By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
We previously featured an article on how the practice of private organizations charging predatory tolls on inmate telephone calls. Now, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), a regulatory agency of the U.S. Government, voted to enact guidelines limiting these tolls to be more in-line with reasonable costs that the agency believes will balance inmate needs with legitimate rates of return required by carriers to remain viable in their business venture.
The ruling by the FCC should come not only as welcome news to inmates, their friends and families, but it will also provide a means of comfort for most inmates and might to a limited degree also lead to lower problems affecting staff caused by inmate misbehavior.
In my previous article I wrote that the matter that has been for years a hot button issue is how telephone service vendors have entered into contract with prisons and jails in the various states. County jails and state prisons were enticed on the promise of lowering costs to the government agency in exchange for having the liberty to place the burden of the cost onto inmates and those electing to make calls.
Over the years several vendors have clearly taken advantage of the system, and callers who have no other choices if they wish to speak with their attorney, family, or friends.
I opined that fines, losses of freedom, and such should be levied by the courts with regard to prisoners. It is likely that having somewhat of a shield to allow such burdensome telephone charges, specifically in that the public and politicians mostly do not care about prisoners paying high fees since they deserve whatever punishment they get regardless of form, that it actually may have fostered an environment leading to an opportunity to extract as much money as possible by telephone vendors–with little oversight or attention.
Now, the rules have changed for what most consider better. Exploitation will no longer be manifest in inmate telephony. Here is an excerpt from the Federal Communication Commission’s press release:
(October 22, 2015) – Acting on its mandate to ensure that rates for phone calls are just, reasonable and fair for all Americans, the Federal Communications Commission today took further steps to rein in the excessive rates and egregious fees on phone calls paid by some of society’s most vulnerable: people trying to stay in touch with loved ones serving time in jail or prison.
With the cost of a call sometimes ballooning to $14 per minute once inside prison walls, the FCC for the first time capped rates for local and in-state long-distance inmate calling, and cut its existing cap on interstate long-distance calls by up to 50 percent.
At the same time, the FCC closed loopholes by barring most add-on fees imposed by inmate calling service (ICS) providers, and set strict limits on the few fees that remain. Extra fees and charges can increase the cost of families staying in touch by phone with loved ones who are incarcerated by as much as 40%.
While contact between inmates and their loved ones has been shown to reduce the rate of recidivism, high inmate calling rates have made that contact unaffordable for many families, who often live in poverty. Reducing the cost of these calls measurably increases the amount of contact between inmates and their loved ones, making an important contribution to the criminal justice reforms sweeping the nation.
Today’s action builds on reforms begun by the FCC in 2013, when it acted on a petition by Martha Wright, a grandmother from Washington, D.C., for relief from the exorbitant rates she was paying to call her grandson in prison. These reforms set an interim cap of 21 cents per minute on interstate debit and prepaid calls, required ICS providers to file cost data. In October 2014, the FCC sought comment on the data and proposed to reform all inmate calling rates and fees.
The Order adopted by the Commission today acts on that data by lowering the cap to 11 cents per minute for all local and long distance calls from state and federal prisons, while providing tiered rates for jails to account for the higher costs of serving jails and smaller institutions.
The new caps fully cover the enhanced security requirements of inmate calling, while allowing providers a reasonable return.
The full text of the press release, including some basic tolling guidelines, may be read HERE. (PDF)
By Darren Smith
Source:
Federal Communications Commission
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
nope.
Good news. Thank you for the article, Darren. I did not know about this practice.
Shining the light of public scrutiny has a disinfecting effect.
@inalienableWrights, respectfully, I disagree. These are not large corporations contracted to provide this service, it’s generally much smaller businesses – probably qualifying under the government category of “Small Business.”
I also think you’re defining monopolies differently than most people. The fact that the government awarded a contract to Wonderer Telecom (and no, I’m not in that business) doesn’t mean that WT has a monopoly. It’s just the only company the government is allowing to provide that service at that particular site. In that sense, the government is just like any other organization that exerts control over a site. As a consumer, you can’t get Pepsi at every restaurant because the restaurant has contracted with Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola doesn’t have a monopoly, they bid for the business and won.
