No surprise: Securus refund disaster

I waste 25 minutes for a visit that never happens, and Securus gets to keep my money anyway.

by Bernadette Rabuy, February 3, 2015

I woke up today feeling pretty irked. Back when we were working on our report on the video visitation industry in prisons and jails, I tried to do a Securus video visit with an incarcerated person in Texas. Even though the Securus interface said “Status: Ready,” and I could see my face on the computer screen, I waited for 25 minutes for a video visit that never happened.

As a result, a month ago, I requested a refund from Securus. Since it seemed like I did everything right, I was feeling fairly confident that I’d get a refund. I submitted the refund form a month ago and never heard back. Today, I called, and the automated attendant said I’d have a 4 minute wait, but after 20 minutes I gave up.

And then I noticed this: Securus changed the status of my video visit to “Status: You did not log in for your scheduled visit.” I just so happen to have a screen shot of the Securus website from last month when I was waiting for my visit. Do I look logged in to you?

Multnomah County Sheriff reverses ban on in-person visits in Portland jails!

Portland jails will now let families visit via video or in-person

by Bernadette Rabuy, January 29, 2015

Yesterday we received some very exciting news! Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton is reversing the ban on in-person visits in Portland jails and announced that families will now have the opportunity to visit incarcerated loved ones via video or in-person.

This is a tremendous victory that was made possible by powerful and consistent investigative reporting done by Street Roots — which first broke the story about video visitation in Portland earlier this month — as well as pressure from the public and county legislators who asked the sheriff to reconsider the elimination of in-person visits.

As we explain in our new report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails, families have been extremely unhappy when video visits are implemented to take away traditional visits. Unfortunately, some of the biggest companies in the industry like Securus claim that they must ban in-person visits in order to be profitable. In our report, we found that another company TurnKey Corrections has actually had the opposite experience: if facilities give families more visitation options, they will be more likely to use the paid, remote video visits. Preserving in-person visits can be better for not only incarcerated people and their families, but also for facilities and companies.

The Portland victory is so important because:

• Multnomah County is amending a contract it had already signed with Securus that explicitly banned in-person visits. According to the sheriff’s press release, “The contract amendment has been verbally agreed to and will be completed by the end of the week.” Apparently, correctional facilities can bring back in-person visits if they really want to.
• Just like we saw in Dallas County, we have further proof that if the public is activated, we can protect families by beating back harmful visitation policies!

Hopefully, the following Oregon counties will follow Multnomah County’s lead and reverse their bans on in-person visits:

• Clackamas County
• Deschutes County
• Josephine County
• Lincoln County
• Northern Oregon Regional Correctional (NORCOR) Facility (serves Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman, and Wasco counties)

Other facilities that have Securus video visitation should also take note and reconsider whether restricting traditional visits is necessary or, rather, unnecessarily punitive.

Department of Justice study: Video visitation is not an invitation to ban in-person visitation

DOJ study on video visitation: In-person visits are a best practice that should be protected

by Bernadette Rabuy, January 28, 2015

In the busy days following the release of our newest report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails, we stumbled upon another report on video visitation by the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Corrections, Video Visiting in Corrections: Benefits, Limitations, and Implementation Considerations. While we were unable to include the study’s findings in our report, I wanted to point out what I found to be particularly valuable.

Like our report, the DOJ breaks the industry’s products down into three categories depending on where the technology is used: home-based video visiting, facility-based video visiting, and community-based video visiting. We find this terminology to be very helpful and are thinking about using it instead of the terms we use in our report: offsite visits, onsite visits, and regional visitation centers.

I also found the benefits and limitations section to be extremely important as the study presents creative uses for video visitation systems as well as spells out why “video visiting is not for all families.”

Video visitation can:

• Expand communication options for child welfare-involved families, which can then prevent the termination of incarcerated parents’ parental rights.
• Connect incarcerated youth and their incarcerated parents who are confined in separate facilities.
• Help families stay connected when travel conditions are poor. For example, the Oregon Department of Corrections found that in-person visitation declined during the winter months.

Video visitation also has limitations:

• Families dislike facility-based video visiting because it requires the same time and expenses as traveling to a facility for an in-person visit, with none of the benefits of an in-person visit.
• Video visitation can be difficult for individuals with visual or hearing impairments or developmental delays as well as for those that that lack computer skills.
• Illiteracy may make setting up a video visitation account difficult.
• Video visitation companies’ websites may not provide scheduling instructions or customer service in multiple languages.
• Some research has found that video visitation is less effective than in-person communication. For example, research has found that an incarcerated individual’s credibility was questioned more often when the individual appeared via video for a bail or immigration hearing than if the individual appeared in-person.

Overall, the study stresses, “the value of video visiting can be maximized when the goals of the facility are balanced with the needs of incarcerated individuals and their families.” The study describes why families are dissatisfied when facility-based video visiting is their only visitation option and establishes, “Traditional in-person visiting is a best practice that should continue in all correctional settings when possible.”

The report is an especially valuable resource for state prisons and county jails considering video visitation as it includes sample checklists and surveys that should be utilized when evaluating video visitation proposals or implementing video systems.

