Dallas County approves video visitation contract

Today, in a partial reversal, the Dallas County Commissioners Court approved a new contract with jail telephone giant Securus.

by Peter Wagner, November 11, 2014

Today, in a partial reversal, the Dallas County Commissioners Court approved a new contract with jail telephone giant Securus.

In September, after hours of eloquent and unanimous testimony, the County’s legislative body rejected a proposed contract that would have explicitly banned in-person visits at the jail and replaced them with expensive computer visitation. The County voted to reopen the bidding to the previous finalists based on new criteria that would prioritize family communication. The County then discovered — so it says — that this step was prohibited by Texas law, so negotiations with Securus ensued to make changes to their previous proposal.

The new contract drops the mandatory ban on in-person visitation, but maintains a troubling requirement that Securus, in addition to the installation of video visitation machines for incarcerated people to use, builds an on-site video visitation center at a cost of more than $200,000 to be paid for by the families. This is troubling because the only purpose for such machines would be to replace the current system of through-the-glass visitation that the county and its sheriff claim they intend to keep.

County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s top elected official, led a strong resistance, calling for more time for public debate and offering a compromise proposal endorsed by Texas CURE, SumOfUs and the Prison Policy Initiative that would have barred the construction of the on-site video visitation center, phased-out the commissions on telephone calls after this year, lowered Securus’s video visitation charge and their deposit fee, and required the contract to automatically include within 30 days any new consumer protections imposed by the Federal Communications Commission.

Unfortunately, Judge Jenkins was unsuccessful at both stopping the contract and winning permission to allow all of the assembled Dallas residents to speak. (Two of the Commissioners voted against extending the time, with one claiming that the issue had received more attention than any other. Judge Jenkins responded that while that was true, unlike other controversial issues, the public and the media were speaking with one voice in opposition to this contract.) Judge Jenkins voted against the contract, but all four of the other commissioners voted to approve the contract today.

However, there were at least four smaller victories today:

• The county forced Securus to offer a per-minute rate rather than a fixed price for each phone call. While the per-call price can sometimes be cheaper for very long calls, in actual use, this pricing structure is more expensive and gives the vendor a financial incentive to “accidentally” drop calls and require expensive reconnection.
• The contract does not ban in-person visits, and the current elected officials are all on record in opposition to banning in-person visits. (We’ll need to carefully monitor the situation to ensure that the county doesn’t directly change course or find more subtle ways to discourage through-the-glass visitation.)
• Judge Jenkins’s fair-minded compromise and the underlying principle on “the gross unfairness of imposing hefty fees on those least able to afford them: the poor who dominate the inmate population” was endorsed by the Dallas Morning News.
• From all of the attention this issue received from Texas public, the media and nationally, it’s clear that almost this entire country — basically everyone who doesn’t have a financial stake in the alternative — thinks that maintaining direct communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones is important. Now that that has been established, it will be much harder for the industry to win further victories elsewhere.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio phases out in-person visits in Maricopa

Infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio replaces in-person visits with video visitation

by Bernadette Rabuy, November 10, 2014

Video visitation at Maricopa County, AZ jails has seemed fishy from the beginning. At first, Sheriff Joe Arpaio cut back visitation last December, just in time for the holiday season. The sheriff’s spokeswoman told the Phoenix New Times that the cut from three 30-minute visits per week to one 30-minute visit per week was necessary in order to “update/improve MCSO’s video visitation program.” What she didn’t mention was that, one week later, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office would announce its plan to get rid of the remaining face-to-face visits in Maricopa that still existed in half of Maricopa’s six jails.

As of last Monday, Sheriff Joe has completely phased out in-person visits in all Maricopa jails. Families and friends now have two options: travel to the jail and visit their incarcerated loved one via a video screen or schedule a remote visit (using a personal computer) for a fee. The confusion doesn’t stop there. While Securus, the provider of video visitation services in Maricopa, is currently offering promotional pricing for remote video visits at 25 cents a minute, this price will only last until the end of the year. So by January, those visits are going to cost 65 cents a minute.

