by John E. Dannenberg

An exhaustive analysis of prison phone contracts nationwide has revealed that with only limited exceptions, telephone service providers offer lucrative kickbacks (politely termed “commissions”) to state contracting agencies – amounting on average to 42% of gross revenues from prisoners’ phone calls – in order to obtain exclusive, monopolistic contracts for prison phone services.

These contracts are priced not only to unjustly enrich the telephone companies by charging much higher rates than those paid by the general public, but are further inflated to cover the commission payments, which suck over $143 million per year out of the pockets of prisoners’ families – who are the overwhelming recipients of prison phone calls. Averaging a 42% kickback nationwide, this indicates that the phone market in state prison systems is worth more than an estimated $362 million annually in gross revenue.

In a research task never before accomplished, Prison Legal News, using public records laws, secured prison phone contract information from all 50 states (compiled in 2008-2009 and representing data from 2007-2008). The initial survey was conducted by PLN contributing writer Mike Rigby, with follow-up research by PLN associate editor Alex Friedmann.

The phone contracts were reviewed to determine the ...

by Mike Rigby

It is common knowledge among PLN readers that prison and jail phone rates are priced far above those in the free world. But just how overpriced are they? What is the average kickback (commission) rate provided by phone companies, and how much in kickbacks is paid each year nationwide?

In an effort to obtain a comprehensive overview of the prison phone market, I was hired to help acquire phone contracts, rate information and commission data from all 50 state prison systems as well as the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and selected county jails. I requested the same data from all agencies yet the responses, and what was initially produced, varied widely.

Responses to the requests for phone data were varied, but the norm was a mixture of bureaucracy and indifference. I was often routed from department to department, from one person to another, before reaching someone who had the authority or initiative to provide the requested information.

For example, the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) readily produced its commission data, but obtaining the prison phone contracts from the uncooperative state purchasing department took multiple calls and emails to 5 different agency officials.
Actually obtaining copies of ...

by Mike Brodheim

Sick and tired of being gouged by high prison phone rates, Nadia Alvarez and Rachel Fishenfeld, two California residents, filed a consumer class action suit against Global Tel*Link (GTL) in August 2010. GTL, a major telecommunications company that contracts with prisons and jails throughout the country to provide phone services, was accused of engaging in unfair business practices in violation of both federal law and California state law.

Alvarez and Fishenfeld sought certification of a class consisting of all United States residents who, within two years of the filing of the suit, paid for GTL’s services so they could receive phone calls from someone in a jail or prison. The plaintiffs also sought to certify a subclass of California residents only, consisting of those who paid for GTL’s services during the four years prior to the filing of the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs were represented by J. Paul Gignac, a partner at Arias Ozzello & Gignac LLP of Santa Barbara, as well as Steven S. Derelian of Pasadena and Eugene Feldman of Hermosa Beach – counsel with experience in handling class action litigation on behalf of consumers.

In their complaint, Alvarez and Fishenfeld stated that GTL is an ...

A report issued by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as part of an audit to determine whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are properly administering prison telephone systems found that changes must be made to bring ICE into full compliance with applicable standards and contract provisions.

According to the report, although ICE has made “considerable progress in assuring detainees’ access to contractor telephone and pro-bono services at ... sites where the majority of illegal aliens are detained ... additional controls are needed to ensure contractor compliance....”

ICE currently operates 15 Service Processing Centers and Contractor Operated Facilities that house 10,000 immigrant detainees. An additional 20,000 ICE prisoners are held in 215 Intergovernmental Service Agreement detention facilities. ICE also operates “hold rooms” in the agency’s field and sub-offices which “presently do not offer telephone services.” [See, e.g., PLN, Sept. 2010, p.22].

Past complaints related to ICE telephone practices have included lack of phones in ICE “hold rooms” and many ICE contract facilities, “pro-bono” phone lines that are non-operable, and excessive charges for calls to detainees’ families and legal assistance organizations. Although the Inspector General’s report does not mention these problems directly, it clearly ...

For decades, prison officials across the U.S. have lined their pockets with multi-million dollar kickbacks from telephone companies that are awarded lucrative prisoner phone service contracts. In doing so, they unwittingly created an “epidemic” that they are now desperately scrambling – and largely failing – to control. Namely, the excessive phone rates that are forced on prisoners and their families have spawned a black market for contraband cell phones smuggled in by guards and other prison employees.

Nowhere is this problem more evident than in California, America’s largest state prison system. In 2009, 300 California prison employees were disciplined for suspected cell phone trafficking to prisoners, and about 100 of those staff members were fired. By mid-year 2010 an additional 150 prison employees had been disciplined.

With contraband cell phones selling for $500 or more, the problem is not going away anytime soon. In 2009, a California guard confessed to earning $100,000 in just 12 months by smuggling cell phones, according to Deputy Director of Adult Institutions Richard Subia.

Contraband cell phones are ubiquitous in every prison, from minimum-security facilities to death row, said Subia. In 2009, California prison officials confiscated 6,995 illegal cell phones, up from 2,800 the year ...

