Brennan Center Fcc Comments on Prison Phone Rates

• Topics: Telephones

Download original document:
Brief thumbnail

This text is machine-read, and may contain errors. Check the original document to verify accuracy.

Before the
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of:

)
)
Implementation of Pay Telephone Reclassification )
and Compensation Provisions of the
)
Telecommunications Act of 1996
)
)
Martha Wright, Dorothy Wade, Annette Wade,
)
Ethel Peoples, Mattie Lucas, Laurie Nelson,
)
Winston Bliss, Sheila Taylor, Gaffney &
)
Schember, M. Elizabeth Kent, Katharine Goray,
)
Ulandis Forte, Charles Wade, Earl Peoples,
)
Darrell Nelson, Melvin Taylor, Jackie Lucas,
)
Pater Bliss, David Hernandez, Lisa Hernandez
)
and Vendella F. Oura
)

CC Docket 96-128

COMMENTS OF THE AD HOC COALITION FOR THE RIGHT TO COMMUNICATE
REGARDING PETITION FOR RULEMAKING OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE,
PETITION TO ADDRESS REFERRAL ISSUES IN PENDING RULEMAKING

Laura K. Abel
Patricia Allard
Kirsten D. Levingston
Kele Williams
Brennan Center for Justice
at New York University School of Law
161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10013
(212) 998-6730

Before the
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of:

CC Docket 96-128

To the Federal Communications Commission:
COMMENTS OF THE AD HOC COALITION FOR THE
RIGHT TO COMMUNICATE REGARDING PETITION
FOR RULEMAKING OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE,
PETITION TO ADDRESS REFERRAL ISSUES IN
PENDING RULEMAKING
The Ad Hoc Coalition for the Right to Communicate (“Coalition”), the members of
which are listed below, submits these Comments pursuant to the Public Notice regarding the
Petition For Rulemaking or, in the Alternative, Petition To Address Referral Issues In A Pending
Rulemaking (“Wright Petition”) issued by the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or
“Commission”) on December 31, 2003. In these Comments, the members of the Coalition
respectfully urge the Commission to address anticompetitive practices that result in excessive
telephone service rates and poor quality service for people incarcerated in privately administered
prisons, and also to address collect call-only policies at those prisons.

The Interest of the Ad Hoc Coalition for the Right to Communicate
The Coalition, consisting of 61 individuals and organizations, was formed to provide the

Commission with information to help it consider whether to address anticompetitive practices
that result in excessive long distance collect call rates at privately administered prisons.
The Coalition is composed of a diverse group of people with an intense interest in this
issue. It includes four categories of people who need to communicate with people in prison, and
who are consequently adversely affected by the anticompetitive practices addressed by the
Wright Petition:
1)

parents, siblings and other family members of people in private or public prisons.

attorneys who must communicate with incarcerated people they represent in

criminal cases, immigration cases, and civil cases.
3)

social service agencies, some of which accept collect calls from people in prison,

and some of which cannot afford to do so.
4)

others, such as a Zen Buddhist priest who has had to refuse calls from people in

prison seeking pastoral counseling, and a retired college professor who bears the expense of
accepting collect calls from people in prison who she is mentoring for post-graduate degrees.
The signatories also include several organizations dedicated to improving the criminal
justice system and to removing impediments to incarcerated people communicating by telephone
with families, attorneys and others. The importance of this issue to many sectors of society is
clear from the variety of advocacy organizations that have joined the Coalition, including the
faith-based Justice Fellowship, the grassroots organization Justice Works!, and many others.
The identity and specific interest of each member of the Coalition is explained in greater
detail in Appendix A.

II.

Introduction
A.

The Wright Petition

In November, 2003, Martha Wright and twenty other people who either are incarcerated
or receive long-distance collect calls from incarcerated people (including families, lawyers, and
others) filed a petition requesting that the Commission take action regarding telephone service
for people incarcerated in private prisons. The Wright Petition asks the Commission to “prohibit
exclusive inmate calling service agreements and collect call-only restrictions at privatelyadministered prisons and require such facilities to permit multiple long distance carriers to
interconnect with prison telephone systems,” and that the FCC “require inmate service providers
to offer debit card or debit account service as an alternative to collect calling services.”1 The
Wright Petition is accompanied by an affidavit by Douglas A. Dawson, a telecommunications
expert with extensive experience providing long distance calling services.
The Wright Petition describes the current regime under which most prisons contract for
telephone services for incarcerated people. It explains that prisons generally enter into exclusive
contracts with telecommunications carriers, with the carrier paying a large “commission” to the
prison, which it recoups by charging very high rates for calls by incarcerated people.2 It explains
that many prisons limit incarcerated people to making collect calls, which further drives up the
cost of their calls.3 In the accompanying expert affidavit, Douglas Dawson explains that neither

In the Matter of Wright Petition for Rulemaking or, in the Alternative, Petition to Address
Referral Issues in Pending Rulemaking, CC Docket 96-128, at 3-4.
2

Wright Petition at 2.

Id. at 4.

the exclusive contracts, nor collect call-only requirements, are necessary to satisfy prisons’
interests in maintaining security.
On December 31, 2003, this Commission issued a Public Notice seeking comments on
the Wright Petition.4 In the Public Notice, the Commission noted that the Wright Petition “raises
important issues” that the Commission will consider in the course of its Inmate Payphone
Rulemaking, an ongoing proceeding regarding the provision of payphone service for people in
prison. The Commission instructed interested parties to file comments no later than 20 days after
publication of the notice in the Federal Register; that deadline was later extended to March 10,
2004.5 The Coalition submits the instant Comments in response to this request.
B.

Scope of These Comments

These Comments focus on the effects of three aspects of the way many private and public
prisons arrange for telephone services for the people they incarcerate: 1) the high cost of collect
calls by incarcerated people, 2) collect call-only policies, and 3) service problems that companies
with exclusive contracts have no incentive to fix.
These Comments focus on the exclusive long-distance telecommunications service
contracts entered into by private prisons and collect call-only policies, because that is the subject
of the Wright Petition. It is important to note, however, that many publicly run prisons enter into
similar long distance telecommunications services contracts, with similar effects.
These Comments focus on the ways in which exclusive telecommunications service
contracts and collect call-only policies affect people in prison, their families and attorneys, and
society in general. In order to assist the Commission in assessing these effects, the Coalition
4

See 69 Fed. Reg. 2697 (January 20, 2004).

69 Fed. Reg. 7615 (Feb. 18, 2004).

submits the declaration of Dr. Creasie Finney Hairston, the Dean of the Jane Addams College of
Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which is attached as Appendix B.
The breadth of the Coalition makes clear that the families and attorneys on which the
Comments focus are just two of the many categories of people and organizations affected by
these aspects of prison telecommunications systems. The Statements of Interest included in
Appendix A describe how the prison telecommunications systems also affect pastoral counselors,
educators, social service agencies, and others.
C.

Private Prisons

The issues addressed in the Wright Petition, and in these Comments, affect a large
number of people. As of the end of 2002, there were 93,771 people incarcerated in private
correctional facilities around the country.6 This constituted 5.8% of all people in state custody
and 12.4% of all people in federal custody.7 The current number of people in private prisons is
likely even higher: between 1995 and 2000 there was a 507% increase in the number of people
housed in private correctional facilities each day, and a 247% percent increase in the number of
private correctional facilities.8 The people incarcerated in private prisons tend to pose a
relatively low security risk: in 2000, approximately 75% of private correctional facilities were
low or minimum security facilities.9

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2002 (July 2003),
available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/p02.txt.
7

Id.

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Census of State and Federal
Correctional Facilities, 2000 p. 16 (Aug. 2003).

Id.

There is a vast array of types of private correctional facilities. The federal Bureau of
Prisons, the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“BICE”), and many state
and county governments send people to private facilities.10 Juveniles, women, and immigrants
detained for overstaying their visas are just some of the people incarcerated in these facilities.
Many people incarcerated in private prisons are far from their families, attorneys, and
other people with whom they wish to communicate. The nation’s largest private prison
company, Corrections Corporation of America, incarcerates over 6,000 people in private prisons
outside their home states.11 The distances are often very long. For example, more than 1,400
Hawaiians are incarcerated in Corrections Corporation of America prisons in Oklahoma and
Arizona.12 More than 800 Alaskans – a number of whom are represented by Coalition member
Averil Lerman – are incarcerated in a Corrections Corporation of America prison in Florence,
Arizona, more than 2,000 miles away from their homes.13 And Vermont has a contract to send
700 people to private prisons in Kentucky and Tennessee.14 For these people, communicating by

See Corrections Corporation of America, CCA at a Glance, available at
http://www.correctionscorp.com/aboutcca.html (“The company manages more than 62,000
inmates including males, females and juveniles at all security levels and does business with all
three federal corrections agencies, almost half of all states, and more than a dozen local
municipalities.”). The federal Bureau of Prisons contracts for private companies to incarcerate
approximately 8,500 people. Mary Zahn & Richard P. Jones, Bill Would Keep Federal Cash,
Inmates Out of Private Prisons, Milwaukee J. Sentinel (Jan. 24, 2000).
11
12

David Crary, Overburdened, 11 States Export Inmates, Associated Press (Jan. 18, 2004).
Id.

See Lerman Statement of Interest. All Statements of Interest of Coalition members are
attached to this document as Appendix A.

Crary, supra n.11. Additional examples include the Corrections Corporation of America’s
Torrance County Detention Center in New Mexico, which takes inmates from the District of
Columbia; and Corrections Corporation of America’s Prairie Correctional Facility in Minnesota,
which takes inmates from Wisconsin and North Dakota. See Corrections Corporation of
6

telephone is essential, because it is impractical, or even impossible, for families and attorneys to
visit.
The many immigrants who the federal BICE has detained in private prisons – many of
whom have not been charged with any crimes but are simply seeking asylum in this country15 –
face particular difficulties communicating with their families, attorneys and others. As of the
end of 2002, BICE had placed 1,936 immigration detainees in private facilities under exclusive
contract with BICE and another 11,317 in federal, state and local penal institutions, some of
which were privately operated.16 Many of those facilities are located far away from the
detainees’ homes and lawyers. For example, Coalition member Laura Kelsey Rhodes, an
immigration attorney, says that many of her clients are detained at rural facilities so far from
both her office and their homes that a visit from family or an attorney is a day-long event.17
Telephone communication is also particularly essential for the 40% of the U.S. prison
population that is functionally illiterate.18 When the families or attorneys of these people are too
distant or too impoverished to visit, there is simply no way to communicate with them.

America, Facilities List, available at http://www.correctionscorp.com/facilitieslist.html (last
accessed February 3, 2004).
15

As of the end of 2002, the BICE was incarcerating 21,065 people, 8,577 of whom had not been
charged with any crimes. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in
2002 (July 2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/p02.txt.

Id.

See Rhodes Statement of Interest. Likewise, the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Area
Immigrants’ Rights Coalition finds that the jails where it visits immigration detainees are located
anywhere between 45 minutes and four hours away from its office. See Capital Area
Immigrants’ Rights Coalition Statement of Interest.
18

The Center on Crime, Communities & Culture, Education as Crime Prevention: Providing
Education to Prisoners, Research Brief: Occasional Paper Series 2 (Sept. 1997).

Summary of the Effects of Exclusive Contracts and Collect
Call-Only Policies

These Comments focus on the effects of three aspects of the way many private and public
prisons arrange for telephone services for the people they incarcerate: 1) cost, 2) collect callonly policies, and 3) poor service. All of these problems are largely the result of the exclusive
nature of telecommunications service contracts.
1.

Cost

When prisons enter into exclusive contracts with telecommunications carriers, one
frequent result is that those who accept collect calls from incarcerated people pay shockingly
high rates. Here are just a few examples:
● A retired couple living on a fixed income in New Hampshire paid $5,000 in 2003 in
order to accept collect calls from their daughter incarcerated in New York.19
● A man living in Iowa pays $18.89 for a 15-minute collect call from a person in prison
in Texas, adding up to monthly phone bills of between $500 and $700.20
● The Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City and the Metropolitan Public
Defender’s Office in Davidson County, Tennessee each pay in excess of $1,000 monthly
to accept collect calls from their clients who are in prison.21
● A criminal defense lawyer is charged a minimum of $14 for collect calls by people in
prison in one facility, regardless of the length of the call.22
● The public defender in Kern County, California paid $460.51 for collect calls from
clients in November, 2003 alone.23

See Wojas Statement of Interest.

See Klitgaard Statement of Interest.

See Office of the Appellate Defender Statement of Interest; Metropolitan Public Defender’s
Office Statement of Interest.

See Rhodes Statement of Interest.

See Arnold Statement of Interest.

● An attorney who accepts long distance collect calls from a person in prison in
Cumberland, Maryland, reports that he has been paying a $3.00 connection fee, and 45
cents each minute.24
The cost of these calls would likely be much lower if telecommunications service providers had
to compete with each other for incarcerated people’s business, and if incarcerated people had the
option of calling direct instead of making collect calls. The bloated nature of these charges is
evident when you consider that debit card calls by people incarcerated in prisons operated by the
federal Bureau of Prisons cost just 17 cents per minute.25
2.