New FCC prison phone regulation proposal play-by-play

Will the FCC ban commissions, cap all calling rates, and eliminate fees?

by Leah Sakala, October 27, 2014

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission proposed several new regulations to protect the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison telephone industry. These rules would fill major gaps in the current regulations and help ensure that no child who wants to talk to his or her incarcerated parent will fall through the cracks.

As we promised, here’s an overview of the FCC’s 77-page notice:

The FCC is calling for feedback on its new proposal to…

• Ban kickbacks altogether. The FCC’s previous order said that companies aren’t allowed to treat the kickbacks as part of the cost of doing business, but the FCC is now seeking comment on getting rid of this perverse incentive that drives up the cost of calls.
• Cap in-state and out-of-state calling rates. The previous FCC regulation capped only the rates for calls between states, which tend to be more expensive but also only make up about 20% of all calls from incarcerated people. This new proposal would make sure that a family wouldn’t have to pay more to talk to an incarcerated loved one just because that person was in the same state.
• Cap, limit, or flat-out prohibit “ancillary fees.” Our research found that fees drive up the phone bills families have to pay, so this step would make a huge difference for the more than 2 million kids with an incarcerated parent.

The FCC also requests more feedback on…

• How to address additional communication services, such as video visitation, that suffer from many of the same market failures as phone services.
• Strategies to make the prison phone market more competitive, and increase access for individuals with disabilities.
• Applying the new regulations to existing contracts.
• Coordinating with state regulatory efforts.
• The costs and requirements for phone systems among different kinds of facilities.
• The actual cost of providing communications services in correctional facilities, and cost/benefit analyses of the regulatory proposals.

Here at PPI, we were pleased to see that the FCC cited our research, presentations, petition submissions, and technical comments throughout their proposal to take a huge step forward. We’ll certainly continue to weigh in as soon as the comment period opens up (when notice is published in the Federal Register, which should be any day now). The comment period will run for 45 days, and we hope that you will share your thoughts with the FCC too. We’ll be sure to keep you all posted as soon as the comment period opens.

FCC considers next steps to protect families from predatory prison and jail telephone industry.

We need your help now to counter the powerful prison phone lobby.

by Peter Wagner, October 17, 2014

We need your help now to counter the powerful prison phone lobby.

Today, by a 3 to 2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission agreed to take the next steps to regulate the prison and jail telephone industry. In the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking the FCC is actively considering, among other things:

• Extending the existing regulation and price caps on interstate calls to all calls, including calls within the same state.
• Further restricting the ability of the industry to make kickback payments to the prison and jail facilities, which currently drives up the call rates.
• Fully addressing the ancillary charges for opening, maintaining, funding and closing accounts that consume an estimated 400 million dollars per year.

The actual notice is not yet public, and we’ll have a more detailed analysis of the new order when it’s out, but it’s clear that we have a lot of work to do in a short period of time — and we need your support to get the work done.

The notice is likely to ask hundreds of detailed questions about how the current system works. We’ll need to provide those answers — and rebut the telephone industry’s recent proposal that would stunt reform — in a short amount of time. We won’t know the exact date until the notice is published in the Federal Register, but we estimate that the first round of comments will be due in early December.

The Prison Policy Initiative’s track record is clear. But we need your financial support to gather all of this information and organize the stories of the millions of people being exploited by this industry all in the next few months. Can you help us affect change once again with a gift today?

Right now, a group of donors will match the first $19,000 we raise. Please help us reach this goal as soon as possible so we can get back to the work of protecting the nation’s poorest families from the predatory prison and jail industry. Please contribute generously today.

Prison bankers cash in on captive customers

Center for Public Integrity releases first part of a series on web of prison bankers, private vendors, and corrections agencies profiting off families of the incarcerated.

by Bernadette Rabuy, September 30, 2014

Daniel Wagner and Eleanor Bell of the nonprofit investigative news organization, the Center for Public Integrity, have recently released “Prison bankers cash in on captive customers” and the video Time is Money, part one of a two-part series on the growing web of prison bankers, private vendors, and corrections agencies that profit off the backs of families of the incarcerated.

