Though drugs and weapons have long been a bane to prison officials everywhere, prisons around the country and the world are now experiencing a new contraband problem: cellular telephones.

Texas prison officials learned how serious the problem was during a months-long undercover investigation that began in the fall of 2003. Electronic monitoring by the FBI had revealed that a member of the Texas Syndicate, a violent prison gang, was making and receiving wireless calls from the Darrington prison near Houston.

In the spring of 2004, investigators decided to raid the prisoner's cell--but they forgot to turn off the water. As they entered, the prisoner flushed the cell phone down his toilet. Prison officials, determined to recover the phone, quickly shut down the water lines and ordered several unlucky prisoners into the sewer traps with rakes to drag the bottom.

What happened next must have surprised everyone. They were pulling up cell phones like they were going fishing," said Lt. Terry Cobbs of the prison system's inspector general's office. And you'd think they'd be those inexpensive disposable phones like you buy at Wal-Mart. But we've even been seeing camera phones.

Other states are experiencing similar problems. In Pennsylvania, a 2002 sweep ...

by John E. Dannenberg


In a scenario reminiscent of the Spy versus Spy" cartoon, phone companies are gouging California jail prisoners' families with outlandish collect call rates, while prisoners are defrauding the phone companies by taking advantage of new computerized phones to clandestinely bill their defense attorneys for collect calls cleverly rerouted elsewhere.

An Associated Press investigation revealed that the average California county jail prisoner's local phone calls home cost more than seven times as much as a 50 cent pay-phone call, yielding over $120 million per year in trappings to the phone companies. From this pot, the phone companies pay nearly 50% in kickbacks to the counties for the privilege of gouging their customers - the jail phone contract going to the highest bidder of kickbacks. The annual payola to Los Angeles County alone runs nearly $17 million per year.

Perhaps the greater crime is that the burden of such calls falls upon the lower income families whose members most often land in jail. Worse yet is that when these costs become prohibitive, family contact is lost and the prisoners' broken lifeline to the community only deepens their chances of becoming stuck" in the system. Charles Carbone, an attorney ...

by Marvin Mentor


The California Department of Corrections (CDC) awarded a sole-source contract to MCI WorldCom (MCI) for all CDC prisoner phones. The October 29, 2004 agreement covers four years, with options for up to two one-year extensions. Significantly, CDC entered into the contract with no input from its prisoner users or their families even those few remaining phone call recipients who have accounts with MCI. Prior contracts with MCI and Verizon expired in February, 2005.

The new contract provides that in-state long distance rates will be reduced by 20% (from what has been $.93 per minute), but out-of-state rates will remain unchanged. Future rate reductions are provided for when call volumes increase (reviewed annually). MCI will also provide newer technology equipment that includes Personal Identification Number capability, which CDC might use in the future. MCI will upgrade equipment at its current sites.

According to Lorretta Fine, CDC's Telecommunications Branch (TB) Chief, the new contract is designed to aid CDC investigative staff. Statewide reports on telephone use can be generated. Auto-archiving will be done on MCI computers. Call detail records and voice recordings will be accessible for the life of the contract. MCI will provide computer workstations for investigative staff, ...

California Demands $1.6 Million In Diverted Telephone Revenues
From Private Prison Contractor

by John E. Dannenberg

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has charged private prison contractor Marantha Corrections LLC with "misappropriating" more than $1 million in telephone revenues at its 500 bed prison in Adelanto, California, and ordered CDC's contract with Marantha terminated "for cause," effective September 30, 2004.

CDC Director Jeanne Woodford stated in a June 29, 2004 letter to Marantha that Marantha was "either unwilling or unable" to account for the phone funds, and as a result, was in breach of its $8.1 million contract with CDC. CDC spokesperson Margot Bach noted the squabble was not over performance, safety or security issues, but solely with their contract. The disputed funds are the commissions from phone calls that are collected by Marantha which are supposed, to be turned over to the state's Inmate Telephone Revenue Fund.

According to CDC documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee , Marantha's Chief Executive Terry Moreland had blocked the state from auditing Marantha's phone fund account. Moreland argued that they were insulated from audit because the phone service had been provided by Marantha's "landlord." CDC found out that that "landlord" was just another ...

by Madeline Severin, 25 Cardozo Law Review 1469, March, 2004

Review by John E. Dannenberg

We all know about how prisons and jails conspire with telephone companies to bilk recipients of prisoner phone calls via exorbitant chargesswollen by kickbacks approaching 60%but how does one legally challenge this scheme?

Yeshiva University Doctor of Jurisprudence candidate Madeline Severin has thoroughly researched existing case law, legislative histories and peer law review literature in creating her Cardozo Law Review treatise that insightfully discusses the history of state and federal legal challenges to prisoner telephone-call price gouging. Severin then proceeds to analyze each legal theory attempted, showing where it failed or occasionally, was held to have merit. From this analysis, she then looks forward to how the problem might have to be approached in the future. In sixty pages of text replete with 390 comprehensive footnotes informative for both pro-per and attorney readers, Severin first examines existing case law. She notes that federal prisoners pay lower rates, but that the legal theories protecting them have little to do with state law claims on prisoner phone rates.

One major obstacle is the "filed rate doctrine," wherein once a phone company has "filed" its rate plan with ...

