In June 2012 we posted the first advertisement for the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice in Prison Legal News. We asked you, our readers, to send letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) describing how you and your families have been impacted by the high cost of prison telephone calls.

One year later, close to 100,000 people and organizations have submitted comments or signed on to petitions filed with the FCC asking the Commission to act on the "Wright Petition" to lower the cost of interstate prison phone calls.

Between July 2012 and June 2013, prisoners submitted or signed on to 1,754 letters or comments filed with the FCC regarding the Wright Petition.* It is clear that many prisoners have been hard at work, organizing to inundate the FCC with stories of unfair phone rates, financial hardship and the struggle to maintain connections with their families.

Pennsylvania prisoners contributed more than 540 letters to the FCC, making up almost a third of the total prisoner filings. Pennsylvania was the only state where more than one letter was submitted per 100 prisoners statewide.

The most filings of any prison or jail came from SCI-Huntingdon in Huntingdon, PA, with 174 letters submitted ...

In the wake of a disturbance which left twelve people injured at Hancock State Prison, Georgia prison officials are suggesting that prisoners used cell phones to plan and coordinate the uprising.

On November 25, 2011, while prisoners in one area of Hancock set fire to the prison, prisoners in another area were engaged in multiple fights. One prisoner was stabbed.

Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens said afterward, "We believe the activity was synchronized and coordinated through illegal cell phones."

The prison remained on 24-hour lockdown for at least two weeks after the disturbance.

Commissioner Owens suggested that prisoners set fires, broke TV sets, and entered Hancock's administration building, all in a clever diversionary effort to delay staff from discovering and stopping the fights.

According to Owens, prisoners' use of cell phones is at an "epidemic level." Moreover, in his view, their use is not about staying in touch with family and friends. "Cell phones in prison aren't about calling grandma for Thanksgiving," he opined. Rather, "it's about power, it's about money, and often times it's about gangs."

That cell phones were used by prisoners at Hancock on November 25, 2011, seems to be an unavoidable conclusion. The source for this article, ...

After heated hearings and postponement, on December 12, 2012, the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) voted to lower the cost of phone calls made from Louisiana prisons and jails by cutting the rates of most calls by 25% and prohibiting costly surcharges. [See: PLN, Jan. 2013, p.14; Feb. 2012, p.36]. The LPSC’s order was a victory for 40,000 Louisiana prisoners and their loved ones. Unfortunately, however, some of the policy changes have been postponed.

At its December hearing, the LPSC decided that telecom companies must lower the rates of most prison and jail phone calls by 25%, starting whenever their current contracts ended or in 2014. The rate reduction did not apply to all calls, but only to calls made by prisoners to family members, clergy, legal aid organizations and certain government agencies.

The part of the LPSC’s order ending unauthorized prison phone surcharges went into effect on February 28, 2013. At that time the telecom companies that contract with Louisiana prisons and jails were supposed to have stopped charging the extra fees, such as fees to set up phone accounts and issue refunds on unused account balances. The LPSC, however, learned that four companies were acting in violation of ...

by Mike Brodheim and Alex Friedmann

WITH SEVEN FACILITIES THAT HOUSE from 15,000 to 18,000 prisoners, Los Angeles County’s jail system is the nation’s largest – and, arguably, among the most dangerous in terms of staff-on-prisoner violence.

The jail system, operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), is facing an investigation by the FBI into allegations of corruption and abuse, as well as multiple lawsuits. Sheriff Leroy David “Lee” Baca, 70, has committed to numerous reforms following a report and recommendations by the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence, but people familiar with long-standing problems in the county’s jails remain skeptical.

A Continuing Culture of Violence

THE LASD JAIL SYSTEM HAS BEEN UNDER federal court oversight since the 1970s when, following a 17-day trial, an injunction was issued that ordered the county to improve jail conditions – including overcrowding, inadequate exercise, and lack of clean clothing and telephone access. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had initially sued Los Angeles County in 1975, alleging that overcrowded conditions, systematic abuse of prisoners by sheriff’s deputies and inadequate medical care violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. See: Rutherford v. Baca, U.S.D.C. (C.D. Cal.), Case No. CV 75-04111 ...

On September 21, 2011, the Lake County, Wisconsin, Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to change the telephone service provider at the Lake County Jail from Public Communications Service (PCS) of Los Angeles to Telemate, LLC of Ontario, Canada. PCS, which provides telephone services at over 200 jails and prisons in the U.S., had been paying the county 47 % of its gross revenue. In exchange for the monopoly in providing prisoner telephone services, Telemate, which counts 190 lockups in 40 states and two Canadian provinces among its customers, will pay 56% without significantly raising rates from those charged by PCS. According to Lake County Police Commander William Patterson, the county should clear about a quarter million dollars a year from the prisoner telephone service payments if the prisoner telephone traffic remains the same.

