• FCC trying to break prison calling monopoly, lower rates for prisoners
    7 replies, posted
[QUOTE] [h=2]In the age of free phone calls and Skype, one group of people is still paying exorbitant rates for talk time: prisoners. The bill for a typical 15 minute state-to-state call tops $16 in some areas.[/h] That's because most prisons offer exclusive deals to phone service providers in exchange for astronomical commissions. The Federal Communications Commission labeled interstate inmate calling services (ICS) a government-sponsored "monopoly." The FCC wants it broken up. On Friday, the agency opened for public comment its [URL="http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-12-167A1.pdf"]proposed rules[/URL] to lower interstate prison phone call rates. Its plans include the establishment of an interstate rate benchmark, caps on rates and the end of exclusivity agreements. The fees providers pay to prisons add 43% on average to the cost of a call, the FCC estimated. As a result, prisoners pay far less for interstate calls in the small handful of states that do not charge commissions. New York, for instance, has banned commissions, and its average per-minute rates are as low as 5 cents per minute -- the lowest of all states' rates. Colorado's ICS, which does charge commissions to its payphone vendors, is the nation's most expensive, at 89 cents per minute. On top of per-minute rates, most ICS operators charge prisoners call-initiation fees, which vary from 50 cents to $3.95 per call. [URL="http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/27/news/dinosaur-smuggler/index.html?iid=HP_River"]Related story: Dinosaur smuggler faces 17 years in prison[/URL] Prison calling services differ from typical payphones in some crucial ways. They can block inmates from making calls to certain people, including judges or witnesses. They can't dial 800 or 900 numbers, and phone conversations can be monitored. If a prisoner is repeatedly making a call to the same number, for instance, corrections officers might listen in or record future calls. The systems also periodically notify the recipient that the call is being placed from a jail. All those features -- and the personnel needed to manage the systems -- make prison systems more costly to operate than regular payphones. But the wide disparity in ICS rates suggests that some operators are going overboard. Interstate calls make up only a small subset of phone calls from prisons, the FCC noted. They tend to be the most expensive, though, and any steps to reign in their costs would "be effective in helping lower the cost of contact between inmates and their families," the commission said in its report. That could end up saving federal and state governments money over time. A recent study from the Government Accountability Office found that contact with family "aids an inmate's success when returning to the community" and lowers the chances that a prisoner will end up back in jail. The FCC proposal comes more than a decade after a U.S. District Court dismissed a class action lawsuit initiated by Martha Wright of Washington, who claimed that [URL="http://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/12/16/fcc-hasn-ruled-effort-lower-cost-prison-phone-calls/A50nmJbl3eUZcX9yMI9fxO/story.html"]she paid $1,000 a year[/URL] to cover the costs of her grandson's phone calls from various state prisons. The judge in the case referred Wright to the FCC, which she contacted nine years ago. One FCC commissioner acknowledged the horrendous turnaround time, saying in a written statement that Wright "could not have expected to wait longer for action on her petition than it took the prison system to release her grandson." The public has 60 days to comment, and the commission has 90 days to respond. [URL="http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/28/technology/prison-phone-calls/index.html?iid=EL#TOP"] [IMG]http://i.cdn.turner.com/money/images/bug.gif[/IMG] [/URL] [/QUOTE] [URL]http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/28/technology/prison-phone-calls/index.html[/URL]
One of the best indicators of successful reentry after incarceration is whether or not a former prisoner has a social support network in place. Friends or family that actually care cannot be overvalued in that regard. However prisoners are often incarcerated many miles, and sometimes several STATES, away. This makes it hard for families and friends to visit and in many cases makes it flat out financially impossible for them to visit due to the socioeconomic status of those on the outside. So despite the data having shown for many years that social networking (the original meaning, not online) plays a pivotal role in reducing additional convictions, our justice system goes out of its way to destroy them through distance and charging ridiculous rates for simply staying in touch via the phone. Didn't expect this particular avenue of attack to be lead by the FCC, but I'm glad someone is doing something about it.
FCC is such a bro. Always actively looking for things to fix and fixing them.
[QUOTE=Elecbullet;39019864]FCC is such a bro. Always actively looking for things to fix and fixing them.[/QUOTE] They can be cunts
[QUOTE=The Article]The bill for a typical 15 minute state-to-state call tops $16 in some areas.[/QUOTE] That's robbery. I'm glad the FCC is trying to crack down on this. Honestly, the people that charge that much for a phone call are worse than *some* of the people they are holding.
The FCC is actually doing the job of the executive branch and checking and balancing the judicial We learned about this on the textbooks of old but I never thought it actually worked
The fcc doing something positive for once?
[img]http://www.boulderweekly.com/imgs/hed/art6675widea.jpg[/img] [quote]"These rates are killing me"[/quote]
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