Prison Phone Justice

County Jail Inmate Telephone and
Commissary
Overcharging a Captive Population

SUMMARY
The COVID-19 (COVID) pandemic uncovered and highlighted many pre-existing inequities in
our society, particularly in our criminal justice system. Details like the Sonoma County Main
Adult Detention Facility’s (MADF) telephone service, gained fresh importance and scrutiny
when viewed through the pandemic’s lens. As part of its inquiry into the jail’s efforts to fight
COVID (see companion report, COVID-19 Mitigation), the Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury
(Grand Jury) found a pattern of charges for inmate phone use that exceeds the market rate by
more than tenfold. This prompted the 2020-2021 Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury to
investigate the inmate phone system.
Calls from our jail are highly expensive at more than 20 cents per minute. The Sonoma County
Sheriff's office, along with many other Sheriff’s offices, contracts with a private company that
provides the service at a rate well above what is available to inmates in other California counties
and to the general public.. In addition, Sonoma County’s contract adds a 70% commission to the
cost of every call, which the company accumulates and pays the Sheriff’s Office monthly. This
commission goes into the Inmate Welfare Trust (IWT) which was established to provide inmate
programs, but also is used to fund some officer’s salaries and other costs.
After over a year of lockdowns and restricted in-person gatherings, we have all experienced
increased isolation. Nationwide video chats, messaging apps, and phone usage have exploded to
fill the gap of lost in-person visits. Inmates in the county jail already experienced limited contact
time, and then COVID struck. To counter the threat of the pandemic, since March 2020, all
incarcerated persons have lost their in-person visitations rights. The only way to communicate
with friends and family was through the jail’s phone system. It is important to note that since the
pandemic inmates have less than one hour per day of out of cell time. Sixty percent of the
MADF incarcerated population have only been arrested and not yet been convicted of any crime.
In the course of the Grand Jury’s investigation into the effects of COVID on the operations at
MADF we learned:
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The Sheriff’s Office has revenue in excess of $1 million per year from the sale of
commissary items and a commission on all phone calls made by inmates.
By law this revenue must be deposited in the IWT, a fund designed to be used for the
benefit, education, and welfare of inmates.
While the majority of these funds are used for beneficial inmate programs, several
hundred thousand dollars per year are used for jail staff salaries and supplies.
The excess of revenue over expenses (approximately $150,000 in 2019, the most recent
available figures) each year is placed in the IWT, which is controlled by the Sheriff’s
office. This fund currently totals over $1.6 million.
Due to COVID, most of the inmate programs have been canceled, reducing the IWT
expenses, yet the mark-ups and commissions continue.

County Jail Inmate Telephone and Commissary

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Federal and State regulators are forcing change on jails that continue to use commissionbased phone contracts where the incarcerated population have no alternatives.
Sheriff’s Offices and Boards of Supervisors in other California counties have eliminated
identical charges in their jails.

In the end, the Grand Jury concludes that our jail should not be a profit generating entity.
Adding large commissions and mark-ups makes it harder for incarcerated people to maintain
their support networks on the outside. When they leave the jail’s front gate, the strength of that
support network often determines whether the person returns to jail or not. The Grand Jury
recommends solutions to offer a more accessible phone system and a more affordable
commissary. It also recommends revising the existing Global Tel Link (GTL) contract to
eliminate commissions and to provide a low-cost or free audio and video service as the State of
California, San Francisco County, San Diego County and other counties have already
implemented.

GLOSSARY
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CPUC
FCC
GTL
IWT
MADF
OCA

California Public Utilities Commission
Federal Communications Commission
Global Tel Link
Inmate Welfare Trust
Main Adult Detention Facility
Out-of-Cell Activity

BACKGROUND
In response to the COVID threat, the Sheriff’s office suspended in-person visitation at the jail in
March 2020. Without visitors, the jail’s telephone system became the only lifeline incarcerated
people had to reach their families and friends outside. As part of its broader investigation into
the jail’s COVID mitigation efforts, the Grand Jury chose to investigate the GTL phone system
and prepare this separate report.
The Sheriff’s Office uses GTL as the exclusive inmate phone system for the MADF. GTL
provides a turnkey system with all hardware and software for its own telephone network,
including all telephones and workstations, with monitoring and recording systems built-in.
The Sheriff’s Office Makes Phone Calls Expensive
For many years, the Sheriff’s Office has used its jail phone contract as a source of revenue. All
calls involving the housing module phones at the jail must use GTL, a private phone company
that provides this service to the Sheriff’s Office under an exclusive contract. The Sheriff’s
Office’s contract requires GTL to add an additional 70% commission to every charge for jail
calls. After collecting its fees and charges, GTL sends that additional 70% commission to the
Sheriff’s Office every month for deposit into the IWT.
The IWT is overseen by the Inmate Welfare Trust Committee, which consists of nine members
of the Sheriff’s Office and one civilian representative. In a 2018-2019 IWT audit, the
Committee approved expenses totaling over $286,575 for unspecified salaries and supplies and
$508,500 for rehabilitative programs and inmate education.

