Low rates of vaccine uptake among correctional staff make it clear that withholding the vaccine from people who are locked up -- or offering it only to a small fraction of the prison population -- is senseless.
Correctional staff in most states have been eligible for COVID-19 vaccination for months, prioritized ahead of many other groups because of the key role staff play in introducing the virus into prisons and jails and then bringing it back out to surrounding communities. Against the recommendations of medical experts, many states chose to vaccinate correctional staff before incarcerated people, often claiming that staff would serve as a barrier against the virus entering prisons and infecting people who are locked up. Now it’s becoming clearer than ever that this policy choice was a gigantic mistake: New data suggests that most prison staff have refused to be vaccinated, leaving vast numbers of incarcerated people — who have been denied the choice to protect themselves — at unnecessary risk.
We compiled data from the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, The Marshall Project/AP, and other sources,1 and calculated the current rate of staff immunizations in 36 states and the Bureau of Prisons. We found that across these jurisdictions, the median vaccination rate — i.e. the percentage of staff who had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose — was only 48%. The numbers are even more disturbing in states like Michigan and Alabama, where just over 10% of staff have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Figure 1.Data compiled from the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, The Marshall Project, and several state-specific data sources (see footnote 1). See the appendix to this article for a table with details about all 37 prison systems for which we gathered data.
This data confirms what we’ve learned anecdotally over the past few months through local news reporting. For example:
In Colorado, vaccine uptake among correctional staff has been so poor that the state is now offering staffers $500 each to get the vaccine.
The Marshall Projectreported in mid-March that “In Massachusetts, more than half the people employed by the Department of Correction declined to be immunized. A statewide survey in California showed that half of all correctional employees will wait to be vaccinated. In Rhode Island, 30% of prison staff have refused the vaccine, a higher rate than the incarcerated, according to the state’s Department of Corrections. And in Iowa, early polling among employees showed a little more than half the staff said they’d get vaccinated.”
These low rates of vaccine uptake among correctional staff make it clear that withholding the vaccine from people who are locked up — or offering it only to a small fraction of the prison population — is senseless. No policymaker in any state should assume there is a firewall of vaccinated staffers protecting incarcerated people from the coronavirus.
Especially as the U.S. experiences a potentially disastrous “fourth surge” of the pandemic, it remains urgently necessary to:
Offer the vaccine to all incarcerated people — now. As we’ve discussed before, incarcerated people are much more likely to contract and die from the coronavirus, because outbreaks behind bars are common and a disproportionate number of incarcerated people have chronic medical problems that make the virus more deadly. (In many of the states we researched, officials and journalists have noted that incarcerated populations have had much higher uptake rates than staff.)
Depopulate prisons and jails. The coronavirus thrives in dense environments, so releasing people is still the best way to stop outbreaks behind bars — and as long as staff and incarcerated people aren’t vaccinated, outbreaks are certain to continue. States should be considering the most medically vulnerable incarcerated people first, and not excluding people automatically based on whether they committed a violent crime (we’ve written at length about the perils of leaving behind whole categories of incarcerated people). Unfortunately, prison releases have been very sparse so far.
As the new data shows, it’s simply not true that “offering” the vaccine to correctional officers amounts to protecting incarcerated people or the public from the rapid spread of the virus in correctional facilities. What states must do is make the vaccine truly accessible to both corrections staff and people who are locked up, and immediately begin increasing prison releases through commutations, good time credits, and expansions of parole. As long as states ignore and neglect incarcerated people, there will be no end in sight to the pandemic in prisons and jails.
Update April 23, 2021: The percentage of North Carolina Dept. of Public Safety staff who had received at least one dose of a vaccine as of April 20, 2021 was erroneously reported in an earlier version of this article as 85%. That calculation was based on the number of correctional staff (7,774) as reported by The Marshall Project/AP, but the Dept. of Public Safety clarified that the staff vaccination counts include all DPS employees, not just correctional staff. All related calculations (e.g. the total reported in the appendix) have been updated as well to reflect the corrected data.
Update June 21, 2021: The percentage of Virginia Dept. of Corrections (DOC) staff who had received at least one dose of a vaccine as of April 20, 2021 was originally reported as 72%. That calculation was based on the number of correctional staff (8,895) as reported by The Marshall Project/AP, but the DOC clarified in an email that our denominator (the number of correctional staff) may not be correct, although they did not provide the correct number of staff. They did, however, report that as of June 4, 2021, only 57% of staff had received at least one dose of a vaccine. Without the details of the number of staff and number receiving a first dose, we are unable to update the other calculations in this analysis (e.g. the total reported in the appendix).
Footnotes
Source notes: In addition to the UCLA and The Marshall Project/AP data sets, we sought staff vaccination data from state Department of Corrections websites, news articles, and in one case, the Covid Prison Project’s media-sourced data set. Our vaccination rate calculations are based on total staff numbers, most of which come from The Marshall Project/AP data set; other sources are noted in the appendix table. The types of employees included in the total staff counts vary by state, and those details were not always clear in the data set. Data from UCLA, The Marshall Project/AP, and state Department of Corrections websites were accessed on April 20, 2021.
It’s important to note that states do not report vaccination data consistently, so we made every effort to avoid double-counting staff and overestimating vaccination rates. Specifically, we typically defined staff receiving “at least one dose” of a vaccine as those who were reported as “partially” vaccinated, or having “initiated” vaccination or “received first dose.” This is because many states record vaccinated staff members twice – once when a two-dose vaccine schedule is started and once when it’s completed; those receiving the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine may be included in both categories as well (as a “first dose” and as “completed”). In states where the available data suggested a different definition, we have noted those differences in “notes/clarifications” in the appendix table. ↩
Appendix
Prison system
Number of staff who have received at least one dose
Total number of staff
Percentage of staff who have received at least one dose
Source for staff vaccination counts
Source for total staff count
Notes/Clarifications
Alabama
824
6,259
13%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP
Arkansas
1,421
4,045
35%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP
California
27,758
46,000
60%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
Colorado
2,972
6,267
47%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
Connecticut
2,697
6,170
44%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
Delaware
1,268
2,530
50.1%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
Idaho
567
1,999
28%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP
In addition to the 224 staff vaccinated at the department, an additional 343 self-disclosed they received both doses from outside providers.
We used the staff number from the DOC because the number of vaccinated employees was described as those “who work in Louisiana’s state prisons” (not all DOC employees).
Included in our calculation of the number of staff who received at least one dose are 1,091 who received the J&J vaccine, 743 who received a first dose from the MDOC, 485 who “completed external [outside of the MDOC] vaccination process,” and 123 who “started external vaccination process.” Because the number that “started” an external vaccination process is much smaller than the number that have completed it, we assumed that the 123 who “started” were not also included in the “completed” group, as is the case in other data sets.
While the source for the COVID Prison Project data is unavailable, its data seems to be corroborated by an April 6 MDOC Employee newsletter, which states, “Thousands of … team members have been vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.”
Specifically, the NDOC update reports “1,230 – first dose, 822- second dose.” Because it is unclear whether those who received second doses are also counted among those who have received a first dose, as is true in other data sets, we used the first dose counts to avoid double-counting.
N.C. Dept. of Public Safety, via email (4/23/21). This includes all DPS employees, not just correctional officers.
We included both “partially” and “fully” vaccinated staff because the number of “fully” vaccinated staff was much greater than the number “partially” vaccinated, suggesting that unlike other data sources, the “fully” vaccinated staff are not double-counted in the NCDOC’s “partially” vaccinated staff counts.
Ohio
7,057
12,192
58%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP
Pennsylvania
3,094
15,073
21%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
Rhode Island
927
1,339
69%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP
Tennessee
3,247
5,179
63%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
Texas
11,893
36,073
33%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP
Vermont
467
1,001
47%
The Marshall Project/AP
The Marshall Project/AP (does not include health care workers, who are contractors).
Virginia
6,416
8,895
72%
UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
The Marshall Project/AP
See update of June 21, 2021 in the text above. The VA DOC reported that as of June 4, 2021, only 57% of staff had received at least one dose of a vaccine; further details were not provided.
According to a Patch.com article (3/16/21), correctional staff were only eligible for vaccination starting March 17, which was much later than many other states.
Specifically, the DCR reports 1,914 first doses and 1,774 second doses administered to 3,687 employees (including contract staff). We used the count for first doses to avoid double-counting those who have received second doses, because it was unclear in the data whether these are mutually exclusive groups.
The Marshall Project/AP report a much smaller DOC staff number (4,640), but it varied so dramatically from the WDOC number that we decided to use the count from the dashboard.
We are excited to welcome Naila Awan, who will serve as the first-ever Director of Advocacy at the Prison Policy Initiative. Naila is a civil and human rights lawyer with years of experience collaborating with, supporting, and representing Black- and Brown-led grassroots organizations in policy reform and litigation efforts. Prior to joining Prison Policy Initiative, Naila worked for multiple civil rights organizations and served on the legislative staff for Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin.
