The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), in a recent FCC filing for Docket No. 12-375 (Inmate Calling Services), made the case that jails should be compensated for the costs they incur to allow inmate calling service (ICS). The FCC, in its Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (SFNPRM), proposed the elimination of the payment of site commissions as a category to correctional facilities, including jails.

On January 12, 2015, NSA’s submitted a cost survey to the FCC which provided information on the cost to Sheriffs to provide security and administrative functions necessary to allow ICS in jails. Sheriffs operating jails in 23 states and the District of Columbia reported the number of hours per week officers, supervisors and other employees spent on monitoring/security duties and administrative duties in connection with ICS and the annual compensation for the officers and employees engaged in these duties.

With respect to monitoring/security duties, the Sheriffs reported time spent on call monitoring, responding to ICS system alerts, responding to law enforcement requests for records/recordings, call recording analysis, enrolling inmates for voice biometrics, and other duties.

With respect to administrative duties, the Sheriffs reported time spent on system administration, answering questions from the public, answering questions from inmates, blocking/unblocking numbers, providing escorts for phone repairs, educating inmates on the use of ICS and other duties.

Sheriffs also were asked to provide the most recent three months of data from ICS providers concerning the total minutes of use for the facility for each month. From this data, the per minute cost for each facility was calculated.

The NSA cost survey provides the inputs for a sampling of jails of all sizes for the hours spent on ICS related duties, the salaries and benefits for the officers and employees performing the ICS-related duties and the number of ICS minutes for the jails.

This input data was then used to calculate a per minute cost to perform the duties associated with ICS for each jail. Excluding the highest cost jails (any result over $1.00), which might reasonably be considered outliers, the average per minute cost for jails by average daily population (ADP):

• $0.409 for jails with 1-99 ADP
• $0.209 for jails with 100-349 ADP
• $0.088 for jails with 350-999 ADP
• $0.059 for jails with 1000-2499 ADP

(NSA’s survey includes only one facility with ADP of 2500 or more, with a per minute compensation amount of approximately $0.007.)

However, after taking into account similar analysis conducted by Pay-Tel, CenturyLink, Praeses, Global Tel*Link, it proposes the following commission rates:

ADP                                     Per Minute Compensation

1-349                                         $0.09-$0.11

350-2,499                                  $0.05-$0.08

?2,500                                       $0.01-$0.02

The NSA concludes its analysis by stating that facility costs should be recovered via a per minute amount added to the per minute ICS rate and that if Sheriffs do not receive compensation, they would have the incentive to reduce the amount of unrecoverable cost by reducing access to ICS.

The NSA further states, “Unlike food, shelter and healthcare, there is no obligation on the public at large to pay for inmate calling services. Some argue, and the Commission has found, that the public benefits from ICS because it keeps children in touch with incarcerated parents and reduces recidivism, which reduces the costs to our justice and prison systems. Even if this is true, it does not change the fact that the Communications Act and Commission precedent establish that costs incurred in connection with a service should be recovered from the cost causer. Nor does it change the fact that the Commission has no authority under the Communications Act to mandate the recovery of cost from general taxpayers. It also does not change the fact that in most cases ICS is a discretionary service and that Sheriffs have wide latitude in determining the extent of ICS calling that will be allowed.”

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An interesting article about the challenges of newly booked prisoners using the prison pay phones in county jails. As stated in the article, the inablity to make collect calls to cell phones, “strikes people strange that, in this technologically advanced and cellphone-reliant age, there is no easy way to make a collect call to a cellphone, particularly as the number of people without a land line increases. According to a 2010 Centers for Disease Control report, 25 percent of U.S. households don’t even have a land line.”

At meshDETECT, we have developed a solution to this problem that provides new detainees a prepaid account and telephone access at the time of intake. Please contact us to find out more about this innovative solution.

Where was Stephen Petrick? That was the question among his friends in mid-November after the 67-year-old retiree suddenly disappeared.

At the time, no one knew that he had been trying to help a pregnant woman kick a nasty heroin habit by locking her inside his Santa Monica home so she couldn’t buy drugs, or that she had tried to flee and things turned ugly fast, ending with the cops arresting Petrick on a charge of false imprisonment.