Washington Commission Finds AT&T is Prison Collect Call Provider

by Mark Wilson

On April 21, 2010, the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission (Commission) handed the dedicated loved ones of PLN’s tenacious Editor an important victory in their long-running challenge of prison collect call rates.

In 2000, Zuraya Wright, Sandy Judd, and Tara Herivel sued AT&T Communications of the Pacific Northwest, Inc. (AT&T); T-Netix, Inc. (T-Netix); Verizon Northwest, Inc. (Verizon); Qwest Corporation (Qwest); and CenturyTel Telephone Utilities, Inc. (CenturyTel), in the Superior Court of Washington for King County.

Plaintiffs alleged that between June 1996 and December 31, 2000, they received collect calls from prisoners confined in four Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities. They also alleged that the named telephone companies were operator service providers (OSPs) that violated Washington’s rate disclosures for the collect calls they received.

The Superior Court dismissed Verizon, Qwest and CenturyTel from the suit, then referred two questions to the Commission under Washington’s “doctrine of primary jurisdiction,” which “requires that issues within an agency’s special expertise be decided by the appropriate agency.” The court sought the Commission’s expertise as to: (1) whether AT&T and T-Netix were OSPs under the contracts at issue; and (2) if so, ...

A fifteen-minute collect call from the Multnomah County jail in Portland, Oregon costs $2.35, billed to the party who accepts the call. Between May 2006 and April 2009 those calls generated $3.5 million in revenue for the jail’s phone service provider, Texas-based Securus Technologies, Inc., while the county’s 38% kickback totaled $1.3 million. Profits likely would have been higher were it not for a handful of prisoners who made free collect calls from the jail.

The first prisoner caught offering a little competition to what county officials thought was a monopoly on the jail’s phone system was Shawn “Sammy Straight Razor” McGinnis. Between December 2006 and October 2007, McGinnis called his parents collect from the jail and they would make three-way connections to Qwest Communications, according to sheriff’s deputy Jose M. Torres.

McGinnis claimed to be a small business owner – a landscaper, a window washer or the owner of a cleaning supply company – and said he needed special business lines for each of his 14 employees. He gave Qwest the “profiles” – names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth – of 14 identity theft victims, plus a billing address. After Qwest issued the business lines, McGinnis had ...

by David M. Reutter

On November 23, 2009, the New York Court of Appeals – the state’s highest court – affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit arguing that the contract between the New York State Department of Correctional Services (NYDOCS) and MCI Worldcom Communications for prison telephone services violated the state’s constitution.

The complaint alleged that the portion of the telephone charge allocated as a commission (i.e., kickback) paid to NY-DOCS constituted an illegal tax or fee, amounted to a government taking without just compensation, and violated the peti-tioners’ equal protection, free speech and associational rights. NYDOCS used the phone commission payments to fund the Family Benefit Fund, which included prisoner health care services, bus transportation for family visitation programs, free prisoner postage, and expenses at prison visitor centers.

New York’s initial 1996 contract with MCI included a 60% per-call commission payment to the state. In 2001, a new contract lowered NYDOCS’ commission to 57.5%. A 2003 contract revision purported to provide relief to families from MCI’s “unfair” variable rate structure by enacting a flat rate fee of $3.00 per phone call plus $.16 per minute, but continued the 57.5% commission.

While the suit was on appeal, having been dismissed ...

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Larsen has recommended the denial of a motion to suppress phone recordings of a plot to harm a federal witness obtained by the government through a Rule 17 subpoena without a court order.

While awaiting trial on various federal charges, Gary Eye in concert with his wife, Stephanie Eye, allegedly plotted to harm a federal witness. The alleged plot was uncovered by an informant at a CCA facility who notified the FBI.

The grand jury issued a subpoena to CCA for phone conversations made by Eye. CCA turned the conversations over to the government, but the discs also contained recordings of calls between Eye and his lawyer. The attorney calls were not segregated.

Prior to trial, the government sent a Rule 17 subpoena to CCA for additional phone conversations made by Eye. CCA complied with the subpoena, turning over additional recordings on disc.

Eye moved to suppress the burden of recordings obtained via the Rule 17 subpoena, arguing that the government had failed to obtain a court order for the subpoena. The court found that the government had failed to comply with Rule 17, but Eye suffered no prejudice from the government’s error.

See: United ...

On September 11, 2009, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that jail prisoners had no right to privacy with respect to the recording of the non-legal phone calls they made while in jail, and the sheriff must provide recordings of the phone calls when the grand jury requests them via subpoena.

The Suffolk County grand jury subpoenaed the recordings of the telephone conversations of a specific prisoner at the jail. The sheriff filed a motion to quash, citing a ruling from a different Superior Court in a different case. The judge denied the motion to quash. The sheriff asked the judge to hold him in contempt so that he could seek an appellate ruling that prisoners had no privacy rights in the recordings. He was held in contempt and appealed.

The Supreme Judicial Court held that prisoners had no expectation of privacy in their jail telephone conversations under the state or federal constitutions. It noted that jail inmates and the persons they telephoned received recorded voice warnings in multiple languages that all calls not made to an attorney would be monitored and recorded. The inmates also received written notice in the jail handbook and by signs posted at the ...