Two calls a week from her incarcerated son costs Marjorie Arniotis over $150 per month. Lorraine Green pays around $200 a month to talk to her imprisoned son and was paying more until one of her sons was acquitted in January 2006.

New Jersy jails and prisons have long been criticized for the outrageous cost of prisoner-to-family phone services. Its rates are among the highest in the nation.

"[Prisoner's] families overpay enormously," said prisoner advocate Bonnie Kerness. "New Jersey is particularly egregious because the charges don't even go to the welfare of inmates. They benefit the State's Treasury Department."

Kerness, a member of the American Friends Service Committee, calls the phone rates morally unjustifiable.

Under the current system, phone payments are divided between the phone companies and the state entities that control the prisons and jails.

County and state governments controlling the lock-ups receive as much as 40% commission from phone services so there is little incentive to lower rates.

"It's outrageous," Said Arniotis. "I wish someone could do something about it."

State officials feel differently. "It's nice and refreshing to give back and offset some of the burden on taxpayers," said Morris County Jail Warden Frank Corrente. "It's not ...

A Washington appeals court has overturned a lower court's grant of summary judgment to telephone companies in a lawsuit alleging they failed to disclose rates to recipients of prisoner-initiated phone calls as required by state law.

In 2000, Sandy Judd, Zuraya Wright and Tara Herivel filed suit against five phone companies--Qwest, Verizon, CenturyTel, AT&T and T-netix--in King County Superior Court. They contended they were not provided with rate information before choosing to accept calls from prisoners in several Washington prisons.

The trial court dismissed Qwest, Verizon and CenturyTel, holding they were exempt from the disclosure requirements. As for AT&T and T-netix, the trial court referred two issues to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) to determine whether the remaining companies were "operator service providers" (which are required to provide disclosure), and whether they had violated WUTC disclosure regulations, which are based on state law.

The companies moved for dismissal in the WUTC. The administrative law judge (ALJ) determined, however, that issues of material fact existed that precluded summary judgment. The ALJ further held that she could not decide the issues because such a determination was outside the superior court's narrow referral. The WUTC affirmed.

For some reason, though, the ...

This month's cover story is by long time PLN contributing writer Mike Rigby. I am pleased to announce that in December, 2006, Mike was released from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice after 13 years of imprisonment. He will continue contributing articles to PLN as his new schedule allows. It's good to have our contributors and writers get out of prison and be able to, if not meet them yet, at least talk on the phone. Texas is the only prison system that does not allow its prisoners to have telephone access.

Last month's issue of PLN had a cover story on the prison telephone industry and the ongoing outrage of the kickbacks paid by phone companies to prisons and jails in exchange for exclusive monopoly rights to gouge consumers by charging outrageous phone rates. No sooner had that issue of PLN been mailed than incoming governor of New York Elliot Spitzer announced, upon assuming office on January 8, 2007, that he was not going to renew the New York state prison system's phone contract with MCI when it expires in April, 2007, and any new contracts would forgo the more than $20 million a year in kickbacks now paid ...

Confronting Confinement, A Report On Safety and Abuse In America's Prisons, Vera Justice Institute (2006), 118 pp.

Reviewed by John E. Dannenberg

The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons released its June 2006 report Confronting Confinement which concluded, "What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay [there]. It comes home with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each day's shift. We must create safe and productive conditions of confinement .. because it influences the safety, health and prosperity of us all."

Since so few citizens know (or even care) what goes on behind bars in America's lockups unless and until they are directly affected by their own or a loved one experiencing "the system," this report was designed to bring the realities and effects of life behind bars into the public limelight.

Included are those components that no judge or jury ever intended -- prison rape, gang violence, abuse by guards, cruel medical care, infectious disease and endless solitary confinement. While the report may not come as "news" to the average PLN reader, it serves valuably as a comprehensive and highly credible reference tool to present to the public who ...

Cleaning up Mississippi's Supermax: Conditions Suit Settled

by David M. Reutter

A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman charged that the totality of conditions are so "hellish" that it makes "Unit 32 the worst place to be incarcerated in Mississippi, perhaps the nation." The suit forced prison officials into a consent decree to upgrade Unit 32's conditions.

Unit 32 is a supermax facility that comprises five buildings, housing around 1,000 men. It imposes forced lockdown of 23 to 24 hours a day in total isolation. Many prisoners have been there for years. Often, they are confined for arbitrary reasons such as being HIV-positive, have special medical needs, are severely ill, or have requested protective custody. Generally, prisoners are not given advance notice or an explanation why they have been placed in Unit 32, nor do they receive information on how they can be removed from there.

With enforced idleness and isolation being imposed, the mentally ill regress, making the unit into a miniature hell. Those prisoners scream, moan, curse, make animal noises, engage in maniacal laughter, and have hallucinatory ravings. This prevents those holding onto their sanity from being able to ...

by Steven J. Jackson

The prison communication industries occupy a large and significant blind spot within the literature of critical communication scholarship and the social sciences more generally. Professional arguments around crime, punishment and the American prison system have dealt with communication issues as a footnote, if at all.

