Prisoner Phone Service Providers Cannot Block Call Routing Service Calls
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) entered an order that concluded inmate calling services (ICS) providers are not authorized to block prisoners’ calls to persons who subscribe to call routing services.
The September 26, 2013 order denied a petition by Securus Technologies, Inc. seeking a declaratory ruling that “call diversion schemes are a form of dial-around calling which Securus is permitted to block,” under existing FCC precedent.
At issue were services that friends and family of prisoners use to pay rates for local ICS calls, avoiding higher rates for long distance ICS calls. The FCC said that the blocking of telephone calls is antithetical to its fundamental goal of making available “rapid, efficient, Nation-wide and world-wide wire radio communications services with adequate facilities.”
Current precedent does allow ICS providers to block “800” and “950” access calls, but extending this precedent to all call routing services does not follow. The call routing services in question are not “operator services” that include “automatic or live assistance to a consumer.” Rather, “for the calling party, the routed call is completed in a seamless manner.” Additionally, those services are not used by the prisoner, but ...
Mississippi Indictments Illustrate Prison Phone Corruption
by Derek Gilna
Two Mississippi businessmen, Irb Benjamin, 69, and Sam Waggoner, 61, face federal charges in connection with a scheme in which kickbacks were paid to former Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Commissioner Christopher B. Epps in return for the awarding of state and county contracts to Mississippi Correctional Management (MCM) and Global Tel*Link (GTL).
According to court documents, Waggoner, a paid consultant for GTL, the nation’s largest prison phone service provider, received from the company “five (5) percent of all revenue generated by the inmate telephone services contracts it had with the state of Mississippi.”
In turn, Waggoner allegedly provided bribes to Epps. According to federal prosecutors, “Specifically, on or about July 30, 2014, and on or about August 26, 2014, the defendant, Sam Waggoner, paid kickbacks in the form of cash generated by his monthly commission from GTL to Christopher B. Epps,” in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(2).
Prisoners’ rights advocates, including the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the parent organization and publisher of Prison Legal News, have long been critical of phone contracts entered into between companies like GTL and corrections agencies that force prisoners and their families ...
Cell Phones Confiscated from Prisoners Given to Charities
by Christopher Zoukis
Thousands of cell phones seized from prisoners nationwide have been donated to charitable causes, including domestic violence programs and Cell Phones for Soldiers.
Cell phones are considered contraband in every prison and jail in the U.S. In many jurisdictions, their possession or use by a prisoner is a criminal offense, including in the federal Bureau of Prisons. [See: PLN, June 2011, p.34]. Despite such penalties there is a burgeoning market for cell phones behind bars, and many end up being found by prison officials. In California alone, 12,151 phones were seized from prisoners in 2013.
As the confiscation of contraband cell phones has become more common, many have been donated to charitable organizations.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections gave more than 1,100 cell phones to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The phones are refurbished by Verizon HopeLine and then provided to domestic violence victims. Phones that cannot be reused are recycled, with the proceeds donated to the program. The Alabama DOC sends confiscated cell phones to HopeLine and proceeds from the sale of refurbished phones are used for grants for domestic violence shelters.
Many of California’s contraband ...
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Retains High Phone Rates for County Jails
On February 11, 2015, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (The Board), in a public session, denied a request for rulemaking on the petition proffered by various prisoners’ advocacy institutions and individuals. The request called for a cap, similar to New York’s rate of no more than $0.05 per minute, on intrastate collect telephone calls for New Jersey prisoners in county jails and state prisons. The Board noted that the referenced New York $0.05 rate cap was arrived at through a competitive process, not rulemaking, which resulted in a contractual agreement between the telecommunications providers and the New York Department of Corrections.
New Jersey prisoners now pay $0.17 per minute for out-of-state calls from state prisons, based on the FCC imposed cap, but can pay up to $0.56 per minute for local calls made from county jails where there is no regulation. Under current contracts, counties will receive a commission usually in excess of 50% of the cost of the call. The petition noted, “[t]hese commissions create perverse incentives by encouraging the governments contracting with phone companies to choose high rates.” That specific issue was not ...
Another Kind of Isolation
The Bureau of Prisons tightens the rules at its secretive “Communication Management Units.”
By Christie Thompson
In 2006 and 2008, the Bureau of Prisons quietly created new restrictive units for terrorists or other inmates they feared might coordinate crimes from behind bars. The Communication Management Units (CMUs) were designed to more tightly monitor and restrict inmates’ communication with the outside world. The units, at Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois, operated largely in secret, without any formal policies or procedures in place — until last week.
Federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., one of two federal facilities with Communication Management Units. Tannen Maury/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
On January 22, the Bureau of Prisons finalized rules that had been nearly five years in the making regarding who can be sent to the CMUs and how the facilities should operate. But prisoner advocates claim the new rules impose even stricter limits on contact without providing a legitimate way for inmates to appeal being placed under such restrictions.
“What this rule does is codify the harsh communication restrictions in place,” said Alexis Agathocleous, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and lead counsel in a federal ...
