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Prison phones are a predatory monopoly – One family fought back and won
- ndespres 10y agoThanks for sharing. I'm glad this is staying on our radar lately. There was another link discussed here recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648361) about how these exorbitant prison phone calls are being replaced with video calls- and ONLY video calls. In the linked article we have this quote: The alternative to high rates isn’t lower rates, the association has suggested — the alternative is that phone calls in jails will be done away with entirely. "Absent these commissions," association president Larry D. Amerson wrote in a comment to the FCC, "counties would need to either increase taxes for the system or jails could potentially cease to provide inmates with this service." So either continue to support this monopoly, or don't speak to or see your brother/cousin/mom in jail at all. Here in New Jersey where I live, as of yesterday you can no longer visit an inmate in a couple of our prisons, in person. Instead, you can pay Securus for a video connection to the inmate you'd like to speak with. I think if more people who were not directly connected to the System via a friend, family member, or personal experience were aware of what's going on, they would be appalled. Instead we conveniently pretend this stuff isn't happening. From the linked article: [Securus'] Smith defended his company’s profits on many of the same grounds other inmate phone companies do. The contracts, he says, are a source of funds for crucial corrections services like health care. "It’s really a public policy issue," Smith says. Securus also provides security services, recording calls sent through its system and intervening to break up any illegal plots that it detects. "We really feel like we perform kind of a noble service for society," he says. What he's not saying is that local municipalities can also get a kickback from the money paid to contact prisoners. So not only does it fund healthcare within the prison system (which of course are also increasingly privatized, so how much of that money do you think can be claimed as profit by the company running the prison), but to fix potholes etc in the local town.. on paper, at least. What I wish these stories left me with is what to do next. Who do I call, petition, or vote for to get this changed?
- nefitty 10y agoAssuming your network is as socially enlightened as you, I would try to figure out if this is happening in your state and contact local government officials about your concerns. Done in a group, it could be a fun social activity to go to a town hall meeting to voice your concerns in public. Afterwards, reward yourselves with a drink for getting out of the house to show your support for good government.
- hermannj314 10y agoOur local jail charges for personal visitation, you get 2 visits per week free but can pay a "nominal" fee to stream additional conversations over the Web. Let's just say that fee was ridiculous. I can't find the link for it was $30 for 15 minutes I think. As a former foster parent that was just trying to connect with the birth parents while they awaited trial, yeah those prices suck. But hey, who cares about people accused of crimes, right? That's the American way.
- Someone1234 10y agoSome jails have tried to eliminate all in-person visitation entirely and move to a system where you'd still have to physically go to a jail, but they'd use video streaming, and naturally charge you for the "service." Their stated reasoning is, drugs, or similar. Even though prisoners are already searched after the visitation, and guards are a common conduit for illegal drugs in jail. The whole criminal justify industry in the US is sick. Seriously needs a top to bottom shakeup.
- roywiggins 10y agoHonestly refusing in person visits by default should be outlawed on the grounds of being cruel and unusual punishment. But America loves to be cruel, so I doubt modern courts would establish a Constitutional right to in-person visitation. Too bad, because imho video-only visitation is a human rights abuse.
- maxerickson 10y agoLast year the Supreme Court affirmed a religious right to a beard: http://www.npr.org/2015/01/21/378774424/supreme-court-rules-on-2-prisoner-rights-cases http://www.npr.org/2015/01/21/378774424/supreme-court-rules-... (I searched for "supreme court prisoner rights") I'm not lampooning the religious right to a beard, I'm suggesting that the atmosphere in the courts may be better than you think.
- Retra 10y ago
- electic 10y agoI think this is a very unique article from a web design perspective. The counter on the left hand side, indicating the time you've been reading, and how much your charges would be if you spent that time on the phone is genius. It really hammers in the point of how unethical this practice is.
- skuunk1 10y agoTrue, except it was distracting to the point that I couldn't finish reading the article...
- rbobby 10y agoWhat a horrible thing to do to innocent American families. Bad enough their loved ones have fucked up mightily enough to be incarcerated but now the state gouges the hell out them just to talk to each other. This is not how a government should treat its people.
- Zigurd 10y agoThink what a thrashing, including calling out the founders and management, companies like uBeam and Theranos get here. Ghouls like prison telcos are 100X worse. Where do we get people who run these operations? Who are they and what makes them tick?
