Historically, prisons and jails have been loathe to give prisoners access to technology. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) didn’t even allow prisoners regular access to telephone calls until 2009. Access to internet-based services, which the non-incarcerated take for granted, is also forbidden by prison officials who cite vaguely-expressed “security concerns.” In recent years, however, electronic tablets that include a variety of programs and ­services have proliferated behind bars.

What has caused this shift in the Luddite mentality of prison officials? Money, mainly. Corrections agencies almost always receive “commission” kickbacks from the revenue generated by fee-based content offered by tablet providers, which ranges from e-messaging and video calls to music downloads and games. The two primary tablet vendors are GTL/ViaPath Technologies, headquartered in Virginia, and Dallas-based Securus Technologies. They are also the nation’s leading prison and jail phone service providers.

Both are owned by private equity firms and have long histories of price-gouging prisoners and their families. Other companies that supply tablets and e-content include Edovo, Inmate Calling Solutions (ICSolutions) and Keefe Commissary Network.

In the business model they all use, corrections officials can select the programs and features available on tablets that are usually provided to prisoners at ...

The Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), a notorious federal jail in Brooklyn, New York, has made the news repeatedly thanks to some high-profile detainees held there to await trial. But federal prosecutors have also charged nine detainees for a series of assaults on fellow detainees, including two murders.

Additionally, as of mid-September 2024, 25% of the lockup’s staff positions were vacant. A little over a month later, on October 28, 2024, multiple federal agencies, including the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), conducted a sweep that uncovered a trove of contraband drugs, electronics and weapons. That led to smuggling charges against a guard. Earlier that same month, a detainee was also charged in a murder-for-hire plot that resulted in the death of a woman outside a New York City nightclub; the killing was allegedly arranged using a contraband cellphone.

On top of that, the almost three-decade-old MDC has been cited for maintenance problems, power outages, raw sewage and conditions so “inhumane” that some federal judges have refused requests from government prosecutors to detain defendants there, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p.24.]

In a bizarre incident, MDC guard Leon Wilson, 49, a 23-year veteran ...

Two South Carolina prisoners were sentenced on December 10, 2024, for their roles in a riot that killed seven fellow prisoners and injured 20 more. They were the most recent of 20 prisoners sentenced so far for convictions on charges stemming from the uprising, the worst in any U.S. prison in 25 years.

As PLN reported, the violence erupted at Lee Correctional Institution (LCI) on April 25, 2018, when two prisoners in the Gangster Nation gang assaulted and robbed a fellow prisoner, Michael Milledge, 44, a member of the rival Bloods gang. When he died of his wounds, outraged fellow gang members spread the word via contraband cell phone, retrieving or fashioning makeshift weapons to exact vengeance. Conditions in the rural prison quickly devolved into bloodshed as the Bloods’ reprisal on the Gangster Nation drew in prisoners from the rival Crips gang, as well, before it was finally put down eight hours later. [See: PLN, Mar. 2020, p.46.]

In the aftermath, Milledge and six more prisoners lay dead: Raymond Angelo Scott; Damonte Marquez Rivera; Eddie Casey Jay Gaskins: Joshua Svwin Jenkins; Corey Scott; and Cornelius Quantral McClary, 38. Investigators from the state Law Enforcement Division said that he was stabbed ...

On November 18, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued two orders denying motions filed by Securus Technologies, LLC, and Pay Tel Communications, Inc., seeking to stay implementation of a rule recently adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which capped the amount both companies may charge for telecommunication services provided to prisoners.

As PLN reported, the FCC published a final rule on August 24, 2024, to significantly reduce the cost of phone and video calls made by people held in prisons and jails nationwide. Under the new rule, which takes effect in 2025, rates in state prisons are limited to $0.06 per minute, while rates in local jails dropped to no more than $0.12 per minute. The FCC also capped the cost of video calls at $0.16 per minute in prisons and between $0.11 to $0.25 per minute in jails. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1.]

Securus and Pay Tel filed petitions for review of the FCC rule in the First Circuit, moving to stay implementation of the rate caps pending final resolution of the appeals. In brief two-page orders signed by Chief Judge David J. Barron and Circuit Judges Gustavo Gelpi and Seth R. ...

On November 19, 2024, prison telecom Securus Technologies, Inc., along with subsidiary JPay, notified users of services provided by the firms at prisons and jails of steps being taken to comply with a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order. As PLN reported, that August 2024 order capped phone rates at $.06 per minute for prisons and $.12 per minute for jails; video calling transaction fees were also eliminated and rates capped at $.16 per minute in prisons and $.11 to $.25 per minute in jails, depending on size. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1.]

In its announcement of these changes, Securus/JPay advised incarcerated users that it currently doesn’t have the functionality to charge by the minute for video calling, as the order requires. So free video calling “may” be offered at some lockups while the firms revamped their programs to accommodate the order. But the announcement also included a vague threat that “some facilities might choose to temporarily disable video calling.”

