FCC takes historic stand to control the predatory prison and jail phone industry

the FCC is finally stepping up to the plate to protect families from having to choose between staying in touch and paying the bills.

by Leah Sakala, August 9, 2013

This afternoon the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve a new set of regulations to control the exploitative prison and jail phone industry. Currently, prisons and jails grant exclusive contracts to telephone companies that charge families outrageous bills and kick back a hefty portion of the profit to the correctional facilities. But now, the FCC is finally stepping up to the plate to protect families from having to choose between staying in touch and paying the bills.

While the official text for the order and notice won’t be available until next week, today the FCC announced that the regulation will mandate:

1. That “all interstate inmate calling rates, including ancillary charges, be based on the cost of providing the inmate calling service.”
2. Interstate rate caps of $0.21/minute for debit and pre-paid calls and $0.25/minute for collect calls, and “safe-harbor” rates of $0.12/minute for debit and prepaid calls and $0.14 cents/minute for collect calls. The rates must also include the costs of security features and technology.
3. The expense of kickbacks back to prisons and jails must not be factored into interstate rates or charges
4. People who need assistive hearing or speech services not be charged higher rates
5. A call for “mandatory data collection, annual certification requirement, and enforcement provisions to ensure compliance with this Order”

The FCC also opened a new comment period to gather information on two topics:

1. Regulating in-state rates
2. Encouraging competition to bring down rates

Advocates for fair phone rates have been calling for regulation for more than a decade, beginning with a 2000 class action lawsuit brought against the Corrections Corporation of America and several prison phone companies. A federal judge decided that the case fell under the jurisdiction of the FCC, where it sat for years. Today’s ruling marks the first definitive action from the FCC to control the broken prison and jail telephone industry.

This victory was the result of a strong and sustained campaign, and we are proud to be celebrating with our movement partners. Stay tuned for a more in-depth analysis next week when the details are available!

The good old days of the exploitative prison phone industry?

2002 footage shows how much the industry has changed in 10 years.

by Leah Sakala, August 9, 2013

The campaign for phone justice just posted a 2002 video of prison phone providers talking about the industry:

Talk about a blast from the past. The video is a perfect example of how much the industry has changed in the last decade. Here’s why:

1. The video features representatives of Verizon and AT&T, public-facing companies you’ve actually heard of. Neither of these companies in the prison phone business anymore after investment banks took over the industry, and now Verizon publicly deplores the price-gouging in the current prison phone market.
2. The video features leading prison phone companies actually engaging with the media. By contrast, coverage of today’s upcoming FCC vote on prison phone regulation has been rife with sentences such as: “American Securities, which owns Global Tel*Link, declined to comment.”
3. The spokespeople in the video acknowledge that it’s not a fair industry to the families of incarcerated people: the corporate bottom line depends on prisons staying full and families footing the expensive phone bills. “Unfortunately, this is a growth industry,” says the Verizon representative at the start of the video, noting that prison expansion is expanding their customer base.

But now? The nation’s largest prison phone company, Global Tel*Link (which most people have probably never heard of), has been conspicuously silent. Not only are Global Tel*Link representatives not responsive to the public and to the media, but they’re also not talking to the Federal Communications Commission, refusing to participate in discussions about regulation or provide data the FCC is requesting.

Calls home from prisons and jails were outrageously expansive when the video was shot, and they’re outrageously expensive now. That alone is reason enough for the FCC to approve comprehensive regulation this morning. But the extreme price gouging combined with a shocking lack of transparency from prison phone corporations should leave no question in the Commissioners’ minds: It’s time to get this broken industry under control.

Tune in at 11AM EST to watch the historic vote and see what happens.

Santa Clara County, CA sheriff scraps plan to ban letters from home

Successful community organizing led Sheriff John Hirokawa to cancel plans to limit correspondence to postcard only.

by Leah Sakala, August 9, 2013

Great news for families in Santa Clara County, California: Sheriff John Hirokawa has scrapped a destructive plan to ban families from writing letters to loved ones in jail. As my report, “Return to Sender: Postcard-only policies in jail,” found, jail letter bans jeopardize the critical family ties that help incarcerated people succeed when they return home.

Santa Clara residents were rightly outraged when they discovered that the Sheriff was planning on banning letters from the jail. With the leadership of local media and community organizing group Silicon Valley De-Bug, they held a powerful public forum to share their concerns with the Sheriff’s Department. And, to the sheriff’s credit, he called off the ban.

Meanwhile, Santa Barbara County residents in Southern California are still fighting to overturn the letter ban in the local jail. Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown would be wise to follow Santa Clara County’s example and end the letter ban that undermines public safety and drives families apart.