Same with these small telecom service providers. The government issued a Request for Bids (or Proposals) and one or more respondents submitted theirs. The government chose one as the service provider – in the cited cases, it was companies that offered fees back to the government (which I find appalling, but that’s another issue). In this case, the service falls under the regulatory purview of the FCC, which can exert control and limits on retail pricing. The government can’t depress retail pricing below the point where the provider is losing money – that might become a taking, because meanwhile, the service provider is obligated by contract to continue the service.
I read Ayn Rand and then I laughed.
The free market is just a fiction of propaganda. I read Von Mises and yawned. I read Hayek and fell asleep. I read Ayn Rand and I dreamed. Then I woke up.
What the heck does ANY of that have to do with my points John? Can’t you do better than a non sequitur?
wonderer said:
“@jackW and @inalienablewrights, the reason for the FCC looking to ensure a reasonable rate of return is that they’re taking over pricing. If the government is dictating the price of something, they have ensure the price they set isn’t going to put the vendor out of business. Same principle as a utility. Government sets the rates, but allows the provider a reasonable rate of return. We could argue all day on what’s “reasonable” or how hard the provider should have to work (cost-cutting, efficiencies, etc.) to achieve it, but that’s the principle of a regulated market.”
wonderer to create and mange monopolies is not the job of the government. And if one pays attention the reality of it is almost always that the large corporations are controlling all of the various agencies that are supposed to “regulate” them and using them to maximize their profits. If you are not aware that this is happening, you simply are not paying attention.
BarkinDog said:
“If America killed more convicted persons instead of locking them up it would deter others from committing similar crimes. Also a quid pro quo punishment would make them think twice. If they steal then cut off their hands. If they snort coke then cut off their noses. If they rape then cut off…”
BarkingDog the population that undergoes the most most stringent tests for conviction, the ones that you would think that we are 100% sure that they are guilty, are the ones on death row.
Well DNA tests have shown that about 1/3 of the people on death row are innocent. That tells us that those convicted of lesser crimes, are even more likely than that to be innocent. Do you want to play God, and kill people when you are going to be killing an innocent person at least 1 out of 3 times?
It has also been proven that the death penalty is not a deterrent. They found out in England in the Victorian age, that when you do something stupid like making stealing bread a capital crime, that your bread thieves not only continued to steal bread, but that they would kill people in order not to be caught. These laws did not act as a deterrent, in fact they resulted in more murders.
What we need to do for starters is to get rid of about 90% of the laws that we have as they make things that
are not crimes into crimes. We need to get rid of the laws that violate peoples rights rather than protecting them. We also need to get rid of the many ambiguously worded laws that can used on just about anyone because no one knows what they mean. That there would cut our prison population in half.
Then we should learn from science and other nations and begin to treat our prisoners like human beings, so that they act like one when they are released. Our current system does little other than steal huge amounts of money from the tax payer, and turn out bitter people that are just as likely to commit another crime. That is far from the case in places like Iceland, where they have a criminal justice system that really works compared to ours.
@jackW and @inalienablewrights, the reason for the FCC looking to ensure a reasonable rate of return is that they’re taking over pricing. If the government is dictating the price of something, they have ensure the price they set isn’t going to put the vendor out of business. Same principle as a utility. Government sets the rates, but allows the provider a reasonable rate of return. We could argue all day on what’s “reasonable” or how hard the provider should have to work (cost-cutting, efficiencies, etc.) to achieve it, but that’s the principle of a regulated market.
If they are too civil then cut off their civility code.
If America killed more convicted persons instead of locking them up it would deter others from committing similar crimes. Also a quid pro quo punishment would make them think twice. If they steal then cut off their hands. If they snort coke then cut off their noses. If they rape then cut off….
This is another result of the dysfunctional approach America has to dealing with those who don’t fit in. The cost to society as well as to the victims of this mindless, ‘lock em up’ approach is many, many, many times more than necessary and as has been proved by those societies that intervene earlier and through efforts to interrupt and change behavior rather than to wait for the failure of the individual and society to collide.
Regardless of one’s theories, ideologies, morals, or whatnot, we pay more, suffer more, and create more misery with our approach. A free market system cannot govern itself and strict ideological approaches never produce a superior society. Common sense illustrates that there is a woeful lack of intelligence in our justice system.