Collect Call-Only Policies

The rates for collect calls are typically higher than for debit card or debit account calls.
Denying prison inmates the alternative of debit card or debit account calling thus is another
factor inflating the cost of inmate telephone services.
Even if the cost of collect calls from prison were lower, the inability to make direct calls
(for example, by using debit cards) would still pose insuperable obstacles to communication for
some incarcerated people. As many members of the Coalition have found, people calling collect
cannot leave messages on answering machines or voice mail, cannot navigate through electronic
phone systems to reach individual extensions, and often cannot place calls to cellular telephones.
3.

Service Problems

The members of the Coalition experience serious service problems, which they believe
would be ameliorated if telecommunications carriers competed for carrying calls from people in
prison and if prisons offered the option of making direct calls instead of collect calls. For

See Dunbaugh Statement of Interest.

U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Memorandum For All Institution
Controllers All Trust Fund Supervisors, from Michael A. Atwood, Chief, Trust Fund Branch,
Trust Fund Message Number 18-02 (Feb. 8, 2002) at 2.

example, some exclusive prison telecommunications carriers erect onerous barriers to connecting
collect calls to anyone whose own telecommunications carrier does not have a contract with the
prison’s carrier. In some instances, the exclusive carrier requires people wanting to receive
collect calls from a particular prison to set up a special account and pay an up-front deposit –
sometimes as much as $50.26 This is a prohibitive amount for some low-income families. It is
particularly burdensome because if the incarcerated person from whom the family member,
lawyer or other account holder wants to accept calls leaves that prison, it can be difficult or
impossible to recover the remainder of the deposit.27 In other instances, the exclusive carrier
requires people wanting to receive collect calls from a particular prison to provide extensive
financial and personal information.28 People who do not know about these requirements, or who
have not yet set up an account with the particular carrier holding an exclusive contract with a
given prison, simply are unable to receive any calls from that prison.29 This poses particular
obstacles for people who have recently been placed in a particular prison, or who are trying to
contact a new attorney or social services provider for the first time.

26
27

See Crane Statement of Interest.
Id.

See, e.g., Holloway Statement of Interest; Teichman Statement of Interest; discussion of
“Kathy” in section III, infra.

See Canino Statement of Interest; Weber Statement of Interest; Rhodes Statement of Interest.
See also John O’Brien, AT&T Blocked Inmates’ Calls: Phone Company Did Not Inform Lawyer
That Clients Were Trying to Reach Him, Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), Jan. 24, 2003, at B6
(describing blocks AT&T has placed on calls from jail with which it had exclusive service
contract, to people whose phone providers do not have contract with AT&T).

As the Commission knows from previous proceedings, exclusive telecommunications
service providers regularly employ problematic call blocking techniques.30 Even when people
are able to set up an account with a prison’s exclusive provider, collect calls to them will often
be blocked once their initial deposit has been used up.31 Moreover, members of the Coalition
report many occasions on which exclusive prison telecommunications carriers have erroneously,
and without notice, placed blocks on their telephones even though they have paid their bills or
provided an advance deposit.32 Some carriers provide such poor service that even when a
customer’s bill has been paid, the carrier will place a block on his or her line unless the customer
calls the carrier to say that the bill has been paid.33 Sometimes exclusive carriers simply place

In In re: Petition of Outside Connection, Inc., DA 03-874, Ms. Diane King Smith submitted
comments describing these blocking techniques used by MCI:
• MCI blocks inmate calls, then requires the customer to pay a deposit or prepay all inmate
calls.
• MCI blocks inmate calls then forces the citizen to change their long distance service to
MCI in order for the block [to be] removed. The customers are told they will only be
able to receive inmate calls if they change their long distance service to MCI.
• MCI blocks inmate calls when the current charges are considered “high”, despite the
customer having a good credit and phone history. The customer is required to pay the
current charges (although the bill is not due) before the block is lifted.
• MCI blocks inmate calls and require[s] the customers to engage in a three-way
conversation with their local telecommunications service provider to verify that their
current bill has been paid. This practice may be repeated each month.
• MCI blocks inmate calls and requires the customer to provide a copy of their phone bill
and a utility bill before the block will be lifted.
• Once the customers comply with the MCI requirements, they have to wait between 48
and 72 hours before the block is removed, and sometimes the block is still not removed
and the citizen is back to square one again contacting MCI.
• Some customers receive duplicate bills for inmate calls from MCI and their local
telecommunications service provider.

See Crane Statement of Interest.

See Office of the Appellate Defender Statement of Interest.

See Teichman Statement of Interest; discussion of “Kathy” in section III, infra. The problem
appears to stem primarily from inadequate communication between the prison’s exclusive
11

blocks on lines they decide have accepted too many collect calls.34 Often, the provider does not
provide the customer with any notice that the block is in place, so that the customer only finds
out when the incarcerated person who is trying to call is able to get word to someone else, who
makes a direct call to the customer, alerting the customer of the problem.35 When this happens,
the customer generally has no idea why the block has been imposed or how to get it lifted.36

telecommunications carrier and the carrier used by the people awaiting calls from the prison. In
September, 2002, the Providence Journal Bulletin carried an article describing an incident in
which Verizon, which had an exclusive contract with a Rhode Island correctional facility,
blocked all calls to people who subscribed to Cox Communication’s service. Verizon took this
action because it believed – wrongly, it turned out – that it was not receiving compensation for
calls to those people. See Timothy C. Barmann, Verizon, Cox Dispute Blocks Phone Lines at
Cranston, R.I., Prison, Providence J. Bull. (Sept. 18, 2002).
34

See Teichman Statement of Interest; discussion of “Kathy” in section III, infra.

See Crane Statement of Interest; Office of the Appellate Defender Statement of Interest. See
also John O’Brien, AT&T Blocked Inmates’ Calls: Phone Company Did Not Inform Lawyer
That Clients Were Trying to Reach Him, Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), Jan. 24, 2003, at B6
(lawyer did not know that AT&T was blocking calls to him from people in jail; his phone service
provider says, “Most attorneys wouldn’t know until their clients in the jail complained.”).
36

Id.

III.

The Commission’s Policy Allowing Exclusive Dealing Arrangements
Severely Limits the Ability of People in Prison to Communicate With
Their Families, Hurting Both Penological Interests and Public Safety
Exorbitant, commission-driven phone rates, made possible by exclusive dealing

arrangements between private prison administrators and their long distance providers, make it
unreasonably difficult for families to stay in contact with family members who are incarcerated.
In some cases, the arrangements even make phone contact with family impossible. For families
with incarcerated loved ones, the phone’s ring provokes both delight and dread. It signals a
chance to hear the voice of an incarcerated spouse, son, daughter, mother, or father. But the
princely sum prison telecommunications carriers charge to relay that voice to families, and the
frustrating collect calling process and bill payment procedure, combine to make the simple act of
picking up a phone receiver a source of great stress for families with members incarcerated in
private and public prison facilities. Low-income families are hardest hit. For them, these
choices can be quite stark and difficult – does one pay basic monthly expenses for essentials like
food and shelter, or does one instead talk to an incarcerated relative?
A.

Families Face Great Difficulty in Maintaining Contact With
Incarcerated Loved Ones

Kathy’s story is instructive.37 Her only child was 17 years old when he pled guilty to a
non-violent offense, received a 5-year sentence, and entered the federal prison system. At the
time “he had never been away from home, never worked, and never driven a car,” she recalls.
Like many parents whose children are incarcerated, she worried about him: “I am in fear for his
life every single day.” Kathy’s son ended up in a private facility run by the Corrections
37

“Kathy” is a pseudonym. The woman who related this story to the Brennan Center requested
anonymity. Kathy’s Statement of Interest is contained in Appendix A; additional information
about her situation is contained in e-mails on file with the Brennan Center.

Corporation of America and telephone calls became her primary way of staying in regular
contact with her son. Coalition members John and Linda Wojas know this fear. During their
daughter’s incarceration, she was physically assaulted so severely that she had to be hospitalized
and needed plastic surgery. On another occasion, she was sexually assaulted. “The telephone is
the only means of providing immediate support and encouragement during these horrific times,”
they say.38 Coalition member Janie Canino likewise says she accepts her incarcerated son’s long
distance collect calls because it gives her “peace to know he is okay.”39 The problem works the
other way, too: children have a hard time maintaining relationships with their parents in prison.
In fact, a Department of Justice report on incarcerated parents found the majority of fathers and
mothers in state prison had never had a personal visit with their minor children.40 One reason is
distance – “prisoners are housed in facilities that are an average distance of more than 100 miles
from their families.”41
Another reason is the visitation process itself. As Dr. Creasie Finney Hairston, Dean of
Social Work at Jane Addams College at the University of Illinois in Chicago, explains:

See Wojas Statement of Interest.

See Canino Statement of Interest.

Christopher J. Mumola, Incarcerated Parents and Their Children, U.S. Department of Justice,
Bureau of Justice Statistics (Aug. 2000).

Jim McKinnon, Helping Family Ties Penetrate Prisons – Agencies Keep Kids in Touch With
Kin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Nov. 5, 2003) at B1; See also Hairston Declaration at ¶ 22,
attached as Appendix B; Jeremy Travis et al., Families Left Behind: The Hidden Costs of
Incarceration and Reentry, Urban Institute Justice Policy Center (Oct. 29, 2003), available at
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310882_families_left_behind.pdf (citing John Hagan and
Juleigh Petty, Returning Captives of the American War on Drugs: Issues of Community and
Family Reentry, paper prepared for the Reentry Roundtable, Washington, D.C., Oct. 12-13, 2000
(2002)). See also discussion section II, supra.

In many facilities, visiting is difficult (and prohibited for some
family members) because of policies requiring children’s custodial
parents to escort them on visits, or limiting children visitors to
those for whom birth certificates list the prisoner as the biological
parent. Prison officials may deny visitors entry to the facility for
other reasons, including constantly changing dress codes, no
identification for children, and ion drug scanners that inaccurately
signal that a visitor is carrying drugs.
Many family members are discouraged from visiting by the many
indignities the visitation process entails. The visit is often a lesson
in humility, intimidation and frustration; and a highly charged and
anxiety producing event. Among the problems noted in one state
report of prison visiting were long waits, sometimes in facilities
without seating, toilets and water; the lack of nutritious food in
visiting room vending machines; and the absence of activities for
children. Body frisks and intrusive searches, rude treatment by
staff, and hot, dirty and crowded visiting rooms are the norm in
many prisons. These conditions are particularly difficult for
children to endure.42
Writing letters is another communication tool. However it, too, presents difficulties,
particularly for the many functionally illiterate people in prison. Letter writers must also contend
with the vagaries of prison mail delivery. It is not uncommon for a letter sent to someone in
prison to arrive months after it was sent, if it arrives at all.43 Coalition member Joan Roberts
says her incarcerated son has gone four months without receiving any of the letters she sends
him.44 For these reasons, for many families, telephone contact is the most realistic and
convenient way to stay in touch with incarcerated relatives and friends.
For Kathy, speaking with her son by phone meant dealing with Evercom. The company,
which she had never heard of and which she had no choice in selecting, was the sole provider of

Hairston Declaration at ¶¶ 22-23.

See Hairston Declaration at ¶ 24.

See Joan Roberts Statement of Interest.

long distance collect calling phone service from her son’s prison. The experience of dealing with
the monopolistic provider changed her life.
“Every minute you’re talking you’re thinking about how much it is costing,” she recalls.
Her phone bills for prison calls were high – on average $200 - $300 per month, and some months
even higher. One particularly steep month her bill was close to $1,000 – about $50 of which
represented her local service and her non-prison long distance charges. “One of the most
frustrating things about it,” Kathy reports, was that the phone company would often “drop,” or
disconnect, her calls with her son in the middle of a conversation. Hanging over every
conversation was a cloud of fear that her chat with him would suddenly end. The only sure thing
was that each time her son called, even if he was reconnecting after a dropped call, Evercom
would charge Kathy a $2.85 connection fee.
Organizations that support families with incarcerated members pay special attention to
the issue of long-distance phone calls, both their cost and importance, warning families like
Kathy’s to prepare themselves for the financial and emotional strain maintaining phone contact
presents. For example, Centerforce, a California-based organization that works to “strengthen
individuals and families affected by incarceration through a comprehensive system of education
and support,”45 addresses the issue this way in its “10 steps to success while your family member
is inside”:
Budget Your Money
•

If you are accepting collect calls from your family member
who is incarcerated, expect higher phone bills and budget
accordingly; and

Centerforce, Our Mission, available at http://www.centerforce.org/aboutUs (last accessed
March 8, 2004).

•

Know your limits and don’t overstep them. Negotiate with
your family member inside, and come up with a plan to stay
connected without putting you in debt (from number of visits,
number of phone calls you can accept, to sending him/her
money).

Stay Connected
•

Remember that visiting is just one way to stay connected;
phone calls can be just as beneficial.