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Phone Calls Are Never Easy in Jail
All inmates in our Main Adult Detention Facility (MADF) need a plan and some luck to make a
phone call at any given time. Each housing module typically has five phones for the inmates to
use. Other than emergencies, the only time one can make a call is during assigned Out-of-Cell
Activity (OCA) time. In the best of circumstances, incarcerated people in a general housing
module were allowed 2-3 hours per day of OCA time, broken up over three periods, and shared
with 50-60 other people. Since the pandemic, this time has dropped to a total of between 30
minutes and 60 minutes per day.
As soon as the cell doors open to the common area, lines begin to form. One set of lines form to
get hot water for soup or a hot drink. One set of lines form to take a shower. One set of lines
form to check-out a video/education tablet, only allowed to be used during OCA time. And one
set of lines form for the phones. There may not be sufficient phones for the number of people
waiting in line. As a result, it is very common to have OCA time end without everyone who
wants to make a call having the opportunity.
Using the Phone in Jail
Getting to a jail phone is only part of the challenge. The system requires each incarcerated
person to access the phone through an electronic account. Using a unique PIN code connected to
their account, the incarcerated person can add money with a debit card. Friends and family
outside the jail can also add money to their phone account through an online portal using a debit
or credit card.
The phone system deducts the cost of each call in real-time on a per-minute basis. It’s a system
that harkens back to the day of excessive long-distance calling charges and hidden fees. If an
incarcerated person’s phone account runs out of funds during a call, the line disconnects.
There are a few ways incarcerated people and their families pay for calls:
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Buy phone cards (90 minutes for $20) from the jail commissary
Use money loaded into their phone account from their debit card or from friends and
family outside
Call collect

Each option has built-in barriers. Friends and families without a credit or debit card have limited
access to the whole system. If families have a card, the private phone company also charges
high transaction fees to use that card to transfer money into the incarcerated person’s phone
account. Each transfer requires a $3 fee on every $20 worth of minutes.
Using the collect call feature also presents problems for those who do not have a wired landline
telephone. If the family member on the outside only has a cell phone, there is no easy way to
call collect. Many households in the County, and especially those most economically vulnerable,
no longer have access to a collect-call-capable landline.
To make up for the suspended in-person visitation, the Sheriff’s Office, through the IWT,
periodically distributed free phone cards from March 2020 until February 2021, and then
provided 10 free minutes each day thereafter. Describing the phone cards or minutes as “free,”
however, is not exactly accurate. The money to pay for those phone cards comes from excessive
charges added to those same incarcerated people’s commissary and phone card purchases.
Although the Sheriff’s Office suspended most of the rehabilitative and educational programs
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those commissions are supposed to be funding, it continued to require the commissions
throughout the pandemic lockdown.

METHODOLOGY
This is a self-initiated report. The Grand Jury interviewed members of the Sheriff’s Office, other
County agencies, and the Board of Supervisors as well as a diverse group of people incarcerated
in different housing modules at the MADF.
Grand Jurors conducted extensive research and reviewed Sheriff’s Office policies and procedure
manuals; contracts between the Sheriff’s Office and telephone service providers; internal
administrative reports; internal emails, documents, and meeting minutes; academic studies;
budget and audit reports; press reports; and prior Grand Jury reports.
The Grand Jury encountered outstanding cooperation from the Sheriff’s Office.