- ndespres 10y agoThey are part of a cycle of private wealth creation that includes, but is not limited to, the following elements: 1. Local politicians "save money" by outsourcing management of prisons in their districts to private companies 2. Contracts awarded for services within these systems have kickbacks which direct money for services back to the municipalities 3. States award contracts to build new prisons in towns, who are told that jobs will be created for their towns, plus the aforementioned kickbacks 4. Now that the prisons are built, they have to be filled. So the local police departments get to work arresting people to fill them up. Judges, lawyers, sherrif's departments, etc justify their own existences by meeting arrest quotas, being "tough on crime," etc., get promoted up their respective ladders until they're in positions of power to keep the cycle going.
- c3534l 10y agoWhy have we decided that the way to treat criminals is to systematically destroy their social support system for profit? This sounds like a terrible idea, and a direction that doesn't seem to be improving the American prison system in the least.
- _ak 10y agoIt's real-world capitalism thought through to the end. You can monetize any service to anyone, even more so when there is a lack of a proper free market in certain niches.
- cheez 10y agoYou're papering over "legalized monopoly" by using different words.
- TallGuyShort 10y agoA government-granted monopoly in a prison is not a free market by any stretch of the imagination.
- mapt 10y agohttps://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file769_25745.pdf https://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file769_25745...
- koolba 10y agoIf you give out monopolies, then this is what happens. Here's a simple idea to fix this: capitalism. Mandate at least two providers at each prison and let them charge whatever they want. Let them race to the bottom so you get the same cheap voip rates the rest of the country has access to. Oh and if they collude on pricing, throw the management in the same prison. I bet they'd also start competing on the features the prison cares about too. Like tracking who's calling who, speech to text transcripts, and service levels. Problem with this approach is that it doesn't allow for the cronyism that is ripe in this type of industry.
- deelowe 10y agoTwo wouldn't be enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly
- smnrchrds 10y agoNeither is three: https://i.imgur.com/NVsdNIE.png https://i.imgur.com/NVsdNIE.png https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/4e9yjw/competition_in_canada_a_comparison_of_canadian/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/4e9yjw/competition_...
- wrboyce 10y agoIt would seem that EU Regulators agree with this sentiment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36266924 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36266924
- wrboyce 10y agoThe linked article describes with a Duopoly is, but not why one would be a problem.
- dragonwriter 10y agoOligopolies (of which duopoly is the minimal example) produce largely the same problems as monopolies, for largely the same reason, once (formal or indirect through signalling) collusion is factored in; competition works when there are enough market participants that a colluding group that can sweep up the whole set of suppliers is impractical to maintain.
- jlafon 10y agoFirst of all, I'm not defending what is obviously predatory. However, there is more involved then what you might think at first glance. Right or wrong, correctional facilities have reasons to discourage phone calls (context: I put myself through college working at a maximum security prison). Calls are supposed to be monitored (usually done manually) to prevent criminal business from being done on prison phones - and there are never enough people to listen to all calls. There are never enough phones either, which frequently causes tension between inmates using phones and those waiting for them. In higher security levels phones are labor intensive. An officer has to escort a (potentially dangerous) person from their cell to the phone, and stand there for the duration of the call. And to the article's point, it's such a problem that prepaid phone cards are a form of currency on the inside.
- netcan 10y agoOf all the ways of limiting phone use, is this a good method. Why not just limit duration?
- Retra 10y agoIf you're going to permit phone calls at all, you need to allow enough duration to enable the reasons for allowing phone calls, and that's plenty enough time to orchestrate criminal activity.
- ceejayoz 10y ago> Calls are supposed to be monitored (usually done manually) to prevent criminal business from being done on prison phones - and there are never enough people to listen to all calls. At $1/minute sorts of rates, it should be possible to pay several people to listen to a call.
- x5n1 10y agoThis is because the people running the show have created a problem. Let business be done. Let all prisoners know all phone calls are recorded and may be monitored at any time. And record all of them. Then get a company that does this sort of thing to transcribe them all. Then do a search on all the text for keywords that might indicate problems or send the text to India to be read. That's it. The rest, well you know who they are calling, those are potential people to investigate... send those to the NSA or the police. Or just let illegal business be done. What's the worst that could happen. Lots of criminals outside of bars too. Also you could let the non-violent ones do whatever and only watch the violent ones. It just depends on whether or not you have a problem solving attitude or a problem creating one. It seems the prison industrial complex creates problems and then spends lots of money to solve them, money of prisoner's families who are already broke and belong to low income households.
- mason55 10y agoI shared an office with a guy who did a couple years for white collar crime. He got out and started a business that placed local voip numbers near prisons then patched the calls through to long distance numbers. He charged way less than the prisons were charging for long distance calls. He was making a ton of money last I talked to him.
