Prison Phone Monopoly

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

States give telecom companies a monopoly over calls made from prisons and jails, with the understanding that the company can charge much higher than usual tolls. Typically, the state and the company split the profits.

In New York, calls from State Department of Correctional Service prisons are marked up 630% above regular rates, and the company — in this case, MCI — returns 57.5% of the profits to the state. [News coverage: Punishing phone call tax for families of incarcerated.]

In California, it costs about $5.25 for a 15-minute call from a state prison and the state gets roughly $26 million per year from the calls. About half of states have contracts with MCI or Verizon, which since a merger earlier this year are one company. [Click here for more information.]

Prison inmates may be considered one of the least-sympathetic populations. But it's not the inmates who pay these fees — it is mostly the prisoner's family and friends that get gouged.

It is vital for inmates to stay in touch with the support of families and friends. A study of California prisons found that inmates without family contacts were six times as likely to be arrested in their first year of parole compared with those who had the support of three or more family members.

The high cost of inmate phone services can hurt rehab and treatment centers too; inmates accused of drug offenses often try to contact these resources for help, and the fees can quickly whittle away a small budget. [Click here to read more.]

State prisoners are prohibited from using phone cards, even though they are in use in federal prisons. This appears to be a clear case of making money off of our country's less fortunate individuals.

The Family Telephone Connection Protection Act of 2005 would require that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) consider caps on such agreements and that providers of inmate telephone service offer both collect call and debit (phone card) services. It directs the FCC to prohibit the payment of commissions by telephone companies to correctional facility adminsitrators and to ensure that more than one service provider is available at each facility so that prisoners have a choice. Without the monopoly, the legislation assumes that competition would bring prices down.

You can help—contact your lawmakers. Just click here to send an email or letter.