Another reason for the change is charges of theft of telephone credits under the personal identification number (PIN) system used by PCS. In 2009, about 30 prisoners reported theft of credits. A county police investigation failed to turn up sufficient evidence to charge anyone, but they suspected that other prisoners were involved in the thefts. The problems went away after PCS issued new PINs to the prisoners. ...

In recognition of October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) announced plans to donate thousands of confiscated cell phones to organizations that help victims of domestic violence.

In addition to providing victims of domestic abuse with a means to call 911 in an emergency (thereby serving a valuable and much-needed public service function), the donation plan gives CDCR an opportunity to put a good face on an increasingly embarrassing problem – the proliferation of contraband cell phones in its prisons.

According to a news release by CDCR spokeswoman Terry Thornton, CDCR staff confiscated nearly 1,400 contraband cell phones in 2007, about 2,800 call phones in 2008, almost 7,000 in 2009, and over 7,800 as of October 2010.

From a corrections standpoint, the cell phones pose a serious risk to safety and security, as they provide prisoners a means of circumventing the systems put in place by prison officials to monitor prisoner communications with the outside world. Officials have expressed concerns that the cell phones will be used to plan escapes, conduct drug transactions, and commit other crimes.

From a prisoner perspective, cell phones provide a means of avoiding the exorbitant phone rates charged ...

To comply with Florida law, the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) amended its rules to remove its jurisdiction in rates of telephone services. For prisoners and their loved ones, that removes what little oversight existed on the rates charged for prisoner collect calls.

The Consumer Choice and Protection Act, which became effective July 1, 2009, amended Section 364.3376 Florida Statutes. That Act eliminated the PSC’s authority to establish maximum rates for all providers of operator services within the state. In removing the statute’s reference to tariffs, it replaced that language with “schedules or published schedules.” The Act now requires operators to charge rates and bill services in accord with the rates in their published schedules.

In comments on the rule amendment proposal, AT&T Florida, Embarq Florida, Evercom Systems, T-Netix Telecommunications Services, Global Tel*Link, Network Communications International, ITI Inmate Telephone Services, and Public Communications Services applauded the change; as it has been something they have been lobbying to obtain for years.

Florida Citizens for the Rehabilitation of Errants and Pay Tel Communications argued that prisoner telephone services are not operator services and from a consumer perspective, are monopolistic. The phone companies argued the bid process utilized by prisons to select service ...

On April 21, 2009, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine decided that the telephone use rates the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) charges state prisoners was not subject to regulation by the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

A complaint was filed with the PUC alleging that the DOC's prisoner telephone rates were unreasonable and unjustly discriminatory. The DOC charges $.30 per minute for prisoner-paid direct calls and $.25 per minute plus a $1.55 connect charge for collect calls. The DOC pays a contractor $.03 per minute to use the Public Switched Telephone Network.

After the complaint was filed, the DOC completed its conversion from a telephone system owned by outside contractors to largely owning its own telephone system. It contested the PUC's regulatory authority, alleging that there was no statute giving the PUC authority over the DOC. The PUC held that the DOC was a "person" and thus subject to its regulation pursuant to 35-A M.R.S. § 102(13). It ordered the DOC to file a rate schedule and petition to operate a telephone system. The DOC appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court.

The court held that the PUC was incorrect in defining the DOC as a "person" and thus subject ...

by Matt Clarke

In January 2013, A $45 million settlement was reached in a long-standing lawsuit that challenged the failure of prison phone service companies to provide rate information to people who accepted calls from prisoners in Washington State.

Previously, on February 23, 2012, a King County superior court had certified the case as a class-action and approved plaintiffs Sandy Judd (the ex-wife of PLN editor Paul Wright), former Human Rights Defense Center board member and attorney Tara Herivel (who co-edited PLN anthologies Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor and Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration), and Columbia Legal Services as class representatives for persons who received intrastate collect calls from prisoners at certain Washington state prisons between June 20, 1996 and December 31, 2000.

During that period, rate information mandated by the Washington Utilities & Transportation Commission (WUTC) was not provided by prison phone service companies. The plaintiffs filed suit in state court alleging violations of the Consumer Protection Act, chapter 19.86 RCW.

Similar claims were brought by another plaintiff, Zuraya Wright – Paul Wright’s mother – on behalf of people who accepted interstate (long distance) collect calls from Washington state prisoners during the same time ...

I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the Human Rights Defense Center/Prison Legal News annual fundraiser. As of mid-January 2013 we had raised a little over $29,000 of our $60,000 goal to continue the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, and still need more support to be able to carry it through the rest of the year. We are making significant progress with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which on January 22, 2013 published a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on interstate prison phone rates.

Our hard-fought efforts are paying off and we need your financial support to continue to keep the campaign going. The FCC has asked specific questions concerning the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and in the Phone Justice ad on page 37 we list information that you can submit to the FCC. One factor in motivating the FCC to act on this issue, after sitting on it for almost a decade, has been letters and submissions from prisoners and their families plus concerted actions by the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice.

If you can make a tax-deductible donation to support the campaign, please do so. Our opponents in this struggle are the powerful telecom industry ...