In 2007, when Texas became the last state in the union to allow prisoner phone calls, the limit on phone usage was 120 minutes a month. In 2009, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice (TBCJ) responded to requests by prisoners' families and doubled the monthly phone minute allotment to 240. Now, the Texas Legislature has passed a bill authorizing another doubling to 480 minutes a month.

No, the legislature has not gotten soft on prisoners. The reason for re-doubling the monthly phone minutes are purely cynical. The legislature is faced with a budget deficit and would like to plug the hole in the budget with money made by charging high phone rates to prisoners and their families. They currently pay 23¢ per minute for in-state phone calls and 43¢ per minute to call out of state.

Of course, the state gets a hefty kickback as well. So hefty that raising the limit to 240 minutes was projected to generate $7.5 million for the state to put into the Compensation to Victims of Crime fund. Instead, only $5 million was generated. This led Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, to introduce the bill authorizing another doubling of the phone minutes in hopes of ...

Los Angeles County Jail deputies have a reputation for brutal treatment of prisoners, and have paid out millions of dollars in settlements as a result. However, even a man visiting his brother Robert at Men's Central Jail and his wife were not exempt from police brutality. As a result of an altercation at that facility in February of 2011, Gabriel Carrillo received a $1.2 million settlement for his injuries at the hands of jail deputies. [See: PLN, March 2016, p.1].

Carrillo and his wife admitted that they both accidentally brought their cell phones in the jail's booking area, but when his wife dropped her phone, she was harassed and although he complied with jail personnel instructions to stand up, he was attacked, handcuffed, and then beaten so severely that he suffered serious bruising and temporary facial paralysis. He then lost consciousness, and when he came to, was pepper sprayed while still handcuffed. Carrillo alleged that after his beating, he was transported to the jail ward at county hospital, where he was treated for his injuries, and videotaped. He was also charged in a criminal complaint with resisting arrest even though his hands were cuffed behind his back. [See: PLN, March ...

The Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan hosted an event on May 11, 2016 that coincided with Mother’s Day to raise awareness about women impacted by the criminal justice system and to highlight the fact that most incarcerated women are mothers and were formerly the sole source of income for their families.

The Elizabeth Fry Society and other organizations challenged citizens to gain a clearer understanding of what actually happens to families when women are incarcerated. The children of female prisoners typically experience trauma from their parent’s imprisonment that results in a wide range of harmful effects. Further, Saskatchewan has a single prison for women, which oftentimes means those individuals are housed geographically far away from their loved ones. Indigenous families are disproportionately affected by the significant barriers to prison visits.

The province’s policies allow for “reasonable contact” between prisoners and their families and friends, but because of the geographic limitations of incarcerated women, often times the only way for that to occur is through phone calls. The government contracts with a Texas-based private prison phone provider that charges high fees to offset the cost of administering the program. Local calls cost around $1.50 and long distance calls are $7 or ...

According to an investigation conducted by the Texas Tribune, guards and prisoners are rarely prosecuted for the contraband cell phones found within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). The investigation discovered that only 5% of the cellphone smuggling cases investigated by the TDCJ's Office of Inspector General from 2009 through 2013 resulted in a criminal sentence. During that time, the office examined 3,687 cellphones, but sought no charges for 2,142 of them and secured sentences in a mere 190 cases.

TDCJ officials say that it is hard to link a cellphone to a specific person and that prosecuting prison cell phone cases often falls to cash-strapped rural counties where the district attorneys may be more interested in spending their limited resources on local law enforcement instead of using them to tack an additional sentence on to a prisoner who is already incarcerated. Therefore, the prosecutors may be satisfied if the TDCJ simply punishes the prisoners using administrative disciplinary penalties.

The allure for guards to smuggle cellphones is money. Entry-level guards receive an annual salary of around $29,000, but a single cell phone can be sold for as much as $3,000.

"The temptation is there, if there's not a strong ...

Louisiana officials are resorting to unconventional tactics to combat the “international” problem of cellphones within its jails and prisons. Prisoner use of the contraband phones has become so widespread that rarely a day goes by that guards fail to find one.             

Several factors drive the proliferation of cellphones in jails and prisons. For prisoners, they are free of security restrictions that record their calls and restrict who they can call. Plus, collect calls to their families and friends come at an exorbitant cost charged by profiteering prison phone companies. For guards, they can earn extra money.

 “That $50 cellphone might sell for $200, so you have a $150 temptation to the correctional officer or visitor who’s coming into the prison,” said Burl Cain, warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary.

 “We find cellphones with inmates almost daily,” he said. “We found one today. We found one over the weekend.”

As PLN has reported, prison and jail officials nationwide are battling this contraband issue. One expert says it’s an issue that reaches beyond U.S. borders. “This is an international issue,” said Tod Burke, criminal justice professor at Virginia’s Radford University. “Every state that has a jail or prison has been trying to deal ...