DISCUSSION
The Commissary and Inmate Welfare Trust
The Sheriff’s Office-run commissary inside the MADF offers the incarcerated population
personal items and packaged food for purchase. Luxuries are small. A single-serving $0.70
package of ramen, for example, is among the most popular items. This item can be purchased at
Safeway for $.33 as a single serving or $.25 when purchased in a package of eight single
servings. On sale, the price can be as low as seven single servings for $1.00.
The commissary serves a much broader role than just providing the incarcerated an opportunity
to purchased snacks and personal items. Like most local jails in California, the Sheriff’s Office
adds a substantial mark-up to each non-essential item the commissary sells. In a rigorous
process, paid for by the IWT, the detention staff regularly surveys retail outlets, mostly local 711 convenience stores, to set commissary prices. These prices are typically 200% to 300% over
the jail’s wholesale cost.
The Sheriff’s Office deposits these monies, which combined with the phone commissions total
approximately $1,000,000 each year into the IWT as State law requires. 1 The jail’s Inmate
Welfare Trust Committee governs the entire program, deciding what money goes in and how to
spend it. The Committee meets quarterly and currently includes nine members of the Sheriff’s
Office correctional and administrative staff, and one civilian representative. The law does not set
the requirements of the committee membership for a jail. In any given year, the IWT Committee
may decide not to spend all of the money it raised. The remaining amount continues to accrue
interest and, as of early 2021, the IWT held a surplus of over $1.6 million.
The Sheriff’s Office, as it must by law, spends the IWT funds “primarily for the benefit,
education, and welfare of the inmates confined within the jail.” 2 That definition is subject to a
broad interpretation. The following chart summarizes expenses the IWT Committee allocated in
the fiscal years ending on June 30, 2018, and June 30, 2019, the years subject to the most recent
audit.

1
2

California Penal Code § 4025.
California Penal Code § 4025(e).

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Expenditure
Salary Reimbursement Costs
Inmate Education Programs
Inmate Incentives
Other Services and Supplies

Inmate Welfare Trust
FY 2017/18
FY 2018/19
$ 279,596
$ 286,575
589,977
508,500
15,384
38,984
120,138
87,334

% Change
+ 2.5%
–13.8%
+153.4%
–27.3%

Total Expenditures
Total Revenue
Change in Fund Surplus

$ 1,005,096
1,126,271 3
121,175

$ 921,396
1,074,258 4
152,862

-8.3%
-4.6%
+26.1%

Ending Fund Surplus Balance

$ 1,334,802

$ 1,487,664

+11.4%

Table 1
The Grand Jury reviewed audit results only, which did not provide complete financial line item
detail. In each of the two years under review the IWT Committee decided not to spend all of the
commissions it collected. A total of $274,037 went to the IWT surplus.
The question arises whether the IWT Committee is prioritizing incarcerated program funding.
On June 11, 2019, just as the FY 2018-19 was ending with declining phone usage and declining
phone commissions, the Sheriff signed an amendment to its longstanding GTL phone contract.
The new arrangement retained the same commission system, but it increased the rate for phone
revenue from 60% to 70%. After signing, all phone charges at the jail increased and the
additional revenue flowed into the IWT. As an amendment to a pre-existing contract, the County
routing slip indicates that no Board of Supervisor review took place.
The Business of Incarcerated Telephone Access
The Sheriff’s Office’s IWT revenue comes mainly from two sources: adding convenience storelevel mark-ups to commissary items, and the jail phone contract commissions. Incarcerated
telephone access is a big business and many California county jails, including ours, have come to
rely on their monthly cut of the profits.
The telephone system used by incarcerated residents at the MADF is provided exclusively by
GTL, the largest of two private companies that dominate the national market for detention
communication services. Due to their exclusive contracts, the jail phone service companies
commanded a high valuation when they came to market. GTL’s last sale took place in 2011
from a Goldman Sachs-led private equity group to GTL’s current private equity owner,
American Securities Capital, for $1 billion. The Sheriff’s Office contracted originally with a
company called Legacy Inmate Communications, but GTL purchased Legacy as part of its
strategy to consolidate 50% of the national market.
GTL has two main sources of income from its inherited contract with Sonoma County:
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Selling phone cards to the Sheriff’s Office for resale in the commissary

The largest sources of FY 2017/18 revenue, in order, include: Phone Revenues ($373,577), Commissary and
Phone Cards ($662,764), Misc. Revenue ($50,671), Interest on Pooled Cash ($23,018).
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The largest sources of FY 2018/19 revenue, in order, include: Phone Revenues ($316,845), Commissary and
Phone Cards ($633,000), Bail Bond Advertising ($43,575), Interest on Pooled Cash ($34,999).
3