For their part, communication scholars have largely ignored the question of prisons, neglecting almost entirely their unique communicative forms, institutions, and industrial structures. But as historians and social theorists have come to appreciate, prisons often mirror, in uncanny and revealing ways, the societies that produce them. So too in the more specific institutional world of correctional communications, whose distinctive characteristics speak to pressing issues in the field of communication writ large: the dangers and abuse of monopoly power; the attendant need (and frequent failure) of regulation; the sometimes dubious marriage of state and corporate interest; and ultimately the role of social movement and citizen mobilization in moderating the worst abuses of state and corporate power.

This article tells a small but important part of the larger prison communication story: the rise in the 1990s of a deeply inequitable pricing scheme that has seen the cost of prisoner phone calls skyrocket, even ...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has reversed a Colorado state prisoner?s administrative segregation (Ad Seg) conditions of confinement claims which were dismissed as frivolous by the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.

Ronald Fogle was housed in continuous Ad Seg confinement in three state prisons from September 2000 to August 2003. He was locked down all but five hours per week and alleges he was denied access to a telephone, showers, outdoor exercise, law library, and programs offered to the general population.

In June 2005, Fogle filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint alleging numerous claims. He sought pauper status which was granted. He then paid the entire filing fee but because pauper status was initially granted, the district court undertook a review of the claims for frivolousness pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(I). All claims were dismissed as frivolous.

On appeal, the Tenth Circuit held that a due process claim stemming from Ad Seg placement hearings was not frivolous. The district court abused its discretion in concluding Fogle?s three-year Ad Seg placement was not atypical and significant, under Sandin v. Conner, 115 S.Ct. 2293 (1995), and thus had no arguable basis. ...

The competitive bid process is normally used by state agencies to compel companies to compete with lower bids while providing the same service. Usually, the lowest bid prevails. In the case of providing collect calls for Missouri prisons, the contract was awarded to a company that provided a bid that was higher than three other competitors.

Selecting the higher bidder will cost family and friends of Missouri prisoners about $3.4 million a year more than if the lowest bid had been accepted. Why allow this money to go into the pockets of providers? asks Sen. Maida Coleman.

Prison Officials say the new provider will still result in a savings of about $2 million a year over the current service. The new contract was awarded to Public Communications Services (PCS).

PCS bid charges 10 cents a minute for long distance calls, compared to 7 cents a minute under the cheapest bid. A local call under PCS will be $4.50 plus a $1 surcharge for a 35 minute call. In contrast, the lowest bidder, Consolidated Communications Public Services, proposed 95 cents for local calls regardless of the duration.

Prison officials justify high prisoner phone calls on the need for equipment to record ...

In April 2006 a Texas prisoner was sentenced to 40 years in prison for possessing a contraband cell phone--8 years more than the 32-year sentence he was already serving for auto theft.

The sentence, the longest anyone has received since the Texas legislature made possession of a cell phone in prison a third degree felony, is extreme. Prosecutors in Brazoria County never alleged that Manor, 41, used the cell phone to carry out illegal activity or circumvent prison security. Rather, the evidence shows only that he used it to call his sister. "I was so surprised just to hear my brother's voice", said Shirley Manor, a contract worker for the Texas Department of Health. "He just asked us how we were doing". Before the call, said Ms. Manor, she hadnt seen or heard from her brother in years.

Lawmakers in most states worry about contraband cell phones because the calls cant be monitored. This allows prisoners to maintain gang ties on the outside or to conduct criminal activity, they say. In Texas, however, this is not the case. Prisoners in the Lone Star State have no access to pay phones, and, in most cases, are imprisoned much too far from ...

by David M. Reutter

For over 10 years, the family and friends of Florida prisoners have paid exorbitant costs to communicate with their imprisoned loved one. I dont think that's right, said interim secretary of Florida's Department of Corrections, James McDonough, upon hearing of those costs. Why are (the families of prisoners) being punished? In April 2006, McDonough took action to reduce those phone costs by 30%.

McDonough knows what it is like to be separated; he has three sons in the military overseas. He said he pays 3 cents a minute to make international calls.

In contrast, a collect call from a Florida prisoner to an in-state party costs $1.50 when you pick up the phone and 26 cents a minute after that. Calls out-of-state are upwards of $20 for a 15 minute call.

FDOC's contract with its phone vendor: Verizon/MCI requires that FDOC receive 53 percent of all call revenue. In fiscal year 2004-2005, FDOC netted $17.6 million in phone revenue. The reduction of 30 percent will reduce that take by about $10 million. Verizon/MCIs revenue will not be affected.

Although this action may in fact cause a decrease in the return to the general revenue fund, I ...