Telephone Campaigns Across the US

[Dazzler]

You guys are doing great at finding some research.  Here's another story Mah found:



ON THE WEB
Visit www.outside connectioninc.net to learn more about Outside Connection, a business that offers prepaid phone service to an inmate's family at a substantial discount.



Ex-con calls to inmates

By EILEEN STILWELL
Courier-Post Staff


WINSLOW
There is a war going on inside the country's state prisons over the cost of inmate telephone calls, and Winslow resident Brian Prins is in the thick of it.

The 39-year-old ex-con knows firsthand how important it is to keep in touch with family and loved ones while behind bars. For that reason he hopes to stop special interests from charging prisoners up to six times more than the general public would pay for a collect call.

"I know how much phone calls from prison cost and how much an inmate needs to talk to his loved ones," said Prins, who recalls racking up monthly phone bills in excess of $1,000. Part of that, he says, stemmed from a day-trading business he created for himself, other inmates and a few guards while he was doing time.

An intense, fast-talking, chain smoking, Bluetooth-wearing man who cranks his $135,000 custom-built pro drag racer up to 200 miles per hour to relax, Prins says his downfall was cocaine.

Drugs put him behind bars in Pennsylvania and New York for eight years for a variety of offenses, including aggravated assault and possession of stolen car parts.

In the front yard of his home, he points proudly to his auto racing registration number -- 1996 -- the year he kicked his drug habit. Six years later he was released from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemmora, N.Y., and started Outside Connection, Inc., hoping to get a piece of the nation's estimated $1 billion prison phone market.

Crime can pay for those involved in the nation's $37 billion prison economy. The United States has the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, according to federal statistics.

Unlike traditional systems, where inmates call home collect, Outside Connection is prepaid by an inmate's family at a substantial discount.

It allows inmates to place calls to cell phones or Internet-based phones, which other systems do not.

Prison protocol requires inmates to list people they plan to call. Also, calls may be monitored.

Because Outside Connection is prepaid, the company is never stuck with a bill, which is why some major phone companies say their rates are so high.

The other reason is a long-standing arrangement in many states, including New Jersey, in which phone providers kick back a portion of the cost of each call to the Department of Corrections or the general treasury.

Choosing a single phone company to serve New Jersey's 27,000 adult prisoners and monitoring the proceeds is handled by New Jersey's Treasury Department, corrections spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheuer said.

Last year, New Jersey signed a five-year contract with GTL, a division of Verizon Communications, to provide phone service to inmates. Forty percent of the revenue collected goes to the general treasury with no dedicated use, said treasury spokesman Mark Perkiss. He was unable to provide the amount of money collected in a single year.

One way to measure the need of inmates to communicate with the outside, said Fedkenheuer, is cell phone trafficking.

"Cell phones are contraband in prison, but possession remains a problem that every state is trying to address," she said. "Cell phones pose a security threat and we can't monitor what is being said, which is required. I hear they're going for $200 to $300 inside our prisons. When we find them, frequently they are dropped in common areas or in the yard, making ownership harder to trace," she said.

Outside Connection has customers in 50 states, but Prins isn't saying how many. The company employs six people in a home-based office in Winslow, and five off site. Revenues for 2006, he said, hovered around $3 million.

Recently, he teamed with a Dallas, Texas-based business that sells prepaid phone service to people who are poor credit risks.

Frank Schmaeling, owner of the Texas company, describes Prins as a "passionate, savvy businessman who works diligently to save inmates' families money.

"Brian has combined and coordinated existing products seamlessly to get the most for his money," said Schmaeling, who is now CEO of Outside Connection.

Prins is president and founder.

Last week, Schmaeling met with officials from New York's Department of Corrections hoping to get approval for a pilot prepaid phone program in the state's prisons. Global Tel Link, also known as GTL, has an exclusive contract for prison calls in 11 states,including New Jersey and New York. Based in Mobile, Ala., GTL is under a sales agreement with the Gores Group, LLC, a private equity firm based in Los Angeles, Calif.

Shortly after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office this month, he ended long-standing surcharges on inmate phone calls and instructed GTL to charge no more than it would the public for a collect call. The order is effective April 1.

New York prisoners make an estimated 80,000 collect calls per month.

Spitzer's action makes New York one of a few states that do not make money on inmate calls, said Annette Dickerson, coordinator of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Since 1996, the service provider has been required to return more than half its profits to New York's Department of Corrections. The arrangement generated $16 million for the state in 2005. The provider passed those charges to people receiving the collect calls, in effect charging families for their relatives' incarceration.

"Despair behind bars can be too much. A call home could save somebody from committing suicide. I've seen it happen," Prins said.

Aside from making money, Prins is interested in holding families together after a member is incarcerated.