- avs733 10y agoWhile I find the conversations in here interesting from an economics perspective they are not solutions to the real problem. This is not a function of cost between inmate, provider, and family alone. These phone systems have a real and tangible cost on society as a whole. An enormous body of research [1] showing that offenders with better/more familial contact while incarcerated have vastly lower recidivism rates. This is literally companies causing harm (and not just economic) harm to societies citizens at large. I respect jlafon's point of view but I can't agree. The fact that a system you create is difficult to adminster should not mean that the cost of dealing with it should be passed along to your 'customers' (gagging as I use that word). When a group of people chooses to put others in a position of limited power they have a responsibility to protect them from harm. Treating prisoners as a revenue stream at all is immoral and I believe unconstitutional. The argument that they should pay or do anything to contribute to their imprisonment is vapid and ugly. If we aren't willing to shoulder the burden of imprisoning them then we shouldn't do it. We absolutely should not be charging them or their families usury amounts of money to satisfy rules and situations we created. Letting prisoners use the phone is labor intensive? Why? because you created rules and a system where it is. To spin it as more complicated or containing 'reasons' is post hoc justification nonsense and should be treated as such. [1] Summarized here: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/apr/15/lowering-recidivism-through-family-communication/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/apr/15/lowering-re...
- superuser2 10y agoThe 13th Amendment goes out of its way to specify that slavery is permitted for convicts. I agree that it's immoral, but it's explicitly, unambiguously Constitutional.
- avs733 10y agoApologies for a delayed response...traveling and such...I understand the perspective from an absolute sense but I think there are three major problems with this analysis. 1) The system we are discussing more directly punishes the families of those convicted by crimes. That is manifestly unconstitutional on several levels including as it furthers not substantive government interest and restricts both the rights of non-prisoners and prisoners. [1a]. The courts have gone out of their way to uphold the rights of non-prisoners to communicate with prisoners [1b] which this effects. 2) Prisoners are already a protected class in research, specifically because they are not fully able to make uncoerced and voluntary decisions. The industry we are discussing is not beholden to the standards of IRB, but the prisons are still held to a minimal standard of duty of care. [e.g., 2] Allowing them to be monetized at the expense of all evidence of their rehabilitation, care, and well being would not seem to be a reasonable or sincere attempt to meet that standard. If not for 30 years of jurisprudence that treats prisoners as an annoyance 3) The slavery that the reading of the 13th amendment you reference is built around comes from the late 1800's. It referenced prison systems where the prisons were almost entirely self-sufficient based on inmate labor. [3] To use the language of the courts, prisoners were 'slaves of the state' in deference to their participation in this system. That does not mean they have entirely given up their rights [e.g., to free speech [1a,b]], but rather that they are significantly restricted. The prison phone scams and associated employment for private gain in prisons have nothing to do with slavery to the state so as to support the costs of the prison system. Rather this modern 13th amendment slavery to benefit private entities should be treated as unsettled (mostly because the courts defer in an almost unfathomable fashion to corrections departments) or a very troubling new reading of the 13th amendment. [1a] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/416/396/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/416/396/case.htm... [1b] http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=iplj http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=108... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_v._Brennan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_v._Brennan [3] https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=162920 https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=1629...
- Overtonwindow 10y agoIt's getting worse. Prisons are now forcing inmates and families to use video visitation, eliminating all in person visits. http://www.businessinsider.com/video-visitation-is-ending-in-person-prison-visits-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/video-visitation-is-ending-in...
- njloof 10y agoCan't we just let them have cell phones and let law enforcement tap them by getting a warrant?
- kingmanaz 10y agoSeems most of mankind's daily labors are inclined toward predatory monopoly these days; either creating their own or wage-slaving toward preserving another's. One laughs with today's comedians as they parody the manners of yesteryear, those musty, pinkies-out concepts of gentlemen and gentlewomen, that gullible faith in the golden rule, yet one's teeth are soon sent gnashing when those many insurances which buttress men's insolence are found to be effected by the same selfish, hard-hearted men as oneself. Rather than Thoreau's "quiet desperation", the masses instead seem bent toward lives of "clawing desperation".
- mynameisnoone 10y agoHillary (and other politicians on both sides, from local to federal) get a ton of for-profit prison money. No wonder. EDIT: VICE did a piece in 2014 on people getting locked up because they could not pay their parole fees. Yes, debtors' prison, where parolees pay (or not) for the privilege of freedom. https://news.vice.com/article/debtors-prisons-are-taking-the-us-back-to-the-19th-century https://news.vice.com/article/debtors-prisons-are-taking-the...
- venomsnake 10y agoIs there a good reason prisoners not to have 24/7 internet access and phones for free. Even if monitored. Hell - give them a free WoW or LoL accounts and they may forget to come out of prison once their term is over.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- martin1975 10y agosomething about "prison" and "winning" used in the same sentence had me immediately peg this article as TLDR...