Breaking News! FCC Votes to Further Reform Prison Phone Industry
by Carrie Wilkinson
The cover story of the December 2013 issue of Prison Legal News was titled “FCC Order Heralds Hope for Reform of Prison Phone Industry.” It included a primer on prison and jail phone services, and detailed a landmark decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that capped the cost of interstate (long distance) rates for phone calls made by prisoners and enacted other reforms. The cover story concluded by saying, “Lady Justice may be blind, but judging from the FCC’s order she is not deaf – and the pleas of prisoners and their families for reform of the abusive prison phone industry are finally being heard loud and clear.”
Exactly two years later in this issue of PLN, after much work by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), our partners in the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice and other advocates, we can report that not only are the voices of prisoners and their families still being heard at the national level, but long-awaited relief is coming as the result of yet another historic FCC rulemaking decision.
On October 22, 2015, the Commission voted 3-2 along party lines ...
$54,000 Attorney Fee and Cost Award in Successful First Amendment Litigation
A Michigan federal district court granted $53,562.57 in attorney fees and costs to the plaintiff in a civil rights action alleging violations of his First Amendment rights by Michigan prison officials.
Prisoner Bahaa Iswed filed a civil rights action ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
As this issue of PLN goes to press the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that on October 22, 2015, they will be issuing rules regulating all prison and jail telephone calls, including setting rate caps for debit and prepaid calls of $.11 per minute at prisons and $.14 to $.22 per minute at jails, plus banning most ancillary fees, among other reforms. We will report the details in an upcoming issue of PLN.
The critical point is that after the prison phone issue has languished on its docket for 12 years, the FCC has acted. In 2011, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which publishes Prison Legal News, founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice with the Center for Media Justice and Working Narratives, with the goal of reducing the cost of prison and jail telephone calls. We are proud that has finally happened, and we would like to thank all of our readers and supporters over the past four years who have donated to and supported our efforts. The FCC also announced it will be revisiting prison phone issues within the next two years.
But more work remains to be ...
Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Files “Justice is Not for Sale Act”
by Derek Gilna
Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, along with Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona in the House, filed companion bills on September 17, 2015 to address some of the many problems in the U.S. criminal justice system. The highlights of their legislation include abolishing all for-profit prisons and reinstating parole for federal prisoners.
The proposed legislation, which must pass both houses of Congress before being signed into law by the President, also takes aim at various other criminal justice issues – including a quota that requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to incarcerate 34,000 detainees at any given time. The bill further addresses excessive charges for prison phone calls and money transfer services, requires ICE to better monitor its facilities and ends the detention of immigrant families.
Senator Sanders, who has advocated other social reforms, including raising the minimum wage and increasing oversight of large banks, noted in a press release that announced the filing of his bill that the private prison industry generates billions of dollars in annual revenues and employs teams of lobbyists to persuade government officials to continue mass incarceration ...
Prisoner’s Right to Counsel Violated by Eavesdropping on Attorney Phone Calls
by Christopher Zoukis
Charges against a Washington man awaiting trial on felony drug and stolen property charges were dropped by a Yakima County Superior Court after an investigation found that a prosecutor and sheriff’s detective had listened to phone calls made to his lawyer.
Superior Court Judge Douglas Federspiel dismissed the charges against Daniel Woolem following a two-day hearing and a court-ordered report from former Yakima County prosecuting attorney and retired U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan, who had been appointed to investigate the matter.
“Under the limited, unique and specific facts of this case based upon the record, it is the court’s opinion that of the available remedies, the only meaningful and appropriate remedy that addresses the violation of the defendant’s right to counsel is the dismissal of the pending charges against Mr. Woolem,” Federspiel wrote.
According to the investigation, phone calls between Woolem and his attorney at the time, Tim Schoenrock, were recorded in May 2011 at the Yakima County jail. Sheriff’s Detective Robert Tucker listened to the first call on May 3. Tucker claimed that he stopped listening as soon as he realized a lawyer was involved, and ...
October 23, 2015
From HRDC executive director Paul Wright:
Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission took a historic step by capping the cost of prison and jail phone calls. For decades, prisoners and their families have been ruthlessly exploited by telecom companies and their government collaborators who monetize human contact and want people to pay as much as possible to communicate with their loved ones in prison. Since 1992 the Human Rights Defense Center has been in the vanguard challenging these exploitive practices and seeking to end them. In 2011 we co-founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, with the express goal of getting the FCC to end abusive phone rates for prisoners and their families. We have poured thousands of staff hours into the Campaign, as well as many trips to DC to meet with FCC staff, and it paid off.
