Jailvertising targets a very captive audience

Charlotte, N.C., is taking the idea of a captive audience to new and more literal places. Faced with budget cuts, the Queen City's county jail is selling advertising time on the monitors that inmates use to chat with friends and family during video visits. Don't worry, the jail says it will seek inmate-appropriate advertisers, like attorneys, and expects to bring in $77,000 a year from the ads. The whole idea rests on shaky moral ground, and it's true that opening correctional facilities to the marketplace could interfere with rehabilitation.