Most recently, Naila served as Senior Counsel at Dēmos, where her work centered on combating voter suppression and expanding access to the ballot for traditionally marginalized communities. In this role, she led a cross-functional project to end the disenfranchisement people experience when then come into contact with the criminal legal system, testified before Congress, and served as counsel in A. Philip Randolph Institute v. Husted, a U.S. Supreme Court case challenging Ohio’s voter purge practices, and Mays v. LaRose, a class action seeking to expand access to the ballot for voters detained in jail. She also co-authored Enfranchisement for All: The Case for Ending Penal Disenfranchisement in Our Democracy and How to End De Facto Disenfranchisement in the Criminal Justice System.
Naila holds a L.L.M in International Studies from the New York University School of Law, a J.D from the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, and a B.A from Miami University of Ohio.
We are excited to welcome our new Communications Director Mike Wessler. Mike has more than a decade of experience helping campaigns, political parties, nonprofit organizations and elected officials accomplish their goals through strategic communication. Mike has done communications work at the Massachusetts Office of the State Auditor and the Office of the Montana Governor, as well at the Montana Department of Labor and the Montana Democratic Party. Mike has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Florida State University.
Families with loved ones incarcerated in New York State prisons pay some of the lowest phone fees in the entire country. Meanwhile, those with loved ones in the state’s county jails have some of the highest phone costs. How can this be?
It’s all about the incentives. In 2007, New York State passed progressive legislation requiring contracts between state prisons and private phone companies to be negotiated “for the lowest price to the consumer,” and prohibiting the department of corrections from accepting commissions on phone calls. (Nationwide, the commission-based structure of correctional phone calls is a major factor driving up costs for the consumer.) New York’s legislation, however, does not apply to county and city jails, meaning counties are free to choose the phone company that charges the most and kicks the most revenue back to the jail. As a result of this loophole, the average 15-minute call from a New York jail costs seven times more than an identical call from a state prison.
These exorbitant phone rates cost some the poorest residents of New York State — and a group disproportionately made up of women of color — more than $13 million a year just to talk to their jailed loved ones.1 The role played by counties in driving up these costs is clearly demonstrated in our new dataset of commission percentages paid by phone companies to New York county jails. We found that the majority of the cost of an average jail phone call — 64 cents on the dollar — is kicked back from the service provider to the county or jail. In some counties, as much as 86% of jail phone call revenue ends up in the pockets of the county government.2
Cost of a 15-minute phone call in New York county jails — and how much more affordable they could be without commissions
Throughout New York State, counties collect significant commissions from their jail phone providers, driving up costs for families. Here, we collected the current cost of a 15-minute, in-state phone call from each county’s jail, using the rate lookup tools on the phone providers’ websites on March 9, 2021. Unlike in other states, the vast majority of New York counties have chosen to contract with GTL.3 (The five counties of New York City are not included here because New York City made all jail calls free in 2019.)
In this table, we also calculated the hypothetical cost of a 15-minute call if commissions were waived, based on a scenario where a county waives its commissions and asks the phone provider to lower the call rate proportionately (for example, if Albany County waived its 86% commission, and the cost of the call dropped by 86%, from $7.50 to $1.05). In reality, a county that took such a step would likely also strike a harder bargain with the private phone company, reducing rates even further. In every county, we were able to find current phone rates on the phone providers’ websites. However, for some counties, we could not calculate the current commission rate or hypothetical cost of a phone call if commissions were waived, because the county did provide a contract in response to public record requests.
County
Phone services provider
Current cost of a 15‑minute phone call
Hypothetical cost of a 15‑minute call if commissions were waived
Kickback percentage in contract
Albany
Securus
$7.50
$1.05
86%
Allegany
GTL
$2.25
Cannot calculate
Did not provide contract
Broome
GTL
$3.00
$1.68
44%
Cattaraugus
GTL
$9.95
$4.48
55%
Cayuga
GTL
$3.00
$1.35
55%
Chautauqua
GTL
$2.25
$1.17
48%
Chemung
GTL
$8.50
$3.83
55%
Chenango
GTL
$3.00
Cannot calculate
Did not provide contract
Clinton
GTL
$3.75
$2.10
44%
Columbia
GTL
$2.25
Cannot calculate
Contract does not specify commission amount
Cortland
GTL
$2.25
$1.01
55%
Delaware
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Dutchess
GTL
$9.95
$4.48
55%
Erie
ICSolutions
$3.15
$1.15
63.50%
Essex
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Franklin
GTL
$2.25
$0.45
80%
Fulton
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Genesee
Securus
$7.50
$1.50
80%
Greene
GTL
$9.95
$5.57
44%
Hamilton
Frontier Communications
$0.00
$0.00
0%
Herkimer
GTL
$2.25
$0.45
80%
Jefferson
GTL
$2.25
$0.45
80%
Lewis
GTL
$3.00
$1.35
55%
Livingston
GTL
$2.25
$0.45
80%
Madison
GTL
$9.95
$1.99
80%
Monroe
Securus
$1.50
$0.32
78.50%
Montgomery
GTL
$3.00
$1.68
44%
Nassau
GTL
$9.95
$4.58
54%
Niagara
GTL
$2.25
$0.45
80%
Oneida
GTL
$9.95
$5.47
45%
Onondaga
ICSolutions
$2.25
$0.79
65%
Ontario
Securus
$3.15
$1.10
65%
Orange
GTL
$9.95
$4.98
50%
Orleans
ICSolutions
$3.15
Cannot calculate
Contract does not specify commission amount
Oswego
GTL
$3.75
$0.75
80%
Otsego
GTL
$2.25
$1.26
44%
Putnam
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Rensselaer
GTL
$2.25
$1.01
55%
Rockland
GTL
$9.95
Cannot calculate
Did not provide contract
Saratoga
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Schenectady
GTL
$9.95
$4.48
55%
Schoharie
GTL
$3.00
$1.35
55% of billed or prepaid
Schuyler
GTL
$3.00
$1.35
55%
Seneca
GTL
$9.95
$1.99
80%
St. Lawrence
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Steuben
GTL
$9.95
$5.57
44%
Suffolk
Securus
$7.50
$1.05
86%
Sullivan
Securus
$7.50
$3.30
56%
Tioga
GTL
$9.95
$1.99
80%
Tompkins
GTL
$2.25
$0.45
80%
Ulster
Securus
$2.10
Cannot calculate
Did not provide contract
Warren
GTL
$9.95
Cannot calculate
Contract does not specify commission amount
Washington
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
Wayne
GTL
$2.25
$1.26
44%
Westchester
GTL
$2.25
$0.86
62%
Wyoming
GTL
$2.40
$0.48
80%
Yates
GTL
$3.00
$0.60
80%
These high commissions translate to high costs for families. We found that in 2019, a 15-minute phone call from the average jail in New York was more expensive than the average jail phone call in 43 states. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If individual New York counties pledged to waive the income they earn off the backs of their poorest residents, the cost of a 15-minute phone call would instantly drop significantly. And if the state stepped in with legislation requiring jail phone contracts to be negotiated on the basis of the lowest cost to the consumer (like it already requires of prisons), the rates would go down even further.
In fact, there are several solutions that would reduce phone costs for families of jailed New Yorkers:
Individual counties should immediately tell their provider they want to waive their commission and see the cost of phone calls proportionally reduced for the consumer. (This would ultimately benefit the counties themselves. Many people in jails will soon return to their communities, and studies show that maintaining close contact with family members is linked to better post-release outcomes and lower rates of recidivism.)
Counties should, in their next contracts, refuse to take a commission, and should negotiate not on the basis of maximizing revenue for the county, but to lower the costs for families. Many contracts in New York counties are expiring in the next few years — some of which will automatically renew unless the county actively seeks a new provider and renegotiates. (See our Expiration Dates appendix for information on when your county’s contract is expiring.)
When seeking a new contract, counties should put out separate Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for each service (such as phone calls, electronic messaging, and video visitation), instead of bundling these services together into a single RFP and contract. In fact, New York State should prohibit jails from signing bundled contracts for multiple services because it obscures the provider’s profits and the true cost of the contract. (For more on the harms of bundling see Footnote 2).
Counties should consider going one step further and paying the cost of phone calls themselves, therefore making calls free for families. New York City became the first US jurisdiction to pick up the tab on jail calls in 2019.4 (This may be less expensive than it sounds. Cities or counties covering the total cost of phone calls can negotiate even lower rates, since the phone companies no longer need to do individualized billing.)
New York State should extend its historic legislation that already bans commissions on phone calls in New York State prisons, and requires prison phone contracts to be negotiated for the lowest price to the consumer. Simply closing this loophole and applying the law to jails would save families at least $13 million on their phone bills.
Methodology & Appendices:
This analysis was made possible thanks to detailed public record requests made by George Dahlbender. This collection was supplemented by Andrea Fenster; Worth Rises also generously shared three additional contracts. Finally, although Schenectady and Sullivan counties did not respond to public record requests, we were able to find recent copies of their contracts on Muckrock.com, a nonprofit that helps people and organizations file and share record requests.
In the following four appendix tables, we have highlighted key information from the contracts and other documents that counties provided. We are also providing links to the contracts themselves so that journalists and other advocates can hold the counties accountable:
Appendix 1: Commissions pocketed by counties for phone, tablet, and video services
This appendix table includes the commissions each county receives for phone calls and other services. Here, we have also provided access to the actual county contracts (and commission reports, where available) to other researchers and advocates. As you can see, the commission rate in a given county is often much higher for phones than for tablets and video services; as we’ve discussed in this article, providers often win contracts by paying huge phone commissions to the counties, while ensuring their own profits via low commissions on bundled services.
