by Ed Lyon

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed in April 2019 against Orange County, California Sheriff Don Barnes was granted class-action status in September 2019 to include all detainees at the Orange County Jail (OCJ) whose telephone conversations with their attorneys were illegally recorded by GTL, the jail’s phone contractor. [See: PLN, May 2019, p.14].

Among the named plaintiffs are three criminal defense attorneys: Stephen Bartol, Walter Cole and Ronald McGregor. They all claim that their phone conversations with clients at the jail were illegally monitored and recorded by OCJ staff.

Sheriff Barnes admitted that contracted staff had improperly monitored 58 such calls, a number he later amended to 347. But the plaintiffs claim the number of phone calls illegally monitored and recorded was actually “in the hundreds of thousands,” based on the sheriff’s own estimate of 60,000 annual bookings at OCJ. The jail system has an average daily population of 5,400 detainees.

The plaintiffs in the case are represented by attorneys Joel Garson, Richard Herman and Nicholas Kohan. It was Garson who uncovered the illegal phone monitoring and recording activity at the jail when he discovered his trial strategy had been revealed to prosecutors during a criminal ...

by Ed Lyon

Alaska prisoner Keilan Ebli met substance abuse counselor Kerri Pittman at the Goose Creek Correctional Center (GCCC). According to evidence gathered by GCCC staff and investigators, Ebli and Pittman entered into a personal relationship, which is prohibited by prison rules.

Photos of the two “kissing” and “displaying wedding rings within a secure area of the facility,” along with recordings of over 2,000 telephone calls between them within a two-year period, some involving sexual conversations, were discovered.

Pittman’s parents began visiting Ebli and making monetary deposits into his prison trust account. Pittman transferred to another unit, but their relationship continued.

After their investigation, GCCC terminated visitation approval between Ebli and Pittman and her parents to include their ability to deposit money into his prison trust account. Pittman was fired for “staff misconduct” and notified that she was “indefinitely barred from visiting any prisoner incarcerated at any DOC facility” but no restrictions were imposed on telephone usage.

Ebli grieved the visitation terminations and lost. He then sought relief in a superior court on behalf of himself, Pittman and her parents.

The judge ruled Ebli lacked standing to sue on anyone else’s behalf. The judge then denied Ebli’s summary judgment ...

by Chad Marks

In 2012, Emmanuel Diaz found himself in the custody of the New York City Department of Correction (DOC). While housed at the Rikers Island jail complex on multiple counts of burglary and robbery, he made nearly 1,100 phone calls. During some of the calls he made incriminating statements.

Diaz later went to a jury trial, and the state sought to introduce excerpts from four of the phone calls recorded while he was in DOC custody. Diaz objected, arguing that he had an expectation of privacy on the calls since he was a pretrial detainee and had not been convicted of a crime.

The trial court, after hearing from both sides, allowed the telephonic evidence to be introduced. The court found that Diaz had impliedly consented to the recording of his phone conversations because the DOC had given him sufficient notice that his calls would be monitored. When entering the jail system, all prisoners receive handbooks that outline the policy related to recording and monitoring of phone calls. There are also signs posted next to the phones, and a recorded message precedes every call that says the call is being monitored.

The trial court relied on this information ...

by Mark Wilson

The Oregon Court of Appeals held on March 13, 2019 that a prisoner was guilty of the crime of identity theft because he used the personal identification numbers (PINs) of two other prisoners to access a jail telephone.

Michael Steven Connolly was confined at the Multnomah County Detention Center (MCDC) in Portland, Oregon after violating a pretrial release agreement in a domestic violence case. The trial court prohibited him from contacting the alleged victim, identified only as K.

Nevertheless, while in jail, Connolly used the PINs of two other prisoners who were housed in his unit to call K five times. He used one prisoner’s PIN to make four calls and another PIN for one call. All of the calls were recorded.

Connolly was charged with five counts of identity theft for using the other prisoners’ PINs to place the phone calls.

An MCDC prisoner’s PIN is a combination of his jail identification number and date of birth. “A person commits the crime of identity theft if the person, with the intent to deceive or to defraud, obtains, possesses, transfers, creates, utters or converts to the person’s own use the personal identification of another person.” See: ORS ...

by Ed Lyon

San Francisco, California mayor London N. Breed has unique views regarding people who have become caught up in the criminal justice system. Her views extend to the families of prisoners and pretrial detainees, too.

Breed, unlike many U.S. politicians, grew up in public housing. Further, her knowledge of the criminal justice system and the experiences of prisoners’ families is intensely personal: Her brother is currently serving a 44-year sentence after being convicted of armed robbery and involuntary manslaughter.

“It’s something that has never sat well with me, from personal experience of the collect calls, and the amount of money that my grandma had to spend on our phone bill, and at times our phone getting cut off because we couldn’t pay the bill,” Mayor Breed noted.

She is not alone in her zeal to ease the financial burdens on prisoners’ family members, including the costs of phone calls and the ability of prisoners to purchase hygiene and other items from the jail commissary.