For the report: http://nicic.gov/library/029609
For more on video visitation: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/

Prison and Jail Video Visitation: A forward-looking idea implemented badly

New Prison Policy Initiative report finds video visitation actually punishes families

January 14, 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 14, 2015

Contact:
Bernadette Rabuy
(413) 527-0845

Easthampton, MA — New technology that is supposed to make it easier for families to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones is actually doing harm, charges a new report by the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative.

While prison and jail video visitation is often described as similar to well-known free services such as Skype or FaceTime, these pay-to-visit video systems are often being used to replace essential human contact. The report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails, finds that most county jails are implementing video visitation with an approach that is a step backwards for families and correctional best practices: video visitation actually punishes families.

Rather than offering video visitation as a supplement to traditional visitation, county jails and video visitation companies are replacing free, in-person visits with free but restricted onsite video visits and low-quality, remote video visits that cost up to $1.50 per minute. “Families are unhappy with video visitation because it replaces the real living person on the other side of the glass with a grainy computer image,” explains Bernadette Rabuy of the Prison Policy Initiative.

“While this technology goes back to the 1990s, this report provides what has before now been entirely lacking: a comprehensive national survey of the video visitation industry starting at its promised benefits and analyzing how it works in the real world,” says Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative.

The Prison Policy Initiative analyzed over a quarter of the industry’s contracts with state prisons and county jails to describe the trends and contrast the industry’s marketing claims with the evidence. The report finds that, with some notable exceptions, this technology is poorly designed, does not work well, and makes a trying time for families even more challenging.

The report offers 23 recommendations for federal and state regulators, legislators, correctional facilities, and the video visitation companies, all with an eye towards making video visitation into a positive, rather than negative, communication option.

For the executive summary, see: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/exec_summary.html
For the report, see: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/report.html

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Six briefings on prison telephone justice

On Monday evening, we submitted 6 major briefings on the need to regulate the prison and jail telephone industry to the Federal Communications Commission.

by Peter Wagner, January 14, 2015

On Monday evening, we submitted 6 major briefings on the need to regulate the prison and jail telephone industry to the Federal Communications Commission:

• Fees continue to increase the cost of calls
• The need to regulate in-state rates
• Prison and jail phone companies seizing customer money
• Single-call programs undermine regulation
• FCC should reject Securus, Global Tel*Link, and Telmate’s joint proposal
• The need for advanced communication services in prisons and jails

Eric Lotke talks about his new novel and the need for prison phone justice

by Peter Wagner, December 29, 2014

In this new video, our Board President, Eric Lotke talks about his new novel, Making Manna and the connection to the struggle for prison phone justice and the Prison Policy Initiative:

Support prison phone justice on this Giving Tuesday!

Generous friends have agreed to match any donations to PPI through 2014, making your gift go twice as far.

by Leah Sakala, December 2, 2014

The national movement for fair prison and jail phone charges is making progress by leaps and bounds. The Federal Communications Commission’s first ruling is already lifting some of the burden of exorbitant phone bills, and the Commission just opened up a new comment period asking the public to weigh in on comprehensive reform that would protect ALL families with incarcerated loved ones from the predatory prison phone industry (more on that below!).

The Prison Policy Initiative has been at the forefront of these major historic victories, holding the billion dollar prison phone industry accountable with lots of hard work and the support of individual donors like you. This is so important that we are going to put every dime we raise through the end of the year towards this urgent campaign.

Please join us in fighting for fair phone charges for families on this Giving Tuesday by making a donation to the Prison Policy Initiative. Generous friends have agreed to match any donations to PPI through the end of the year, making your gift go twice as far. Then, please help to spread the word by forwarding this post to four friends, and/or Tweeting something like:

• “Please join me in making a #givingtuesday prison #phonejustice donation to @prisonpolicy: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/donate.html”

Thank you for your generosity!

New video explains jail telephone industry’s hidden fees

One company produces a video explaining to Sheriffs how the status quo is bad for them.

by Peter Wagner, November 25, 2014

NCIC, one of the smaller companies in the prison and jail telephone industry, has made a two minute video that explains how some players in the industry cheat families, the jails, and state regulators by charging the families hidden fees and then quietly pocketing that money.

The perspective of the video is different than a lot of what we post on this blog; it comes from a more-ethical company speaking directly to jails about how the the current system isn’t as good for the jails as they have been led to believe.

For more on hidden fees and other nasty tricks that hurt families without bringing in a dime for the facilities (like Text-To-Collect and other “single-call” programs) see our 2013 report Please Deposit All of Your Money: Kickbacks, Rates and Hidden Fees in the Jail Phone Industry.

New opportunity to weigh in on FCC prison phone regulation

Join us in telling the FCC to ensure that ALL families can afford to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones

by Leah Sakala, November 21, 2014

If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to weigh in on federal regulation of the prison and jail telephone industry, the time has come.

Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a Public Notice in the Federal Register announcing the Commission’s “Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” to make calls home from prisons and jails more fairly priced. For a refresher on what the FCC is proposing to do, check out our play-by-play blog post.

This Federal Register publication kicks off a new FCC public comment period that will run until January 5, 2015*, followed by a reply comment period that will end on January 20, 2015*. You can make your voice heard by submitting a comment to the FCC. We’re working on a series of submissions here at PPI, and hope that you’ll join us in telling the FCC that it’s time to enact comprehensive regulation to ensure that ALL families can afford to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones.

*December Update: The FCC has granted a one-week extension. Comments are now due January 12 and reply comments are due on January 27.

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.