Not one of Petrick’s friends had an inkling that Petrick was stuck inside the Los Angeles County jail system — for five long nights — unable to contact them or a bondsman because of the phone setup inmates are forced to use.

“You supposedly have the right to bail,” Petrick says, “but it was effectively denied by the way the phone system works. It should be criminal.”

Petrick says he was arrested in Santa Monica, where he was fingerprinted and booked at the city jail. When he asked to make a phone call, officers told him he had to wait until he was transferred to the L.A. County jail later that day.

At the county jail, Petrick says, he told the deputies that he had high blood pressure and diabetes, so he was placed in a medical unit. He describes it as a large room with 20 to 30 inmates, a few narrow, stainless-steel benches and two or three telephones.

Immediately, Petrick says, he walked up to one of the old-fashioned-looking pay phones, a big black box with patches of chrome but absent a coin slot. Petrick lifted the receiver and placed it to his ear, listening to the automated voice tell him he’d be making a collect call and that it may be recorded or monitored.

Petrick reached out to dial a number. He paused.

Like many people, Petrick had come to rely on his cellphone. He wasn’t as good as he used to be about memorizing phone numbers. Excitedly, he recalled one person’s cell number and dialed it.

His elation, however, quickly turned to anxious frustration as the automated voice told Petrick that he could not place a collect call to a cellular phone. He could only call out to a land line. Trouble was, he hadn’t memorized any land-line numbers.

Hell, he hardly even knew anyone with a land line anymore.

“I realized right away that I had a problem,” Petrick says.

Next, Petrick says, he looked around for a phone book or a posted list of bond agencies so he could arrange to pay bail. The bond was $150,000, an amount Petrick says he had no problem paying. But he needed to call someone on the outside to help.

Unfortunately, he says, he could not find a list of phone numbers for bail bondsmen. When he asked a deputy for help, Petrick says, the deputy was resolutely unhelpful, telling him, “That’s your problem. If we gave you the number, that would be showing partiality.”

After spending a few sleepless nights in the large room filled with other inmates, Petrick says, he was moved to a more permanent cell with access to a common room containing phones. Doubting they would be any different, Petrick tried once again to place a call. But the results were the same. No collect calls to cellphones. No phone list of bail bonds agencies.

Petrick says he was not able to arrange bail until after he had his first court appearance — four days after his arrest.

“There was no way in hell for me to call anyone or to get a bondsman’s number,” he says. “The phones in there effectively denied me the right to make bail, and I don’t know if many people know about this.”

Jeff Stanley, owner of Bad Boys Bail Bonds, one of the largest bond companies in California, with offices from San Jose to San Diego, says the phone situation at L.A. County jail is one of the worst in the state.

“The individuals in custody are held hostage to this phone system that they have to use to talk to an attorney or a bondsman — something they have the legal right to do,” Stanley says. “I truly believe that it’s a violation of their civil rights, because everyone has a right to bail, and this is interfering with that right.”

Says Esther Lim, the jails monitor for the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the few people actually allowed inside the notoriously restricted facility, “I didn’t see a listing of bail-bonds companies near any of the phones I’ve looked at. I have seen listings by the phones for your ambassador if you’re not a U.S. national, but nothing for bail bonds. It’s ridiculous.”

Nicole Nishida, spokeswoman for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, confirms there are no phone numbers provided for bail bondsmen near phones to which inmates have access.

“And we have no plans of doing it in the future,” she says.

Nishida calls the problem a “vending issue” that would have to be resolved by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. She says it boils down to fairness: making sure the Sheriff’s Department does not display favoritism toward any particular bail bonds businesses.

Officials in other counties, however, say they’re having no such problem and have found easy ways to provide phone numbers to everybody in jail.

An Orange County jail spokeswoman, for example, says that a list of bond companies, with phone numbers, is posted in both the booking area and in the common rooms used by inmates. She says the bond agencies must contact a company that contracts with the county, and they pay to get on the list that goes inside the jail.

In San Diego County, the Sheriff’s Department used to provide inmates with the Yellow Pages but recently replaced the bulky phone book with an alphabetical listing of bail bonds companies provided to the jail by a local association of bail agencies.

“L.A. County does not post a list,” says bondsman Stanley, “and I have no idea why. L.A. County marches to its own beat.”