Delaware: Drop in Prison Phone Rates Called a “Drop in the Bucket”
by Derek Gilna
Delaware’s prison phone rates will be reduced as a result of a new contract entered into between the state Department of Correction (DOC) and Global Tel*Link (GTL) that will run from July 21, 2015 through June 30, 2018. Rates for local calls will drop from $1.22 to $.85 per call, while intrastate (in-state) rates will be reduced from $3.20 to $2.29 for a 15-minute call and rates for interstate (long distance) calls will drop from $3.75 to $2.70 for a 15-minute collect call or $2.25 for debit and prepaid calls.
Although prisoners’ rights groups like Dover-based Citizens for Criminal Justice were happy the phone rates were reduced, one advocate called the lower rates a “drop in the bucket” – just one of many inflated charges that prisoners and their families must bear.
“It’s good to see a move in the right direction,” said the organization’s director, Kenneth Abraham, a former Deputy Attorney General who served time in prison on a drug charge. “But it still seems too high and could be lower.”
The DOC’s rates for interstate calls were originally $10.70 for a 15-minute call, ...
Prisoners Pay Millions to Call Loved Ones Every Year. Now this Company Wants Even More
by Ben Walsh, Huffington Post
A captive market, no competition and government contracts that make monopoly-enabled price gouging the industry standard – it’s never been in doubt that the prison phone business is a very profitable model.
A presentation that the privately-held prison telecom company Securus made to investors that The Huffington Post obtained shows just how much money there is to be made as the state-sanctioned middleman between prisoners and the outside world: $404.6 million last year alone.
Securus, which provides phone services to 2,600 prisons and jails in 47 states, made $114.6 million in profit on that revenue in 2014. Securus’ gross profit margin – a measure of the difference between the cost to provide its services, and what it charges for them – was a whopping 51 percent. And Securus, with a 20 percent market share, isn’t even the biggest prison phone company. That would be Global Tel*Link, or GTL, which has a 50 percent market share, the New York Times reported. GTL drew national attention for its prominent role in the 2014 viral podcast Serial.
While Securus is already making massive ...
Inside the Shadowy Business of Prison Phone Calls
An IBTimes investigation into the secretive world of selling phone calls to prisoners and their families.
by Eric Markowitz
Joanne Jones, an occupational therapist from Warwick, Rhode Island, has made an unlikely foe in the past year: Securus Technologies, a billion-dollar prison technology company based in Dallas.
Sitting at her kitchen table one recent afternoon in front of a stack of Securus bills, Jones explained that her 29-year-old son, Nate Jones, had been arrested on an aggravated robbery charge in January 2014. Her son’s life may have taken a negative turn, but Jones tries to keep in touch with him as often as possible.
They speak roughly once a week in a 15-minute phone call, and speak for another 25 minutes on a video chat. Jones says she’d travel to Texas to visit her son in person, but Hays County Jail, where he is locked up, banned visitations in November 2013. That happened shortly after the county jail entered into a contract with Securus.
Since then, all family communication with prisoners at Hays County goes through Securus, which charges Jones about $10 for a phone call and about $8 for a video visit.
In the year and a half that her son has been locked up, Jones says ...
New Jersey County Seeks New Jail Phone Contract, Increases Commission Rate
by Derek Gilna
Officials in Bergen County, New Jersey are seeking bids on a new jail phone contract that will include an increase in the “commission” kickback the county receives from calls made by prisoners, which will go from 60% to 65%. Under the new contract, phone calls from the Bergen County jail will reportedly cost $.21 per minute for domestic calls and $.50 per minute for international calls. There will also be a $5.95 deposit fee for prepaid phone accounts.
At the same time, the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC), which contracts with Global Tel*Link for phone services, has completely eliminated its prison phone commission. As previously reported in Prison Legal News, the DOC abolished commission payments effective August 2015, which will result in significantly lower rates of under $.05 per minute. [See: PLN, May 2015, p.40; Oct. 2014, p.28].
Although New Jersey counties can opt into the DOC’s phone contract, some, including Bergen County, have declined to do so – apparently to preserve their lucrative commission payments at the expense of higher phone rates for prisoners and their family members and friends.
The Federal ...
Feds and Tennessee Officials Investigate Prisoners Using Facebook
by David Reutter
The Bureau of Prisons is investigating two prisoners who were discovered using Facebook to “broadcast live” from a federal facility in Atlanta, where they are serving time on drug and weapons charges. The probe was initiated following a November 19, 2014 investigative news report by WSMV Channel 4 in Nashville.
“Hey, what’s up everybody! It’s your boy Stackhouse Dadon, reporting live from the federal penitentiary,” said one prisoner in a video posted on Facebook.
“You all stay tuned, man. We’ll keep you updated on what’s going on in this prison,” the other prisoner stated.
The WSMV news report identified the pair as Cameron Braswell and Rex Whitlock, both from Tennessee. The videos and status updates posted on Facebook also showed off the pair’s tattoos and shoes.
“Federal inmates are not authorized to use any equipment that would allow for creating videos of themselves inside our prisons,” a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said in a statement. “We immediately conduct investigations into these matters.” The statement added that Braswell and Whitlock could face administrative sanctions and possible federal prosecution stemming from their online profiles. Authorities have also contacted Facebook.
Braswell and ...