The Center for Public Integrity’s six-month investigation found plenty of families making necessary sacrifices in order to support and maintain contact with their incarcerated loved one. In order to send money to their incarcerated loved one, family members would sometimes be forced to forego medical care, skip utility bills, and even limit visits with their loved one. Meanwhile, corporations such as JPay, which handles deposits into incarcerated individuals’ accounts, generated well over $50 million in revenue in 2013. Vincent Townsend, president of prison phone company, Pay-Tel Communications, agrees that there’s something wrong with this, telling the Center for Public Integrity, “My industry has abused the public and I’m willing to admit that.” And beyond prison vendors’ profits, there is still the share of profits that gets returned to corrections agencies, often called commissions or kickbacks.

Stay tuned for part two, which will run this Thursday!

Next Steps on prison and jail phone reform: Joint statement by Chairman Wheeler and Commissioner Clyburn

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but today we prepare to take the next critical step toward reducing the high price paid by inmates and their families to communicate"

by Aleks Kajstura, September 26, 2014

Yesterday, Chairman Wheeler and Commissioner Clyburn issued the following joint statement regarding the circulation to their fellow commissioners of proposals for further reform of the inmate calling regime:

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but today we prepare to take the next critical step toward reducing the high price paid by inmates and their families to communicate.

Our recent reforms have reduced interstate long-distance inmate calling rates by nearly 40%, and that is a very positive development. But many families of inmates still face exorbitant rates for in-state calls, not to mention punitive and irrational fees—all of which make the simple act of staying in touch unaffordable.

The Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking we are circulating today proposes a simple, market-based solution to address all these problems. It proposes rules that will ensure that ALL Americans – including inmates and their families – have access to phone service at rates that are just, reasonable and fair. We look forward to working with our colleagues to adopt permanent reform as soon as possible.

FCC Commissioners are proposing to protect families from in-state prison phone gouging

Two commissioners circulate a proposal that would extend last year's historic ruling protecting some families from the predatory prison and jail telephone industry.

by Peter Wagner, September 25, 2014

Federal Communications Commissioner Clyburn and Chairman Wheeler are circulating to their colleagues a new proposal to regulate the prison and jail telephone industry.

There aren’t a lot of details in the Commission’s press release, but it appears the Commissioners want extend their earlier progress to:

• Extend the regulation and price caps on interstate calls to the vast majority of calls home from prisons and jails that are to numbers within the same state.
• Further restrict the industry’s payments that can be made to the facilities as these payments drive up the cost of a call.
• Fully address the ancillary charges for opening, having, funding and closing accounts. Beyond the actual costs of the call, ancillary charges consume an estimated 400 million dollars per year.

The draft isn’t available yet, but when it is, we’ll have a full analysis and be working with our friends to encourage public comment on it. For background, see our phones page.

Tired of corporate stalling, petitioners submit prison phone companies’ own data to FCC

Martha Wright and her fellow petitioners mine prison phone companies' state-mandated disclosures to submit rate data to the FCC when the companies refuse answer the basic questions themselves.

by Aleks Kajstura, September 23, 2014

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been seeking information on the interstate rates charged by the prison phone companies, but the companies have been stalling. Now the FCC is considering regulation of intrastate rates as well. Martha Wright and her fellow petitioners don’t expect the companies to cooperate here either, so the petitioners took the task up themselves and submitted the companies’ publicly disclosed rates to the FCC:

While the provided information is not exhaustive, it does illustrate the widely-divergent rates for the three classes of Intrastate ICS calls. The wide range of rates cannot be explained solely by looking at whether a call is local, IntraLATA, or InterLATA. Moreover, since most every ICS call is routed to calling centers outside the originating state, the artificial differences in rates among Local, IntraLATA and InterLATA calls are simply unnecessary. While ICS providers have previously attempted to divert the FCC’s attention from reviewing their tariffed rates, in light of the ICS providers’ past refusal to provide this information, and the fact that these providers went to the extreme measure of obtaining a court order staying the effectiveness of [the FCC’s request for information published in] 47 C.F.R. §64.6060 so that they would not have to provide this information, the ICS providers cannot now argue that the FCC should merely ignore the publically-available information.

