While the Massachusetts Department of Corrections charges prisoners ten or 11 cents per minute for phone calls, the state’s sheriffs set their own rates individually. Some sheriffs charged more than 40 cents per minute.

Now, according to the Massachusetts Sheriff’s Association (MSA), all 14 sheriffs in the state have agreed to provide people incarcerated in their jails ten minutes of free phone usage per week and cap the charges for anyone using more than the allotted ten minutes at 14 cents per additional minute effective August 1, 2021.

MSA president and Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins said the sheriffs were aware of the need to maintain contact with friends and loved-ones to prepare prisoners for re-entry into society.

Another factor may have been a bill, S1559/H1900, backed by Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) and filed by State Senator Cynthia Creem and Representative Chynah Tyler, which would require the provision of free telephone calls to people incarcerated in the state’s jails and prisons. In promoting the bill, PLS mentioned the phone calls’ positive effect on re-entry and noted that prisoners’ children would also reap benefits of family contact during a vulnerable time.

However, its most powerful argument was that “[p]risoners and their ...

by Kevin Bliss

Louisville, Kentucky’s Metro Department of Corrections (MDOC) who operates the city jail has been ordered by the Metro Council Budget Committee to stop charging prisoners for phone calls from the jail by December 31, 2021.

MDOC currently contracts with Dallas, Texas communications giant Securus Technologies for its jail phone system. Current calls cost prisoners and their families $1.85 for 15-minute calls to local landlines, inter- and intrastate calls have additional per-minute fees. Calls to cell phones have a flat $9.99 fee.

Lawmakers told MDOC director, Dwayne Clark, to create a new plan eliminating phone fees for prisoners and families by the beginning of next year. The current plan is too much of a hardship on families of the prisoners. “We should not be funding our jail on the back of the families whose loved ones are inmates and should be doing all we can to keep families connected to their loved ones, to ease reentry and reduce recidivism,” stated Budget Committee Chair Bill Hollander.

Mayor Greg Fischer estimated the MDOC would generate revenue of $700,000 from telephone kickbacks for the year 2021. The city plans to use the better revenue forecasts and federal American Rescue Act funds” ...

by Chuck Sharman

On the heels of a May 2021 decision by federal regulators that sharply lowered rates prisoners and their loved ones pay for interstate calls, the California Public Utilities Commission (CAPUC) adopted a rule on August 19, 2021, which takes a hatchet to rates on intrastate calls—the lion’s share of the $1.2 billion U.S. market for prisoner calls, which currently run as high as $6.95 a minute in the state. The rule establishes a rate cap for the first time in the Golden State that now limits providers of “Incarcerated Person’s Calling Services” (IPCS) on an interim basis to a fee of $0.07 per minute.

Paul Wright, the director of the Human Rights Defense Center, a Florida nonprofit which publishes Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, provided expert testimony in the proceedings before CAPUC.

When the new rule takes effect on October 7, 2021, 45 days after it was both adopted and issued, it will provide immediate relief to nearly 77,000 prisoners held in California’s 249 local and county jails, plus almost 11,500 prisoners held in 16 federal prisons in the state. There are another 94,500 state prisoners held by the California Department of Corrections and ...

by Chuck Sharman

A review of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report and adopted order on rates for interstate inmate calling services (ICS), released May 24, 2021.

When this rule takes effect—90days after its release—ICS interstate call rates will be capped at 12 cents per minute for prisons and 14 cents per minute for larger jails, defined as those with an average daily population (ADP) of 1,000 or more. For smaller jails, the cap remains where it was set in 2013 at 21 cents per minute. All of which ensures that prison phone providers like Securus and Global Tel*Link (GTL) will continue making obscene profits off the backs of prisoners and their families.

The new caps are determined by a different formula than that used to set previous caps, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. vacated in a pair of 2017 rulings against the FCC in favor of two large ICS providers: Global Tel*Link v. FCC, 866 F.3d 397 (D.C. Cir. 2017) and Securus v. FCC, 2017 US App. Lexis 26360 (DC Cir. 2017). The formula that those cases successfully challenged estimated provider costs using an industry-wide average, which the court said was likely to mean that ...

by Chuck Sharman

On August 18, 2021, a lawsuit was filed in the circuit court for Cook County in Chicago, Illinois by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the publisher of Prison Legal News (PLN) and Criminal Legal News (CLN), accusing the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) of failing to timely produce prison phone contract documents that HRDC had sought under the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 5 ILCS 140/1.

HRDC’s initial request, filed on June 10, 2021, asked for records of state contracts for prisoner video visitation services, specifically: contracts between the service provider, Global Tel Link (GTL), and IDOC since January 1, 2019; receipts for commissions paid for the services to IDOC or its assignees during that period; and allocations of those commissions.

Under the law, IDOC had five business days to respond, which expired June 17, 2021. But after it blew by that statutory deadline—IDOC didn’t respond with its request for more time until June 21, on day 11. The agency then refused the request on day 18, saying it was “unduly burdensome” to comply.