Assisting Families of Inmates, Inc., in Richmond, Virginia, another family support group,
suggests this coping strategy to families: “Set financial and emotional limits with your loved one
and set them early. Phone calls, visits and financial support for your loved one can easily get out
of hand. Decide what you have time and the finances to do and stick to those limits.”46
“This phone issue is a huge problem for the families. Everyone I know is in the same
situation,” says Kathy. “I consider myself lucky because I am able to pay the monthly phone
bills. If I was in the situation most people are in, I could not talk to my son. I don’t know how
other families do it.”47
Others certainly are not as “lucky” as Kathy. Many have lost their primary breadwinner
to incarceration, leaving them destitute. Many forego paying for other essentials in order to
maintain phone contact. Coalition member Lloyd Snook has a client on death row in Virginia
whose mother is AIDS-infected and disabled. Allowed one visit with her son per month, the
woman had to choose between speaking with her son by phone – which cost $100 per month –

Assisting Families of Inmates, Coping Strategies, available at http://www.afoi.org/Coping.htm
(last accessed February 3, 2004).
47

Her son’s incarceration affects Kathy’s entire family. Her father has started making her
mortgage payments, an additional financial burden that stretches his resources, in order to free up
funds for her to cover large phone bills.

paying her rent, and purchasing her medication. She chose contact over rent, and now lives in
homeless shelters.48
For some families, the phone service structure and exorbitant fees make phone contact,
the only possible form of contact, simply impossible. For example, more than 800 Alaskans,
many of whom are residents of remote rural villages engaged in subsistence living with virtually
no cash economy, are housed in Corrections Corporation of America facilities in Florence,
Arizona – more than 2,000 miles from their homes. The only possible way for these individuals
to maintain family contact is by telephone. However, up-front cash demands, accompanied by
exorbitant per minute rates, make it impossible for them to access phone service.49
In addition to cost, prisons’ collect call-only policies, poor service and lack of service
choice also take their toll on families. Kathy’s son could only call her collect, which meant he
could not leave messages on her answering machine. If she were not home, she could not hear
from him. Consequently, Kathy did not want to leave the house for fear she would miss his
calls. Bill payment, a relatively simple task, required Kathy to adopt a rather complex routine.
First, she would send her payment to her phone company – which billed her for both regular
phone service and the prison phone service. Her phone company, in turn, forwarded Evercom’s
share to Evercom. Even after paying her bill, Kathy feared Evercom might place a block on her
phone that would prevent her from receiving phone calls from her son’s prison. So, after sending
payment to her phone company, she would call Evercom to notify them her bill was paid. 50 On

See Snook Statement of Interest.

See Lerman Statement of Interest.

The prison phone company placed a block on Kathy’s phone if they did not receive payment
for a bill or if the phone charges reached $300 at any point during the month. If the calls reached
that amount part-way through the month, even before the bill was due, the company would,
18

occasion when she did not notify Evercom of a payment, the company blocked her phone even
though she had paid her bill. Indeed, Evercom even blocked her phone after receiving notice of
her payment. Once the block was in place the burden was on Kathy, first, to discover it (since
the company did not provide advance notice that it was blocking the line) and, second, to
demand its removal.
For families, monopolistic provider arrangements and collect call policies produce high
prices, poor service, and no choice in service provider. When people in prison cannot maintain
phone contact with their family members there are other costs as well – to penal institutions,
potential parolees, their families and public safety.
B.

Family Contact Furthers Penological Interests

People in prison who maintain contact with their families are more likely to have positive
interactions with others while incarcerated. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) recognizes
this in the preamble to its regulations. “The Bureau of Prisons extends telephone privileges to
inmates as part of its overall correctional management. Telephone privileges are a supplemental
means of maintaining community and family ties that will contribute to an inmate's personal
development.”51 Studies show that “telephone usage and other contacts with family contribute to

without providing notice, block Kathy’s line so her son’s calls could not get through to her. To
avoid this Kathy sometimes would call Evercom part way through the month to determine how
close she was to the $300 limit. If necessary, she would pay Evercom part way through the
month before her bill was due in order to protect against the interim block. See discussion of
similarly burdensome blocking techniques employed by MCI, supra n.30.
51

28 C.F.R. § 540.100. The 17 cents per minute cost for calls from federal Bureau of Prison
facilities reflects this desire to facilitate telephone contact between people and prison and their
families, as does the fact that the Bureau of Prisons permits the people it incarcerates to use debit
cards to place direct calls. See discussion supra section II.D.1; Report of the Virginia State
Corporation Commission’s Division of Communications on Rates Charged to Recipients of
Inmate Long Distance Calls, Attachment 1 (2000), available at
http://www.state.va.us/scc/caseinfo/reports/inmateldrept.pdf.
19

inmate morale, better staff-inmate interactions, and more connection to the community, which in
turn has made them less likely to return to prison,”52 and that quality family visitation improves
the mental health of people in prison, as well as their ability to participate successfully in prison
programs and avoid disciplinary problems while incarcerated.53
Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections, in a publication called “Time
in Prison: The Adult Institutions,” writes that “maintaining family contacts is important to an
inmate’s ability to adjust in prison and to his/her future potential to return successfully to a
community. Access to telephones and visiting support this need.”54
C.

Family Contact Aids Efforts to Secure and Successfully
Complete Parole

Parole review boards consider the strength of ties between people in prison and their
families in determining whether to release someone on parole. Research – in Illinois and
California, and at the federal level – supports review board perceptions that family matters for
parole success. An Illinois study of people released from prisons between 1925 and 1935
showed that 75% of those who had maintained active family interest (i.e., maintained continuing
visitation with family members) during their term of incarceration were successful on parole

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Criminal Calls: A Review of the
Bureau of Prisons’ Management of Inmate Telephone Privileges, Ch. II, n.6 (Aug. 1999),
available at http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/99-08/callsp2.htm#background (last accessed
March 9, 2004).

Terry A. Kupers, M.D., Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We
Must Do About It (1999).

State of Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Time in Prison: The Adult
Institutions, p. 5 (2004), available at
http://www.corrections.state.la.us/Whats%20NEw/PDFs/TimeInPrison.pdf (last accessed March
9, 2004). Louisiana has contracted for the Corrections Corporation of America to operate the
Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana.

while only 34% of those considered loners experienced parole success.55 The California Board
of Prison Terms evaluates “family support” when deciding whether a person is suitable for
parole.56 A study of people in California prisons and their families, “Explorations in InmateFamily Relationships” (1972), found that “in every comparison category, including [people] with
three or more prior commitments [to prison], men with more family-social ties [had] the fewest
parole failures.”57 An assessment of people incarcerated in federal prisons found that 71% of
those involved in active family interest groups were successful on parole compared with 50% of
those in the no contact with relatives group.58 Finally, a recent survey of visitors to two men's
prisons found that successful completion of parole is significantly related to the maintenance of
family ties during incarceration.59
Summarizing the extant research literature, Eva Lee Homer noted that “the convergence
of these studies, the consensus of findings, should be emphasized. The strong positive
relationship between strength of family-social bonds and parole success has held up for more
than 50 years, across very diverse offender populations and in different locales. It is doubtful if

Lloyd Ohlin, The Stability and Validity of Parole Experience Tables (1954) (Ph.D. dissertation
for University of Chicago), cited in Daniel Glaser, The Effectiveness of a Prison and Parole
System 366 (1964).

“Studies on recidivism have shown that prisoners who remain in close contact with their
families are less likely to commit new offenses after being freed … The [California] Board of
Prison Terms says family support is one of its criteria for deciding whether an inmate is suitable
for parole.” Jennifer Warren, The State Inmates' Families Pay Heavy Price for Staying in Touch
Phones, Los Angeles Times (Feb. 16, 2002) at B10.
57

Norman Holt & Donald Miller, Explorations in Inmate-Family Relationships (1972).

Glaser, supra n.55.

N.E. Schafer, Exploring The Link Between Visits And Parole Success: A Survey Of Prison
Visitors, 38 International J. of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology pp. 17-32 (1994).

there is any other research finding in the field of corrections which can come close to this
record.”60
Communication between people in prison and their family members is a primary
indicator of family ties, a tangible factor parole boards look to in order to assess parole requests
and make parole decisions. To the extent that monopolistic practices, collect call-only policies,
and poor service prevent inmates from making contacts that demonstrate or facilitate ongoing
relationship with their families, they could be preventing deserving individuals from securing
parole. Not only is this result unfair to those individuals and their families, but it is also costly to
taxpayers whose dollars are used to incarcerate people who should be home. “According to June
2001 figures from the California Department of Corrections, it currently costs $25,607 per year
to incarcerate a prisoner. If increased family contact by phone was able to keep just 0.7 percent
of the current prison population from re-entering (that's about 1,200 people), the state would save
$30,728,400 in prisoner housing costs . . . .”61
D.

Family Contact Reduces Recidivism

Related to parole success, social scientists also conclude that people in prison who
maintain family contact while incarcerated are more successful at staying out of the criminal
justice system once they return home. As reported in the Annual Review of Sociology,
“[p]risoners who experienced more family contact -- whether through visits or mail, or via
participation in programs intended to facilitate family contact --experienced lower recidivism

Eva Lee Homer, Inmate-Family Ties: Desirable But Difficult, 47-52 Federal Probation p. 49
(1979) (emphasis added).
61

Celeste Fremon, Crime Pays – the Phone Company and the State, Los Angeles Weekly (June
22, 2001).

rates and greater post release success.”62 The studies mentioned above, issued by the Florida
House of Representatives Justice Council Committee on Corrections (1994) and the California
Department of Corrections Research Division (1972), concluded that encouraging families to
remain intact helps lower recidivism.63 District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams recently
endorsed these findings, stating “when prisoners have contact with their families, and that is
coupled with good rehabilitative programs . . . then it pays dividends down the road because you
have less recidivism.”64 In addition, Dr. Hairston’s review of research on prisoners’ family
relationships yielded two consistent findings. “First, male prisoners who maintain strong family
ties during imprisonment have higher rates of post release success than those who do not.
Second, men who assume responsible husband and parenting roles upon release have higher rates
of success than those who do not. There is similar evidence regarding the beneficial value of
family ties for females in prisons. Family relationships have a significant influence on relapse
prevention among parolees.”65 This research accords with the experience of many Coalition
members, such as the Women’s Prison Association, which provides social services to 2,000
women annually who are involved in the criminal justice system, and the Center for Community
Alternatives, which provides sentencing and parole advocacy and HIV-related services to

Christy A. Visher & Jeremy Travis, Transitions From Prsion to Community: Understanding
Individual Pathways, Annual Review of Sociology (2003).

See also Families Left Behind, supra n.41 (citing C.F. Hairston, Family Times During
Imprisonment: Do they Influence Future Criminal Activity? Federal Probation pp. 48-52 (1998)).
64

Arthur Santana, Locked Down and Far From Home; One-Third of D.C. Prisoners Incarcerated
More Than 500 Miles Away, Washington Post (April 24, 2003) at B1.

Hairston Declaration at ¶¶ 11-12. See also E. Slaght, Family and Offender Treatment:
Focusing on the Family in the Treatment of Substance Abusing Criminal Offenders, 19 J. of
Drug Education 53-62 (1999).

incarcerated people. Both of these organizations have signed these Comments because
communication with family members is essential to the ability of the people with whom they
work to re-enter society successfully.66
Recognizing that telephone contact is critical to parole success and reducing recidivism
several corrections officials and agencies have adopted policies explicitly recognizing the
importance of extending inmate telephone privileges, including the American Correctional
Association,67 Federal Bureau of Prisons and National Sheriffs' Association,68 among others. For
example, the Federal Bureau of Prisons indicates in its program statement on telephone
regulations for incarcerated people that:
The Bureau of Prisons extends telephone privileges to
inmates as part of its overall correctional management. Telephone
privileges are a supplemental means of maintaining community
and family ties that will contribute to an inmate’s personal
development…Contact with the public is a valuable tool in the
overall correctional process. Towards this objective, the Bureau
provides inmates with several means of achieving such
communication. Primary among these is written correspondence,
with telephone and visiting privileges serving as two supplemental
methods.69
Through its policy statement, the American Correctional Association acknowledges the
importance of telephone contact for correctional management purposes:

See Women’s Prison Association and Center for Community Alternatives Statements of
Interest.

The American Correctional Association is the national organization that accredits prisons.

Resolution of 14 June 1995.

Bureau of Prisons, Program Statement No. 5264.07, Telephone Regulations for Inmates (Jan.
31, 2002), available at http://www.bop.gov/progstat/5264_007.pdf (last accessed March 9,
2004).

[C]onsistent with the requirements of sound correctional
management, inmates/juvenile offenders should have access to a
range of reasonably priced telecommunications services.
Correctional agencies should ensure that:
A. Contracts involving telecommunications services for
inmates/juvenile offenders comply with all applicable state and
federal regulations;
B. Contracts are based on rates and surcharges that are
commensurate with those charged to the general public for like
services. Any deviation from ordinary consumer rates should
reflect actual costs associated with the provision of services in
a correctional setting; and
C. Contracts for inmate/juvenile offender telecommunications
services provide the broadest range of calling options
determined to be consistent with the requirements of sound
correctional management.70
Furthermore, the American Correctional Association, which according to Corrections
Corporation of America has accredited 75% of its facilities,71 expressly adopted in 2002 a policy
against excessive phone rates:
Written policy, procedure and practice [must] ensure that offenders
have access to reasonably priced telephone services. Correctional
agencies [must] ensure that:
a. Contracts involving telephone services for offenders comply
with all applicable state and federal regulations;
b. Contracts are based on rates and surcharges that are
commensurate with those charged to the general public for like
services. Any deviation from ordinary consumer rates reflects
actual costs associated with the provision of services in a
correctional setting; and

Public Correctional Policy unanimously ratified by ACA Delegate Assembly on Jan. 24, 2001.

