that there is this absence of information, education, solutions, whatever you want to call it, to their problem, meaning newly arrested. What do I do now? Nobody’s going to answer the questions, from the guy that books you in, from the cop that arrests you. Go ahead.

Richard: Yes, from what I’ve seen, I’m a good example. Thankfully I haven’t had to sit in jail and all I see on TV; public perception to me is that people say oh good, lock them up and throw away the key. Because they’re in jail they must be bad people, to hell with them, let them rot.

Ray: Yes, you’re exactly right. That if you got arrested then you must be bad, but you know there’s a statistic out there that just came out recently by the American – Look it up on the Web – I don’t have the exact name off the top of my head. I think it’s the American Academy of Psychiatry who did a long survey that said by the age 23, one out of three young adults will have been arrested.

Richard: Huh.

Ray: That’s shocking.

Richard: Crazy.

Ray: It is. Well, think about this. We have 2.2 million people in prisons in the U.S.

Richard: Wow.

Ray: More than any other country, we have 2.2 million. Now when you figure 300, 310 million that’s not that big a deal except when you start comparing it to other countries, but more importantly that’s 2 million people who are sentenced and serving out their time in prison. There’s 700,000 people in custody in county and pretrial. Now here’s the biggest statistic on that. There’s 13 million to 14 million felony and misdemeanor arrests every year.

Richard: Wow. That’s a little over a million a month.

Ray: Yes, a little over a million a month, but think about that. If there’s 300 million people, what’s the percentage? You’ve got 3% of the population getting arrested every single year. Now it’s not the same people of course so after a number of years that’s where that statistic comes into play from the Academy or the American Association of Psychiatry.

Richard: Got you.

Ray: It’s mind boggling. People are going to be in contact with that system odds are. They’re going to be in contact with that system either for themselves or a friend. I was in the bail business for 15 years, built a very large business before I got involved with magazine publishing and one of the biggest things that I recognized when I was bailing somebody out is that the vast majority of the time people who got arrested for drunken driving or stupidly have some drugs on them or suspended driver’s license or they got mad at somebody and they got into a bar fight, they’re just like you and me.

Richard: Yes.

Ray: Eighty-five, ninety percent of everybody that gets arrested are just like the general populous. There’s some bad guys of course and those; what I’m saying is those people do not know what’s going on and hence that’s the reason for the magazine. Now to answer the second part of your question if I may continue here, how do I get the magazine in? It’s because we have the 1st Amendment Right as a publisher to reach our readers. That started way back with Ben Franklin. Our readers happen to be in custody.

Richard: Right.

Ray: Because a post office delivers, we have a 1st Amendment Right to reach those readers and in fact, we pursued federal litigation to establish case law that says we have that right. In 2011, we had an appellate court, the 9th Circuit Appellate Court, issue a reversal and remand back down to lower court on a lawsuit, some prejudgment motions that I lost but I knew I needed to have case law bump it up to the 9th circuit. IN that ruling they said that we have the right to send in magazines unsolicited.

Richard: Oh okay. What happened, the jail said well we’re not going to let the inmates have it? You can’t mail to them unsolicited, is that what they were saying?

Ray: Exactly, they look at the magazine and “Crime Justice in America” is 36 to 40 page magazine and it has only four pages of advertisements, except in LA sometimes we put in a little more just because there’s so many people down there and there’s so many issues that we distribute into Los Angeles. Everywhere else in the country it’s four advertisements out of a 36 to 40 page magazine so that’s a 90% editorial, 10% ad ratio. It’s far different from any magazine that you would get in the mail or distributed free. They’re 50/50.

Richard: Right.

Ray: The jail, specifically Sacramento and Butte County, looked at that and said oh no; you are a commercial business sending in a product to sell. I’m sorry; it’s 90/10 ratio. Hence, I didn’t of course agree with them and we filed a federal litigation against them to force distribution.

Richard: Okay. What’s your distribution right now? How many states and how many counties are you in?

Ray: Well currently we are approved and authorized to distribute – And I hate to use the word approved because that seems like you’re going hat in hand – But let me say that we have made distribution arrangements with because these guys are really good guys over at these county jails starting with LA is the biggest one and then going down to some small ones across the country, but right now we’re approved – I did it again – we have an agreement to distribute into about 125 counties across 22 states; 125 counties across 22 states. We have; and we only distribute in a county of course when we have an advertiser because of course we’ve got to pay our printer and we have pay for the distribution. Our circulation is somewhere between, right around 100,000 every issue.

Richard: I’ve looked at the list states. Let me say I see Washington State, Oregon, Arizona, Illinois, little bit of Texas so I see definitely some major states in here, Florida.

Ray: Right. We started with the most populous counties in the nation because of course they’re going to have the most business in the jails. We know people are going to get arrested there than anywhere else.

Richard: Right.

Ray: We started with the top 50, then 100, then 200 and that’s how we approached our expansion, not necessarily moving in step by step across the country.

Richard: Also I see when I look at these states that you’re, you’re in major counties too so it’s not like you’re in piddly backwashed counties in Wyoming or anything. You’re in a lot of major counties which is great to see.

Ray: Absolutely because that’s going to be where the business is for the attorneys.

Richard: Right, right.

Ray: Obviously more people, more attorneys, more arrests, more jails, more business for all the criminal attorneys are the private sector within the criminal justice system.