Steep Costs of Inmate Phone Calls Are Under Scrutiny

The New York Times ^ | MARCH 30, 2015 | TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

[edwinland]

Since the Pennsylvania police arrested Anthony Kofalt last March for walking out of a Walmart with 21 boxes of Crest White Strips he had not paid for, his wife, Heather, has spent $3,000 — about $60 a week — on phone calls to the prisons and jails where he has been held.

The cost of a 15-minute call is $12.95, although Mr. Kofalt is in a prison only a few hours’ drive from his wife’s home in Franklin, Pa. The cost for a similar non-prison call would be about 60 cents.

And every time Ms. Kofalt deposits $25 into the prison phone account, the private company that runs the system charges her $6.95.

[T-Bone Texan]

A person must be really desperate to phone a friend that they would put a phone up to their face that was previously secreted in someone’s anus!

[kiryandil]

If you can't do the time don't do the crime.

Sounds like the perps running the Pennsylvania Crimnel Jesters Systum are doing the crime, but they're not doing the time.

[dfwgator]

Well it is called “paying back their debt to society.”

[davius]

'Does the local call include recording, detection equipment to tell if a third party has been included in the call, and a voice over that warns that this call is from a prison and recorded? Does the phone company have to deal with continual subpoenas that result from these calls?'

Bingo! Also armored phones and cables, together with an entire culture that struggles mightily to avoid paying utility bills under any circumstances.

[kiryandil]

If you lift up the rock of prison services like phone calls and food, you will see a lot of ugly stuff. This is one example. The state and these companies make a fortune off of charging for even local prisoner calls that would cost pennies if done through normal phone lines. Same with food, there is a several hundred percent — perhaps even 1,000%, mark up. And because a lot of people don’t have sympathy for prisoners, the state and their crony capitalist service providers get away with it. It needs to stop.

I call it the Great Big Giant Large Criminal Justice Machine. The wheels go round and round, and lots of tax and fine money gets spit out to the various gruberment employee cogs in the Machine, but there's not a whole lot of Justice involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_T._Francis#Anarcho-tyranny

Sam Francis wrote: What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.

And he also wrote: The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites ... or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and "pathological" elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms – people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible – not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_state

Paul Gottfried, in After Liberalism, defines this worldview as a "series of social programs informed by a vague egalitarian spirit, and it maintains its power by pointing its finger accusingly at antiliberals." He calls it a new theocratic religion. In this view, when the managerial regime cannot get democratic support for its policies, it resorts to sanctimony and social engineering, via programs, court decisions and regulations...

Note that Hillary, the Manager, committed MULTIPLE serious felonies with her little email server scheme.

She'll never see the inside of a jail cell.

Enjoy yer "Jesters", peasant... LOL! :)

[rfreedom4u]

The money for these calls doesn’t go to the city/state/county. It goes to private companies. In their “agreement of services” it states that they can change the rates at any time for any reason without prior notification. The service sucks as calls are not put through but still charged.

And yes, I speak from experience as my daughter called me from jail a few times.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Are they paying for monitoring?

Being a long-time PA resident I am assuming at least five bucks of that $6.95 is going to our politicians as a kickback.

[Conscience of a Conservative]

If you can't do the time don't do the crime.

So crony capitalism and corruption are OK, as long as the only people who are affected are criminals (and their families)?

[kiryandil]

I'm sure that in this imperfect country of ours it's *never* been true that *everyone* in prison is guilty as charged.But I'd wager that there's video of *this* guy walking out without having paid for the items in question.

So, like - when's Hillary Clinton going to jail?

I am the police, and I'm here to arrest you [unless you're Bill or Hillary Clinton]. You've broken the law. I did not write the law. I may even disagree with the law but I will enforce it [unless you're Jon Corzine or Charley Rangel]. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathies, nothing you do will stop me from placing you in a steel cage with gray bars [unless you're an important politician, like Jon Corzine]. If you run away I will chase you. If you fight me I will fight back. If you shoot at me I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away . [unless you're an important politician, like Bill Clinton or Charley Rangel] I am a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a gun. Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed, I think, I love, and yes I *can* be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who are the same as me. They will lay down their lives for me, and I them. We stand watch together. The thin-blue-line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.

Yeah, them polices are DEATH on Crest White-Strip pilferers.

Serious felons like inner-city gangbangers, or the Clintons?

Not so much...