Corrections Corporation of America, Why Do Business With CCA, available at
http://www.correctionscorp.com/4main.html#performance (last accessed March 9, 2004).

c. Contracts for offender telephone services provide the broadest
range of calling options determined by the agency administrator
to be consistent with the requirements of sound correctional
management.72
E.

Family Contact Promotes Reunification

Based on her extensive research, Dr. Hairston concludes that, “communication between
prisoners and their families provides the most concrete and visible strategy that families and
prisoners use to manage separation and maintain connections. Families visit their imprisoned
relatives at the institutions where they are held, talk with them by phone, and exchange cards and
letters as a means of staying connected.”73 Contact between people in prison and their families is
particularly important for children with incarcerated parents. Most state (55%) and federal
(63%) inmates – some 721,500 people – are parents of children under 18.74 In 1999, 1.5 million
children under 18 had a parent in state or federal prison.75 Nationwide 2.1% of minor children
had a parent in state or federal prison.76 The Department of Health and Human Services

This standard is contained in the following American Correctional Association manuals:
Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions, third edition; Standards for Adult Local Detention
Facilities, third edition; Standards for Adult Community Residential Facilities, fourth edition;
Standards for Adult Correctional Boot Camp Programs, first edition; Standards for Juvenile
Community Residential Facilities, third edition; Standards for Juvenile Detention Facilities,
third edition; Standards for Juvenile Correctional Boot Camp Programs, first edition; Standards
for Juvenile Training Schools, third edition; Standards for Small Juvenile Detention Facilities,
first edition; and Small Jail Facilities, first edition.
73

Hairston Declaration at ¶ 17.

Incarcerated Parents and Their Children, supra n.40, at 2.

Id.

Id. For African-American and Hispanic children those numbers are even higher – the
percentage of black children in the U.S. resident population with an incarcerated parent (7.0
percent) was nearly nine times higher than that of white children (0.8). Hispanic children were
three times as likely as white children to have a parent in prison (2.6).

Administration for Children and Families, in a recently issued request for proposals, stresses the
importance of communication between incarcerated parents and their children: “In situations
where incarcerated parents were actively engaged in the mentoring process, through visits, phone
conversations or letters, reunification is a natural process.”77
On average, parents in state prison are expected to serve 80 months (almost 7 years),
while those in federal prison are expected to serve 103 months (almost 9 years).78 In most cases,
enabling families to “maintain contact during incarceration reassures children of their parents’
love, motivates parents in their recovery and rehabilitation efforts, and increases the likelihood
that families can be successfully reunited when prisoners return home,” according to Shay
Bilchik, Executive Director of the Child Welfare League of America.79 Dr. Hairston explains:
These contacts allow family members to share family experiences,
participate in family rituals, and remain emotionally attached.
They help assure incarcerated parents that their children have not
forgotten them and help assure children that their parents love and
care about them. They allow people in prison to see themselves,
and to function, in socially acceptable roles rather than as prison
numbers and institutionalized dependents.80
77

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families,
Family & Youth Services Bureau, RFP: Mentoring Children of Prisoners, 69 Fed. Reg. 8201,
8201-8209 (Feb. 23, 2004).

Incarcerated Parents and Their Children, supra n.40, at 6.

Shay Bilchik, Children of Convicts Struggle with a Prison of Their Own, Seattle PostIntelligencer (May 12, 2002), at F9.

Hairston Declaration at ¶¶ 17-20. Thousands of children across the country are themselves
incarcerated in prisons operated by Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison
administrators. See http://www.correctionscorp.com/tourjuvenile.html for a description of
Corrections Corporation of America’s work with juveniles. According to this page, Corrections
Corporation of America operates the following juvenile facilities:
Corrections Corporation of America Juvenile Facilities:
-- Shelby Training Center - Memphis, Tennessee. A 200-bed, secure juvenile center
-- Tall Trees - Memphis, Tennessee. A 63-bed, non-secure juvenile residential facility
Corrections Corporation of America Jails housing Juvenile Offenders:
27

Finally, it is worth noting that last year, Corrections Corporation of America, which
recently “forged a partnership” with Good News Jail and Prisoner Ministry, acknowledges that
“[r]elationships [between people in prison and chaplains] are intended to provide a way for
[people in prison] to establish connections with the community that will benefit them upon
release.”81 Appreciating both the importance of family-inmate contact, and its high cost, last
December, the private prison corporation’s partner made a public appeal for phone cards which
Good News Jail and Prisoner Ministry then distributed to inmates in the Guilford Correctional
Center in North Carolina.82 Unfortunately, Corrections Corporation of America’s policies with
respect to telephone services does not reflect a similar understanding of the importance of
communications between incarcerated people and their families. Indeed, the high rates charged
to people incarcerated at its facilities result in part from the commissions imposed by CCA on
inmate telephone service providers.
This is a similar appeal to the Commission to modify existing policies that obstruct
contact between people in prison and their families, which in turn harm penological interests,
family interests, and public safety. We urge this Commission to eliminate the anticompetitive

-- Bay County Jail and Annex - Panama City, Florida
-- Hernando County Jail - Brooksville, Florida
-- David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center - Tulsa, Oklahoma
-- Houston Processing Center - Houston, Texas
Thus, reasonably priced, quality phone service is key to ensuring contact between free parents
and their incarcerated children as well.
81

See Corrections Corporation of America, Press Release June 5, 2003, available at
http://www.correctionscorp.com/index/aspx.

See Non-Profit Wish Lists: Give Them a Hand, North Carolina News & Record (Dec. 7, 2003)
at D1 (saying that the organization needs “[t]elephone cards with up to 500 minutes to allow
inmates to call family member in United States for holidays”).

practices and collect call-only policies that enable high costs and poor service to flourish, and
that devastate families.

IV.

Allowing Exclusive Dealing Arrangements and Collect Call-Only
Policies Severely Limits the Ability of Incarcerated People to
Communicate With Their Lawyers
Exorbitant long distance collect call telephone rates, collect call-only policies, and the

exclusivity of prison telephone contracts, which allow companies to provide substandard service,
all severely restrict the ability of people in prison to communicate with their attorneys. This
burden on communication interferes with the ability of criminal defendants to exercise their
constitutional right to legal representation, of immigration detainees and incarcerated people with
civil cases to exercise their right of access to the courts, and of incarcerated people to prepare for
a successful re-entry into society.
The ability of incarcerated litigants to communicate with their attorneys is of paramount
importance. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the
effective assistance of counsel. The United States Supreme Court has held that this provision
requires the government to provide counsel to those who cannot afford to hire an attorney.83
All other litigants have a constitutional right of access to the courts under the Fourteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For many of these litigants, the assistance of an attorney is
essential for them to be able to gain access to the courts. In immigration proceedings, for
example, an immigrant represented by an attorney is approximately four times more likely to
persuade an immigration judge to grant an asylum application than is someone who has no
attorney.84 If a litigant has limited English skills – as many detained immigrants do – or if a
litigant is illiterate – as many prisoners are – the need for an attorney is all the greater.

Alabama v. Shelton, 535 U.S. 654 (2002); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).

Christopher Nugent, The INS Detention Standards and You: Facilitating Legal
Representation and Humane Conditions of Confinement for Immigration Detainees, available at
www.abanet.org/immigration/probono/home.html.
30

For people in prison with pending criminal charges or appeals, or with immigration or
civil cases, many of whom are incarcerated in privately administered prisons, it is vitally
important to be able to speak with and assist the lawyer handling their cases. A person may need
to contact his or her lawyer to share information about the case, to learn crucial information
about the status of the case, or to make critical strategy decisions.85 Often, the telephone is the
only or most efficient means to communicate with lawyers because prisons and jails are located
far from lawyers’ offices, or because resource constraints, busy caseloads, or inconvenient
visiting schedules force lawyers to visit only infrequently.
Courts have long recognized that the ability to communicate privately with an attorney by
telephone is essential to the exercise of the constitutional rights to counsel and to access to the
courts.86 They have accordingly held that, when prisons’ collect call-only policies interfere with
the ability of incarcerated people to communicate with their lawyers, they may violate these

Johnson v. Galli, 596 F. Supp. 135, 138 (D. Nev. 1984) (use of a telephone is essential to
contact a lawyer, bail bondsman or other person in order to prepare a case).

Murphy v. Waller, 51 F.3d 714, 718 & n.7 (7th Cir. 1995) (“Restrictions on a detainee’s
telephone privileges that prevented him from contacting his attorney violate the Sixth
Amendment right to counsel. . . . In certain limited circumstances, unreasonable restrictions on a
detainee’s access to a telephone may also violate the Fourteenth Amendment.”); Tucker v.
Randall, 948 F.2d 388, 390-91 (7th Cir. 1991) (denying a pre-trial detainee telephone access to
his lawyer for four days would implicate the Sixth Amendment); Johnson-El v. Schoemehl, 878
F.2d 1043, 1051 (8th Cir.1989) (holding that inmates’ challenge to restrictions on the number
and time of telephone calls stated a claim for violation of their rights to counsel); Miller v.
Carlson, 401 F. Supp. 835 (M.D. Fla. 1975), aff’d & modified on other grounds, 563 F.2d 741
(5th Cir. 1977) (granting a permanent injunction precluding the monitoring and denial of
inmates’ telephone calls to their attorneys). See also Dana Beyerle, Making Telephone Calls
From Jail Can Be Costly, Times Montgomery Bureau (Sept. 22, 2002) (Etowah, Alabama
county jail under court order to provide phones to people incarcerated in the jail based in part on
complaints they could not talk to lawyers).

rights.87 The prison telephone arrangements challenged in the Wright Petition pose precisely the
types of impediments that the courts have found to be unconstitutional. They interfere with the
ability of people in prison to communicate with their lawyers, in violation of the Sixth
Amendment, in several ways: by keeping the cost of the calls high, by restricting people in
prison to making collect calls, and by allowing exclusive telecommunications service providers
to provide substandard service.
In section I.D.1, these Comments listed some of the extremely high costs that Coalition
members have had to pay in order to accept collect calls from their clients in prison – adding
several hundred dollars, and sometimes over a thousand dollars to their monthly phone bills.
Publicly funded lawyers, who represent the vast majority of criminal defendants incarcerated in
jails and prisons, often cannot afford to accept high-priced collect calls from their clients. State
and county governments bear the cost of providing legal representation to the poor in criminal
cases, typically by creating public defender programs, or by using private attorneys who are
appointed on a case-by-case basis or who contract to accept a county’s full or partial caseload in
return for a lump sum.88 Indigent defense systems across the country suffer from severe under-

See, e.g., Lynch v. Leis, Docket No. C-1-00-274 (S.D. Ohio Feb. 19, 2002) (holding that where
public defender’s office and many private attorneys refused most collect calls, a prison’s collect
call-only policy was unconstitutional) (unpublished decision on file with the Brennan Center); In
re Ron Grimes, 208 Cal. App. 3d 1175, 1178 (1989) (holding that switch by Humboldt County
(California) Jail from coin operated to collect-only calls violated the constitutional rights of
people incarcerated there because the public defender’s office, other county departments, and
some private attorneys did not accept collect calls).

The Spangenberg Group, State and County Expenditures for Indigent Defense Services in
Fiscal Year 2002 (American Bar Assoc. 2003) (describing each state’s indigent system and
expenditures).

funding, which commentators credit with causing a “crisis” in indigent defense.89 For example,
in Texas – where there are 16 private Corrections Corporation of America facilities (including
several county jails and state prisons), and many other privately run jails and prisons – a report
on indigent defense practices concluded that none of the counties studied “provide[s] sufficient
funds to assure quality representation to all indigent defendants.”90 The compensation rates for
court-appointed lawyers are so low that often they are not paid for work performed outside of
court, such as visiting clients in jail.91
Faced with these resource constraints, many attorneys representing indigent criminal
defendants – including signatories such as Lesli Myers, who represents people incarcerated in a
Corrections Corporation of America facility in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma – simply are unable to
afford collect calls from their clients, or are forced to severely limit the number of such calls they

Richard Klein and Robert Spangenberg, The Indigent Defense Crisis (The American Bar
Assoc., Section of Criminal Justice, Ad Hoc Committee on Indigent Defense Crisis 1993);
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Assembly Line Justice: Mississippi’s Indigent
Defense Crisis 6 (2003) (“Lawyers for the poor lack funds to conduct the most basis
investigation, to conduct legal research, or to hire experts); Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System, Indigent Defense in Pennsylvania
184 (May 2002) (concluding that indigent defense receives inadequate resources to provide
adequate representation); Bill Rankin, Indigent Defense Rates F, The Atlanta J. Constitution
(Dec. 12, 2002) (describing shortcomings and underfunding in Georgia’s indigent defense
system, which handles 80% of the state’s criminal cases); Texas Appleseed Fair Defense Project,
The Fair Defense Report: Findings and Recommendations on Indigent Defense Practices in
Texas 10-12 (Dec. 2000) (describing lack of resources in Texas’ indigent defense system);
Douglas W. Vick, Poorhouse Justice: Underfunded Indigent Defense Services and Arbitrary
Death Sentences, 43 Buff. L. Rev. 329 (1995) (discussing the problem of underfunding in
indigent defense systems); The Spangenberg Group, A Comprehensive Review of Indigent
Defense in Virginia 82 (American Bar Assoc. Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent
Defendants Jan. 2004).

Texas Appleseed Fair Defense Project, The Fair Defense Report: Findings and
Recommendations on Indigent Defense Practices in Texas 12 (Dec. 2000).

