The first round of comments are in for the FCC Proposed Rule Making 12-375 (The Wright Petition), and advocates from both sides of the issue have submitted letters and comments on the price of interstate calls from prison. Some cash-strapped states and facilities collect commissions from prison phone contracts. Texas, for instance, uses some of the money collected for a crime victims’ fund. Nationwide, states collect more than $150 million a year from prison phone […]
revenue
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A recent article on the website of the British newspaper The Guardian discusses the impact of the high cost of telephone calls from U.S. prisons. This issue has become more and more prominent, culminating in the recent bipartisan letter to the FCC calling on the Federal Communications Commission to stop phone companies from charging inmates what they call unreasonable and predatory rates to make phone calls. The Guardian article highlights the critical importance of telephone […]
The CDCR recently issued a bid for its inmate telephone services and made the installation of wireless managed access jamming systems in its prisons a requirement for the bidders. Global Tel*Link (GTL) has won that bid and will therefore be bearing the cost of installing these systems. Given the high cost of this selective jamming technology and GTL’s commitment not to raise the cost of calls for prisoners, either the CDCR is taking a much […]
This is an interesting opinion piece on the importance of adequate state prison funding and the impact of insufficient financial resources on prison safety, correctional officer morale and prisoner recidivism. As we have written before, prison administrators are constantly seeking new sources of prison funding and frequently it is prisoners and their families whom prisons turn to for new sources of revenue. Primarily through the imposition of fees and service charges. The article mentions one […]
Recent statistics show that, on average, a day in state prison costs nearly $80 Cash-strapped states have increasingly turned to user fees to fund their criminal justice systems, as well as to provide general budgetary support. States now charge defendants for everything from probation supervision, to jail stays, to the use of a constitutionally-required public defender. Every stage of the criminal justice process, it seems, has become ripe for a surcharge. These “user fees” differ […]