The full filing with the attached rates is available in 7 parts on the FCC’s website — take a look at the companies’ disclosures yourself:

• Cover letter, interstate comparison chart of intrastate rates, and Securs’ Rate sheet for Texas
• Securus’ tariffs filed in several other states
• Global Tel*Link’s tariffs filed in several other states
• DSI-ITI’s tariffs filed in several states
• Value-Added Communications’ tariffs filed in several states

Dallas County rejects Securus video visitation contract!

Dallas County tells Securus: No we won't end visiting hours at jail and require expensive video visitation instead.

by Peter Wagner, September 9, 2014

Today the Dallas County Commissioners Court refused to approve a proposed contract with prison telephone giant Securus. The contract would have required the jail to end visiting hours and instead force families to pay for expensive video visits via computer.

After County Judge Clay Jenkins courageously spoke out against the proposed contract, a movement quickly came together, coordinated by Texas CURE, to urge the other County Commissioners to support Judge Jenkins. (In Texas, the county legislature is called a “Commissioners Court” and the person elected county-wide to be the county’s chief administrator is called the County Judge. For more, see this wikipedia article. )

As I argued in a New York Times Room for Debate feature, prison and jail video communication has the potential to offer additional avenues for critical family communication, but charging unconscionable sums and banning free in-person visits is a step in entirely the wrong direction.

Today, after several hours of eloquent and unanimous testimony and the submission of more than 2,000 petitions from SumOfUs and other petitions collected on NationInside and Change.org, we beat back this horrible proposal!

Now things got a little complicated procedurally, but this was a big, albeit interim, win. The Commissioners Court didn’t approve Judge Jenkins’s order to reject this contract and start over with completely new criteria that would prioritize getting the best service possible for both families and Dallas County, but the Court soundly rejected the two most critical parts of the proposed contract: the ban on in-person visitation and the collection of commissions for video visitation. (At least one commissioner supports commissions in the phone context, but many are opposed there as well.)

As I understand it, the Commissioners Court voted to propose changes to the contract to:

• protect in-person visitation
• renounce the commission on video visitation
• seek clarity on other details, including the number of video visitation terminals that would be provided.

The County proposed to, at next week’s meeting, approve a new request for “Best and Final Offers” based on the county’s new and improved understanding of the importance of keeping families together, and then to send these new requirements out to all of the bidders on the contract to solicit new proposals.

Obviously, some details remain to be worked out, but what seemed clear to us watching the video of the hearing is that the Commissioners Court now understands that in-person visitation is important and that it shouldn’t let Securus — or any vendor — entice the county into breaking up families just to make an extra buck.

Stay tuned for how we can ensure that Dallas finalizes a contract that supports families and benefits all residents of the County, and stay tuned for our forthcoming report on the video visitation industry.

Dallas Texas to consider banning free in-person visits, requiring expensive video visits instead

by Peter Wagner, September 9, 2014

Later this morning, Dallas County Texas will vote on a new telephone contract with Securus that will also ban free in-person visits and require families to pay for video visitation instead.

There have been two good stories this week:

• Dallas Morning-News: Dallas County considers using video chats for jail visitation (This article is a good introduction except that it subtly legitimizes the bizarre argument that the contract might not ban in-person visits.)
• Dallas Observer: Dallas County Set to Stop Most Face-to-Face Jail Visits, Charge Families for Video (This article squarely presents the evidence to address the fact that this contract will ban in-person visits.)

With the vote scheduled for this morning, our friends at SumOfUs collected 2,053 petitions from their Texas members in under 12 hours yesterday urging the county to reject a “contract that would substitute visiting hours for expensive corporate-sponsored video calls.”

To our friends in Texas, good luck today!