"I had a lousy childhood, and I have no kids of my own," said Prins, who married two years ago. "Sometimes I'm jealous of some of my buddies who have very close family ties. You can't blame a guy who screwed up for wanting to talk to his wife and kids from prison. I really want to help them."

Another reason, Prins admits, is to support his expensive race car hobby.

"I work for toys," said Prins, surveying a pair of massive trailers that he uses to travel across the country in the pro race car circuit.

"He who dies with the most toys wins," he said.

Reach Eileen Stilwell at (856) 486-2464 or estilwell@courierpostonline.com
[liPublished]: January 21. 2007 3:10AM

[Dazzler]

Here's a synopsis of the 1999 challenge to Illinois prison phone calls that Scout and I referred to....unfortunately it failed:



Docket: Arsberry v. State of Illinois, AT&T, Invision Telecom, MCI Telecommunications Corp, et al.

 Opinions and Documents 
 Prison Telephone Project
 Byrd v. Goord
 Martha Wright v. Corrections Corporation of America

Synopsis

This suit challenged the State of Illinois’ practice of creating exclusive agreements with telephone companies for inmate telephone service.  This practice requires prisoners to make only collect calls, and results in the prisoners’ families and friends being charged excessive rates and exorbitant surcharges.



 

“These prisons and prison systems are conspiring with telephone companies to enrich themselves at the expense of prisoners and their families,” says  former CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman commenting on the practice of prisons requiring that inmates make only collect calls, and only from a single carrier, at exorbitant rates.

 

“They’re taking advantage of a ‘captive’ audience.  Prisoners are forced to use whichever carrier the prison has entered into a contract with, and that carrier charges rates well above market rate, with the prisons getting a commission on each phone call.  It puts a huge burden on the friends, family and counsel of these prisoners.”

 

On June 29, 1999, CCR filed a civil rights lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois challenging the State of Illinois’ practice of creating exclusive agreements with telephone companies for inmate telephone service.  These agreements require prisoners to make only collect calls and result in the recipient of the call being charged excessive rates and surcharges that are among the highest, if not the highest, for any type of telephone service available to the public.  Those receiving inmate calls are locked into such an arrangement as well and are not entitled to use any other service or to seek telephone company assistance for problems associated with these calls.  In addition, attorneys and prisoner assistance organizations have been impeded in their efforts to adequately represent their incarcerated clients because of these high rates.  The agreements also provide for huge monetary bonuses to be paid by the telephone companies to the State in exchange for the exclusive franchise. 

 

The lawsuit alleges that these agreements violate the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment to the Constitution, and the Illinois Constitution and Antitrust Act.

 

On March 22, 2000, the District Court entered a judgment dismissing the case.  According to the Court, the case should be heard by either the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and/or the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) rather than by a federal court, since “one issue that all of these causes of action have in common is that they challenge the fairness, at some level, of the telephone rates charged by the telephone companies.”

 

CCR filed an appeal of the decision with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.  The brief on appeal argues that the District Court erred in ruling that the filed rate doctrine requires dismissal because most of the issues presented by plaintiffs involve claims of deprivation of their constitutional rights and do not challenge the specific rates contained in tariffs filed with the FCC or ICC.  In fact, the ICC has specifically ruled that it will not consider any issues concerning prison telephone systems.  The brief also argues that dismissal under the doctrine of primary jurisdiction is inappropriate given that the claims alleged are matters traditionally within the expertise and experience of Article III courts and not administrative agencies.  Finally, the brief noted that the law in the Seventh Circuit is clear that deferral for an agency determination is the appropriate mechanism rather than dismissal under the primary jurisdiction doctrine. 

 

The Seventh Circuit considered the plaintiffs’ claims on the merits, and held that the special tax on telephone calls did not violate the First Amendment rights of prisoners and their families.  Judge Posner wrote, “Although the telephone can be used to convey communications that are protected by the First Amendment, that is not its primary use and it is extremely rare for inmates and their callers to use the telephone for this purpose.   Not to allow them access to a telephone might be questionable on other grounds, but to suppose that it would infringe the First Amendment would be doctrinaire in the extreme .  .  .  .”

 

CCR does not consider the Seventh Circuit decision as the last word in the challenges against governmental restrictions and abuses concerning prison telephones.  The organization is representing clients on two other cases -- Byrd v. Goord and Wright v. Corrections Corporations of America -- in which the prison telephone policies are being challenged. 

 




CCR Legal Team - Barbara Olshansky with Cooperating Attorney Robert Perry

 
 

[Dazzler]

This is a great website about the Pennsylvania Prison Phone System:  http://www.prisoners.com/ltbrian.html  It's really funny....and they're paying only about half of what Illinois is....