Id.

accept.92 For example, four district public defenders in Tennessee – a state in which the
Corrections Corporation of America houses almost a quarter of the prison population – do not
accept collect calls from prison.93 Likewise, in Hamilton County, Ohio – a state in which
approximately 1,800 people are housed in private prisons – the public defender’s office and
many private attorneys refuse most collect calls from jails and prisons.94 Many other lawyers
severely limit the number of collect calls they accept from people in prison. Coalition member
North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services Inc., which represents people in prison in both civil
litigation and criminal appeals, does not accept collect calls from people in prison except in
emergency situations or cases where it represents the client in litigation, when court filing
deadlines require it.95 Coalition member the Committee for Public Counsel Services, which
provides public defender services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, accepts collect calls
only at certain times of day, and only if the caller’s particular attorney is in the office and
92

Myers Statement of Interest. See also The Issue: Phone Fees, Overcrowding Merit
Discussion. Our View: These Two Issues Won’t Go Away When New Jail Opens for Business,
Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press (Dec. 23, 2003) (Vanderburgh County, Illinois public defender
does not accept collect calls from people in jail); U.S. ex rel. Green v. Washington, 917 F. Supp.
1238, 1244 (N.D. Ill. 1996) (finding that as a result of 1993 budget cuts the Illinois Office of
State Appellate Defender for the First District had to “reduce its budget for travel to prisons and
to limit the office’s ability to accept collect phone calls from clients”); Greer v. St. Tammany
Parish Jail, 693 F. Supp. 502 (E.D. La. 1988) (inmate stated he was only allowed to make
collect calls, and the St. Tammany Parish public defender’s office did not accept collect calls);
Malady v. Baker, 650 F. Supp. 901, 903 (E.D. Mo. 1987) (public defenders in Missouri decide
whether to accept inmate collect calls based on “urgency of communications, possibility of
correspondence and budgetary concerns”). See also cases discussed in note 87, supra.
93

E-mail from Andy Hardin, Executive Director of the Tennessee District Public Defenders
Conference, Feb. 26, 2004, on file with the Brennan Center; Getahn Ward, Private Prison
Operator Ready to Grow Anew, The Tennessean (Oct. 6, 2003).

See Lynch v. Leis, supra n.87; Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, The
Institutions, available at http://www.drc.state.oh.us/web/prisprog.htm.

See North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc. Statement of Interest.

available to take the call.96 The Prisoner’s Rights Information System of Maryland, a private
legal services group under contract with Maryland to provide legal services to people in prison,
has a similar policy and will accept phone calls from actual clients only.
In addition to interfering with attorney-client communication, the high cost of long
distance collect calls from prison reduces the total assets available to finance criminal defense
and other types of legal representation for people in prison. Some publicly funded criminal
defense lawyers, such as signatories Kern County, California public defender Mark A. Arnold;
the Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office in Davidson County, Tennessee; and the New Yorkbased Office of the Appellate Defender and Center for Appellate Litigation, are not reimbursed
for the collect calls they accept and must absorb the costs of collect calls from their clients.97
Many immigration attorneys and legal services lawyers, which receive their limited funding from
government sources, foundations, and individual donations, do the same. Other publicly funded
criminal defense lawyers, such as signatory Clay Hernandez, P.C., which represents people in

See Committee for Public Counsel Services Statement of Interest.

See Arnold Statement of Interest; Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office Statement of Interest;
Office of the Appellate Defender Statement of Interest; Center for Appellate Litigation Statement
of Interest.
Even when lawyers are reimbursed for some collect calls, there are often stringent limits
on the number of collect calls from prison for which they will be reimbursed. These limits are
presumably a result of the high cost of the calls. For example, lawyers who are appointed to
represent indigent criminal defendants in federal criminal cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Sixth Circuit are instructed:
Long distance telephone calls may be reimbursed where it is determined that
the calls were reasonable and necessary for proper handling of the case,
except that the cost of telephone calls to the client will be reimbursed
only where they have been authorized by the court in advance. In any event,
funds are not available to cover either counsel’s time or expenses for more
than three telephone conferences with the client.
United States Court of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit Criminal Justice Act (CJA) Form 2o
Submission Instructions, Section C.5 (Revised and Updated: 7/11/2002).

private and public prisons in Arizona, pass the costs of their clients’ collect calls on to the
governmental entity funding them.98 Either way, the net result is that a portion of the scarce
public dollars allocated for the defense of indigents in criminal cases and for the representation
of low-income people in other types of cases are diverted to private prison administrators and the
telephone companies that have exclusive inmate service contracts at those facilities, instead of
being spent on investigators, training for attorneys and investigators, law books, and other items
essential to providing the legal representation that is so sorely needed, and that is often
constitutionally required.
Even if the cost of collect calls from prison were lower, collect call-only policies would
still hamper the ability of incarcerated people to communicate with their lawyers. Many criminal
defense lawyers – including several of the attorneys participating in the Coalition signing these
Comments – use automated telephone systems in order to avoid the expense of employing a
receptionist.99 These telephone systems generally cannot accept collect calls, with the result that
even if the lawyers could afford to accept the calls, they would not be able to do so. A similar
problem arises for attorneys who use answering machines or voice mail, because when their
incarcerated clients are limited to calling collect, the clients cannot leave messages.100
Moreover, the service problems described in section I pose serious impediments to the
ability of incarcerated people to communicate with their lawyers. For example, Bruce Teichman,
98

Likewise, Madison, Wisconsin attorney Anthony Delyea, who takes cases on contract for the
state public defender’s office, bills calls from indigent clients to the state, which ends up paying
the inflated rates. Steven Elbow, Jailhouse Phone Shakedown; Corporations, Lockups and
Prison Here Profit by Forcing Inmates to Make Collect Calls at Crushing Rates, The Madison
Capitol Times (Wis.) (Oct. 5, 2002).

See Dennis Roberts Statement of Interest.

100

See Crane Statement of Interest.

a member of the Coalition submitting these Comments, reports that his clients’ calls were
blocked from a private prison serviced by Evercom. When he contacted Evercom, he was told
that his service had been interrupted for failure to pay his phone bill, despite the fact that Mr.
Teichman’s phone payments were current. The representative advised Mr. Teichman that, in
addition to sending his payments, he had to call Evercom each month to notify them that he had
made a payment. Before reconnecting service, Evercom requested proof of past payments, a tax
identification number and other documents. If private prisons were prohibited from entering into
exclusive contracts with phone service providers, market forces and competition would create
disincentives to imposing this level of inconvenience and poor service on their customers.
In addition to interfering with the constitutionally protected right to counsel, the
telephone policies challenged in the Wright Petition also hurt the ability of incarcerated people to
prepare for their eventual re-entry into society. People in prison often need to contact lawyers in
connection with civil litigation necessary to ensure that, when they are released, they will have
families, homes and employment. For example, people in prison often need to contact their
lawyers to arrange for visitation with their children or to fight threatened terminations of their
parental rights, to fight threatened foreclosures on their homes, and to preserve their good credit
histories.101 When people in prison are unable to contact their lawyers, their ability to participate
in this litigation is impaired, with the result that they may lose their parental rights, their homes,

101

For examples of ways in which lawyers often play an essential role in permitting imprisoned
parents to retain their relationships with their children, see Legal Services for Prisoners With
Children, Case Studies: Incarcerated Women With Young Children, available at
http://prisonerswithchildren.org/issues/pwcpmp.htm; Legal Services for Prisoners With Children,
Case Studies: Pregnant Women, available at
http://prisonerswithchildren.org/issues/pwcpreg.htm (both on file with the Brennan Center for
Justice).

Appendix A

APPENDIX A: STATEMENTS OF INTEREST
I.

People with family members or friends in prison

Janie Canino, who lives in Texas, regularly accepts long distance collect phone calls from her
son, who is in prison in Louisiana. The cost of accepting these calls from my son adds
approximately $75 to $100 to her phone bill each month. This is a severe burden, because she is
a single parent, supporting two elderly parents and a son in prison on her small salary. However,
she cannot refuse her son’s calls because when he calls it gives her peace to know he is okay. A
mom can tell in her child’s voice when things aren’t quite right. It gives her son peace knowing
he can pick up the phone when he is lonely, depressed, or whatever to be able to talk with his
family.
Duane Carter has a son incarcerated in the Florence, Arizona State Prison Complex – Eyman,
Cook Unit. He believes that the inmates of prisons are being robbed by the necessity of paying
such high prices for phone calls. Just a simple 15 minute collect phone call from Florence,
Arizona to Mesa, Arizona costs almost $6.00. If a long distance company like 10 10 987 were
used, it would cost 39 cents to connect plus 3 cents a minute, that would be 84 cents. People can
call all over USA, Canada, South America, and most of Western Europe at this rate. Surely there
is some way to get a rate, perhaps not as low as this, but a lot more reasonable than what is being
used. Another problem the inmates have with telephone service is that it is practically
impossible for the inmate to make a call to speak to his attorney or visa versa.
Kathy1 cares about this issue because she loves her son, who was incarcerated in a private
prison. She wants to be able to hear his voice, and be there to support him. She wants him to
know his family is here for him, but does not want to have to pay hundreds of dollars per month
because the costs of calls are so outrageous. She is a single parent who works a full time job and
with the cost of my bills she can not keep my head above water. Having a loved one in the
system is difficult as it is and yet the monopoly on the cost of calls only makes a further hardship
for everyone.
Phil Klitgaard, who lives in Iowa, has been paying $18.89 for a 15 minute phone call from a
friend in prison in Texas. To keep in touch, he has been paying $500 - $700 a month for long
distance collect calls. He believes this is basically nothing more than greed on the part of the
phone companies since there are no other options open to the inmates or their families and the
phone companies control the rates. These phone calls are beneficial to the inmates and their
family and friends but cause financial hardship and emotional stress due to the rates.
Maria M. Rangel has a brother located at the Arizona State Prison Complex, Cheyenne Unit in
Yuma, Arizona. She participates in these Comments because when he would call her home
phone in Peoria, AZ it was an average of $5.00 per call when you can make a long distance call
on a payphone at $1.00 for 5 minutes.

This is a pseudonym – she wishes to remain anonymous.

Joan Roberts2 and her husband – who are respectively 62 and 72 – live in California, and their
son is incarcerated approximately 600 miles away in Arizona. His institution limits his
telephone calling to collect calls. The Roberts rely heavily on telephone calls to communicate
with him, because they live too far away from his institution to visit frequently, and mail delivery
in his institution is so unreliable that, at times, he has gone four months without receiving any of
the letters she has sent him. The Roberts’ phone bill for calls from their son averages more than
$300 monthly.
When Robin Stewart’s brother was taken into custody after he showed up 20 minutes late for
court, he was unable to call her for three days because her phone company – Comcast – does not
allow collect calls unless the customer opts to be able to receive them, and because she had not
signed up with a billing service. Ms. Stewart had not done either of these things because she did
not know that she had to. For her brother to call his attorney collect from prison costs him $5.69
for the initial minute, and $1.69 for each additional minute. Five calls totaling thirty minutes
cost $104.10, without adding in any taxes or surcharges.
Gail Sullivan, who lives in New York, finds that phones are a necessity for communicating with
her husband, who is in prison in New York, as they have children together and have needed to
have some kind of contact for their sons to speak to their father when situations occur. The cost
of the calls takes away money from the food she puts on the table, or compromises her ability to
pay her bills. She participates in these Comments because even though her husband committed a
crime, she and her children did not. Nonetheless, they are all paying the price. Although the
prison system preaches about the value of family contact it isn’t making it easy for families to
maintain that contact.
Carole Tkacz, of Gary, Indiana, has accepted long distance collect calls from her son when he
was in prison. She is a single, self-supporting woman, and the phone bills imposed a tremendous
burden on her finances.
John and Linda Wojas are retired parents on a fixed income paying prohibitive costs for collect
calls from our inmate daughter, Pamela A. Smart. They have paid thousands of dollars over the
past fourteen years (last year $5,000.00) being forced to use the prison telephone carrier; unable
to use their our own carrier at a lower rate. In addition, because their daughter is indigent, the
Wojas’ have absorbed the same telephone costs of attorneys over the years in order that she may
have attorney representation in court. It is a nine hour drive to see her, necessitating an
overnight stay many times incurring additional costs. During her time in prison, their daughter
has been physically assaulted, resulting in hospitalization and plastic surgery. Recently, she was
the victim of a sexual assault by a correctional officer. The telephone is the only means of
providing immediate support and encouragement during these horrific times. The Wojas’ ask the
FCC to take into account the punishment levied on parents when they are forced to accept collect
calls from a carrier not of their choice in order to maintain a lifeline and keep their daughter’s
hope alive.

This is a pseudonym – she wishes to remain anonymous.

II.