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Selling minutes through debit card transfers or online sales to people outside the jail who
want to fund calls from friends or family inside the MADF

The phone card business is a straight-forward buy wholesale and sell retail model. In this case,
however, profit margins are very high and the “customers” are without choice. The Sheriff’s
Office collects profit by adding a 233% mark-up on every phone card its sells from the
commissary. GTL sells 90-minute phone cards to the Sheriff’s Office for $6, or approximately
$0.07 per minute. By contrast, the average prepaid phone cards available for retail sale in the
community cost between $0.02 and $0.03 per minute. 5 The Sheriff’s Office adds on $14 before
charging incarcerated consumers $20 at the commissary for the same card. Tacking on the
Sheriff’s Office’s surcharge to GTL’s already expensive prepaid phone service increases the
$0.07 per minute rate to $0.22 per minute, or over 10 times the retail rate plus fees. Last year,
the Sheriff’s Office made $140,000 from these phone card mark-ups alone.
The Sheriff’s Office receives over twice that amount each year from GTL’s online business in
the form of commissions. Families and support networks outside can transfer money to a jail
inmate’s phone account through the GTL’s website. GTL charges its own fees and rates before
adding an additional 70% commission for the Sheriff’s Office. The 70% mark-up also applies to
every collect call from the jail. There is no option but to use GTL and its high rates to speak to
anyone outside the jail. The more minutes users outside the MADF purchase directly from GTL
online, the more commission money flows into the IWT.
The Sheriff’s Office’s Role
The amount of the commission is entirely within the Sheriff’s Office’s discretion. In these
transactions, GTL is simply a pass through, applying the contract’s mark-up, and passing that
commission on to the Sheriff’s Office.
The Sheriff’s Office points to the laudable programs, such as tablet based educational courses,
rehabilitative programs and services which these mark-ups help fund. These programs play a
role in furthering the jail’s rehabilitative goals. 6 However, as shown in Table 1 above, only
$547,484 of the $921,346, or about 60%, of the monies expensed in the budget actually directly
benefitted the inmates. The Jury agrees that many of the IWT expenditures remain critically
important. The IWT pays for a host of different education programs, job training, reading
materials, and coveted tablet-based coursework.
But, even after suspending all in-person visitation for over a year, and most of the programs
these commissions were designed to fund, the Sheriff’s office continued the 70% commissions
on all phone use. The result is a phone charge that serves mainly to enlarge the $1.6 million
IWT surplus.
Change Is Coming, Voluntarily or Not
This system of funding jail programs with phone service fees has been around for a long time.
Recently, however, the national trend is moving toward abolishing these arrangements. In 2015,
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigated detention telephone contracts and
imposed strict fee caps to prevent the practices we continue to use locally. In trying to fill the

7-11, the convenience store maximum mark-up the Sheriff’s Office uses for other commissary pricing decisions,
offers its own prepaid phone cards. 7-11 charges less than $0.02 per minute for its prepaid cards.
6
The 2016-17 Civil Grand Jury reported extensively on Programs At Sonoma County Detention Facilities.
5

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regulatory gap, the FCC described how these contracts impact families and work against our core
detention goals:
Excessive rates for inmate calling deter communication between inmates and
their families, with substantial and damaging social consequences. Inmates’
families may be forced to choose between putting food on the table or paying
hundreds of dollars each month to keep in touch. When incarcerated parents
lack regular contact with their children, those children – 2.7 million of them
nationwide – have higher rates of truancy, depression, and poor school
performance. Barriers to communication for high inmate calling rates …
impede family contact that can “make[] prisons and jails safer spaces,” and
foster recidivism. 7
After the FCC reforms, all Federal prisons charge less than 10% of the rates we continue to
charge for phone access at our County jail.
San Francisco, San Diego, and California Offer Examples
For now, local county jails including ours represent the last refuge in the State for these
commission-based contracts. California’s Public Utility Commission (CPUC) is looking to
change that for good. The CPUC issued an Order in October 2020, announcing it “will consider
how to ensure incarcerated people and their families have access to intrastate telecommunication
service at just and reasonable rates.” It is currently targeting a final decision before the end of
2021.
Other counties are not waiting. San Francisco provided a blueprint for a new model with the
same GTL vendor in August 2020. In one of a series of reforms, San Francisco County
renegotiated its contract with GTL. A press release by the Mayor of San Francisco, explained
why they eliminated the commission based phone contracts:
“When people are in jail they need to be able to stay connected with their family
without being concerned about how much it will cost them or their loved ones.
Being able to stay in touch with family is always important, but it is even more
critical during a health emergency like COVID. This change is an important
continuation of our efforts to reform fines and fees that disproportionately impact
low-income people and communities of color.”
San Francisco’s Sheriff’s Department took the lead on the transition with active Board of
Supervisors encouragement and support. The new contract requires the San Francisco Sheriff’s
Department to pay a vastly smaller amount as a fixed fee to GTL each month rather than using
the commission-based system, that Sonoma County and many other California jails still use.
By decoupling the programs its Inmate Welfare Trust were funding from the commissary and
commission revenue sources, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department was able to use County
funding for rehabilitative programs. The telephone and commissary could then function with a
completely different model. In San Francisco, the commissary removed the mark-ups and prices
dropped 40% overnight. After removing the commission-based mechanism, San Francisco’s
new GTL contract allows their Sheriff’s Office to provide the same telephone service and video
visitation at no charge to incarcerated people and their families.
7