Nation’s leading Criminal Defense association recognizes Peter Wagner as a “Champion of State Criminal Justice Reform”

New album with photos from NACDL's award ceremony where Peter was honored.

by Leah Sakala, August 8, 2013

At the end of July, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers awarded Peter the “Champion of State Criminal Justice Reform Award” at the 12th Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference in San Francisco, California. It was a great honor!

We recently got some pictures from NACDL of the award ceremony, and took a few shots of the award going up in the office:

NACDL President Jerry J. Cox, Peter Wagner, and State Legislative Affairs Director Angelyn Frazer at the NACDL conference (Image source: NACDL)

Peter speaking at the NACDL conference (Image source: NACDL)

Hanging the award in the Prison Policy Initiative office

Oregon passes legislation to rein in racial disparities in criminal law; which state will be next?

Evaluating legislation before it is passed is the best way to avoid harmful racial disparities down the line.

by Leah Sakala, July 9, 2013

Last week Oregon made great strides towards racial justice when Governor Kitzhaber signed SB 463 into law, a bill that enables the legislature to evaluate whether a bill or human service program is likely to lead to increased racial disparities. The bill, sponsored by Senator Chip Shields and Representative Gallegos, passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support.

This law gives legislators the tools they need to be able to avoid passing legislation that unintentionally increases racial inequality. It has two different provisions:

• Any two legislators, as long as they are from different parties, can ask the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission to evaluate proposed legislation or ballot measures and issue a statement on the expected impact on racial disparities. For ballot measures, the statement must also be printed in voter information pamphlets.
• State agencies awarding grants for juvenile court or child welfare services must require grant applicants to include racial impact statements in their applications.

This bill is designed to foster informed criminal justice policymaking. Preparing racial impact statements for proposed legislation means that policymakers and voters can consider the larger impact of a bill before it is passed, rather than discovering any racially disparate consequences only after the damage has been done.

Prospective evaluations of racial impact are especially critical in the criminal justice context. The U.S. prison system is infamous for perpetuating fundamental racial inequalities. Nationally, Black people are incarcerated nearly six times as much as White people are, and Latinos are incarcerated nearly three times as much as Whites:

The racial disparities on the state level, too, are stark. In Oregon, for example, Black people make up 1.6% of the total population but more than 9% of the prison population. Latinos are 9% of the total population, but more than 13% of the prison population.

It’s impossible pinpoint a single reason for such stark racial inequality, but social scientists generally point to a complex combination of social disparities, policy decisions and systemic biases. Racial impact statements are a preventative measure to ensure that at least one critical factor in that equation — policy decisions — doesn’t unintentionally make things worse.

Not only are racial impact statement policies good for racial justice, but ensuring that bills are likely to do only what they are intended to do is just plain smart government policy. As SB 463 sponsor Rep. Gallegos said, “racial and ethnic disparities suggest that we are using state resources inefficiently and ineffectively.”

Bills like Oregon’s help policymakers:

• Ensure that legislation is narrowly targeted to have its intended effect.
• Consider the full impact of a measure before it is enacted.
• Avoid the expensive and time-consuming process of adapting existing legislation after the fact to remove unintended harm.
• Reduce the chances that new criminal justice policy in Oregon will increase the state’s significant racial disparities in the incarcerated population.

Oregon’s new law makes good common sense, but Oregon is only the third state to pass racial impact legislation, following on the heels of Iowa and Connecticut. It’s time for the rest of the states to join them.

We’ve been working on a comprehensive research review in order to help more states adopt similar racial impact statement policies. We aim to make two main contributions to the discourse on these useful policy tools:

1. Racial impact statements fit entirely within a long and respected tradition of legislators requesting experts to evaluate proposed legislation for unforeseen impacts. It’s very common, for example, for legislators to ask for information on how a proposed bill is likely to affect the budget or the environment. Our movement needs to properly situate racial impact statements in the broader arsenal of smart and common policymaking practices.
2. We should use the data we already have to make racial impact statements as useful as possible. Beyond the three states with racial impact legislation, a number of other states routinely request similar racial impact evaluations as part of the legislative process. Each state’s procedure is different, from the conditions that have to be met before a request can be made, to the nature of the information requested, to the time allocated for the request to be fulfilled. By doing a comprehensive review of current racial impact measures and how they are used, we can suggest best practices that will make similar legislation in other additional states as effective as possible.

The criminal justice system is at a crossroads right now, and evaluating legislation before it is passed is the best way to avoid harmful racial disparities down the line. By establishing that racial impact statements are a common-sense tool for rational policymaking, and giving lawmakers some clear best practice guidelines, we can pave the way for more states to follow Oregon’s lead.