Phone
Tablet
Video
Notes
County
Provider
Phone Commission Percent
Additional Payments
Guaranteed Minimum Payments
Cite in Document
Provider
Commission
Cite in Document
Is commission contingent on 80% of the population having “reasonable access” to tablets?
Provider
Commission
Cite in Document
Albany
Securus
86%
One-time $115,000 signing bonus
Pre-paid commissions of $1,200,000 in the first year, and $600,000 in each of the second and third year
The service schedule that is referenced in the contract was not included in the county’s response to a FOIL request.
Cortland
GTL
55%
“… Premise Provider is compensated on a per call basis, depending on the program implemented, either at a flat amount per call, or on a percentage of the call charge.”
“Company will pay Premise Provider a commission every month based on average monthly revenue per tablet for that month from purchased content (“Content Revenue”)…Furthermore, Company will not owe or pay any commission on the first Eighty Nine Thousand Seven Hundred Dollars ($89,700), in Content Revenue collected.” Commissions range from 0% to 70%.
“Company shall also encumber Twenty-five percent (25%) of the Gross Reveneue billed or prepaid for inmate telephone calls covered by this Agreement, and issue a monthly check to the Premise Provider for this amount in the form of a technology grant”
Montgomery County responded on 9/30/2020 that they did not have a current contract. We obtained a contract that is expired, but automatically renews, from Worth Rises. As of 3/12/2021, rates for Montgomery County were listed on the GTL website.
In response to a request for the current contracts on 7/13/2020, the county provided a contract with Trinity for tablets and phones which expired on 4/20/2020. We assumed that this is the current provider. However, it is possible that the county has switched tablet and video service providers to Telmate, which is owned by GTL. Telmate’s website, as of 3/12/2021, lists that it provides tablets and video here.
“Such compensation will be paid monthly with a minimum annual guarantee amount of $75,000. After the first 12 months and each year thereafter during the Term, the minimum annual guarantee will be 80% of the previous 12 month’s actual commissions earned”
Orange County responded “N/A/ no such record” to the request for records relating to tablet and video services. GTL’s website lists that it provides video services as of 3/12/2021.
Orleans
ICSolutions
Unknown (Contract mentions these services, but does not specify any commission amount)
Unknown (Contract mentions these services, but does not specify commission details)
Unknown (Contract mentions these services, but does not specify commission details)
Orleans County provided some documents, but did not provide agreements with service providers. The response stated that the records requested “are trade secrets or are submitted to agency by a commercial enterprise or derived from information obtained from a commercial enterprise and which, if disclosed, would cause substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject enterprise (POL 87(2)(d)).”
Oswego
GTL
80%
$1.60 for each Collect2Card call and $0.30 for each Connect2Phone call
Rockland County responded that Corrections does not keep responsive records. We checked service provider websites to see if Rockland County was listed; we found the county on both the GTL and Securus websites. Since GTL is also listed on the Rockland County Sheriff’s Office website, we assume this is the correct phone service provider.
“… Premise Provider is compensated on a per call basis, depending on the program implemented, either at a flat amount per call, or on a percentage of the call charge.”
Schenectady County did not provide a response to FOIL requests. However, we obtained a contract from MuckRock.com. In addition, GTL’s website lists Schenectady County as one of the places it serves.
Schoharie
GTL
55% of billed or prepaid
“Company shall also encumber Twenty-five percent (25%) of the Gross Reveneue billed or prepaid for inmate telephone calls covered by this Agreement, and issue a monthly check to the Premise Provider for this amount.”
“… Premise Provider is compensated on a per call basis, depending on the program implemented, either at a flat amount per call, or on a percentage of the call charge.”
Sullivan County did not provide a response to FOIL requests. However, we obtained a recent contract from MuckRock.com. In addition, Securus’s website lists Sullivan County as one of the places it serves.
“… B) put in escrow $200,000.00 to be used for enhanced technology at the County’s request; C) roll over an escrow balance of $61,652.63 remaining from the previous agreement into the new term; …”
“… Premise Provider is compensated on a per call basis, depending on the program implemented, either at a flat amount per call, or on a percentage of the call charge.”
Appendix 2: Which counties have bundled contracts?
This appendix table shows that the majority of counties bundle together phone calls and other services into a single contract. Bundling services together usually adds additional costs for the consumers. We chose to distinguish between counties (such as Albany) that bundled together services from a single vendor within the initial contract, and other counties (such as Broome) that signed a phone contract and then later added non-phone services to that contract via amendment. Both of these scenarios are concerning for different reasons: When counties bundle from the outset, providers can obscure the true cost of the contract and the provider’s profits, as explained in Footnote 2. And when counties add new services onto an existing contract instead of putting out a competitive request for proposals, they fail to consider whether a competing company could provide either the existing or newly-added services at a lower cost.
County
Are Services Bundled?
Albany
Yes: Phone, tablet, and video services were bundled in initial contract
Allegany
Unknown (Did not provide contract)
Broome
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Cattaraugus
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Cayuga
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Chautauqua
Yes: Phone and video services were bundled in initial contract
Chemung
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Chenango
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Clinton
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Columbia
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Cortland
Yes: Tablet services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Delaware
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Dutchess
Yes: Phone, tablet, and video services were bundled in initial contract
Erie
Yes: Video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Essex
Yes: Phone, tablet, and video services were bundled in initial contract
Franklin
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Fulton
No: Has contracts with different providers for phone and tablet services
Genesee
Yes: Phone and video services were bundled in initial documents
Greene
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Hamilton
N/A (Facility does not offer tablet and video services)
Herkimer
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Jefferson
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Lewis
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Livingston
Yes: Phone, tablet, and video services were bundled in initial contract
Madison
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Monroe
Yes: Phone, tablet, and video services were bundled in initial contract
Montgomery
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Nassau
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Niagara
Yes: Video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Oneida
Unclear: County provided contracts for different providers for phone services and tablet/video services (GTL for phones and Trinity for tablets and video). However, Telmate, a GTL subsidiary, lists that it provides tablet and video services to Oneida County on its website.
Onondaga
Yes: Phone and video services were bundled in initial contract
Ontario
Yes: Phone, Tablet, Video were bundled in initial contract
Orange
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Orleans
Unknown (Did not provide full phone and video contracts)
Oswego
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Otsego
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Putnam
Yes: Tablet services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Rensselaer
Yes: Video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Rockland
Unknown (Did not provide phone, tablet, or video contracts)
Saratoga
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment (The phone and tablet provider is Keefe, which is owned by GTL)
Schenectady
Unknown (Did not provide phone, tablet, or video contracts)
Schoharie
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Schuyler
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Seneca
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
St. Lawrence
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Steuben
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Suffolk
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Sullivan
Unknown (Did not provide phone, tablet, or video contracts)
Tioga
N/A (Facility does not offer tablet and video services)
Tompkins
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Ulster
Unknown (Did not provide contract)
Warren
N/A (Facility does not offer tablet and video services)
Washington
Yes: Tablet and video services were added to existing phone contract via amendment
Wayne
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Westchester
No: Has contracts with different providers for phone and video services (county did not provide a tablet contract)
Wyoming
Unknown (Did not provide Tablet and Video contracts)
Yates
Yes: Phone, tablet, and video services are in a single contract (unknown if it was set up this way initially or if additional services were added to existing contract via amendment)
Appendix 3: Where are county kickbacks directed?
Different county contracts specify different payees for the commissions. In some cases, kickbacks are paid directly to the jail, in others to the county more broadly, and in still others to a specified fund. For each county, this table shows the payee listed in the county contract.
Of course, as we have argued for years, these kickbacks are inappropriate no matter who technically receives them. As Verizon, a vocal opponent of predatory phone calls, noted in a comment to the FCC: “DOCs may use commissions to fund beneficial inmate services that may not otherwise receive funding. But forcing inmates’s families to fund these programs through their calling rates is not the answer. Because higher rates necessarily reduce inmates’s telephone communications with their families and thus impede the well-recognized societal benefits resulting from such communications, other funding sources should be pursued.”