Global Tel*Link v. FCC, 866 F.3d 397, 405 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (quoting the FCC’s brief).

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San Diego County took a different path to the same result. Instead of the Sheriff’s Office, the
San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted on March 2, 2021, to reject their Sheriff’s
proposal to continue funding its IWT with phone and commissary overcharges. The San Diego
Sheriff argued that eliminating the revenue streams would impact educational programs and
other services. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to end the practice of charging
incarcerated people for phone calls and video visits. Its public comment period resulted in broad
support. At the time of this report it is unclear as to the result of these changes.
To date, eight states including California have eliminated commission-based telephone
monopolies in their prisons. In each state, prices dropped significantly after the transition. In
March 2021, California completed the renegotiation of its statewide communications contract
with GTL, providing another example for what Sonoma County could accomplish on a smaller
scale.
GTL is transitioning its business across the country in response to new laws, new regulations,
class action lawsuits, price fixing lawsuits, and a racketeering action initiated by the Mississippi
Attorney General. The new GTL contract for California state prisons changed its cost structure
completely. All call charges dropped to 2 ½ cents per minute. The contract now requires a cap
of 37 ½ cents for a nationwide 15-minute call to prevent GTL’s practice of adding excessive
fees. GTL is also going to roll out kiosk and tablet communication services in California prisons
for email and video visitation. The program includes 15 minutes of free video calls every two
weeks for each incarcerated person.
Sonoma County’s $1.6 million and growing IWT surplus is enough money to pay for the next
two years of programs and phone calls, allowing a transition to a new contract that eliminates
commissions and overcharging. The San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and Sheriff’s
Department took less than two years starting from scratch, and they implemented transition
measures to drop the phone costs early on. Sonoma County should take advantage of that
legwork and seek to implement similar measures on a faster timeline.

CONCLUSION
Whether the Sheriff’s Office takes the lead or the Board of Supervisors takes up the issue:
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The Inmate Welfare Trust needs to be reformed
Alternative sources of revenue for inmate programs need to be found
Expenditures of the IWT need to be more transparent
The Board of Supervisors needs to be involved in the IWT fund oversight
Phone and commissary mark-ups work to the detriment of inmates and should be
minimized
The IWT Commission needs to be restructured with more community representation

If you didn’t know, now you know.

FINDINGS
The Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury determined that:
F1. Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office commission-based contract with Global Tel Link
unreasonably inflates the cost of telephone communication for incarcerated people and
their families in the community.

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F2. High mark-ups on commissary and phone card sales place an undue burden on some of
the most economically vulnerable families in the County.
F3. A renegotiated agreement with Global Tel Link, without the excessive mark-up added
for commissions, would lower the cost of telephone calls for the incarcerated
population.
F4. Five telephones for a group of 60 people to use in less than one hour is insufficient to
promote communication between incarcerated people and their support networks
outside the jail.
F5. The Sheriff’s Office will be required to find new funding for its Inmate Welfare Trust supported programs if the California Public Utilities Commission issues its order in the
coming year.
F6. The Sheriff’s Office detention staff holds disproportionate control over the Inmate
Welfare Trust Commission with nine seats of the 10-member committee.
F7. The high mark-up on the commissary and phone card sales continued while visitation
and inmate supportive programs, which are funding by the Inmate Welfare Trust
revenues, were cancelled.
F8. The high mark-up on the commissary and phone card sales result in over $1.6 million
accumulated excess in the Inmate Welfare Trust.