In addition, it strikes people such as Stanley, Lim and Petrick as strange that, in this technologically advanced and cellphone-reliant age, there is no easy way to make a collect call to a cellphone, particularly as the number of people without a land line increases. According to a 2010 Centers for Disease Control report, 25 percent of U.S. households don’t even have a land line.

Stanley’s is one of them.

“Many families like myself don’t have a land line,” he says, “and I think it’s about time they moved into the 21st century.”

Dorothy Cukier of Global Tel Link, a company that specializes in prison phones and operates the system in L.A. County, told the Weekly via email that collect calls in general — whether they originate from a jail or not — are limited to land lines. The company is allowed to jump in when inmates call a cellphone, offering the recipient of the call a chance to sign up for a service, AdvancePay, which lets calls to cellphones go through, by using a credit card. Another option, Cukier says, is for inmates to put money into an inmate debit account, out of which they can pay to call a phone that does not ordinarily accept collect calls.

Petrick says he was never offered an inmate debit account and has no idea whether a Global Tel Link agent jumped in to ask the friend Petrick had called if he’d accept the charge. All Petrick knows is that he couldn’t get through to his friend.

Two months after Petrick finally arranged bail and got out of jail, he settled his criminal case, which prosecutors apparently agreed wasn’t as serious as the initial charges implied. He pled guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment. He received three years of probation and, ironically, credit for time served for his five nights missing in the jail system.

As for the future, Petrick says, “The first thing I’m going to do is carry a bail bondsman’s number with me at all times and memorize it in case there’s some fluke and I get in trouble again. I don’t want to ever get stuck in jail like that again. It was a nightmare.”

Source

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An update on the progress of a proposed law in Michigan to add tougher penalties to the law prohibiting contraband cell phone use by prisoners. The article states, “Roesler said the main concern with inmates possessing a cellphone has more to do with security than the inmate being able to call out of the jail. With the cell phones now, they act as cameras and computers as a way to communicate and receive information. They can receive intelligence information and take pictures of corrections officers and witnesses. It could be a major security breach.”

Contraband cell phone use can be reduced by offering an alternative such as the meshDETECT secure prison cell phone solution. These phones have no cameras or internet access.

Two proposed bills — worked on by Muskegon County’s sheriff and state senator, and which would raise the penalties for possession and use of cellphones by inmates — is working its way through the Legislature.

The bills would amend current law to prohibit state prisoners and county jail inmates from possessing a cellphone and prohibit anyone from furnishing them with a cellphone.

Under the bills, violators of the ban would face a felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison, a maximum fine of $1,000 or both. Currently, inmates found in possession of cellphones face confiscation of the devices and losses of privileges.

The legislation currently is before the House Judiciary Committee. The state Senate passed the bills, Senate Bills No. 551 and No. 552, on votes of 34-3 in September, sending them to the House.

Muskegon County Sheriff Dean Roesler and state Sen. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, collaborated on the proposed legislation. Hansen is the primary sponsor of the bills.

Roesler said the main concern with inmates possessing a cellphone has more to do with security than the inmate being able to call out of the jail.

“With the cell phones now, they act as cameras and computers as a way to communicate and receive information,” Roesler said. “They can receive intelligence information and take pictures of corrections officers and witnesses. It could be a major security breach.”

Hansen called cellphone use by inmates and prisoners “a real safety concern.”

“They could call witnesses outside the jail or prison, coordinate a guard’s movements,” Hansen said. “There could be some real danger.”

The language of the proposed legislation prohibits use by inmates and prisoners of all wireless communication devices.

In addition, the proposed legislation calls for cellphones and other devices confiscated as contraband to be donated to Cell Phones For Soldiers Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing deployed and returning troops cost-free methods to communicate with family while serving in the U.S. military.

Roesler said he was pleased to learn the bills passed the Senate and anticipated the potential benefits of the proposed changes to the law.

Currently, “an inmate bringing or possessing a cellphone in the jail would only have administrative sanctions, a loss of privileges, like TV or trustee status,” he said, pointing to the criminal charges proposed with the legislation being considered.

Hansen said he will push for the bills’ consideration by the state House.

“We’ll keep working on it because it’s common sense,” Hansen said. “What do you do if you’re in the sheriff’s position, because you don’t have any punishment.”

Source

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