On November 30, 2011, a Missouri circuit court held that adding optional services to the state’s prisoner telephone contract without putting those services out for competitive bidding would render the contract void. The court found the current contract was valid, but to amend it to include the optional services would require the entire contract to be rebid.

From 2006 to 2011, Public Communications Services (PCS) provided phone services to more than 30,000 prisoners in the Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC). The PCS phone system handled 12.1 million calls that totaled more than 117 million minutes in 2010. There are three methods by which prisoners can make calls: 1) debit calls, which are debited directly from the prisoner’s account; 2) pre-paid calls with accounts set up by friends and family members; and 3) collect calls that result in the accepting party being billed.

In December 2010, Missouri’s Office of Administration (OA), through its Director of Purchasing and Materials Management (DPMM), issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a new prison phone service provider following the expiration of the PCS contract in May 2011. Seven companies submitted acceptable responses: CenturyLink, Consolidated Communications Public Services, PCS, Securus Techonologies, Synergy Telecom Service Company/Telcomate, Talk ...

For the past 22 years, PLN has been at the forefront of reporting on the gouging of prisoners’ families by prisons, jails and the telecommunications industry as prisoncrats and corporations profit by charging families exorbitant phone rates for the ability to communicate with their incarcerated loved ones. PLN’s groundbreaking report on the prison phone industry last year – see our April 2011 cover story – has led to a growing movement that seeks real change regarding this issue. To date, we are the only news media organization to tackle this topic on a national level.

To end the injustice of unfair prison phone rates, the Human Rights Defense Center, the Center for Media Justice and Working Narratives have launched a national campaign to end the kickback “commissions” routinely provided to prisons and jails by prison phone companies. We have launched two websites, www.phonejustice.org and www.kitescampaigns.org/campaign/prison-phone-justice, where we have massive amounts of information on prison phone rates, contracts and corruption; these sites also include resources for people affected by prison phone rate gouging to tell their story and take action.

In March 2012 I was among a number of advocates on the topic of prison phone justice who met in Washington, ...

On October 14, 2011 the Iowa Supreme Court held that a prison telephone company did not commit a “cramming” violation by improperly billing a third party for fraudulent collect calls made by a prisoner.

Evercom Systems, Inc. provides phone services to more than 2,900 detention facilities nationwide, including the Bridewell Detention Center (Bridewell) in Bethany, Missouri.
On January 25, 2006, Evercom informed Iowa resident Ken Silver that on the previous day “over fifty dollars of collect calls had been accepted by his (Des Moines, Iowa) business line and that Evercom was placing a temporary block on his line.”

Silver denied accepting or having any knowledge of the calls. Evercom agreed to investigate and get back with him in 7-10 days. The next day, however, the company sent Silver a letter stating the charges would not be removed because “a thorough investigation” found no system deficiencies. Silver did not receive the letter because Evercom mailed it to an incorrect address; his local telephone company billed him $78.21 for the collect calls.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get Evercom to remove the charges, on February 27, 2006, Silver filed a complaint with the Iowa Attorney General’s office. Evercom quickly investigated and “concluded ...

by Matt Clarke

On January 21, 2011, a U.S. District Court held that state prisoners in Arkansas have no First Amendment right to less expensive phone rates, a decision that was subsequently affirmed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Arkansas state prisoners Winston Holloway and Joseph Breault filed a civil rights action in federal court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that excessive contractual kickbacks resulted in high telephone rates for prisoners in the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC), which infringed on their First Amendment rights.

The magistrate judge assigned to the case issued a report recommending that a First Amendment violation be found and that the ADC’s phone service provider, Global Tel*Link (GLT), be enjoined from paying any “commission” kickbacks to the ADC. The district judge rejected that part of the report and dismissed the suit on the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

The ADC established telephone services for prisoners in 2006 by contracting with GTL. Under the contract, GTL pays for all costs of equipment, installation and phone service, and gives the ADC a 45% “commission” on the income the company receives from prisoner phone calls. The phone rates include a $3.00 surcharge plus $0.12/minute for ...

The bidding process used to select the telephone contractor for Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) was rigged by an official previously accused of improperly influencing a prior phone contract at the jail. That was the basis of a lawsuit filed by a local taxpayer, Matthew E. D’Eramo, in an effort to void the contract.

Previously, Common Pleas Judge Judith Friedman ruled in May 2006 that ACJ’s former Internal Affairs Chief, Capt. Thomas R. Leicht, Jr., conspired with other county employees to rig the bids on the jail’s telephone contract the last time it was put out for bid. See: Lemansky v. Allegheny County, Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County (PA), Case No. GD 06-3583.

An appellate court ordered the 2006 contract bid to be reopened, and Securus Technologies subsequently won the jail’s phone contract after Leicht was prohibited from participating in the re-bid process. See: Lemansky v. Allegheny County, 926 A.2d 1003 (Pa.Cmwlth. 2007). However, Leicht was again assigned to evaluate bids when the phone contract was up for renewal in 2009, and he gave a low score to Securus based on a failed system test.