RECOMMENDATIONS
The Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury recommends that:
R1. The Sheriff’s Office work with the Board of Supervisors to replace the current
commission-based audio and video contract with Global Tel Link, using a model based
on the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department, by December 31, 2021. (F1, F3)
R2. By September 30, 2021, the Sheriff’s Office develop a new communications model to
provide for sufficient telephone kiosks to allow the inmate population free telephone
and video visitation for at least 90 minutes per week until such time as a new
communication contract is in effect. (F1, F2, F3)
R3. As required by PC § 4025(e), the Sheriff’s Office provide an annual report to the Board
Of Supervisors detailing line item revenue and expenses within the Inmate Welfare
Trust , beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, with the initial report due
by November 30, 2021. (F5, F7)
R4. The Sheriff’s Office use its $1.6 million Inmate Welfare Trust surplus to remove all
charges for telephone service while in-person visitation is suspended, on or before
September 30, 2021. (F8)
R5. The Sheriff’s Office reevaluate its commissary markup to be in line with grocery store,
as opposed to convenience store, pricing, on or before September 1, 2021. (F2, F7, F8)
R6. By September 30, 2021, the Sheriff’s Office, using the reserve Inmate Welfare Trust
funds, resume all inmate programs in existence pre-COVID, with funding at the same
level once COVID related restrictions are lifted. (F8)

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R7. The Sheriff’s Office restructure the 10-member Inmate Welfare Trust Committee by
December 31, 2021 to include more diverse representation, for example, community
members, financial analysts, social workers and educators to bring the Committee more
in line with the requirements of Penal Code § 5006 regarding commission membership
standards for State Prisons. (F6)

REQUIRED RESPONSES
Pursuant to Penal Code §§ 933 and 933.05, the Grand Jury requires responses within 60 days as
follows:
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Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office (R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, R7)
Sonoma County Board of Supervisors (R1, R3)

The governing bodies indicated above should be aware that their comments and responses must
be conducted subject to the notice, agenda and open meeting requirements of the Brown Act.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hyperlinks for key source material have also been included in the body of the electronic version
of the report:
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“Justice Is Calling: How San Francisco Made Jail Phone Calls Free, Ended
Commissary Markups, and Stopped Generating Revenue From Incarcerated People
and Their Families,” Financial Justice Project of San Francisco, San Francisco
Treasurer’s Office (Feb. 18, 2021) (https://tinyurl.com/39njj8dw)
“Private Equity Firms Profit Handsomely from Prison Phone Services,” Prison Legal
News (October 15, 2012) (https://tinyurl.com/3xfjpjzc)
Public Notice, “Applications Filed For The Acquisition Of Certain Assets Of Legacy
Long Distance International, Inc. D/B/A Legacy Inmate Communications By Global
Tel*Link Corporation” (August 27, 2020) (https://tinyurl.com/2xn7jcn9)
Order Instituting Rulemaking to Consider Regulating Telecommunications Services
Used by Incarcerated People, Federal Communications Commission, Rulemaking 2010-002 (Issued October 19, 2020). (https://tinyurl.com/wvp4xb4k)
Press Release, San Francisco Announces All Phone Calls From County Jails Are Now
Free, San Francisco Mayor’s Office (August 10, 2020) (https://tinyurl.com/6ckyhans)
“County Supervisors Vote to End Charging Jail Inmates for Phone Calls,” Times of
San Diego (March 2, 2021). (https://tinyurl.com/4xykutv9)
Erika Martin, “California cuts cost of state inmate phone calls, will expand prisoners’
access to tablets,” KTLA.com (March 1, 2021) (https://tinyurl.com/5h8um5rc)

Additional Sources Material
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Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Fiscal 2019-2020, Annual Report,
https://tinyurl.com/yjocdzs2
2020-21 Sonoma County Budget, pages 115, 120, (https://tinyurl.com/b82cab7a)
Internal Audit: Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Inmate Welfare and Jail Store Trust
Funds, For the Period: July 1, 2017 – June 30, 2019, Report Date: October 30, 2020,
(https://tinyurl.com/3w2sxs42)

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Reports issued by the Civil Grand Jury do not identify individuals interviewed. Penal Code Section 929
requires that reports of the Grand Jury not contain the name of any person or facts leading to the
identity of any person who provides information to the Civil Grand Jury.

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