FOIA does in fact make provision for the state to refuse a records request on those grounds in certain limited situations. ...

by Derek Gilna

The COVID-19 pandemic and resultant shut-downs have focused attention on the need for connection between all members of society, and for many prisoners, denied in-person visits, a contraband cellphone has helped them keep in touch with family. But that didn’t stop the Mississippi Supreme Court from affirming a 12-year sentence to Willie Nash for having a phone in the county jail. See: Nash v. State, 293 So. 3d 265 (Miss. 2020).

Although correctional officials claim that they can be used for fraud and extortion, just as state provided phones are, the fact remains that most prisoners understand that these phones are too valuable as family communication tools to be put at risk by committing other crimes.

Ten years ago, a New York Times article conceded that harsh penalties and increased vigilance weren’t working to keep phones out of prisons. “The logical solution would be to keep all cellphones out of prison. But that is a war that is being lost, corrections officials say.”

As noted by former death row resident Jarvis Jay Masters: “For people isolated from the world, hearing a loved one’s voice or a grandbaby coo for the first time is healing.”

The Times ...

The County of San Diego Board of Supervisors (Board) voted unanimously February 27, 2021 to stop charging prisoners and detainees in county jails and juvenile detention centers for phone calls. The initiative called for the Board to develop a plan by May 4 which prohibited the county from generating revenue from phone calls and to find funding to replace that lost revenue. Effective July 1, 2021, all jail prisoners can make unlimited phone and video calls to day with each phone call being limited to 15 minutes and video calls limited to 30 minutes.

San Diego County Jail (SDCJ) contracts with Securus Technologies for phone services. Prior to the change, costs ran from 21 cents per minute for prepaid interstate calls to 33 cents per minute for local and intrastate calls. Detainees were also charged $2.50 for a 20-minute video visit, $2.00 for voice mail messaging, and several different service fees for account maintenance. Under the current contract, the county makes $2.8 million each year which is used to operate juvenile detention centers, pay for educational programs, manage indigent supplies, and more.

Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer introduced the proposal, stating that it was morally wrong to generate revenue in this fashion. ...

by Dale Chappell

Over five years ago, federal prosecutors in Kansas used recordings of attorney visits and phone calls to obtain convictions in numerous criminal cases. The recordings were made by a private prison in Leavenworth owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, which has since changed its name to CoreCivic), and then handed over to prosecutors. Once this scam was exposed, hundreds of prisoners filed motion to toss their criminal cases. Despite that the federal court found the prosecutors were in contempt of court for refusing to turn over the evidence it illegally obtained, the government still tried to white-wash its disgraceful acts through multiple court challenges and complaints.

The government’s latest attempt was an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, where the government complained that the district court’s investigation into the recorded meetings and calls was unlawful and that the judge’s criticism of the government’s acts was harmful to the government’s other cases stemming from those acts. It said that these things could harm the cases still open that are challenging possible constitutional violations by the government and CCA. But the Court of Appeals ruled on May 4, 2021, that the government’s appeal ...

Connecticut made history on June 16, 2020, when Governor Lamont signed Senate Bill 972, making the state the first in the country where prison phone calls will be free for all prisoners and their families, including incarcerated youth. The state Senate and House fully funded the bipartisan bill, allocating $11.2 million in the budget. Other jurisdictions like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego have made jail phone calls free, but no state had taken the same step across its prison population until Connecticut passed this bill into law.

The change comes after years of organizing and lobbying by advocates for prisoners and families, including the Connecting Families Connecticut coalition. Worth Rises, a New York nonprofit, helped to lead the fight, and its Executive Director Bianca Tylek said the bill will save prisoners and their families in the state $14 million dollars a year. It will also help connect struggling families trying to stay in touch and assist in reentry by improving access to support networks, she said.

“Today, Connecticut made history by becoming the first state to make prison calls, and all other communications, free. All of the brave advocates and directly impacted families who fought ...

by David M. Reutter

The Iowa Utilities Board ordered phone vendors that provide services to jails to lower their rates from as high as $1 per minute. The order comes after a two year review in which the Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, urged a rate cap of no more than five cents per minute.

The Utilities Board has approved rates for five jail phone providers: Prodigy, Network Communications International Corporation, Combined Public Communications, ICSolutions, and Global Tel*Link. It has not yet approved a rate for Securus, but it and the other companies were instructed to keep their rates at 25 cents or less for prepaid calls.

GTL’s proposal for prepaid calls was unanimously approved on February 16, 2021. It sets the rate at 22 cents per minute for prepaid calls from the Black Hawk County Jail, 16 cents per minute from the Scott County Jail, and 11 cents per minute from the Boys State Training School.

This type of price disparity is something the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) requested the Utilities Board to end when it ordered a price reduction. ‘‘The incarceration of of a loved one is stressful. Families should not ...