The Illinois Court of Appeals for the Third District reinstated a prisoner's lawsuit against Ameritech over the company's alleged fraudulent intentional early disconnecting of prisoner phone calls.

Johnnie Flournoy, an Illinois state prisoner, filed suit in state court alleging fraud and negligence against Ameritech, the provider of prison phone services for intentionally disconnecting his collect phone calls early so as to force a second call and allow the collection of a second initial calling fee and surcharge. He also alleged that he sent his mother money to pay for the collect calls he made from prison. Ameritech moved for dismissal of the suit, citing the Illinois Public Utilities Act which grants the Illinois Commerce Commission exclusive jurisdiction over complaints concerning excessive rates or overcharges by public utilities companies. 220 ILCS 5/9 252. The circuit court dismissed the suit. Flournoy appealed.

The court of appeals first noted that claims for reparations lie within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commission. However, if the claim is for civil damages, a circuit court may hear the case. It then held that "the essence of Flournoy's claim is that Ameritech deliberately terminated his collect telephone calls prematurely, forcing him to call the same person again. ...

Virginia SCC Without Jurisdiction to Hear
Prisoner Phone Rate Challenge


The Virginia Supreme Court, in an un-published opinion, has held the State Corporation Commission (SCC) does not have jurisdiction to hear challenge to prisoner phone rates. Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) prisoner Robert E. Lee Jones, Jr., filed a complaint with the SCC alleging that M.C.I. Telecommunications Corporation (MCI) charged excessive rates for telephone service in the Commonwealth's prisons. The SCC entered a Final Order in Jones' favor. MCI and VDOC appealed, arguing that Code §56-234 prevents the SCC from exercising jurisdiction over "contracts for services rendered by any telephone company to the state government."


§ 56-34 requires "every public utility to furnish reasonably adequate service and facilities at reasonable and just rates to any person, firm, or corporation" and that "[t]he charge for such service shall be at the lowest rate applicable with schedules filed with the [SCC] pursuant to §56-236." However, § 56-234 specifically exempted from this requirement "schedules of rates, or contracts for service rendered by any telephone company to the state government&"


The Court favored the "Inmate Telephone System contract is an agreement between MCI and a state agency." The fact prisoners and recipients of their ...

A lawsuit currently pending in a California state court claims that certain providers of prison telephone services have improperly charged for collect calls from correctional institutions that were not authorized or accepted by the called party. The lawsuit, Condes v. Evercom Systems, Inc., Alameda County (California) Superior Court Case No. 2002054255, was filed in 2002 by three San Francisco Bay Area law firms _ the Law Offices of Edward C. Casey, Jr., the Law Offices of John W. Allured and Bramson, Plutzik, Mahler & Birkhaeuser, LLP.

The plaintiffs in the action are three criminal defense lawyers _ Elena Condes, Bicka Barlow and Brian Getz _ and an accountant, Christopher Fank. They allege in their complaint that defendants Evercom Systems, Inc., Global Tel*Link Corporation, T-Netix Telecommunications Services, Inc. and ILD Telecommunications, Inc. improperly charged them and other persons for prisoner collect calls that they had not authorized or accepted _ including calls that were received when nobody was present to answer the phone and calls received by telephone answering machines or voicemail. Also named as defendants in the action are Verizon California, Inc., Pacific Bell Telephone Co. and SBC Communications, Inc.

The plaintiffs have asserted claims based on California's Unfair Competition ...

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment granted by the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, to officials at the Special Commitment Center (SCC) for sex offenders at McNeil Island, Washington. This case is part of ongoing litigation. against the SCC, about which PLN has reported extensively.

Andre Young, a detainee at SCC, sued Dr. Mark Seling and other SCC officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated when SCC monitored his telephone calls and denied his incoming and outgoing calls from April 18 through September 24, 1998, when his sister was terminally ill. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants and Young appealed.

The appeals court held that the district court erred in overlooking an injunction issued in 1994 by Judge Dwyer, also of the Western District of Washington, his reaffirmation of that injunction on November 15, 1999, and his published opinion in Turay v. Seling, 108 F.Supp.2d 1148 (W.D. Wash. 2000), also upholding the 1994 injunction. Judge Dwyer specifically enjoined SCC (1) from monitoring residents' telephone calls, (2) from barring outgoing calls other than collect calls, and (3) to allow "prompt telephone access to residents in cases ...

Nebraska Prisoners Win Summary Judgment on
Phone Access and Monitoring Issues

by Matthew T. Clarke

A Nebraska state district court
granted Nebraska state prisoners' summary judgment on issues involving the monitoring and recording of phone calls to government officials, courts, and attorneys, and the denial of calls to some attorney phone numbers and all news media numbers.

In 1997, Tarty McCroy, Gary Pope, David Ditter, and Thomas Nesbitt, Nebraska state prisoners, filed suit in state court under the First, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, their state equivalents (Article I, Sections 3, 5, 13. and 19 of the Nebraska Constitution), seeking to prevent the recording of phone calls to courts, State Senators, government officials; the restriction of attorney confidential calls to a single business number; the denial of all calls to attorneys who haven't appeared for the prisoner in a matter which is scheduled for a hearing within 14 days; the denial of calls to law firm staff, paralegals, law clerks, and 411 information; and the denial of calls using 800 numbers, cellular phones, or call forwarding, call waiting, and conference calling. These restrictions on prisoners' phone calls were brought about by the implementation of Nebraska Department of ...