Meanwhile, on November 19, 2024, Securus Video Connect went offline throughout the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) for five days while a “system update” was underway. Video calling in DOC prisons currently costs $4.95 for 30 minutes—a little over 3% ...

In a petition filed on September 30, 2024, the Republican Attorneys General of 14 states asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to block new rate caps on prison and jail calls that were issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the previous July.

As PLN reported, the new FCC rule limited charges for Incarcerated Persons Calling Services (ICPS) by phone to six cents per minute, with allowances up to 12 cents per minute in smaller lockups where per-­call costs are presumed higher. The rule also limited ICPS video call charges to a range of 16 to 25 cents per minute. Importantly, the FCC also eliminated “site commission” kickbacks to prison and jail operators, as well as ancillary fees users were charged for adding funds to phone accounts, receiving paper billing statements, talking to a live agent, making third-­party financial transactions and placing a single call. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1.]

Arkansas Attorney General (AG) Tim Griffin and Indiana AG Todd Rokita led the group of fellow Republican AGs asking the Eighth Circuit to declare the new FCC rules “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion” that was made “in excess of statutory authority.” In a separate ...

On August 26, 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published its final rule in the Federal Register, formalizing rulemaking that the agency issued the previous month which significantly reduces the cost of phone and video calls made by people held in prisons and jails nationwide. It is the latest development in a decades-long campaign to rein in predatory price gouging by prison telecom companies.

Phone rates in state prisons were limited to $.06 per minute, and per-minute rates in local jails dropped to no more than $.12. The FCC imposed interim caps on the cost of video calls equal to $.16 per minute in prisons and $.11 to $.25 per minute in jails. The order included a number of other measures to address abusive practices by prison phone companies, and to make communication services more affordable and accessible. All the reforms go into effect in 2025. See: Incarcerated People’s Communications Services; Implementation of the Martha Wright- Reed Act; Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services, Fed. Reg. Vol. 89 No. 165.

To properly appreciate this most recent FCC action, it must be considered in the context of longstanding exploitation of prisoners and their families by telecom providers, operating in collusion with ...

by Douglas Ankney
When a jail is found to violate a detainee’s Sixth Amendment expectation that communications with his attorney are privileged, courts often shrug it off as harmless; after all, the detainee won’t raise the objection unless what was discussed could undermine his defense, and in that case courts are loathe to let the guilty go free.
But a nation of laws must abide by all of them, no matter the result. So it was a welcome surprise when the Supreme Court of Nevada on March 7, 2024, refused to take the easy way out and agree with a lower court that a detainee who violated jail phone policy to make a legal call had waived attorney-­client privilege for it.
The Court’s ruling came in an appeal by former Clark County Detention Center detainee Jamal Jacqkey Gibbs. In April 2021, he was 29 and at the Las Vegas apartment of his girlfriend when her daughter returned from a visit with the child’s father, Jaylon Tiffith, 29. The mother then got in a fight with Tiffith’s new girlfriend, who was also not named. Both Tiffith and Gibbs—recently released from state prison after completing a 10-­year term for a 2008 gang ...

Lawmakers on both coasts of the U.S. sponsored legislation in January 2024 to make telecommunications free to state prisoners and their families. This follows a national trend to ease the financial burden on families with incarcerated loved ones and reduce the associated risk of reoffending for those who can’t afford to stay in touch.

In Washington, state Sen. Drew Hansen (D-Brainbridge Island) introduced the Connecting Families Act or SB 6021. State prisoners currently have limited free calls and video visits, but when those are used up, prisoners must pay high per-minute charges for additional phone calls or $4.95 for a thirty-minute video call. Emails require purchase of stamps at 20 for $5. The legislation eliminates fees for prison phone calls, emails and video visits, which Hansen and other advocates argue will reduce recidivism rates and prison violence, as well as improve mental health for the incarcerated, by promoting stronger family ties.

The bill needs to pass the Ways and Means Committee, but the cost is currently unknown; the state Department of Corrections (DOC) has a telecommunications contract with Securus that runs until 2028, meaning the state must absorb any cost until then. Jerry Thomas, a state prisoner 15 years into ...

On December 1, 2023, phone calls became free for detainees and prisoners in Los Angeles County jails. The county’s Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 on November 22, 2023, to amend the existing phone service contract with ViaPath Technologies—formerly Global Tel*Link (GTL)—to shift the cost of calls from the county’s approximately 12,000 detainees and their families to the jail system’s Inmate Welfare Fund (IFW).

When the Board first voted to study the idea in 2021, audits revealed that GTL kickbacks dumped about $15 million annually into the IFW. Along with profits from detainee commissary purchases, the fund balance grew to $32 million, use of which is limited by state law to goods and services provided for the benefit and education of detainees.

The county Sheriff’s Department (LASD) taps the IFW for about $9 to $20 million each year for programming and another $5 to $14 million for facility maintenance. Under the revised ViaPath contract, up to $12.9 million will now come from the fund for calls. But since the county is losing the kickbacks, the hit on its budget is expected to be twice that amount.

The contract provides that the county will be billed no more than 4.2 cents per ...