Organizations and individuals providing direct services to people in
prison & their families

The mission of the Arizona Coalition for Effective Government (AzCEG) is to have a positive
influence in the lives of men and women currently incarcerated in Arizona’s prison system by
passing legislation that will change the manner in which the Arizona state government operates
and to give the inmates the information they need to help them resolve their immediate issues.
Most AzCEG volunteers have a loved one in prison, and consequently have to pay the high cost
of accepting phone calls from people in prison.
The Center for Community Alternatives provides sentencing and parole advocacy services,
and HIV related services to defendants detained in local jails and people incarcerated in New
York State correctional facilities. As such it is vital for the organization to be able to
communicate with its clients without undue costs. The Center is a not-for-profit organization
with limited resources and thus must limit the calls that it accepts from its incarcerated clients
because of the exorbitant rates. Also, as an agency that works in the field of reentry, it
appreciates the critical importance of maintaining family ties. The costs of long distance calls
are prohibitive for most prisoner families, who typically are low income. The Center support the
Coalition’s efforts on behalf of the right of people in prison to communicate.
Families in Crisis, Inc. is a private, not-for-profit organization in Connecticut that provides
counseling and support services for families of people in prison. It conducted a survey several
years ago revealing that many of the families it works with receive collect calls from people in
prison and experience hardship as a result of the high phone bills they must pay to receive those
calls. Connecticut sends some of its inmates to Virginia, which makes it difficult and expensive
for family members to visit loved ones in prison, and makes phone communication particularly
important.
Family and Corrections Network (FCN) is a national provider of resources for families of
people in prison and those working with them. The unfair cost of long distance collect calls from
people in prison and their families is a major concern for its 150 member organizations and
individuals and the thousands of users of our web site. For years, families of members who are in
prison have complained to FCN about telephone bills of $200 or more a month – all going to pay
for collect long distance calls. In January, 2003 it published an article by Liz Gaynes, a prisonfamily member who estimated she had paid $40,000 for collect calls since 1984.
The Female Offenders Re-entry Program of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania (“F.O.R.E.”)
works with women coming out of prison. The organization’s board of directors includes
professionals who see in their jobs the impact that high priced phone calls have on families of
people in prison. The board of directors also includes ex-offenders who can attest to the strain
the high cost of their collect calls put on their families. The high prices made calling home to
their children very hard. The families caring for their children generally did not have a lot of
money, so the number of calls they could accept was limited. This was particularly hard on the
children, who were already dealing with the issue of separation. If they had a hard day in school
or something really great happened for them they needed to share this with their mothers. The
high cost of collect calls from prison made that impossible.

The Rev. Kobutsu Malone is a Zen Buddhist priest who serves as a prison and death row
chaplain. He has been working with people in prison for around 13 years. His ministry runs on
begging – his only income consists of what he can get people to donate. As a result, he has had
to refuse calls from some incarcerated people in need of pastoral counseling due to his inability
to pay for the calls.
Dr. Eleanor Pam is a Professor Emerita at the Inmate Education Program at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. She has an ongoing relationship with
people in prison who call her frequently at great personal expense to her, especially since she is
involved in mentoring them for post-graduate degrees. Phone conversations about their progress
and classroom work tend to be lengthy and are often the most immediate link to helping with
their questions. Since studies show a connection between recidivism/rehabilitation and
education while in prison, it would be helpful if the system supported, rather than impeded, this
activity. Telephone costs should not be this prohibitive for those who volunteer their time and
energy.
The Women’s Prison Association provides social services to 2000 women a year who are
involved in the criminal justice system. It pays for collect calls from incarcerated people out of
its budget. It participates in this Coalition because frequent and affordable phone calls are key to
maintaining family connections, providing for the well-being of children, and aiding people in
prisons in making a successful adjustment to the community. Supportive families should be
helped, not bankrupted.
III.

Attorneys

Mark A. Arnold is the Public Defender for Kern County, California. His office accepts collect
calls from incarcerated clients. In November, 2003, which was a typical month, collect calls
from clients cost his office $460.51. This money came out of his office’s budget, which is
extremely limited. If their phone bills were lower, the office could use that money for attorney
or investigator training, law books, expert witnesses or other items crucial to his clients’ defense.
Additionally, his clients’ families are routinely charged exorbitant fees for accepting collect calls
from their loved ones in prison.
Shane Laughton Brabazon, Esq. is a criminal defense attorney practicing in Green Bay,
Wisconsin. As a result of the high cost of collect telephone calls from people in prison, she has
been unable to accept the many collect calls her office has received from people seeking
representation. Additionally, the high cost of long distance collect calls from prison has forced
many of her clients’ families to refuse collect calls from their loved ones in prison, even though
they would like to be able to accept those calls.
William Bunting is a criminal defense lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina who must accept
collect calls from his clients in order to communicate with them about their cases. Additionally,
his clients’ families often suffer severe hardship as a result of the high phone bills they must pay
in order to keep in touch with their family members in prison.

The Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (“CAIR Coalition”) provides services to the
immigrant advocacy community and to people in immigration detention in the greater
Washington, DC metropolitan area. CAIR Coalition brings together community groups, pro
bono attorneys, volunteers and immigrants to work for a fair and humane immigration policy.
CAIR Coalition provides education and training, public policy development, forums for sharing
information, legal support services and other empowerment programs to individuals and
organizations that represent immigrants. Among its many activities, CAIR Coalition assists
individuals detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement with their credible
fear interviews, conducts legal rights presentations for them regarding immigration remedies,
and represents or seeks pro bono representation for them.
CAIR Coalition participates in these Comments because legal representation is pivotal to
vulnerable immigrant families, many of which do not have funds to obtain legal representation.
Each month, CAIR Coalition visits 4 to 5 county jails in central and southern Virginia where
immigrants are detained. A significant percentage of the individuals the Coalition meets are
asylum seekers who have committed no crimes, but are co-mingled with U.S. citizen inmates.
These jails where they are incarcerated are located anywhere from 45 minutes to four hours away
from its office. Collect calls from those facilities cost between three dollars and five dollars per
minute, depending on the facilities’ distance from the caller. The CAIR Coalition is unable to
accept these calls due to their exorbitant costs. Likewise, many pro bono attorneys opt not to
represent detained individuals – arguably the most vulnerable population amongst immigrants –
due to the high costs of representing them (including the high cost of collect calls). The high
cost of the collect calls consequently severely hampers the ability of people in immigration
detention to obtain legal assistance.
Dawn E. Caradonna, Esq. represents incarcerated people in criminal, family law and juvenile
cases in Peterborough, New Hampshire. She accepts long distance collect calls from her clients,
including from a client in a Corrections Corporation of America facility in Leavenworth, Kansas.
She pays for these calls herself because it is difficult to track the cost by client and difficult to get
reimbursement from the state or federal government. In order to keep her costs down, her staff
accepts collect calls only when she is in the office and available to speak to her clients. As a
result, clients must sometimes make repeated calls or write to her in order to get information to
her, and are not able to get important information to her quickly. Many of the other criminal
defense attorneys in her area do not accept collect calls at all.
Ms. Caradonna also participates in these Comments because of the impact that the high cost of
long distance collect calls has on her clients’ families. Many of these families have already had
their finances devastated by the incarceration of a breadwinner; the high cost of long distance
collect calls exacerbates their already severe financial problems. Moreover, many of her clients’
children are unable to talk to their incarcerated parents on the telephone because their custodial
parents are unable to afford the cost of the telephone calls.
The Center for Appellate Litigation is a New York not-for-profit law firm which handles
appeals and post-conviction proceedings on behalf of criminal defendants, in cases assigned to it
by the New York Appellate Division. The office accepts collect calls from clients who need to
provide necessary information about their cases, and to participate in the course of their defense.

Accepting these calls costs the office between $125 and $150/month. This money could be
better spent on the office’s law library or other items essential to representing clients.
The Committee for Public Counsel Services is the public defender agency for the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It spends thousands of dollars a month on local, collect calls
from its clients incarcerated in public correctional facilities, funds that could be spent in a
number of ways to improve and enhance the legal services provided to its clients. In an effort to
control costs, it has implemented a policy limiting the time of day its offices will accept collect
calls, and it only accepts calls if the client’s attorney is in the office and available to take the call.
Richard Crane is an attorney representing federal and state inmates housed in both public and
private facilities. (He was vice-president for legal affairs at Corrections Corporation of America
from 1994 through 1997.) When inmates are allowed to place collect calls only, it is very
frustrating and expensive for them and their families. When Mr. Crane’s phone lines are busy or
no one is in the office to accept a collect call, the inmate is not even able to leave a message. If
the inmate could leave a message with his question, then an answer could be available when he
called back – or better – a thoughtful and complete answer could be mailed to him, saving the
cost of an additional call.
Several of Mr. Crane’s inmate clients have had the unfortunate experience of being at prisons
served by a telecommunications providers named “Evercom” and “Value Added
Communications.” These companies (they may be one and the same) do not have a billing
relationship with Mr. Crane’s carrier (AT&T). So, they place a block preventing any client and
potential client calls to Mr. Crane’s number, without telling them or him that they are doing so.
The block is only removed when Mr. Crane has deposited $50 with the company. When the $50
is gone, the block is restored; when the inmate is gone, the company keeps what is left of the
$50.
Frank M. Dunbaugh is a civil rights attorney in private practice in Annapolis, Maryland. He
accepts long distance collect calls from a person serving a life sentence, who he has represented
on a pro bono basis for approximately 20 years in a series of post-conviction, re-sentencing and
appeals matters. Until this year, when a new contract was introduced with slightly lower rates,
the cost was $3.00 to connect and 45 cents per minute. When his case is active, they speak for
about 20 to 30 minutes each week. The client is incarcerated near Cumberland, Maryland, about
165 miles from Annapolis, where Mr. Dunbaugh lives and works, so Mr. Dunbaugh is rarely
able to visit him. Mr. Dunbaugh also accepts numerous local collect calls from people
incarcerated in the Baltimore City Jail/Baltimore City Detention Center, who he has represented
since 1981 in consolidated cases involving overcrowding and the conditions of confinement.
David Goldberger is a Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Programs at the Ohio State
University College of Law. His interest arises from the fact that for over thirty years he has been
representing prison inmate clients in litigation seeking to assure that governmental burdens on
their rights and activities are confined to legitimate governmental interests and do not improperly
burden inmates’ First Amendment rights

Clay Hernandez, P.C., represents defendants in both state and federal cases in Tucson, Arizona.
When these defendants are incarcerated either before or after trial, they need to make long
distance collect calls to his office or to their families. His office accepts these long distance
collect calls from these defendants from private prisons, including a Corrections Corporation of
America facility in Florence, Arizona, and also from state and federal facilities. Unfortunately,
these charges are 4 to 10 times more than the actual cost of phone calls of similar duration from
people who are not in prison. In some of his cases, the county or federal government reimburses
him for the cost of the calls. In other cases, his office ends up paying for the calls.
Melissa Hill is a sole practitioner doing criminal appellate and habeas corpus work in California
and New Mexico. Her clients in both states are distant from her office, so she must maintain
communication by telephone. Every one of her clients can only call her if she accepts their calls
collect. In most of her cases, she is court-appointed, or working under contracts with the state or
state agencies. She is usually paid a flat fee that provides no reimbursement for long distance
phone charges. Just accepting a few short collect calls a month from her clients adds an extra
$50 to $100 to her phone bills. Often, the exorbitant cost of accepting calls from her clients
collect, as frequently as they would like to call, strains her monthly budget.
Mary Jo Holloway is a criminal defense attorney practicing in several rural counties in Texas.
She has always accepted collect calls from her clients who are in prison. In many instances she
has represented the clients as a result of a court appointment and so has ended up bearing the cost
as an office expense. She has also had clients’ calls to her blocked because her long distance
phone service provider did not have a contract with the exclusive phone service provider for the
clients’ prison, and she was not willing to provide the exclusive provider with the business and
personal information it demanded in order to set up an account for her. She knows other defense
lawyers who do not accept collect calls from clients in prison because they simply cannot afford
the cost. Some of her clients’ families have had their phone service shut off because they have
been unable to pay the phone bills generated by collect calls from their relatives in prison.
Robert E. Juceam is a senior partner of the Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP law
firm based in New York. He represents persons in prison for criminal convictions and civil
detainees for alleged immigration law violations or pending asylum processing. Often, the civil
detainees are housed in privately contracted facilities or, in the absence of room in federal civil
detention centers, in state penal facilities. Wildly overpriced collect call charges to his home,
office and cell phones, and collect call-only policies that make it impossible for his clients to
leave a message on voice mail (along with malfunctioning prison telephones) are a persistent and
disturbing cause of limiting his clients’ access to legal counsel on urgent matters in their cases.
He is also knowledgeable about the harm, waste and burdens these aspects of prison and
detention center phone call policies cause in other cases, based on his experience as a former
member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono; an inspector of
criminal and civil detention facilities under the “Detention Standards Guidelines” agreed to by
the U.S. Department of Justice and the American Bar Association; and a director of Pro Bono
Institute, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based organization that, among other things, sponsors the
Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge to enhance pro bono participation by signatories from among the
250 largest U.S. law firms.