San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, as well as Treasurer José Cisneros and his Financial Justice Project’s director, Anne Stuhl, are also firmly on board with Breed’s vision to ease the financial costs imposed on ...

by Brian Dolinar, Truthout

“There were a lot of times my sons tried calling me,” recalled Annette Taylor, who regularly receives calls from her two sons in prison, “but there was no money on the account.” Those were some of the “hardest calls,” she said. “I would worry something was wrong.”

Families of those incarcerated have long complained about the high cost of phone calls from prison. A national campaign pressured the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to intervene in 2015, but the agency’s regulations have since been reversed by the Trump administration.

In Illinois, the price of prison phone calls was just drastically reduced, making it much easier for Taylor and others like her to stay in contact with their loved ones. Just a few years ago, Illinois had the most inflated rates in the country. According to a renegotiated contract, the cost of a call from prison is now just under a penny a minute. Illinois is now the state with the lowest costs in the country. 

Taylor’s group, the Ripple Effect (Reaching Into Prisons with Purpose and Love), a prison pen pal project located in Champaign, Illinois, was involved early on in the campaign to reduce ...

by Victoria Law, Truthout

Imagine paying $20.12 for a 15-minute phone call. That’s how much a call from the Jennings Adult Correctional Facility in Missouri costs.

In 2013, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set rate caps on interstate calls from jails, prisons and detention facilities. Now, interstate debit or prepaid calls can cost no more than 21 cents per minute (or $3.15 for a 15-minute phone call). Two years later, in 2015, it did the same for intrastate (or in-state) calls, which make up 92 percent of all calls from incarcerated people. Prison phone providers filed lawsuits challenging these restrictions and, in June 2017, a federal court ruled in the phone companies’ favor. The ruling means that intrastate calls are not subject to FCC regulation and rates fluctuate wildly depending on each facility’s contract with the phone provider.

Jennings isn’t the only local jail with outrageous phone prices. The Arkansas County Jail charges $24.82 for a 15-minute call; in contrast, the same call from the state’s prisons costs $4.80. In Michigan, a call from the Benzie County Sheriff’s jail costs $22.56, but $2.40 from the state prison.

Even when phone costs aren’t as exorbitant, they still add up quickly. ...

The prison phone industry, which provides telecom services for prisons, jails and other detention facilities, has a long and sordid history of exploiting prisoners and their families by charging exorbitant phone rates and fees. [See: PLN, Dec. 2013, p.1; April 2011, p.1]. Over the past decade the industry has steadily consolidated, with two companies supplying the majority of prison phone services: Securus Technologies and Global Tel*Link (GTL). 

On April 2, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that a proposed merger between Securus and the nation’s fourth-largest prison telecom, Inmate Calling Solutions, LLC (also known as ICSolutions or ICS), which would have resulted in further consolidation and thus even less competition, had been withdrawn by the firms. 

FCC staff had recommended to the agency’s chairman, Ajit Pai, that the merger be denied. Pai wrote in a terse statement that the FCC’s staff “concluded that this deal poses significant competitive concerns and would not be in the public interest.”

The parent organization of Prison Legal News, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which co-founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice in 2011 to advocate for reforms in the prison telecom industry – including lower phone rates, the ...

by Matt Clarke 

On February 11, 2019, the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) issued a report on the “State of Phone Justice,” noting progress on reducing state prison phone rates but fewer reforms in local jails, where high rates and fees persist.

Since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) capped the cost of out-of-state (long distance) phone calls from prisons and jails at $0.21-.25 per minute and limited some of the ancillary fees charged by phone service providers, telecom companies have concentrated their predatory practices at local jails. [See: PLN, Dec. 2013, p.1].

While phone rates in most state prisons have declined in recent years, phone service providers such as Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies have burdened prisoners and their family members with numerous fees. Those fees, including fees to add funds to prepaid phone accounts, are a significant burden for prisoners’ families, many of which have low incomes.

Imagine a family whose breadwinner is in jail and unable to afford bond. In addition to worrying about how to pay for food, rent and utilities, they also must deal with jail phone costs that may run over $20 for a 15-minute call. Making the choice to decline ...

by Scott Grammer

There is a surprising item for sale in the commissary at the Union County Jail in South Carolina: cell phones. The $100 phones can be used to text and make calls between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., but do not have Internet access. All communications are monitored and the phones cannot be used to contact alleged victims. Games, music, reading materials and a GED program can be downloaded from access points within the jail. The phones and associated services are provided by Lattice Incorporated.

The company’s website says their “CellMate” phone “is changing how inmates communicate with family and friends and access educational and entertainment content,” and that a future update will allow access to “rehabilitation videos, online educational courses, religious broadcasts, [and] law library content.” This is similar to content provided by tablets in prisons and jail, which also employ a pay-for-service model. [See: PLN, April 2018, p.44; Nov. 2016, p.52; July 2015, p.42].

According to Union County Sheriff David Taylor, the county makes money from the sale of the phones and additional minutes purchased to use them. Lattice emphasizes to jail officials that its “robust account deposit platform ... ensures that ...