County
Phones
Tablets
Video
Albany
County
County
County
Allegany
Unknown (did not provide phone contract)
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Broome
Broome County Jail/Premises Provider
Broome County Jail/Premises Provider
Broome County Jail/Premises Provider
Cattaraugus
Cattaraugus County, Attn: Sheriff’s Office
Premises Provider
Premises Provider
Cayuga
Cayuga County Jail, Sheriff David S. Gould
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Chautauqua
Chautauqua County Jail
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Chautauqua County Jail
Chemung
Chemung County Jail, Attn: Sheriff Christopher J. Moss
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Chenango
Unknown (did not provide phone contract)
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Clinton
Clinton County Jail, Attn: David Farro, Sheriff
Clinton County Jail/Premises Provider
Clinton County Jail/Premises Provider
Columbia
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Cortland
Cortland County Jail
Cortland County Sheriff’s Department/Premise Provider
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Delaware
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
County said it does not provide this service
County said it does not provide this service
Dutchess
Dutchess County Sheriff’s Department, Attn: George Krom, Correction Administrator
Dutchess County/Premise Provider
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Erie
Erie County Sheriff’s Office, NY/Facility
County said it does not provide this service
Erie County Sheriff’s Office, NY/Facility
Essex
Essex County Jail, Attn: Sheriff David Reynolds
Essex County Jail/Premises Provider
Essex County Jail/Premises Provider
Franklin
Franklin County Jail/Premises Provider
Franklin County Jail/Premises Provider
Franklin County Jail/Premises Provider
Fulton
Fulton County Jail, Attn: Sheriff Thomas J. Lorey
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Genesee
County
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Greene
Greene County Jail, Att: Daniel Frank, County Administrator
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Hamilton
County said there are no commissions on phone calls
County said it does not provide this service
County said it does not provide this service
Herkimer
Herkimer County Jail, Attn: Ms. Judy Higgins (Deposited by county to Account A 3150A.2450A, Commissions, Correctional Facility Fund)
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Jefferson
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Lewis
County of Lewis/County
Lewis County Jail/Premises Provider
Lewis County Jail/Premises Provider
Livingston
Livingston County, Attn: Chief Deputy Jason Yasso
Livingston County Jail/Premises Provider
Livingston County Jail/Premises Provider
Madison
Madison County Jail, Attn: Sheriff
Madison County/ Premises Provider
Madison County/Premises Provider
Monroe
Jail Administration, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office (by county resolution, payments go to trust fund 9620, T99 Jail Commissary-Phone)
Jail Administration, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office (by county resulotion, payments go to trust fund 9620, T99 Jail Commissary-Phone)
Jail Administration, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office (by county resulotion, payments go to trust fund 9620, T99 Jail Commissary-Phone)
Montgomery
Montgomery County Treasurer
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Nassau
Nassau County Correctional Center, Attn: Warren Vandewater, Budget Director
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Niagara
Niagara County Sheriff’s Office
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Oneida
Oneida County Sheriff’s Office/Premises Provider
Oneida County Sheriff’s Office
Oneida County Sheriff’s Office
Onondaga
County of Onondaga/County
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
County of Onondaga/County
Ontario
Ontario County/Customer
Ontario County/Customer
Ontario County/Customer
Orange
Karen Daly, Fiscal Manager, Orange County Correctional Facility
County said it does not provide this service
County said it does not provide this service
Orleans
County
County said it does not provide this service
County
Oswego
Oswego County Correctional Facility
Oswego County Correctional Facility/Premises Provider
Oswego County Correctional Facility/Premises Provider
Otsego
Otsego County Sheriff’s Department
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Putnam
Putnam County, NY, Attn: Robert L. Langley Jr., Sheriff
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Rensselaer
Rensselaer County Bureau of Finance
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Rockland
Unknown (did not provide phone contract)
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Saratoga
County of Saratoga/County
Saratoga County Correctional Facility/Client
Saratoga County Correctional Facility/Client
Schenectady
Finance Department
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Schoharie
Schoharie County Sheriff’s Office, ATTN: Sheriff Ron Stevens
Schoharie County Jail/Premises Provider
Schoharie County Jail/Premises Provider
Schuyler
Schuyler County Jail, Attn: Sheriff William E. Yessman
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Seneca
Seneca County Jail
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
St. Lawrence
St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office
St. Lawrence County Correctional Facility
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Steuben
Steuben County Jail, Attn: Sheriff Joel Ordway
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Suffolk
County of Suffolk/County
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Sullivan
Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office, Attn: Sheriff
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Tioga
Tioga County Jail, Att: Gary W. Howard, Sheriff
County said it does not provide this service
County said it does not provide this service
Tompkins
Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department/Premises Provider
Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department/Premises Provider
Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department/Premises Provider
Ulster
Unknown (did not provide phone contract)
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Warren
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
County said it does not provide this service
County said it does not provide this service
Washington
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Washington County Jail/Premises Provider
Washington County Jail/Premises Provider
Wayne
Wayne County Sheriff’s Office/Premises Provider
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Westchester
County of Westchester/County
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
County said it does not provide this service
Wyoming
Wyoming County Jail
Unknown (did not provide tablet contract)
Unknown (did not provide video contract)
Yates
Unknown (county provided incomplete documentation that leaves details of service unclear)
Yates County Jail/Premises Provider
Yates County Jail/Premises Provider
Appendix 4: When does each county’s contract expire?
Advocates and local politicians can take note of when the current contract in your county is set to expire. Many will automatically renew unless a new contract is sought and negotiated. As you can see, some counties sent contracts that have already expired.
County
Expiration date
Renewal Terms
Notes
Albany
2/11/22
2 one-year options for renewal
Allegany
2014
Automatically renews
The full GTL contract was not provided, though the county’s FOIL response indicates that the initial contract expired in 2014 and has been renewed every year since.
Broome
2/14/22
2 one-year options for renewal
Cattaraugus
5/20/22
Automatically renews
Cayuga
10/28/19
Automatically renews
In response to a request for the current contract on 5/12/2020, the county sent a contract that expired on 10/28/2019.
Chautauqua
5/31/23
Automatically renews
This is a 10-year contract.
Chemung
4/10/22
Automatically renews
Chenango
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Clinton
10/5/23
Automatically renews
Columbia
12/29/20
Automatically renews
Cortland
5/1/21
Automatically renews
Delaware
10/13/23
Does not specify renewal terms
Dutchess
9/29/20
Automatically renews
The exact end date of this contract is unclear because the effective date (the date that the Agreement is signed by all parties) is unclear. There are no dates accompanying signatures directly; however, the signature page bears a date of 9/29/15 in the bottom left corner. We assumed that this is the effective date.
Erie
9/30/22
2 one-year automatic renewals
Essex
7/1/23
Does not specify renewal terms
Franklin
Unknown
Unknown
Full contracts were not provided; as such, the end date of the contract is unclear. The most recent amendment was signed 9/11/2020.
Fulton
GTL: 10/8/23 Trinity: Unknown
GTL: automatically renews Trinity: Unknown”
Fulton County contracts with GTL for phone services and Trinity for tablets. The agreement with Trinity does not provide an end date. The most recent date of signature on that document is 1/9/2020.
Genesee
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Full contracts were not provided; as such, the end date of the contract is unclear. The resolution approving Securus’s proposal, which was provided to us, was signed 5/25/2018.
Greene
6/8/14
Automatically renews
Hamilton
Not applicable
Not applicable
In response to a FOIL request, Herkimer County stated that phone calls are free at the county jail and did not provide contracts.
Herkimer
10/25/19
Automatically renews
Jefferson
10/10/17
Automatically renews
Lewis
4/15/23
Does not specify renewal terms
Livingston
GTL: 8/27/2023 Primonics: 7/18/17
Automatically renews
Madison
11/17/21
Automatically renews
Monroe
4/30/25
5 one-year options for renewal
Montgomery
4/13/17
Automatically renews
Montgomery County responded on 9/30/2020 that they did not have a current contract. We obtained a contract that is expired, but automatically renews, from Worth Rises. As of 3/12/2021, rates for Montgomery County were listed on the GTL website.
Nassau
2/7/15
Does not specify renewal terms
In response to a request for the current contract on 7/1/2020, the county sent a contract that expired on 2/7/2015. Nassau County also responded that “no records exist” relating to tablet or video services.
Niagara
6/17/21
Automatically renews
Oneida
GTL: 6/15/2012 Trinity: 4/30/2020
GTL: automatically renews Trinity: Does not specify renewal terms
In response to a request for the current contract on 7/13/2020, the county sent a contract with Trinity for tablets that expired on 4/20/2020. Telmate’s website, as of 3/12/2021, lists that it provides tablets and video here.
Onondaga
12/31/2021
Does not specify renewal terms
Ontario
10/27/23
1 five-year option for renewal
Orange
2/2/16
3 one-year options for renewal
In response to the request for current contracts on 7/10/2020, the county sent a contract that expired on 2/2/2019 at the latest. Orange County responded “N/A no such record” to the request for records relating to tablet and video services. GTL’s website lists that it provides video services as of 3/12/2021.
Orleans
5/31/22
Unclear from the documents provided
Orleans County provided no agreements with service providers. The response stated that the records requested “are trade secrets or are submitted to agency by a commercial enterprise or derived from information obtained from a commercial enterprise and which, if disclosed, would cause substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject enterprise (POL 87(2)(d)).”
Oswego
1/30/22
Automatically renews
Otsego
12/20/16
Automatically renews
Putnam
Either 4/26/24 or 10/22/22
Either automatically renews or 3 one-year automatic renewals
The contract states that the term of the agreement runs until 4/26/2024, though an amendment states that the term of the agreement is extended to 10/22/2022 with 3 one-year renewals.
Rensselaer
12/20/19
Unclear from the documents provided
In response to the request for the current contracts on 3/1/2021, the county sent a contract that expired on 12/20/2019.
Rockland
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Rockland County responded that Corrections does not keep responsive records. Current rates were listed on both the GTL and Securus websites. GTL is listed on the Rockland County Sheriff’s Office website.
