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What’s the Problem?The problem is a simple one: telephone service providers and law enforcement officials have partnered to take advantage of prisoners and their families by charging outrageous prices for telephone calls and receiving commissions on profits so generated. How this came about and the law governing telecommunications providers are far more complex matters.
For people in jails and prisons, telephones are a vital means of maintaining contact with family, friends, and even their attorneys. It is well established that the maintenance of these connections can make the difference between successful reintegration into the community or a return to the cycle of crime and incarceration. (Obviously, the outcome to be desired is one in which a person can find a place as a productive, law-abiding citizen, rather than one which increases an already massive “prison-industrial complex” that deprives 1 in 100 Americans of their liberty at enormous cost to the public fisc.)
Correctional professionals, who have undertaken the burdens of public service, know that people in their custody are more successful upon release when they have a support structure, such as family and friends upon whom they can rely for help. These public servants also know that telephone privileges are a powerful management tool and control mechanism that encourage prisoners to comply with institutional rules and maintain good behavior.
But corrections departments and detention facilities across the nation are perennially underfunded. Prisoners are not a popular group, and while politicians and some members of the public continually call for harsher treatment and longer sentences, they rarely appreciate the financial implications of such a failed policy and virtually never provide the financial resources needed to ensure that people in prisons and jails are treated humanely.
Contracts for correctional telephone services promise enormous new revenue, either for the enhanced operation of correctional facilities, or to pad the public coffers (and thereby provide a means of reducing taxes for the general public). Inmate Telephone Service Providers (ITS) compete for exclusive rights to operate telephone systems in jails, prisons, and in fact, throughout statewide correctional systems. This competition has produced perverse results.
Instead of securing business by offering the best possible service at the lowest possible rates, service providers have competed by offering “commissions” to correctional agencies for monopoly rights. The higher the commission, the more enticing to correctional professionals. As a result, commissions have reached staggering rates, in some cases as much as 60% of revenue.
But these commissions drive up the cost of prisoner telephone use, almost all of which must take the form of collect calls – the most expensive means of placing a call. Other calling options, such as debit or pre-paid calling are perfectly viable and entirely consistent with security concerns. But the cost of such calls is less, thus generating less revenue. As a matter of policy, most correctional facilities permit only collect calls.
This practice amounts to the exploitation of prisoners – people in custody of correctional professionals, public servants who have undertaken the duty to protect the community and the people in their charge. Such practices clearly raise ethical conundrums regarding conflicts of interest, profiteering, and other such grave concerns.
Worse yet, this flagrant exploitation is visited upon the families of people who are held in confinement, though these family members have neither been charged with, nor convicted of wrongdoing. It is, after all, the called party who must bear the expense of collect telephone calls.
And what of the children? A woman recently told me that her brother had been divested of parental rights because his former spouse could not afford to accept collect calls and he was unable to correspond with the children. Having lost all contact, the court found that he had abdicated his parental responsibilities and was therefore stripped of any legal rights regarding the children.
On top of already unjustifiably expensive rates, some service providers have required families to place deposits on account, imposed additional fees to set up such accounts, and have engaged in a host of other unethical and illegal practices to further enhance profits.
Detailed telephone costs from all 50 states are available at this link.
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