Averil Lerman is an Assistant Public Advocate with the Alaska Office of Public Advocacy in
Anchorage. Her office provides legal services for indigent Alaskans who are charged with or
have been convicted of crimes in Alaska. In addition to representing hundreds of Alaskans who
are incarcerated in various locations in Alaska, the office represents a number of the more than
800 Alaskans who are housed in a Corrections Corporation of America facility in Florence,
Arizona, more than 2,000 miles from their homes.
The telephone system has been a continuing serious problem for Ms. Lerman’s clients, both
those in Arizona and those in Alaska correctional centers. Many inmates in both locations come
from remote rural villages in which there is almost no cash economy. The exorbitant up-front
cash demands made by the telephone company before a person in prison may contact his family
often end any opportunity for maintaining contact with family during the period of incarceration.
This is true even if the inmate is housed in Anchorage, if the family is living a subsistence
traditional life in Bush Alaska. Because of the distance between the imprisoned person and his
family, and the complete lack of roads between them, and the lack of a cash economy, the only
possible way to maintain contact is by telephone. The unconscionable prices and conditions of
phone service should be prohibited.
Since 1973, the Lewisburg Prison Project has provided non-profit legal aid to people
incarcerated in Pennsylvania. It counsels, assists, and visits people in prison who write to the
Project when they encounter problems they perceive as illegal or unfair. The Project listens to
grievances and assists the people in prison by talking to prison authorities, furnishing people in
prison with appropriate legal materials, evaluating the case, and/or proceeding with litigation. It
represents people in prison who need to make long distance collect calls to family members or
attorneys and often receives complaints from people who need to accept long distance collect
calls from people in prison.
The Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office represents indigent adults and juveniles accused of
criminal or delinquent conduct in Davidson County, Tennessee. The increasingly high cost of
telephone calls from jails, prisons and other custodial facilities in Tennessee creates a burden on
pre-trial defendants, sentenced inmates, the families of defendants and inmates and on the
lawyers who represent the defendants and inmates. Many of the clients of the Metropolitan
Public Defender’s Office receive sentences to the Tennessee Department of Corrections and are
thus incarcerated some distance from Nashville. This requires that the clients be able to make
long distance collect calls to the office and to their families or friends. Two of the state prisons
are managed by the Correctional Corporation of America. The Correctional Corporation of
America also manages one facility in Davidson County, which is dedicated primarily to the
incarceration of Davidson County inmates serving sentences of six years or less. The
Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office accepts collect calls from clients in jails and prisons. The
cost for these collect calls is increasing and is currently averaging over $1,000 a month. This
expense is ultimately a public expense and reduces the uses to which the office can put its
budgeted funds.
Lesli Ann Myers is a criminal defense attorney in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Her clients are
held in custody pre-trial by the City/County Jail Facility, which is administered by the

Corrections Corporation of America. She cannot accept collect calls, so her clients are not easily
able to communicate with her. Most of them cannot call family members because their family
members have cell phones which cannot accept collect calls.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is the preeminent
organization in the United States advancing the mission of the nation’s criminal defense lawyers
to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional
bar association founded in 1958, NACDL’s 10,500 direct members — and 75-plus state and
local affiliate organizations with another 28,000 members — include private criminal defense
lawyers, public defenders, active-duty military defense counsel, law professors and judges
committed to preserving fairness within America’s criminal justice system. The unfair cost of
long distance collect calls is a major concern for NACDL’s members, as it places a tremendous
burden on attorney-client communication. In August of 2002, NACDL’s Board of Directors
formally passed the following “Resolution of the Board of Directors on Prison Telephone
Systems:” WHEREAS all prisoners are dependent on prison telephone systems for contact with
their families, friends, and attorneys; WHEREAS many federal, state and county prisons are
profiting from prisoner phone calls by giving contracts to local phone companies who pay the
prisons large commissions on all prisoner phone calls; WHEREAS the families, friends, and
attorneys of prisoners are forced to pay inflated rates because of these contracts; THEREFORE
BE IT RESOLVED that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers supports reform
of prison telephone systems so that prisoners, their families, friends, and attorneys are charged
reasonable rates for phone calls.
North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services (NCPLS) is a non-profit, public service law firm that
provides legal advice and assistance to people incarcerated in North Carolina. NCPLS addresses
matters involving inhumane conditions of confinement or illegal criminal convictions and
sentences. Providing North Carolina inmates with information about their legal rights and
responsibilities, NCPLS works to reduce frivolous litigation and to resolve legitimate problems
through administrative channels. When serious problems cannot be resolved administratively,
NCPLS offers legal representation in all State and Federal courts throughout North Carolina, and
beyond. NCPLS participates in these Comments because telecommunications services are
increasingly integral to human interaction in today’s society. Separated from family and friends
by the fact of their incarceration, inmates may be especially reliant on telephone privileges to
maintain contact with loved ones. This is particularly true for a significant percentage of the
incarcerated population that has limited literacy skills. For many years, NCPLS’ clients and their
families have been exploited through excessive rates for inmate-initiated telephone calls.
The Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City is a not-for-profit organization that has
been providing high quality appellate and post-conviction representation to indigent persons in
New York State since 1988. Each month, it spends in excess of $1,000 on collect calls, which it
accepts from all of its clients on a regular basis. This money comes from the limited funds the
office receives from the City of New York and from donations from law firms and individuals,
and it could be better spent on other costs of representation. Additionally, its clients’ families
often say that they are unable to communicate with their incarcerated loved ones because of the
exorbitant rates charged for collect calls.

In addition to the problem of costs, the Office experiences occasional blocks on its collect calls
from people in prison, without any notice by MCI (the exclusive telecommunications carrier for
New York prisons). These blocks usually occur because MCI has administratively failed to
credit a payment or has lost a check. The company never provides advance notice – or any
notice at all – and the Office only learns of the blocks by chance. It generally takes several days
of administrative wrangling with MCI to have the block removed.
Gary Peak is a criminal defense attorney in a small town in Texas. He represents a large
number of criminal defendants who are unable to make bond. They are stuck in a county jail or
prison unit. Accepting collect calls through Evercom from people in prison costs his office at
least $4.50 per connection. This makes it very difficult to communicate with his clients as often
as he needs to properly represent them. Any change the FCC can make to prevent this highway
robbery would be greatly appreciated.
The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project provides free civil legal assistance to 88,000
institutionalized persons in Pennsylvania. It participates in these Comments because these
exorbitant rates impact almost all of its clients and their families, and because the 1996
Telecommunications Act was supposed to improve service and rates but has backfired on these
natural monopolies and sanctioned price gouging.
Laura Kelsey Rhodes is a criminal defense attorney and immigration attorney in Washington,
D.C., and Maryland, with Albright & Rhodes, LLC. Many of her Maryland and Virginia
immigration clients are detained at rural facilities far from both her office and their homes. A
visit from family or an attorney is a day-long event – very costly in either instance. Thus,
telephone contact is essential. Clients in deportation proceedings are facing life-changing
hearings and need to consult frequently with both an attorney and family in order to make
informed decisions. Current telephone charges from most facilities are exorbitantly high and
have a significant effect on the ability of those detained to make calls. Her office gets charges
for accepting collect calls from one facility at a minimum of $14 regardless of the length of the
call. This means that they have to focus on costs often at the expense of focusing on legal
representation. Detained immigrants have no right to appointed counsel, so no government
funds are ever used to defray these costs. When clients call collect from some facilities, they get
a recording saying that her firm does not accept collect calls – this is incorrect. In fact, she may
not use the carrier that the prison contract requires her to use. Thus her clients can be completely
cut off from calling her.
Dennis Roberts is a criminal defense lawyer in Oakland, California. He is constantly frustrated
by dealing with incarcerated people who cannot afford the exorbitant rates to call him. His
office phones are electronic, so there is no way to place a collect call to them. He has been
forced to make his personal line available for this purpose.
The Teichman Law Office, located in Omaha, Nebraska, represents inmates in Corrections
Corporation of America facilities. It is concerned about the cost of collect calls from inmates in
those facilities, the inability of the inmates to make other than collect calls, and the practice of
some prison telephone service providers of placing blocks on attorneys’ lines, so that no collect
calls can be made to those offices, when the provider arbitrarily decides the office has received

too many calls (without providing prior notice of these blocks). Additionally, the families of
many of his clients have had their telephone service shut off because they are unable to pay the
high telephone bills generated by collect calls from their loved ones in prison.
The Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is an association made up of
attorneys practicing criminal defense law in Washington State. WACDL is a not-for-profit
corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. WACDL was formed to improve the quality and
administration of justice. Its members represent defendants in trials and appeals of criminal
cases. It is concerned about the cost of phone calls made by prisoners because the high cost of
calls from people in prison makes it difficult for them to maintain contact with their families, and
because of the cost to defense lawyers when their in-prison clients need to communicate them by
telephone.
The Washington Defender Association is a nonprofit professional association and resource
center for public defenders in Washington state. It represents 800 public defense attorneys, some
of whom provide post-conviction representation. The attorneys must pay for collect calls from
their clients – a cost which ultimately is a public expense.
David R. Weber is the president of Vasquez & Weber, P.C., a law firm in Anchorage, Alaska.
The firm represents people held in facilities operated by the State of Alaska or providing services
to the State of Alaska. In addition, the firm represents people incarcerated in Federal facilities
who may be held in Alaskan facilities or in facilities anywhere in the United States. The firm
needs to accept collect telephone calls from its clients and potential clients.
Mr. Weber participates in these Comments to document his experience with a
telecommunications provider named “Evercom.” They routinely block the firm’s telephone
number, thus preventing his clients from contacting the firm. This has an obvious detrimental
impact on his clients’ ability to obtain the assistance of counsel. The firm has no way of
knowing how many potential clients have tried to call the firm to retain its services but were
prevented from doing so by Evercom. Evercom has never presented the firm with a bill for
payment. The firm has always paid its bills, including those for telecommunications services.
Mr. Weber’s experience leads him to believe that Evercom (which charges extremely high rates
for its services) does not want to pay the local carrier for billing services and so does not have a
(traditional) billing arrangement with his local carrier. Unfortunately, it does not seem to have a
billing system of its own, either. The business plan seems to be: “Send us your money in
advance (we promise not to go bankrupt) and we will allow our captive clientele to call you.”
IV.

Advocacy organizations and others

Addictions Coalition of Delaware and the National Coalition for Full Opportunity for
Felons represent inmates and families who have to make or accept long-distance phone calls
from people in prison. These organizations participate in these Comments because the high
telephone rates charged by telephone companies under contract with Corrections Corporation of
America facilities exploit the situation of people in prison and their family members and
supporters.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law unites thinkers and advocates in
pursuit of a vision of inclusive and effective democracy. Its mission is to develop and implement
an innovative, nonpartisan agenda of scholarship, public education, and legal action that
promotes equality and human dignity, while safeguarding fundamental freedoms. To advance
this mission the Center is challenging an array of policies and practices that serve as barriers for
people with criminal convictions, as well as their families and communities, to full political and
social participation. The Center is also working to remove barriers to the ability of low income
people to obtain access to the courts, including policies and practices that impede attorney-client
communication.
Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants – Virginia, Inc. (Virginia C.U.R.E.) is a nonprofit, membership organization that advocates for people in prison and the families affected by
the criminal justice system. It is a chapter of National CURE. Since 1991, Virginia C.U.R.E.
has pursued advocacy – including meetings with Virginia officials, proposed legislation,
appearing before the State Corporation Commission, and litigation – aimed at reforming the
unfair inmate telephone system in Virginia.
The Correctional Association of New York is a 158-year-old, private non-profit criminal
justice policy and advocacy organization focusing on issues such as conditions of prison
confinement, sentencing reform, women in prison and juvenile justice. The Correctional
Association is concerned about the exorbitant costs of prison calls set by contracts between
telephone companies and prison agencies. It believes the practice of charging telephone rates
that are completely out-of-line with charges in the free market is discriminatory, unjust and
exploitative.
The Defender Policy Group and Defender Legal Services Division of the National Legal Aid
and Defender Association (NLADA) participate in these Comments because of the severe
impact that the exclusive telecommunications service contracts and collect call-only policies
discussed in these Comments have on people facing criminal charges and on their attorneys. The
NLADA is a national, nonprofit membership association advocating for criminal defense
attorneys and other equal justice professionals. The NLADA’s Defender Legal Services
Division helps individuals and programs provide quality public defense in criminal cases. The
NLADA’s Defender Policy Group, composed of public defenders and their clients, advises the
NLADA's Board of Directors regarding policy and programs relating to the provision of criminal
defense services.
The Defending Immigrants Partnership is made up of the National Legal Aid and Defender
Association, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Immigration Project, and the
Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association. The focus of its
program is aimed at training and providing technical assistance and other resources pertaining to
immigration law to criminal defense counsel. The Partnership believes that exorbitant costs for
telephone access in prisons and other detention facilities are unfair and harmful to inmates and
detainees, and warrant FCC intervention.
The Justice Fellowship is a faith based not-for-profit advocacy organization urging reform of
the criminal justice system according to the principles of restorative justice. The Fellowship has

been active in support of prisoners and their families seeking relief from the hardship imposed on
them by the manner in which most of our prisons – public and private – provide telephone
service to them. Fostering and maintaining ties between an inmate and his/her family, relatives
and friends is a critical element in the effort to rehabilitate prisoners and return them as lawabiding and productive members of society. The telephone system is one of the few effective
tools available to accomplish that end.
While the Comments being submitted by the Coalition relate to a petition involving only
privately run prisons, it is the position of the Justice Fellowship that the relief being sought
should be extended to all prisoners, whether in public or private institutions.
Justice Works! is a grassroots organization in Seattle, Washington representing people in prison
who need to make long distance collect calls and people who need to accept these calls from
people in prison. The organization works to resist the profit motive for incarceration, including
the extreme costs for families to stay connected throughout the incarceration of a loved one.
Salima Marriott is a state representative in the Maryland General Assembly. She has been
instrumental in the founding of more than one organization that advocates for justice on behalf of
incarcerated individuals. Her office accepts long distance calls from inmates, and she herself has
also accepted long distance collect calls from her family members and their friends imprisoned in
Maryland and around the country. As a legislator, she has advocated against the Maryland
Department of Correctional Services’ practice of subsidizing its budget with the profits returned
to them by the telephone companies from overcharging the family members of incarcerated
individuals.
The Maryland Justice Policy Institute is a not-for-profit organization engaged in public
education concerning issues of crime, criminal law, corrections, crime prevention and
alternatives. A few years ago the Institute founded the Maryland Prison Telephone Policy
Coalition, made up of people interested in lowering the rates of prison telephone calls. The
Institute urges that the so-called “commissions” paid to the state by the telephone service
provider amount to an illegal tax and that only the State legislature has the authority to decide
who to tax, what activity is to be taxed, and how much they should be taxed. The Institute also
believes that the activities funded by this money are things that the state should fund with its
general budget. Some are activities which the state is obligated to fund, so it is unfair to pass
these costs on to the families of people in prison, when the obligation is owed by all citizens.
The Montclair (New Jersey) Alumni Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. works to
improve our criminal justice system nationally. Its members have considerable experience with
the hardships that the high cost of telephone calls from prison impose on families with loved
ones in prison. It participates in these Comments to oppose the continued destruction of families
that the high costs foster.
NuLeadership Policy Group (NuLPG), housed at the Medgar Evers College of the City
University of New York, is the first university based, national public policy think tank and
community organization developed and operated by formerly incarcerated professional and
community activists. It provides a legitimate voice for the currently and formerly incarcerated.