Saratoga
GTL: Unknown Keefe: 9/4/24
GTL: Unknown Keefe: automatically renews
The full GTL contract was not provided; as such, the end date of the contract is unclear. The most recent amendment was signed 3/23/2020.
Schenectady
8/14/20
Automatically renews
Schenectady County did not provide response to our FOIL requests. However, we obtained a contract from MuckRock.com. GTL’s website lists Schenectady County as one of the places it serves.
Schoharie
2/11/25
Automatically renews
Schuyler
3/16/25
Automatically renews
Seneca
8/9/23
Automatically renews
St. Lawrence
2/20/24
Automatically renews
Steuben
2/20/21
Automatically renews
Suffolk
4/30/19
Does not specify renewal terms
Sullivan
5/27/16
Automatically renews
Sullivan County did not provide response to our FOIL requests. However, we obtained a recent contract from MuckRock.com. Securus’s website lists Sullivan County as one of the places it serves.
Tioga
5/19/25
Automatically renews
Tompkins
6/15/23
Automatically renews
Ulster
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Unknown (contract was not provided)
Warren
None
Automatically renews
Some documentation was provided in response to a FOIL request, though the contract itself was not provided.
Washington
4/11/24
Does not specify renewal terms
Wayne
9/11/11
1 two-year option for renewal
Westchester
GTL: 7/31/21 Primonics: 5/14/24
GTL: 1 two-year option for renewal
Wyoming
6/11/24
Automatically renews
Yates
3/16/21
Does not specify renewal terms
Footnotes
This amount was calculated using a conservative estimate of 400 minutes of phone calls per jailed person, per month. This 400-minute estimate was based on the (rounded-down) number of minutes of use at the Albany County Jail from 2019, as well as our previous research into jail phone use. We also assumed an average phone call length of 13 minutes, based on GTL call summaries from 2017. Finally, we determined the average daily population in each jail using reports from the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services. ↩
You might wonder how private phone companies manage to turn profits in jails, even while paying such a large percentage of phone revenue to the counties in the form of kickbacks. For one, companies charge many additional hidden consumer fees on phone calls that may be exempt from kickbacks. In some instances around the country, this fee harvesting can add up to more than the base, per-minute cost of the call. Secondly, phone companies also make money off other products and services that they bundle together with phone services into a single contract. For example, commission data from Albany County shows that while Securus kicks back a whopping 86% of phone call revenue back to the county, it gives the county just 20% of revenue from video visitation and eMessaging, and 10% of revenue from music, movies, and games. In November and December 2020, according to the commissions report for Albany County, non-phone services amounted to more than three-quarters of Securus’ post-commissions revenue in Albany. These non-phone services often escape regulation and oversight by the FCC and individual states. The bundling of regulated and unregulated services into a single contract thwarts regulators’ ability to set reasonable rates for services, and allows service providers to obscure the amount of unreasonable profits that they collect under a contract, as Stephen Raher notes in his law review article, The Company Store and the Literally Captive Market. (For more on profiteering in the world of prison tablets, see our work on hidden costs in tablet contracts). ↩
A disproportionate number of New York counties use GTL. The likely reason is that the New York State Sheriff’s Association steers counties to GTL in exchange for 3% of every GTL phone call made from a jail in New York State. This kickback — which is not in the county’s contracts — is documented in a 2019 expose in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. This long-standing arrangement dates back more than 20 years, as described in this 2006 settlement with the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York, where the Sheriff’s Association was criticized for not disclosing its financial interest in the awarding of contracts to its then-preferred vendor, AT&T. (AT&T’s jail phone business was acquired by Global Tel*Link in 2005.)
Other researchers should note that the New York State Sheriff’s Association apparently has GTL funnel the money through a for-profit corporation it controls, “Star Governmental” (see paragraph 26 in the 2006 settlement linked above) which then pays the Sheriff’s Association. These funds are substantial. According to the non-profit tax returns of the New York State Sheriff’s Association, the Association receives approximately $460,000 per year in royalties from Star Governmental ($434,884 in 2016, $458,681 in 2017, $487,112 in 2018). ↩
New York City is not the only jurisdiction that has made phone calls free. New York’s Monroe County, home to Rochester — which already reduced phone calls to the relatively affordable cost of 10 cents a minute in 2019 — voted in March 2021 to use its phone commission fund to provide 75 minutes of free calls to each person in the jail each week; 30 of the minutes can be used on video calls. These free calls will save families an estimated $30 a month. And this trend is not confined to New York: San Francisco County made jail calls free in 2020, and in March 2021, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to do the same. ↩
We explain the research showing that violent crimes against Black Americans - especially those in poverty - are less likely to be cleared by police and less likely to receive news coverage than similar crimes against white people.
Of 89 criminal cases recently solved with the growing but controversial use of genetic genealogy databases — all following the highly-publicized arrest of the Golden State Killer in 2018 — just four were crimes perpetrated against a Black victim. Cases solved with genetic genealogy, as a recent Atlantic article notes, “tended to be notorious crimes” that stuck in the public memory, where evidence was maintained for years and news coverage was widespread.
This racial disparity should be surprising — after all, Black people are more likely to be victims of homicide than people of other races, and are in fact more likely to experience violent crime in general.1 But the lack of “notorious” unsolved crimes involving Black victims is part of a larger American problem: the devaluing of the lives and experiences of Black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), as evidenced by clear racial disparities in crime victimization.
The research shows that not only are Black Americans – especially those in poverty – disproportionately victims of crime, but that crimes against Black people are less likely to be cleared by police and less likely to receive news coverage than crimes against white people. What’s more, crimes with Black victims are also more likely to be deemed “justifiable” by the courts. In this briefing, we highlight and discuss research findings about those disparities.
Crimes against Black and Latinx people are less likely to be solved
When crimes occur, police are more likely to clear cases in which the victims were white. In a 2018 Washington Post analysis of nearly 50,000 homicides around the country, the authors found that an arrest was made in 63 percent of murders of white victims, compared to 48 percent of those with Latinx victims and 46 percent with Black victims. And within cities throughout the country, the data revealed significant disparities in murder arrest rates between neighborhoods. Low arrest rates in disadvantaged and racially segregated areas both reflect and contribute to broader racial disparities, and as the article notes, “perpetrate cycles of violence in low-arrest areas.”
The journalists note that some of the disparity in arrest rates may stem from the fact that — due to a long history of racist policing — members of comunities of color may be less likely to trust and cooperate with police. An additional factor may be that homicides involving firearms — which are used disproportionately in murders of Black victims — are less likely to be solved, regardless of the race of the victim.2 However, these contributing factors do not explain the overall disparate experiences of violent victimization between BIPOC and white Americans.
Disparities in news coverage
Crimes against Black people are also less likely to receive media attention. A 2020 analysis of all news coverage of the 762 homicides in Chicago in 2016 found that where a crime occurred contributed to its perceived newsworthiness. Murders in predominantly Black neighborhoods received less coverage than those in white neighborhoods. What’s more, the authors noted, “Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people.” To measure this, researchers counted the number of times articles described victims in terms of their roles in the community (such as spouse, grandchild, friend, or volunteer), instead of focusing simply on the details of the crime.
The lack of media attention to crimes involving victims of color may actually explain some of the difference in police clearance rates. News coverage can help make people aware that a crime occurred, lead to information from the public, and keep pressure on police departments. For example, the media and public obsession over certain crimes, dubbed the “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” can mean less attention is given to cases of missing Black people.
Disproportionate use of Stand Your Ground laws
Even when a homicide does lead to an arrest, courts are more likely to deem homicides with Black victims “justified” than when the victims are white.
Since Florida enacted its “Stand Your Ground” law in 2005, allowing people to use lethal force if they believe they are in danger, 27 other states have passed similar statutes (an additional eight are Stand Your Ground states by legal precedent or jury instruction). In a 2015 analysis of all homicide cases in Florida from 2005 to 2013 where “Stand Your Ground” was invoked as a defense, the authors found that, after controlling for other variables, defendants were twice as likely to be convicted if the case involved white victims. Another study, which considered nationwide homicide data from 2005 to 2010, found that 11.4% of homicides with a white perpetrator and a Black victim were ruled justified, compared to 1.2% of cases where a Black person killed a white victim. This disparity existed in both states that did and did not have Stand Your Ground laws, but was greater in states with the laws.
Research shows that the cards are stacked against Black victims of crime. Not only are they more likely to experience crime in the first place, but those crimes are less likely to be publicly covered in the media and solved by police, and more likely to be ruled justified. As the authors of the analysis of homicide news coverage in Chicago noted, “Whereas the loss of White lives is seen as tragic, the loss of Black and Hispanic lives is viewed as normal, acceptable, even inevitable.”
Footnotes
Using data from the 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, Anna Harvey and Taylor Mattia found that Black survey respondents were 22% more likely to experience a serious violent crime than non-Hispanic white respondents. When property crimes were included, the disparity rose to 41%. (In a similar fall 2020 report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) did not find racial disparities in crime victimization in 2018. One major difference between the studies was that the BJS included simple assaults in its analysis, which Harvey and Mattia did not. Notably, neither study includes homicide in its analysis.) Another study found that the 2017 homicide victimization rate for Black Americans was 20.42 per 100,000, compared to 5.2 nationally. And as we know, Black people are more than twice as likely as people of other races to be killed by police, even in situations where there are no obvious circumstances that would make the use of deadly force “reasonable.”
