For people incarcerated in county jails, many, as much as over half of whom are still waiting for their day in court, which makes them innocent until then and even after, the telephone is their only connection to families and their lawyers.
This being the case, the price of phone calls can be a source of additional income to county sheriff s who can set the price of calls with the company with whom they contract to install and maintain the system. The more that is charged for a phone call over the contractual fee a sheriff committed to with the telecom company, the more personal profit.
After being charged up to $3,75 just to initiate a call, inmates are charged by the minute with a dropped call being reinitiated requiring the inmate to again pay the call initiation fee. With the cost of each call costing what it does, an inmate often has to forego contacting family and their legal representative as well.
Denying that a sheriff would never be so craven as to abuse inmates for monetary gain is countered by such realities as the Bristol County sheriff Thomas Hodgson having to be sued to end his practice of charging inmates $5.00 a day during their time of incarceration, and his charging relatively exorbitant fees for such canteen items as a bag of ramen noodles that are sold in packs of five for a dollar, but for which he charges up to $2.00 each.
County sheriffs with a propensity to use inmates for profit and keeping what is gained in slush fund coffers for personal use like Hodgson does, are like Mr. Haney from Hooterville who found a way to make a buck any way he could dream up.
Inmates are supplied an attorney if they can’t afford one, but, even though that may be honored, it can be gotten around by offering phone contact while at the same time making it difficult to make that necessary contact.
Studies show that family contact is important to those incarcerated, not just for them, but those at home.
I guess, however, for a sheriff like that of Bristol County MA who supports Trump 100% which includes separating families, parents from children, at the Southern border relishes in his being able to do that in another iteration in his jails.
While he claims most problems at his House of Corrections are due to those housed there with mental illness, this does not deal with addressing that alleged reality, but exacerbating it as studies show that family contact during incarceration is essential to an inmate’s mental health.
During the Pandemic, visitations at county jails have been curtailed, making the phone the only contact an inmate, again, most of whom are innocent, has with family members.
The choice often comes down to making a call that will be charged to your family or not making that call which could be as much as, if not over, $10.00 for a short call.
While creating hardship, the sheriffs make money.
When an individual is incarcerated, their entire family and serves time along with them.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley explained her opposition to this money making scam,
“Charging families exorbitant fees just to have contact with their loved ones is cruel and unusual, and undermines their very humanity and dignity. We must continue our calls for decarceration now, and Massachusetts must lead by outlawing these predatory fees and affirming the right of every individual to stay in contact with those they love, regardless of their income.”
While State and county correctional budgets grew by 6% between FY 2013 and FY 2020, the population of incarcerated people in the Bay State fell by 27%, and spending on basic rehabilitative programs meant to benefit incarcerated people was only 4% of the entire correctional budget.
Rather than use phone and other profits from services to inmates for which they are charged to improve or initiate programs for their betterment and rehabilitation, many sheriffs have chosen to disproportionately fund more security staff while the number of people incarcerated declines, and, in the case of Bristol County, purchasing unnecessary equipment like boats and command center trailers while neither is necessary as there is already the Coast Guard, shore patrol, and harbor police, and local law enforcement and the state police already have command centers.
He charges his inmates to support his puffery.
The Director of Prisoners’ Legal Services has said,
“To rely on families, and primarily women, to fund any programming whatsoever has always been unconscionable and a direct result of corporate prison profiteering. It’s particularly damaging now when women and children in the Commonwealth, especially those of color, are struggling more now than ever.”
Families have paid $24 million a year for phone calls to their loved ones, with sheriffs receiving $7.4 million annually from the telecom corporations with which they contract. Add this to the over $600 million county sheriffs got in the 2020 budget, and that $7.4 million is theirs to spend on what they want, which is often spent with little if any accountability to the public.
The Massachusetts state population is approximately 27% people of color, while the population incarcerated by the Department of Correction is 56% Black and Latinx.
If you are reading this and thinking these percentages of incarcerated Blacks and LatinX people is because of some innate propensity to commit crimes resulting in justified incarceration, let me present two experiences that may explain what people refuse to accept.
I was once walking through a posh neighborhood with a friend on our way to another friend’s house just outside of it at the opposite end from my apartment. As the result of a phone call from a homeowner there, the police pulled up, and while I was walked aside and was asked by one officer, while I remained standing, why we were in the neighborhood, my friend who was Black was told to
put his laced fingered hands on his head and kneel down behind the patrol car with his ankles crossed to make it hard to jump up.
I was once pulled over by police in the city in which I was living at the time and was directed to step out of my car with my license and registration. This stepping out was standard procedure. In that same city while in a car with other teacher union officers on our way to a meeting, we got pulled over, but in this case the driver, a celebrated coach and the organizer of an anti–gang involvement youth athletic program, was directed, as I had been, to exit the car with his license and registration, with the added direction to go to the back of the patrol car, put his laced fingered hands on his head, and kneel down with his ankles crossed to make it hard to jump up. He was a Black man.
Overwhelming support at a public hearing before the Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security in November 2019, resulted in the Committee reporting on the no cost phone call bill favorably and referring it to the Committee on Senate Ways and Means which subsequently reported the bill out favorably so now it must be brought forward to the floor for a vote.
Not surprisingly, Sheriffs are telling legislators not to pass S2846 because they need the profits from predatory phone call charges to pay for “programming”, most of which is often performed by volunteers, or simply exist in name only.
Since Sheriffs already get hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget every year, if they were better stewards of the public’s tax dollars, they would not need the extra money that is spent without receipts.
This Saturday, September 26, people will be gathering at the State House in Boston in support of the bill, and in Bristol County at the Ash St. Jail in New Bedford starting at noon.
This abuse for profit needs to end.