“Legitimate rates of return?” No one worries if I achieve that in my business or props me up to do so. No one allows me to set rates to achieve this. The way these companies are able to make such analyses and charge accordingly is socializing the costs and privatizing the profits, again, still.
Spot on JackW! The free market is the solution here, as it is everywhere.
InalienableWrights – landline phone companies fall under the FCC. If you want a free market, then the prison would have to allow cell phones. Each is allowed to charge for its equipment. You have to remember that a lot of prisons record the calls of their prisoners. They could not do this with cells. Now the question will be, who pays for the recording equipment?
You know that Coke machine in your kid’s school? The price on the products is set by the administration, not by the vendor. The ‘profit’ is used for various things at the school. If the markup is low, the profit is used to pay for the coffee in the teachers lounge. 🙂
Paul C. Schulte said:
“InalienableWrights – landline phone companies fall under the FCC. If you want a free market, then the prison would have to allow cell phones. Each is allowed to charge for its equipment. You have to remember that a lot of prisons record the calls of their prisoners. They could not do this with cells. Now the question will be, who pays for the recording equipment?
You know that Coke machine in your kid’s school? The price on the products is set by the administration, not by the vendor. The ‘profit’ is used for various things at the school. If the markup is low, the profit is used to pay for the coffee in the teachers lounge. 🙂 ”
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Paul neither of your examples are examples of the free market. For starters the free market does not exist anywhere in the US that I am aware of. I was only referring to a less regulated market than one that the prison officials have created. In that market (that is not free) one can get a phone either land line or cell for about $35 a month.
It is child’s play and not very costly to record conversations Paul. Don’t forget the NSA records all phone calls made in this country and you pay for it in your phone bill.
Who would pay for it? LOL That is implied in the words the free market. It is only in a socialist system that you make other people pay for other peoples actions. They would pay for it just as you pay for the NSA recording your phone calls.
I really think that in a humane and corruption free world though Paul that prisons would not cost us $50,000 a year to imprison someone, and that half of the prisoners that do not belong in jail would not be there. So getting rid of half of the prisoners, bringing down the housing costs to about half of what we are being charged today, that $35 per prisoner for a phone would be looked upon the same way as having to provide them food, water, toilets, heat, and electric.
**** Instead Paul, we the tax payers are jacked for like $50,000 per prisoner and then private corporations run business’s that pay the prisoners 25 cents an hour. Those profits are not used to offset the costs to the taxpayer they go right into the pocket of huge corporations. With that said why the fuk are we bickering over $35. This is just a red herring used for divide and conquer like most news is.
The big problem in our country is that we are a nation of dumbed down know nothings, compared to say the people of 200 years ago. Dumbed down know nothings have a real hard time identifying problems much less solving them.
Yes I am aware of the stealing that goes on in schools. I am also aware of the historical roots of our schools, they were started in large part due to the efforts of globalists such as Rockefeller and Carnegie, and that they are funded by a theft called the property tax.
This sums up my view of the government schools:
Good topic. I had seen an article on Google earlier today. Good article by Darren on this topic. And very good comments above. Prison reform gets some good discussion on Sentencing Law and Policy blog. I think some of you will enjoy that blog as well.
This is a very good first step.
Now let’s do away with private prisons, private fine-collection agencies, unaffordable bail and the general cost shifting of municipal revenue onto the poor and working class.
Justice should not be done in steps! Principle should always be the underlying guideline and principle says that no one should be getting raped on their communications cost when they are at the mercy of the powers that be.
I would be that if I thoroughly examined this fairer policy, that I would find it extremely unacceptable. There is not reason for these calls to cost more than they would in the free market, and that is unlimited calling for around $35 a month.
Yes, this is long past due. They literally steal from people and families they call for help.
When is the criminal FCC going to take the same action for the victims of “predatory pricing” in mental institutions? And I am sure that there are places that I am missing.
Now it is long past time to end private prisons. They are a cancer and only give politicians a chance to do as boss Tweed said, and get some honest graft.
Glad to hear it. About time!!!!
Please stop sending me emails I really don’t care about the stuff you send me.
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