“Despite Judge Friedman’s opinion and past finding[s] of Capt. Leicht’s corruption, the county ...

Most people are familiar with Crime Stoppers, the “snitch line” for individuals with information about crimes. Successful tips can result in benefits to the tipster – which can take the form of cash, leniency with a new case or a time cut if the tipster is already in prison. Not surprisingly, Crime Stoppers receives a lot of calls from prisoners.

Rather than calling to report crimes, though, some crafty South Carolina state prisoners figured out a way to use the Crime Stoppers phone line to make personal calls, racking up some $7,000 in charges at Crime Stoppers’ expense, according to a July 2011 news report. The toll-free tip line was billed for 4,000 calls in one month, apparently after prisoners used the Crime Stoppers phone number as a third-party billing source for long distance calls.

“Some inmates are very resourceful and have a lot of time on their hands,” said Joey Hudson, President of Greenville County Crime Stoppers. “We know definitively the calls were made from corrections institutes in the Pee Dee area,” he stated. “We are still working to see if we can trace the calls back to a specific inmate or inmates.”

Telecompute, the company that provides Crime ...

The October 2011 sale of Global Tel*Link Corp. (GTL), the nation’s largest prison and jail phone company, demonstrates what a goldmine prison phone services are for the provider side of the market. The sale, reportedly valued at $1 billion, was highly unusual because it was a leveraged deal at a time when the nearly frozen financial sector is running from most leveraged deals.

GTL and its subsidiaries provide phone services for the prison systems of over half the states plus various county jails. In February 2009, the private equity firm Veritas Capital and Goldman Sachs purchased GTL from Gores Equity LLC for $345 million. The deal to sell GTL to Alabama-based American Securities Capital, another private equity firm, will about triple their investment.

The high value of GTL derives from the fact that it operates a pure monopoly once it obtains a prison phone contract. The company then price-gouges its captive customers, who have few other means of calling their family members and friends.

GTL charges up to $3.95 plus $.89 per minute for long distance calls, or $17.30 for a 15-minute conversation. The company’s call rates vary from state to state; GTL also charges service fees, such as for ...

The Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) is examining the rates for phone calls made by prisoners. To help it in that determination, the PSC has hired outside counsel to analyze rates, review regulations and compare them with other states to decide if they are “just, fair and reasonable.”

PLN previously reported that states receive an average of 41.9% of the gross revenue from prisoner calls in kickbacks from phone service providers. The only thing that controls the high rates for prison phone calls is “pure, unabated greed by both the phone companies” and state prison systems. [See: PLN, April 2011, p.1].

In Louisiana the kickback is 55% of gross prison phone revenue. “A lot of people think this is grossly unfair,” said PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell, a former state senator. “This affects a lot of families in Louisiana.”

Prisoners at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison pay $1.31 for the first five minutes of a local call and $.50 for each five-minute period thereafter, or $2.31 for a 15-minute call. According to Pam Laborde, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, the cost for collect intrastate calls averages $5.55.

Laborde touted that as a good deal when ...

In April 2011, Matthew Cate, Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), announced that he intended to enlist the aid of companies that bid for the state’s lucrative prison phone service contract in an effort to stem the ever-increasing tide of unauthorized cell phone calls made by prisoners.

Cate’s motivation is simple. CDCR cannot afford the estimated $16.5 million to $33 million it would cost to install up-to-date “managed access” technology at all 33 state prisons to block cellular signals. The motivation for the phone companies to help combat cell phone use by prisoners is equally simple: profits. As the number of contraband cell phones in the CDCR has grown, the prison phone system’s revenue has fallen.

In a recent interview, Cate put it bluntly. “If cell phones are inoperable, the company will make more money,” he said. That is, without contraband cell phones, prisoners who want to call family members and friends will have only one other option – prison pay phones, which will generate more money for the prison system’s phone service contractor, currently Global Tel*Link.

Cell phone jamming systems are used in prisons in Mexico, France, Australia and other countries, but face roadblocks in ...

In February 2011 it was revealed that the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee had recorded approximately 300 phone calls between jail prisoners and their lawyers, then gave the recordings to federal prosecutors.

The calls were recorded despite the unwritten policy of the Sheriff’s Office not to listen to attorney-client phone calls; Sheriff’s officials claimed the recordings were inadvertent.
The controversy arose when 142 CDs containing the calls, among many other phone conversations from the jail, were turned over to federal prosecutors who shared them with dozens of criminal defense lawyers.

Some of the defense attorneys whose calls were recorded objected to their release, claiming it violated attorney-client privilege, but other defense lawyers refused to return the CDs with the recorded calls, saying they might be useful in the representation of their clients.

U.S. Attorney Jerry E. Martin, who ultimately received the CDs with the attorney phone recordings, said “It’s our policy not to listen to those calls. The controversy arises because there’s [sic] criminal defense lawyers in town who want to listen to other defense lawyers’ calls.”

As part of an investigation into a Somali gang sex-trafficking ring, the U.S. Attorney had requested recordings of phone calls made ...