The NuLPG is opposed to the practice by the Corrections Corporation of America of contracting
only with a single company to provide telephone service for inmates at each institution it
operates, because this practice exploits incarcerated men and women and their families.
The Prison Show is a weekly radio show on Houston’s Pacifica Network radio station, KPFTFM. Each week it allows families to call the station for one or two hours on Friday nights to
speak to their friends and families in Texas prisons. The Prison Show does that because people
incarcerated in Texas rarely get an opportunity to call their families, friends and others on the
outside. In many places where they do get an opportunity to call home, rates are prohibitive.

Appendix B

Before the
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20554

In the Matter of:

CC Docket 96-128

DECLARATION OF DR. CREASIE FINNEY HAIRSTON
Dr. Creasie Finney Hairston declares that the following is true under the penalty
of perjury:

INTRODUCTION

My name is Dr. Creasie Finney Hairston and I am Dean of the Jane Addams

College of Social Work (the “College”), University of Illinois at Chicago, located at 1040
West Harrison Street, Room 4018 Chicago, Illinois 60607-7134. I am also a professor
there. Jane Addams College of Social Work builds on the legacy of its namesake, the
Illinois-born social reformer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and pioneer of American social
work, who in the late 1800’s promoted the development of programs to enhance health,
literacy, workplace safety, education, justice for children, outreach to oppressed
immigrant groups, and social investigations. The College carries out the mission of Jane

Addams, adapting it to contemporary needs and the realities of today's urban settings. Its
commitment to social, racial, and economic justice is reflected in the racial and cultural
diversity of the faculty, staff, and student body; the curriculum of the degree programs;
community service projects; and research and evaluation projects and initiatives.
2.

Jane Addams College of Social Work’s master's and bachelor's programs are fully

accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. Its Master of Social Work program
is one of the ten largest programs in the United States and the largest in the Big Ten
region. Our graduates are prepared to work as practitioners, caseworkers, administrators,
policy advocates, and community organizers in a variety of settings and with diverse
populations, including individuals involved in the criminal justice system as well as their
families and children; children and families in agency, school and community settings;
persons with severe and persistent mental illness, individuals with acute and chronic
health problems, including HIV/AIDS; and persons who abuse alcohol and drugs.
3.

The College’s graduates comprise the majority of new social workers entering

the profession in the Chicago area each year, and its graduates are found in social work
practice throughout the United States and the world. Consistent with the College’s
tradition, the doctoral program prepares scholars to focus on research and practice that
promotes social and economic justice.
4.

I received both my Ph.D. and M.S.S.A. from Case Western Reserve University,

and my B.S. (summa cum laude) from Bluefield State College. Prior to joining Jane
Addams College I served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, the State
University of New York, and West Virginia University, and as Associate Dean at Indiana
University. Prior to attending graduate school I was a social worker with the Cuyahoga

County Welfare Department in Cleveland, Ohio. My curriculum vitae is appended as
Exhibit 1.
5.

My current professional distinctions and associations include membership on the

Urban Institute Roundtable on Prisoner Re-entry, the National Advisory Board for the
Center for Mental Health Services and Criminal Justice Research, the Illinois Children
and Families Research Institute Advisory Committee, and the Chicago Board of Health.
6.

I submit this declaration in support of the above-captioned petition to have the

Federal Communications Commission (“Commission” or “FCC”) address certain issues
involving prison inmate calling services referred to the Commission by the United States
District Court for the District of Columbia in Wright, et al. v. Corrections Corporation of
America, et al. (“Wright”). I have specific experience and expertise relating to families
and the criminal justice system, and in particular to the importance of maintaining and
promoting contact between people in prison and their family members, which is relevant
to the issues addressed in this proceeding.
7.

I have researched and written extensively on the impact of incarceration and

reentry on families with children and specifically, on the importance of family
communication in securing and successfully completing parole. My articles appear in
leading academic journals and textbooks and in publications for practitioners and the
general public. Among my recent publications, are:
o Prisoner Reentry: Social Capital and Family Connections, Women, Girls &
Criminal Justice 4/5, 67-68 (2003);
o Fathers in Prison: Responsible Fatherhood and Responsible Public Policies,
Michigan Family Impact Seminars Briefing Report No. 2002-1, 21-26 (2002);

o The Importance of Families in Prisoners’ Community Reentry, ICCA Journal on
Community Corrections 11-12(14) (2002);
o Prisoners and Families: Parenting Issues During Incarceration, in From Prison to
Home: The Effect of Incarceration and reentry on Children, Families and
Communities (2002). Washington, DC U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
o The importance of Families in Prisoners’ Community Reentry, Family and
Corrections Network Report 30 (1), 11-12 (2001).
o Prisoners and Their Families and Friends, proceedings of the International
Conference on Human Rights and Prison Reform (pp. 29-31). Washington, DC:
National CURE (2001).
o Serving incarcerated and ex-offender fathers and their families: A review of the
field. (2001). New York: Vera Institute of Justice. (Co-authors: John M. Jeffries
and Suzanne Menghraj).
o Children with parents in prison: Child welfare policy, program, and practice
issues. (2001). Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. (Co-editor: Cynthia B.
Seymour).
o Justice matters are family matters: Social work and the criminal justice system.
(1999, August). NASW New York State Chapter Update 24, 2.
8.

My work in promoting family-oriented correctional policies and institutional and

community partnerships to address broad social services and criminal justice goals has
been nationally recognized. I have reviewed and documented programs serving families
of prisoners, conducted program evaluations of parenting programs in prisons and jails,

and studied the impact of incarceration on families and communities. As a result of my
research, writing, evaluations, and consultations, I have an in-depth understanding of the
vital role that communication plays in the lives of incarcerated people and their families.

II.
9.

PURPOSE OF TESTIMONY
The preservation and strengthening of families has a longstanding history as a United

States public policy priority and as a major objective of governmental agencies. One way
to keep families with incarcerated members remain strong is to keep family members
connected throughout the period of incarceration.
10.

In this affidavit, I discuss the critical role that ongoing communication and

contact plays in the lives of people in prison and their families. In my experience the
issues raised in the Wright petition – monopolistic phone service, exorbitant phone rates,
and impractical collect-calling arrangements – are both common and problematic. This
affidavit discusses 1) how maintaining family contact contributes to family cohesion, 2)
hurdles that make contact difficult, and the benefits of contact for people in prison,
families, and 3) broader social interests.

III. BENEFITS OF MAINTAING FAMILY CONTACT BETWEEN PEOPLE IN
PRISON AND THEIR INCARCERATED FAMILY MEMBERS
11.

Family contact serves to prevent recidivism and delinquency. My review of

research on prisoners’ family relationships has yielded two consistent findings. First,
male prisoners who maintain strong family ties during imprisonment have higher rates of
post release success than those who do not. Second, men who assume responsible

husband and parenting roles upon release have higher rates of success than those who do
not.
12.

There is similar evidence regarding the beneficial value of family ties for females

in prison. Dowden and Andrews’ (1999) analysis of research on female offenders
identified family involvement and affection as the strongest predictors of female
offenders’ success, and Slaght (1999) found family relationships to have a significant
influence on relapse prevention among parolees.
13.

Social scientists and practitioners have used these findings to demonstrate that

programs including family members in prisoners’ treatment during incarceration and after
their release can produce positive results for prisoners, families, institutions, and
communities (Jeffries, Menghraj, and Hairston, 2001; Wright and Wright, 1992).
14.

Communication between people in prison and their children is important not only

for people in prison, but for their children as well. Practitioners providing or advocating
for parenting programs in prison offer the perspective that incarcerated parents’
involvement with, and attachment to, their children can prevent their children from
committing crimes.
15.

Many studies have demonstrated the importance of family relationships and

parenting practices in child development and the prevention of delinquency (Tolan,
Guerra, and Kendall, 1995). The maintenance of family ties for incarcerated individuals
has been found to produce more positive outcomes for young people who are
incarcerated, as well as for adults (Borgman, 1985). Moreover, research indicates that
the effects of parental criminality on delinquency are indirect and mediated by parental

attachment (to which communication is essential) and by other factors (Larzelere and
Patterson, 1990).
16.

Based on my research and experience I conclude that correctional policies that

promote the maintenance of familial bonds and responsible parenting serve the interests
of people in prison, their families, and society at large.

IV.

ONGOING COMMUNICATION AND FAMILY COHESION

17.

Communication between prisoners and their families is an essential strategy that

families and prisoners use to manage separation and maintain connections. Families visit
their imprisoned relatives at the institutions where they are held, talk with them by phone,
and exchange cards and letters as a means of staying connected. These contacts allow
family members to share family experiences, participate in family rituals, and remain
emotionally attached. They help assure incarcerated parents that their children have not
forgotten them and help assure children that their parents love and care about them. They
allow people in prison to see themselves, and to function, in socially acceptable roles
rather than as prison numbers and institutionalized dependents.
18.

Families with members in prison engage in a process of role change and

adaptability that can be referred to as pitching in and helping out. Some relatives pitch in
by taking full or major responsibility for something the prisoner used to do. Some
relatives help out with new responsibilities that families acquire as a result of
incarceration, e.g. negotiating with the prison system, accepting collect phone calls from
the prisoner and then serving as an emissary between the prisoner and his/her children
and other relatives, or arranging for and paying the costs of phone bills and prison visits.

19.

Prisoners who maintain family connections must adapt to new family roles.

Incarcerated parents are not in a position to make significant financial contributions to
their family nor are they able to physically take care of or protect their children. Family
role expectations of prisoners, therefore, center on demonstrations of caring and concern
for children or other family members or participation in decisionmaking about select
family issues.
20.

People in prison participate in family life by calling home or calling the place

where other family members have gathered on holidays, sending cards to acknowledge
birthdays and other events of family relevance, and writing letters to inquire about and
encourage children’s progress in school and giving advice on how to handle different
problems.

V.
OBSTACLES TO MAINTAINING FAMILY CONTACT WHILE IN
PRISON
21.

Telephone calls are an important way for prisoners and their families to maintain

contact, because other methods are difficult and sometimes impossible.
22.

In many facilities, visiting is difficult (and prohibited for some family members)

because of policies requiring children’s custodial parents to escort them on visits, or
limiting children visitors to those for whom birth certificates list the prisoner as the
biological parent. Prison officials may deny visitors entry to the facility for other
reasons, including constantly changing dress codes, no identification for children, and ion
drug scanners that inaccurately signal that a visitor is carrying drugs. Even when visiting
is permitted it may be prohibitively expensive when prisoners are located hundreds or
thousands of miles from their homes. Distant prison visits are costly, as they involve

transportation, usually to geographically remote locations; meals and vending machine
snacks during visits; and, sometimes, overnight lodging.
23.

Many family members are discouraged from visiting by the many indignities the

visitation process entails. The visit is often a lesson in humility, intimidation and
frustration; and a highly charged and anxiety producing event. Among the problems
noted in one state report of prison visiting were long waits, sometimes in facilities
without seating, toilets and water; the lack of nutritious food in visiting room vending
machines; and the absence of activities for children. Body frisks and intrusive searches,
rude treatment by staff, and hot, dirty and crowded visiting rooms are the norm in many
prisons. These conditions are particularly difficult for children to endure.
24.

Written communication – another possible method of communication – also

cannot replace telephone calls. Many people in prison, and many of their family
members, are functionally illiterate. People who do write find that prisons often lose
their mail, or delay delivering it for weeks at a time. In any event, writing is no substitute
for hearing a loved one’s voice.
25.

For these reasons telephone communication is vital to maintaining family bonds,

particularly between parents and children.
26.

In theory, the vast majority of correctional facilities permit telephone contact

between people in prison and their families. However, the primary intent of the rate
structure for prisoner telephone systems seems to be to subsidize prison budgets, generate
profits, and/or exert social control, not only over people in prison, but over their kin as
well.

Exhibit 1