Securus Technologies, Inc.'s petition to block discounted prisoner calling plans, such as the widely-used "Cons Call Home" program, was denied by the Wireline Competition Bureau in a hearing before the Federal Communications Commission. Securus was attempting to utilize correctional rules devised to prevent incarcerated individuals from calling unauthorized numbers to  prevent bypassing their significantly more expensive and monopolistic telephone network sold to correctional institutions in return for a share of the profit.

According to the Commission's findings, "We deny the Petition because we conclude that the precedent cited by Securus does not authorize the call blocking practice described in the Petition. As the Commission has previously found, call blocking is largely antithetical to the fundamental goal of ubiquity and reliability of the telecommunications network. We find that this situation is no exception. This Declaratory Ruling and Order furthers the Commission’s goals of ensuring the integrity and reliability of telecommunications networks."

In reaching its decision in September 2013, the FCC recognized that inmate calling services (ICS) are generally confined to a single provider creating opportunities for abuse and profiteering at the expense of the incarcerated and their families. The temptation of correctional institutions and law-enforcement organizations to profit at the expense of prisoners is generally too difficult ...

The Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to keep the discussion about fines for companies that illegally placed surcharge fees on prisoner telephones behind closed doors.

City Tele Coin serves about 30 parish and municipal jails around Louisiana. In 2006, the PSC refused to allow the company to add surcharge fees for calls made by prisoners on jailhouse phones. Despite that order, City Tele Coin began adding the surcharge fees in 2010.

The PSC found City Tele Coin and Securus Techologies, which provide telephone services for prisoners at 10 Louisiana prisons, were collecting unauthorized surcharge fees upon their captive clientele. That March 2013 findings came only four months after the PSC cut by 25 percent the rates for all prison calls and ordered removal of all surcharges not specifically approved by the PSC.

Each violation for collection of unauthorized fees can result in fines up to $10,000. City Tele Coin offered $5,000 to settle the claims and Securus offered $2,500.

How to handle the matter resulted in a heated debate amongst PSC Commissioners, Eric Skrmetta, PSC’s Chairman, pushed to resolve the matter in a closed executive session that caused a raucous 15-minute exchange that saw Skrmetta and PSC Commissioner Foster ...

According to criminal defense attorneys in Baltimore, Maryland, at least 200 individuals are now sitting in prison based upon illegally-obtained cell phone records obtained from the use of "stingray" tracking devices.  The suitcase-sized eavesdropping device mimics a cell-phone tower, recording information from cell phones of suspects.  The Court of Appeals ruled that the conviction obtained by the practice must be set aside.

According to the court,  "This case presents a Fourth Amendment issue of first impression in this State: whether a cell phone-a piece of technology so ubiquitous as to be on the person practically every citizen-may be transformed into a real-time tracking device by the government without a warrant." The court's answer: a emphatic, "no!"

USA Today has been in the forefront in an investigation for the past several months detailing the secret and warrantless use of this eavesdropping device, despite the strenuous efforts of law enforcement and the FBI.  The Maryland decision marks the first decision by an appellate court finding it a Fourth Amendment violation.

In May, 2014, the court said, "the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) used an active cell site simulator, without a warrant, to locate Appellee Kerron Andrews was wanted on charges of attempted ...

by Jordan Smith and Micah Lee, The Intercept

An enormous cache of phone records obtained by The Intercept reveals a major breach of security at Securus Technologies, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation’s prisons and jails. The materials – leaked via SecureDrop by an anonymous hacker who believes that Securus is violating the constitutional rights of prisoners – comprise over 70 million records of phone calls, placed by prisoners to at least 37 states, in addition to links to downloadable recordings of the calls. The calls span a nearly two-and-a-half year period, beginning in December 2011 and ending in the spring of 2014.

Particularly notable within the vast trove of phone records are what appear to be at least 14,000 recorded conversations between prisoners and attorneys, a strong indication that at least some of the recordings are likely confidential and privileged legal communications – calls that never should have been recorded in the first place. The recording of legally protected attorney-client communications – and the storage of those recordings – potentially offends constitutional protections, including the right to effective assistance of counsel and of access to the courts.

“This may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history, and that’s certainly something ...

On May 27, 2016, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Securus Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, accusing the company of recording privileged phone calls between prisoners and their attorneys as described in this issue’s cover story.

The suit was filed by former San Diego jail detainees Frank Tiscareno and Juan Romero, who allege Securus recorded calls made to their attorneys – a practice that is prohibited by state statute. The California Invasion of Privacy Act includes protections for communications between prisoners and their lawyers, physicians and members of the clergy. Cal. Penal Code § 636(a).

“But in reality, Securus does eavesdrop on, listen in on, record, and store private and confidential attorney-client phone calls without permission of all parties, and Securus shares access and recordings with law enforcement personnel, including prosecutors, as evidenced by, inter alia, reports by lawyers of production of such recorded calls from prosecutors in discovery,” the complaint states.

Recording attorney-client calls, and potentially sharing them with prosecutors and law enforcement officials, “creates a huge potential for mischief and abuse.” The lawsuit also contends that Securus did not provide adequate notice that calls would be recorded, and covered up ...