[Conscience of a Conservative]

At the core of the inquiry are the hundreds of millions of dollars in concession fees, known as commissions, paid by the phone companies to state and local prison systems in exchange for exclusive contracts. The fees help drive phone charges as high as $1.22 per minute, and the leading companies say they need to charge at least 20 cents per minute, compared with typical commercial rates of about 4 cents a minute.

In 2013, a total of $460 million in concession fees was paid to jails and prisons, and to state, county and local governments, according to the F.C.C. The fees are legal, and they cover a range of expenses within prisons as well as outside.

So, legalized kickbacks.

[kiryandil]

Rates seem rather reasonable considering all that goes on and the associated costs to cater to criminals using the phone system.

I don't know about you, but around here, the taxpayers have to pay some of the criminals 6-figure salaries, their phone bills, and outrageous pensions.

They're called state & national gruberment elected politicians...

[tbw2]

Jails are charging higher rates than phone cards for phone calls.
They charge inmates for basics like tooth paste, soap, etc. In some places, they charge you for the room and board, too.
You end up with some jurisdictions keeping people in jail longer because they don’t have the money to pay for the bill for the jail stay, or being put back in prison for not paying the fines plus extra collection fees.
The desire to make criminals “pay” is approaching the debtors’ prison of old.

[wardaddy]

That has zero to do with phone companies and jail bilking families or prisoners

But nice cliche

[NEMDF]

Someone I know is in prison in IL, going on 27 years. What you say is correct. Also in my work, we once had a client who was a part-owner of one of those prison phone service companies, and they were raking in the money BIG TIME, probably after paying some bribe to an “official” (public servant) who gave them the contract.

I will say that in IL, they have improved this situation, as it used to be $1/minute for phone calls, and the current service is much more affordable.

[peeps36]

You forget we are talking about people who will put their face directly into the anus. In prison the anus is a tool used to hide and transport contraband and earn those extras that make prison life more comfortable.

[wardaddy]

Freepers likely 99% know nothing about prison or jail

If they did they wouldn’t say inmates

But boy like anything else they are ignorant of they sure have heartfelt feelings

Prisons have always been a spoils system....for everyone to feed from the public trough or in this case prisoner families

This is just more of that

I don’t anyone will stop it

Most folks here act like they would be ok with execution for any crime worthy of prison time

Really touching from a liberty site

Free Republic has lost most of its old timers

Newer posters are often here same as any other social commentary site

To be hard asses with anonymity they dare not be in public

Lonely angry folks are just too damn common here now

The halcyon days of purpose and liberty from 97-2005 are gone....and I lament that...back when we had reknown posters

I miss the libertarians...kooky but they gave a balance to torches and pitchforks

Will a Cruz or Walker nomination rekindle it here or will the bloodshed inevitable here from the primaries make that impossible

/rant

[MeganC]

These kinds of things are a way for a jurisdiction to recover the costs of incarceration. It’s not the least bit nice to the families that end up paying for these things but that’s the way it is.

When my father was in prison no one called him so it didn’t really affect us anyway.

By the way, he BELONGED in prison!

[wardaddy]

You’re half right.....the rectum technically is a tool for smuggling much like the vagina is in the visiting room

It’s called keistering

But gay crap is not so much a sale thing

It’s voluntary tween power fags ....a wardaddy.in prison vernacular...and a sissy or punk

If you are straight and particularly if white and young and are raped then it will 99% be by blacks Or some Native Indians who don’t consider they are faggots in spite of putting their johnsons in a white boys rear

The rest is fairly consensual and frowned on amongst other demographics to the point of death sentence in Alice Baker or Mex gangs

So the rectum is only a tool to a point

[Girlene]

Bingo.

[Little Pig]

The “phones” in most corrections facilities are provided by a third party, and all calls routed through those phones go through the third party’s private phone system, which has an enormously-complex routing path to ensure that the inmate’s phone usage is properly accounted, and that the call is going to a number the prisoner is permitted to call (i.e. not the victim, or a judge, or the DA etc), and that the call isn’t being rerouted or conferenced in any way that would permit the prisoner to gain a connection to any of the aforementioned parties. I worked for a while with one of these corrections phone providers, and the system involved is really convoluted. When you factor in the cost of maintaining and improving the system, providing the on-site equipment (which is not cheap and which does get damaged), plus providing a cushion to cover litigation costs etc, and operating profit (most of which generally ends up getting plowed back in for expansion so they can increase their client base), the providers have a fairly hefty usage bill to pass along to the corrections facility even after the inmate’s “account” is deducted for their portion of the call.