The FCC action significantly reduces the cost of prison phone calls to no more than $.11 per minute and also reduces the cost of calls made from jails. It bans all but three ancillary fees charged by the telecom industry to bolster their profit margins and bottom lines. Most of the reforms will go into effect within 90 days ...
Prisoner Phone Service Providers Cannot Block Call Routing Service Calls
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) entered an order that concluded inmate calling services (ICS) providers are not authorized to block prisoners’ calls to persons who subscribe to call routing services.
The September 26, 2013 order denied a petition by Securus Technologies, Inc. seeking a declaratory ruling that “call diversion schemes are a form of dial-around calling which Securus is permitted to block,” under existing FCC precedent.
At issue were services that friends and family of prisoners use to pay rates for local ICS calls, avoiding higher rates for long distance ICS calls. The FCC said that the blocking of telephone calls is antithetical to its fundamental goal of making available “rapid, efficient, Nation-wide and world-wide wire radio communications services with adequate facilities.”
Current precedent does allow ICS providers to block “800” and “950” access calls, but extending this precedent to all call routing services does not follow. The call routing services in question are not “operator services” that include “automatic or live assistance to a consumer.” Rather, “for the calling party, the routed call is completed in a seamless manner.” Additionally, those services are not used by the prisoner, but ...
Mississippi Indictments Illustrate Prison Phone Corruption
by Derek Gilna
Two Mississippi businessmen, Irb Benjamin, 69, and Sam Waggoner, 61, face federal charges in connection with a scheme in which kickbacks were paid to former Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Commissioner Christopher B. Epps in return for the awarding of state and county contracts to Mississippi Correctional Management (MCM) and Global Tel*Link (GTL).
According to court documents, Waggoner, a paid consultant for GTL, the nation’s largest prison phone service provider, received from the company “five (5) percent of all revenue generated by the inmate telephone services contracts it had with the state of Mississippi.”
In turn, Waggoner allegedly provided bribes to Epps. According to federal prosecutors, “Specifically, on or about July 30, 2014, and on or about August 26, 2014, the defendant, Sam Waggoner, paid kickbacks in the form of cash generated by his monthly commission from GTL to Christopher B. Epps,” in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(2).
Prisoners’ rights advocates, including the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the parent organization and publisher of Prison Legal News, have long been critical of phone contracts entered into between companies like GTL and corrections agencies that force prisoners and their families ...
Cell Phones Confiscated from Prisoners Given to Charities
by Christopher Zoukis
Thousands of cell phones seized from prisoners nationwide have been donated to charitable causes, including domestic violence programs and Cell Phones for Soldiers.
Cell phones are considered contraband in every prison and jail in the U.S. In many jurisdictions, their possession or use by a prisoner is a criminal offense, including in the federal Bureau of Prisons. [See: PLN, June 2011, p.34]. Despite such penalties there is a burgeoning market for cell phones behind bars, and many end up being found by prison officials. In California alone, 12,151 phones were seized from prisoners in 2013.
As the confiscation of contraband cell phones has become more common, many have been donated to charitable organizations.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections gave more than 1,100 cell phones to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The phones are refurbished by Verizon HopeLine and then provided to domestic violence victims. Phones that cannot be reused are recycled, with the proceeds donated to the program. The Alabama DOC sends confiscated cell phones to HopeLine and proceeds from the sale of refurbished phones are used for grants for domestic violence shelters.
Many of California’s contraband ...
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Retains High Phone Rates for County Jails
On February 11, 2015, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (The Board), in a public session, denied a request for rulemaking on the petition proffered by various prisoners’ advocacy institutions and individuals. The request called for a cap, similar to New York’s rate of no more than $0.05 per minute, on intrastate collect telephone calls for New Jersey prisoners in county jails and state prisons. The Board noted that the referenced New York $0.05 rate cap was arrived at through a competitive process, not rulemaking, which resulted in a contractual agreement between the telecommunications providers and the New York Department of Corrections.
New Jersey prisoners now pay $0.17 per minute for out-of-state calls from state prisons, based on the FCC imposed cap, but can pay up to $0.56 per minute for local calls made from county jails where there is no regulation. Under current contracts, counties will receive a commission usually in excess of 50% of the cost of the call. The petition noted, “[t]hese commissions create perverse incentives by encouraging the governments contracting with phone companies to choose high rates.” That specific issue was not ...