A major contributing factor to this higher rate of violent victimization is that Black people are twice as likely as white people to live below the poverty line. A Bureau of Justice (BJS) report found that, from 2008 to 2012, both Black and white people living in households below the poverty line are more likely to experience violent victimization than those in low, middle, and high income households. And as The Guardian noted in an article mapping gun violence across the country, gun homicides are extremely concentrated in areas of high poverty, low educational attainment, and “neighborhoods forged out of racial segregation.” ↩
According to 2019 FBI data, 83.8% of homicides of Black people involved a gun, compared to 61.8% of homicides of white people and 73.2% of all homicides. Murders involving firearms are often more difficult to solve for a varity of reasons, including the physical distance between shooter and victim, which often leaves less evidence. Regardless of the victim’s race, police are less likely to identify the perpetrator in gun-related homicides. ↩
A new BJS report shows that U.S. jails reduced their populations by 25% in the first few months of the pandemic. But even then, the U.S. was still putting more people in local jails than most countries incarcerate in total.
Last week, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports with updates on city and county jail populations nationwide: Jail Inmates in 2019 and Impact of COVID-19 on the Local Jail Population, January-June 2020. After a year of upheaval due to the pandemic, the first report is already out-of-date and mainly useful as a historical document. The second report, however, answers some important questions about the decisions local officials made when the high stakes of jail incarceration – for individual and public health – were put into stark relief by the pandemic. Their decisions, and the resulting jail population changes in the first half of 2020, hold important lessons for ongoing and future decarceration efforts; here we outline some of those lessons – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good: Significant drops in jail detention early on, and especially for low-level offenses and among women
First, we saw that local law enforcement, courts, and jails were able to quickly reduce jail populations when they had to. Before the pandemic, jails nationwide held almost 742,000 people on any given day, and over the course of the year, there were 10.3 million jail admissions. But by the end of June 2020, the jail population had dropped by 25%; 185,000 fewer people were held in jails in June 2020 compared to June 2019. Most of that change occurred in the first half of 2020, largely fueled by decreasing admissions and, to a lesser extent, by expedited releases due to the pandemic. In the one-year period ending June 30, 2020, there were 1.67 million fewer jail admissions – a 16% drop compared to the preceding year. Of those who were booked into jails between March 1 and June 30, 2020, 208,500 (almost 9%) received an expedited release in response to COVID-19.
Second, we saw that when pressed, local criminal justice systems did shift toward some of the common-sense changes that reform advocates have long called for (at least temporarily): eliminating unnecessary arrests and incarceration for offenses and violations that don’t threaten public safety, and ending pretrial detention for most, if not all, defendants.
Early in the pandemic, many police departments were encouraged to use arrest as “a tool of last resort,” reducing stops, shifting to citations in lieu of arrest, and adopting other best practices. At the same time, many courts took action to reduce admissions and pretrial detention. For example, Maine state courts vacated all outstanding bench warrants for unpaid court fines and fees and for failure to appear, and California reduced bail to $0 for most low-level offenses. Jail administrators and sheriffs, too, found ways to reduce detention: The Cuyahoga County (Cleveland, Ohio) Jail, for example, stopped admitting people on new misdemeanor charges, except for domestic violence charges.
The BJS Impact of COVID-19 report shows that these local efforts made a difference: The number of people held for misdemeanors dropped by 45% by June 2020 compared to 2019, and the number of people held pretrial dropped by 21% – or about 100,000 people – over the same period. As we have argued before, incarceration is especially counterproductive for people convicted of low-level offenses like misdemeanors, as it cuts people off from their families, housing, and jobs while yielding virtually no benefits to public safety.
The bad: Jail reductions didn’t go far enough, and quickly ticked back up
Of course, the Impact of COVID-19 report also reveals some disturbing jail trends during the pandemic. First, local justice systems could and should have done more to further depopulate jails, where social distancing is impossible and the flow of people in and out of facilities puts everyone around them, incarcerated or not, at greater risk. Even after reducing admissions and increasing releases, a significant number of jails were still overcrowded: average jail occupancy rate fell from 81% to 60% from 2019 to 2020, but in June 2020, 1 in 14 jails still held over 100% of their rated capacity.
Furthermore, despite its 25% decline in jail populations, the U.S. jail incarceration rate alone (that is, excluding people held in state and federal prisons) still far exceeds international norms. After cutting jail populations during the early months of the pandemic, the U.S. still locked up more people per capita in jails alone than most countries do in any type of confinement facilities. At the end of June 2020, 167 per 100,000 U.S. residents were held in local jails; that’s still well over the totalincarceration rates of peer countries like the U.K., Canada, and France.
It’s easy to see where jail decarceration efforts fell short. In particular, jails could have gone much further in reducing the number of people held pretrial. While it’s good that the number of people held pretrial declined by 21%, 381,000 people were still held pretrial at the end of last June. The percentage of people held in local jails pretrial (69%) was actually higher than at the same time a year before (65% in June 2019). As a reminder, people held pretrial are unconvicted and legally presumed innocent. While some defendants are detained because a court deems them a significant safety or non-appearance risk, many are there simply because they cannot afford to pay cash bail. During normal times pretrial detention has detrimental effects on defendants’ employment, health, housing, financial stability, and family wellbeing,but especially during a pandemic, pretrial detention can also be fatal. For example, two Texas men, aged 64 and 57 (one experiencing homelessness at the time of his arrest), recently died while being held pretrial in the Harris County Jail on $1,000 and $1,500 bonds, respectively. One of them died of COVID-19.
Finally, the BJS report confirms the rebound in jail populations starting in May 2020 that weidentifiedpreviously using a different data set – indicating that more dramatic population reductions were possible, but efforts were not sustained, with local justice systems only too eager to return to “business as usual.” Jail populations declined by 190,800 (27%) between the end of February and the end of April alone, but in May and June, populations ticked back up by 29,600, essentially undoing over 15% of the cuts achieved before May. This finding is in line with our research showing that jail populations nationwide have been creeping up since late spring. While populations are still lower than they were pre-pandemic, the data suggests the early reforms instituted to mitigate COVID-19 have largely been abandoned. With most people in local jails still unvaccinated, this has put vast numbers of people at enormous and unnecessary risk for COVID-19.
The ugly: Racial disparities in jail incarceration widened during the pandemic
One especially troubling finding in the Impact of COVID-19 report: The decrease in jail populations did nothing to address the glaring racial disparities in jails. In fact, while the total jail population dropped by 25% between June 2019 and June 2020, racial disparities increased over the same period. In June of 2019, Black people were incarcerated in jails at about 3.3 times the rate of white people; a year later, the racial gap had widened so that Black people were jailed at 3.5 times the rate of white people. Moreover, the decrease in white jail incarceration outpaced the decreases among Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and multi-racial people. For example, the number of white people in jails dropped by almost 28% while the number of Black people in jails fell by only 22%. These findings reflect the dangers of not centering racial justice in decarceration. It is not enough to focus only on “reducing incarceration” – decarceration efforts must also address long-standing racial disparities and should never make the criminal justice system less equitable.
In all, the BJS Impact of COVID-19 report proves that local and state justice systems can quickly and significantly reduce jail populations, as shown by the initial responses to COVID-19 – but it also shows that they could have diverted from jail or released far more people, and far more equitably. Although jail populations dropped significantly at the beginning of the pandemic, these changes did not reduce racial disparities in incarceration, nor did they sufficiently reduce pretrial detention. Even after reducing jail populations, the U.S. jail incarceration rate still greatly exceeds that of our peer countries, and more recent data suggests that jail populations have been increasing steadily since late spring.
Moving forward, justice system authorities should make permanent the strategies that led to the jail reductions achieved during the pandemic, and push themselves to go further now that they have seen what is possible. The number of people jailed for misdemeanors or held pretrial, as well as the number of women in jails, should never return to pre-pandemic levels. Finally, states and counties must take deliberate action to eliminate racial disparities in jails as they take the next steps toward decarceration.
We’re fighting for fair phone rates for people in jail and their families, and we just picked up a big victory. We pressured officials in Iowa to regulate the prices that predatory jail phone companies are charging. And we won.
Why Iowa? When a federal court said the FCC couldn’t regulate the cost of in-state jail phone calls, we adopted a state-by-state strategy. We’ve focused on places where state law allows regulators to cap phone rates, and where jail phone rates are the worst. Iowa is one of those states: Before our recent victory, jails there charged as much as $14.10 for a 15-minute call.
Now, the state Utilities Board has set a limit on the rates that these companies can force consumers to pay. We calculate that the new rules will save Iowans about $1 million every year. As reporter Erin Jordan explains in the Cedar Rapids Gazette:
The Iowa Utilities Board is forcing companies that provide phone service for county jail inmates to lower rates from as high as $1 a minute to a quarter or less.