But we need financial support to bring this project forward.

If you can support this research project to help bring racial justice to criminal justice in more states, or know of anyone who can, please get in touch.

And congratulations to Oregon!

Were your headphones made in prison?

A new Forbes piece explores the international market for products made in prison, citing to our publication "The Prison Index."

by Leah Sakala, June 29, 2013

It’s really exciting to see our work being used in creative and compelling ways. For example:

A new Forbes piece reveals that major international corporations are buying products, such as in-flight airline headphones, manufactured in inhumane Chinese work prisons.

While most people would rightly conclude that profiting from abusive forced labor is unconscionable, the author points out that this might also be a good time for some self-reflection. U.S. consumers regularly buy products from private U.S. corporations that capitalize on prison labor, and there’s a frightening push in this country to cut costs by replacing public sector jobs with work crews of incarcerated people. Citing to the “Prison Labor” section of our publication, The Prison Index, the author warns:

It’s not clear… whether U.S. citizens would feel comfortable using products that were made by prisoners making $0.13 cents per hour. But if U.S. citizens for some reason do become comfortable with it, there are plenty of companies and prison administrators worldwide who would be happy to oblige them.

We released the The Prison Index over ten years ago in order to give a broad overview of the criminal justice system by compiling reliable data on a wide array of criminal justice topics. We anticipated that it would have a shelf life of about two years, but, lo and behold, we’re thrilled that it’s still regularly cited by journalists, activists, and policymakers more than a decade later.

We’re working on raising the funds we need to update and expand The Prison Index. But in the meantime, check it out!

The Death Penalty: 60 Years After the Rosenbergs’ Execution

At sundown 60 years ago today, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were wrongfully executed by the U.S. Government. What have we learned since?

by Leah Sakala, June 19, 2013

At sundown 60 years ago today, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were wrongfully executed by the U.S. Government after courts found them guilty of espionage. Now, six decades later, we know that their execution was a direct result of the mass hysteria about the dangers of communism at the beginning of the Cold War.

But what have we learned in the six decades since the Rosenbergs’s wrongful execution? Thanks to the tireless work of organizations like the Innocence Project and pro bono law clinics, the list of innocent people who have been exonerated from death row is steadily growing.

But, as the below graph shows, the struggle to abolish the death penalty still has a long ways to go:

Mass. Legislature should pass Innocence Commission bill

We just submitted a letter in support of Bill H. 1638, “An Act to establish the Massachusetts innocence commission.”

by Leah Sakala, June 18, 2013

We just submitted a letter to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary in support of Bill H. 1638, “An Act to establish the Massachusetts innocence commission.”

We wrote:

The experience of incarceration has a profound and lasting negative impact on any person’s life. Passing H. 1638 would be an important step to ensure that innocent people are kept out of the Massachusetts justice system. Furthermore, conviction errors not only destroy lives, but they also waste precious tax dollars that should instead be used to invest in the future by keeping communities safe and healthy.

There is no question that the criminal justice system will make mistakes. The question is whether Massachusetts will put in place a system to ensure that we learn from those mistakes and make wrongful convictions less likely in the future.

Want to get involved? The Massachusetts Conference of United Church of Christ Innocence Commission Task Team is doing great organizing to support this important bill.

The Phone Corporations That Ruined Fathers Day

On Sunday, some families had to choose between wishing dad a Happy Father’s Day on the telephone and putting food on the table.

by Peter Wagner, June 18, 2013

On Sunday, some families had to choose between wishing dad a Happy Father’s Day on the telephone and putting food on the table. These days, most telephone calls are practically free, but for the 2.7 million kids in the United States who have an incarcerated parent, a call home can break the bank.

Most prisons and jails give their telephone contract to a single company that charges up to $17 for a 15 minute call. Phone bills are high in part because the prisons and jails demand that the phone companies kick back up to 84% of the revenue to the facility, and in part because the Federal Communications Commission has stalled on regulating the industry for more than a decade.

Securus agrees that it’s ripping customers off via outrageous prison phone fees

But will they take their own advice and stop charging customers to get their own money back?

by Leah Sakala, June 11, 2013

Yet another phone company is recognizing the broken nature of the prison phone industry, and this time it’s a big one.

In a letter filed yesterday with the FCC, the second-largest phone company in the prison phone industry, Securus, has agreed that, “certain practices, which serve to artificially inflate the cost of prison phone calls, are egregious and should be eliminated.”

Which practices? For example, Securus writes, charging customers extra fees to refund their money is “restrictive and unwarranted.”

The fact that Securus officials are speaking out against exploitative industry practices is great news. But will they take their own advice and stop charging customers $4.95 just to get their own money back? Only time will tell.