Week of February 25 - Piggy For Profits

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Piggy For Profits

IDOC Is Bringing Home The Bacon

The Illinois Department of Corrections has a cash cow…er, pig. It’s called inmate family phone calls. The IDOC has conspired with Consolidated Public Services to squeeze $$millions of dollars from inmate phone calls to family, friends and legal counsels. The average phone call from an Illinois correctional facility within the state is approximately $10 for a 30-minute call. Outside Illinois the calls can reach upwards of $30 - $40 each. This doesn’t include the maximum percentage of universal taxes levied either. Not only does the IDOC not care that these outrageous rates are crippling communications between families, but they thrive on the outlandish commission kickbacks paid by Consolidated to ensure their exclusivity on the prison phone scam.

Millions of dollars pour into the IDOC yearly. Those bearing the burden of this strong-armed robbery are oftentimes the single-parent families who only want to keep in contact with an incarcerated spouse or parent. The IDOC should be more concerned about fostering good family ties with inmates rather than how much of their money they can suck out of them for fat profits. Some families must decide whether they can buy groceries or talk to Daddy each month.

It almost appears to be a well orchestrated conspiracy. The IDOC seems to ship inmates to prisons at opposite ends of the state from where the inmate’s family resides. Good security measure? Ridiculous! It just makes it difficult for families to visit on a regular basis. As if that isn’t bad enough, the IDOC further interferes with good family relations by delivering inmate mail in such a sloppy and erratically random manner that inmates are forced to participate in the department’s telephone extortion plan just to have contact with home. This affects families and legal representatives as well. Some Christmas mail is still being delivered. The same old tired excuse of ‘understaffing’ is wearing thin. Families and inmates are at the mercy of inefficient employees or incredibly ineffective management of our state’s prisons. The haphazard delivery of mail is bordering on illegal and certainly it’s punitive to all involved. There is no excuse that’s acceptable. Period.

The lousy mail service and costly long distance visits leave inmates no alternative than to make phone calls at over-inflated rates. This is obviously part of the monopoly plot. For a wife or children or parents of an inmate to share a few moments in a telephone conversation, the Consolidated phone account holder pays dearly. Some monthly bills can reach as high as $300 or $400 per month for a brief, daily phone call.

The connection charges are the hidden smoking gun. These are the outlandish fees charged for handling the call by Consolidated. Not only are the initial connection fees from $3 to $5 per call, plus a high per-minute charge, but it’s a routine custom to be mysteriously disconnected, sometimes several times within a 30-minute block of calling, necessitating several more ‘connection fees’ to complete one call. Consolidated has refused to reimburse the account holder for these ‘hang-ups’. Pretty nifty scam they’ve got going, eh? Not to mention the calls are frequently interrupted for official prisons messages and extra per minute charges than are actually used. Yes, Consolidated, we’re wise to you. We’re collecting all those phone bills.

The commission fees paid to the IDOC to keep Consolidated Public Services as the exclusive rip-off artist for the IDOC is supposedly in excess of 50% of the company’s revenues. We say presumably because the IDOC is none too quick to respond to inquiries about the revenues realized from these calls. It’s sort of like twisting the piggy’s tail for an answer. Also, the contract between the two seems to be elusive to the public.

The governor of the State of New York has stepped up to the plate and recently put a halt to this unconscionable practice in his state. He has ordered the immediate removal of all connection fees from calls placed by inmates. The Department of Corrections in New York has received in excess of $25,000,000 per year in kickback commissions for a prison population of 60,000. Illinois has roughly 55,000 inmates. A court ruling this week against MCI Telephone and the NYDOC may possibly result in the refund of over $200,000,000 to inmate families for this extortion since the lawsuit was filed.

The newly created Illinois Campaign for Telephone Justice will seek similar relief from the IDOC and Consolidated Public Services. It’s time to stop the extortion and the punishment of inmate families.

Besides being forced to stuff the State’s telephone piggy bank, inmate families support the IDOC by paying for the high cost of commissary items and providing the huge profits from vending machine sales during visits. There is nothing kind or humane about the treatment and unreasonable demands placed on ‘outmates’. We are the ones who are being punished by the DOC just to maintain any degree of normalcy between family members. Our tax dollars already support the IDOC - yet we are forced to pay many times that of other Illinoisans to maintain the IDOC’s lavish expenditures.

Someone in the State needs to revamp this Department and it’s practices. Not only do families bear the brunt of supporting their own inmate, which is the state’s responsibility, but they are doing it at a great sacrifice.

To STOP THE EXTORTION NOW visit the online petition site and let your voice be heard: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/IllinoisTelephoneJustice

Heads up IDOC…we’re coming after our money. It’s time to stop making pigs of yourselves at our expense.[/b][/font]

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