Until recently, Bremer County had the highest jail phone rates in the state at $14.10 for a 15-minute call, which included $3.74 for the first minute and 74 cents after. Their service provider, Securus, lowered rates to 21 cents a minute — meaning a 15-minute call now will cost just $3.15.
The Utilities Board has not yet approved Securus’s new tariff, but has instructed the company and other providers to keep rates at 25 cents per minute or less for prepaid calls. The board has so far approved new, lower rates for five companies — Prodigy, Network Communication International Corporation, Combined Public Communications, ICSolutions and Global Tel*Link.
The exorbitant phone rates charged by jail phone companies — and ratcheted up by jails that hope to get a kickback — have caused untold suffering for families, particularly during COVID-19. For example, the Gazette interviewed a mother in Des Moines who said she has to limit the number of times her 4-year-old son can call his father, who is incarcerated.
The squeezing of these families for profit has been going on for years, but during the pandemic and recession (with in-person jail visits suspended) it has hit them harder and caused even more anguish. So even as the Prison Policy Initiative celebrates our victory, we’re pushing Iowa to do more.
Yesterday, we wrote to Governor Kim Reynolds, urging her to work with the Iowa Utilities Board to address the remaining issues of fairness for Iowa consumers, including:
Rates are still too high. As we wrote in our letter: “During the last year, the Board has unofficially used an informal “rate cap” of roughly 25¢ per minute, based on previous FCC rules imposing interstate rate caps of 21¢ for prepaid calls. However, much has changed since the FCC imposed those interim rate caps in 2013. In October 2020, then-chair of the FCC Ajit Pai announced a new rulemaking to lower interstate rates to 14¢ for calls from prisons, and 16¢ for calls from jails. If the FCC finalizes those changes, then many Iowa carriers would be charging substantially more for in-state calls (up to 25¢) than they could for interstate calls (16¢).”
Some companies are seizing unused consumer funds from prepaid accounts that should be returned to the families or turned over to the state’s unclaimed property program.
Five companies are “double dipping” on deposit fees, charging two fees for each credit card transaction.
At least one company is steering consumers to the most expensive and inefficient way to pay calls: “single calls” that require paying the $3 deposit fee on each and every call.
With at least one county in the U.S. having negotiated jail phone rates down to one cent a minute, it’s clear that companies in Iowa are still charging far more money for a phone call than they need to — so we’re continuing the fight for a better deal for incarcerated Iowans and their families.
Meanwhile, we’re taking our successful Iowa strategy to other states. We’re currently working with a broad coalition of activists and telecom experts who are urging the California Public Utilities Commission to crack down on high jail phone and video-calling rates in that state. The political momentum that we build in these key states will help us put more pressure on the FCC to address continued exploitation in this area. Mass incarceration has created far too many opportunities for companies to get rich at the expense of poor families, and our advocacy won’t stop until that exploitation ends.
(Northampton, MA) – The Prison Policy Initiative, a leading research organization in the field of criminal justice, added five new directors to the board of directors to help foster strategic growth. The new members will serve three-year terms:
Sharon Cromwell, Deputy State Director, New York Working Families Party
Ed Epping, AD Falck Professor of Art, Emeritus, Williams College
Timothy Fisher, Professor of Law and former Dean, University of Connecticut School of Law
Leslie M. Smith, IBM Business Development Executive (retired) and Founder / CEO DistancEd. Inc
Paul Watterson, Of Counsel, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
“The Prison Policy Initiative is proud to welcome these five leaders to our board. Each will help propel the Prison Policy Initiative with new ideas, new energy and new partnerships” said the Board’s President, Elena Lavarreda, NJ Political Director, SEIU 32BJ.
Also welcoming the new members are: Nora V. Demleitner, Director, Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Daniel Kopf, Board Treasurer, Data Editor, San Francisco Chronicle, and Bernadette Rabuy, Board Clerk, Trial Attorney, Homicide/Major Crime Defense Unit, New York County Defender Services.
In January, the Board participated in a two-day retreat where they set their goals for the coming year, including recruiting additional directors to the Board. “We’re looking forward to supporting the Prison Policy Initiative at this critical transition point, as they welcome new senior staff, including a Director of Advocacy and Communications Director, and expand as an organization with staff in several states,” said Leslie M. Smith, one of the new directors and Founder/CEO DistancEd. Inc., a non-profit that trains computer skills to formerly incarcerated people. Another new director, Ed Epping, shared his excitement about the Prison Policy Initiative’s plans, “The Prison Policy Initiative’s insightful data analysis and powerful graphics have long fueled the national movement for criminal justice reform by filling in key messaging and data gaps. We’re looking forward to supporting the Prison Policy Initiative as it begins to have the dedicated staff and capacity to outreach to local, state, and national advocates and support them with our research.”
The Prison Policy Initiative (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/) was co-founded by Peter Wagner in 2001 to document and publicize how mass incarceration punishes our entire society. Since its inception, the Prison Policy Initiative has gained national recognition for compiling and presenting up-to-date information about the criminal justice system that empowers policymakers, journalists, advocates, and the general public to participate in the justice reform movement. The Department of Justice’s National Institute of Corrections, for example, calls one report “required reading for those people striving to reform the correctional system.” Frequently cited in traditional media as a reliable and accessible source on a number of incarceration issues, the Prison Policy Initiative also has an influential social media presence and demonstrated success in guiding and informing public discourse on incarceration policy. You can find a full list of the Prison Policy Initiative’s most prominent successes at prisonpolicy.org/about.html.
The data is clear: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ 1) people are overrepresented at every stage of criminal justice system, starting with juvenile justice system involvement. They are arrested, incarcerated, and subjected to community supervision at significantly higher rates than straight and cisgender people. This is especially true for trans people and queer women. And while incarcerated, LGBTQ individuals are subject to particularly inhumane conditions and treatment.
For this briefing, we’ve compiled the existing research on LGBTQ involvement and experiences with the criminal justice system, and – where the data did not yet exist – analyzed a recent national data set to fill in the gaps. (Namely, we provide the only national estimates for lesbian, gay, or bisexual arrest rates and community supervision rates that we know of.) We present the findings for each stage of the criminal justice system with available data, and pair them with new graphics illustrating the dramatic disparities in the system related to sexuality and gender identity.
LGBTQ+ youth in the juvenile justice system
For LGBTQ people, criminal justice involvement often starts at a young age. LGBTQ youth are extremely overrepresented in the juvenile justice system. Researchers estimate that 20% of youth in the juvenile justice system are lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, gender nonconforming, or transgender compared with 4-6% of youth in the general population. The same research shows that 40% of girls (who were assigned female at birth) in the juvenile justice system identify as LBQ and/or gender nonconforming.2 This overrepresentation is largely due to the obstacles that LGBTQ youth face after fleeing abuse and lack of acceptance at home because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In order to survive, LGBTQ youth are pushed towards criminalized behaviors such as drug sales, theft, or survival sex, which increase their risk of arrest and confinement.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults in the criminal justice system
Arrest
High rates of criminal justice system contact continue into adulthood. Our analysis of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reveals that in 2019, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals (with an arrest rate of 3,620 per 100,000) were 2.25 times as likely to be arrested in the past twelve months than straight individuals (with an arrest rate of 1,610 per 100,000). This disparity is driven by lesbian and bisexual women, who are 4 times as likely to be arrested than straight women (with an arrest rate of 3,860 per 100,000 compared to 860 per 100,000).Meanwhile, gay and bisexual men are 1.35 times as likely to be arrested than straight men (with a rate of 3,210 arrested per 100,000 compared to 2,380 per 100,000):3
Sentencing and incarceration
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are also overrepresented in prisons and jails, especially lesbian and bisexual women. Researchers analyzing the most recent National Inmate Survey found that LGB people are incarcerated at a rate over three times that of the total adult population: 1,882 per 100,000 lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are incarcerated, compared with 612 per 100,000 U.S. residents aged 18 and older. This disparity, again, is largely driven by queer women, as evidenced by the researchers’ breakdown of the data by sex. Compared to the general population, in which 3.6% of men and 3.4% of women identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual:
1 in 20 (5.5%) men in prison identify as gay or bisexual and an additional 3.8% report having had sex with men before arrival at the facility but do not self-identify as gay or bisexual.4
1 in 3 (33.3%) women in prison identify as lesbian or bisexual and another 8.8% report having sex with women, but do not identify as lesbian or bisexual.
And almost 1 in 4 (24.6%) women in county and municipal jails identify as lesbian or bisexual, with another 9.3% who report having sex with women, but do not identify as lesbian or bisexual.
The high rates of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people behind bars can in part be attributed to the longer sentences courts impose on them. The same study of the National Inmate Survey data found that in both prisons and jails, lesbian or bisexual women were sentenced to longer periods of incarceration than straight women. And gay and bisexual men were more likely than straight men to have sentences longer than 10 years in prison.
While locked up, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are subjected to especially inhumane treatment. The National Inmate Survey study showed these “sexual minorities” were more likely to be put in solitary confinement than straight men and women in prisons and jails. In Black and Pink’s survey of 1,118 LGBTQ incarcerated people, a staggering 85% of respondents reported that they had been held in solitary confinement at some point during their sentence. And BIPOC LGBTQ incarcerated people were twice as likely to put in solitary compared to white LGBTQ incarcerated people. This is often done in the name of “protecting” queer individuals behind bars, despite the well documented, long-lasting harms of solitary confinement. And according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, LGB men and women, as well as men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with women (WSW), are also 10 times as likely to be sexually victimized by another incarcerated person and 2.6 times as likely to be victimized by staff as heterosexual incarcerated people:
Probation and parole
Finally, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are overrepresented in the community supervision population. Our analysis of the NSDUH data reveals that people on probation and parole are almost twice as likely to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual than people not on probation and parole – and again, lesbian and bisexual women are especially overrepresented:
Men on probation are somewhat more likely to be gay or bisexual (5.7%) as men not on probation (4.1%).
Women on probation are nearly three times as likely to be lesbian or bisexual (16.7%) as women not on probation (6.3%).
Men on parole are nearly twice as likely to be gay or bisexual (7.9%) as men not on parole (4.1%).
And women on parole are nearly three times as likely to be lesbian or bisexual (17.6%) as women not on parole (6.4%).
Trans people in the criminal justice system
There is significantly less data available on trans individuals in the criminal justice system. There is no data on transgender arrest rates, but other research shows police are extremely biased against trans people, especially Black trans people. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, nearly half of trans people reported that they do not feel comfortable seeking help from police. 1 in 5 trans people who have had police contact reported that they have been harassed by police, include 38% of Black trans individuals. Six percent reported that police have physically assaulted them and 2% reported that police have sexually assaulted them. Assault rates were even higher for Black trans people, with 15% reporting physical abuse and 7% of them reporting sexual assault by police.
There is also limited data on trans incarceration. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that there are over 3,200 transgender people in U.S. prisons and 1,827 in local jails nationwide. However, this might be an underestimate: In 2020, NBC News found that there were 4,890 transgender people locked up in state prisons alone. And according to data from The National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 1 in 6 trans people have been incarcerated at some point, and nearly half (47%) of Black trans people have been incarcerated:
The data consistently shows that LGBTQ people are overrepresented throughout the criminal justice system and that they are subjected to especially harmful conditions behind bars. The Movement Advancement Project and Center for American Progress have explained how discrimination and stigma – like family rejection, poverty, unsafe schools, and employment discrimination – leads to criminalization. They argue that ending the criminalization of LGBTQ people will require broad social and policy changes, including (but not limited to):
Increasing support for LGTBQ youth within families, schools, communities, and other institutions
Eliminating discrimination against LGBTQ people in housing, employment, and other realms
Eliminating homelessness among the LGBTQ population
Ending the criminalization of sex work
Enacting drug policy and sentencing reforms
While the central goal should be keeping LGBTQ people out of prison in the first place, far more needs to be done to ensure their safety behind bars, by preventing harassment and sexual assault, improving systems for addressing assault when it occurs, providing access to appropriate housing, health care, and clothing to incarcerated transgender people, and enacting and enforcing non-discrimination policies for staff.
Footnotes
A note about language used in this briefing: We most often use the term LBGTQ to refer to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in the criminal justice system, to best match the data sources we used. In a few places, we depart from the LBGTQ acronym to reflect other groups explicitly included in the data source we reference (for instance, in the section about youth in the juvenile justice system, where “questioning” youth are included), or where a group is explicitly excluded (the studies analyzing the National Inmate Survey, for example, do not address people who identify as transgender). Unfortunately, government data on gender and sexuality in the criminal justice system do not allow us to see whether intersex, asexual, gender nonconforming, two spirit people, and other groups within the queer community are also overrepresented in our criminal justice system.
Specifically, Irvine & Canfield (2016) “found that 60.1% of girls in the juvenile justice system are heterosexual and gender conforming; 7.8% are heterosexual and gender nonconforming (more masculine presenting or behaving); 22.9% of girls are lesbian, bisexual, or questioning and gender conforming; and 9.2% of girls are lesbian, bisexual, or questioning and gender nonconforming.” (Chart 2, page 249)
Gay and bisexual men are not overrepresented in jails, where 3.3% are gay or bisexual men and 2.9% report having had sex with men before arrival at the facility but do not self-identify as gay or bisexual.
The dramatic tale of mail ballots during the November 2020 election had many people thinking about the mail for the first time in years. Now, though, as the election fades into the past, the post office isn’t on most people’s minds as much. But there is a huge group of people who can’t simply substitute the latest online communication or financial service for paper mail: incarcerated people and those who communicate with them.
In a time when consumer advocates warn to avoid filing your taxes on paper, people in prison and jail have no alternative. Want to monitor your credit history to guard against identity theft? It takes a few minutes online; unless you’re in prison, in which case you’ll have to mail a paper form to the credit bureaus and hope that the response makes it through the prison mailroom. Need to apply for a state-issued ID, student financial aid, public assistance, or just about anything else? Most often you’ll be directed to a website, but if you’re incarcerated you’ll need to keep turning over proverbial rocks, searching for a paper-based option.
With this general background in mind, let’s turn to a largely-overlooked change that could spell big trouble for users of the mail, particularly for those with low incomes. Under federal law, postal rates are set under a variety of complicated rules, overseen by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). For years, the cost of a first-class stamp has been governed by an inflation-linked price cap: the USPS could seek permission to raise rates each year, but not beyond the rate of consumer inflation. After years of deliberation, the PRC issued a massive ruling in late November, establishing a new system that most experts warn will result in faster-growing postage rates.
Adding insult to injury: Obviously, any price increase is unwelcome news to people who use the mail. But the rationale underpinning the new price structure is a particularly bitter pill for incarcerated consumers. Setting aside some of the more esoteric parts of the PRC’s ruling, the leading justification for new price hikes is the issue of “mail density.”
Mail density works like this: the USPS is required to deliver to more addresses (or “delivery points,” in postal regulatory lingo) each year. As the overall volume of mail declines and the number of delivery points increases, the USPS’s cost to deliver each piece of mail goes up. Given this well-documented dynamic, the PRC decided that stamp prices should be allowed to increase to compensate for this “decline in mail density.”
So, we’re all going to pay more for stamps because of decreasing density–but what delivery point is more dense than a typical prison, where hundreds or thousands of people receive their mail at one address? From a strictly economic view, the new pricing system is logical: the American postal system is based on a theory of uniform rates, where anyone sending a letter pays the same amount, regardless of the path that the letter travels. Under this thinking, declines in density caused by sprawling new suburban developments are appropriately shared by all mailers, even those in densely populated cities or correctional facilities. But as a matter of basic fairness, something is awry. Incarcerated people are not contributing to the USPS’s declining density problem and they have no ability to mitigate increased postage rates by seeking electronic alternatives. But they stand to be the demographic most disadvantaged by the sharp price hikes likely to come later this year.
What does this mean for prices? The mechanics of the new rate procedure are so complicated as to be laughable. For example, the actual amount that stamp prices will increase due to the new density rate authority is determined by the following formula:
Not being gifted in math, I can’t give you a good explanation of this formula, but experts who study postal economics predict rapid and steep price increases. And the pandemic is making things worse. As explained in the previous section, the basic point of the complicated formula is to allow for greater price increases the more that mail density declines. What happened during the pandemic? Less mail was sent, and thus density took a nosedive.
As explained by the Save the Post Office blog, when the PRC issued its ruling, tentative calculations suggested that the density formula would probably yield a rate hike of 1.3% in 2021. But when the pandemic-depressed mail volume is plugged into the formula, it results in a potential price hike over three times as large (4.5%).
When other potential rate-drivers are taken into account, USPS could seek a mid-year price hike of around 5.5%. Based on the current first-class rate of 55c for a one-ounce letter, a 5.5% increase would be around 3c, but under the USPS’s ill-advised rounding policy (which we strongly opposed), the increase would be rounded up to the nearest five cents, potentially resulting in a new price of 60c to mail a letter. That’s about equal to the average hourly wage earned by incarcerated people in non-prison-industry certified jobs.
Prices go up as quality goes down. To make matters even worse, prices are going up at the same time that mail quality (i.e., speed of delivery) is getting really bad. For this, we can thank Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a crony of the former president whose legendary conflicts of interest remain a stain on his tenure to this very day.
Unsurprisingly, Postmaster General DeJoy is on a seeming mission to destroy the USPS, recently announcing even greater service cutbacks that threaten to make mail even slower and less reliable than it is today.
What can you do about it? Unlike the criminal justice system, where power and decision-making is spread over hundreds of jurisdictions, postal policy is ultimately controlled by one body: Congress. There are currently moves in Congress to address mismanagement of the USPS, but when debating postal reform measures, lawmakers need to hear the unique burdens faced by incarcerated people.
Currently, there are two ways you can tell Congress to act. You can support efforts to remove Postmaster DeJoy, and you can tell your members of Congress to act immediately to improve the USPS finances without extracting more money from incarcerated people and their families. A general hearing on postal reform measures will take place in the House Oversight and Reform Committee on February 24. Committee members should keep the needs of incarcerated mailers in mind while crafting legislative proposals. For starters, this should include broad measures to stabilize the cost of sending first-class letters. More targeted reforms could include exempting incarcerated people from the new density-based rate increases, or (ideally) subsidizing postage for people in prison and jail.