Prison Telecom Monopolies 'Evolve,' Now Rip Off Inmate Families With Shoddy Video Services, Too
from the truly-captive-markets dept
We've noted a few times how interstate inmate calling service (ICS) companies have a disturbingly cozy relationship with government, striking (technically buying) monopoly deals that let them charge inmate families $14 per minute. Worse, some ICS companies like Securus Technologies have been under fire for helping the government spy on privileged inmate attorney communications, information that was only revealed after Securus was hacked late last year. Given the apathy for prison inmates and their families ("Iff'n ya don't like high prices, don't go to prison son!") reform on this front has been glacial at best.As such, ripping off inmate families and delivering sub-par services continues unabated. As many prisons eliminate personal visits, these ICS firms have expanded revenues by pretending to offer next-generation teleconferencing services. But while slightly more economical ($10 for 20 minutes), apparently companies like Securus with no competitors, a captive audience, and no repercussions for sloppy technology haven't quite figured out how to make this whole video chat thing work yet. As a result, inmates who use the services say their experiences are repeatedly abysmal:
"Johnson logged into the Securus Technologies website — a Skype-like communication system used by the Travis County jail — on her PC laptop. But the video player didn't have the latest version of Java. When Johnson installed it, the system insisted she had not. So Johnson tried another laptop — a MacBook this time. Java was working this time, Flash was not.In short, Securus is the Comcast of the industrial incarceration sector, and as a result customer support and service is about what you'd expect. 600 prisons in 46 states now have video visitation, and more prisons are doing away with in site visitations monthly, creating yet more revenue opportunities for ICS outfits. Reformers have been arguing that cutting off in-person visitation increases on-site violence by frustrated inmates, and hindering an inmate's ability to maintain outside connections (kind of hard when your wife and child look like pixelated Godzilla) increases the risk of repeat incarceration:
Thinking the browser might be the problem, Johnson tried launching the video player in Chrome, then switched to Safari before giving up and using the Securus Android app on her phone.
Finally, Coleman's face appeared on screen — barely. For the entire call, a glitch in the system caused Coleman's image to look like a tangle of window blinds. Johnson wanted to talk to Coleman about her case, but through most of the call, she simply repeated, "Hello — can you hear me now?" Johnson was charged $10 for the video visit, even after cutting it a few minutes short of the 20-minute maximum."
"County officials across the country claim video visitation is good for security. When Renaud got ahold of prison records, they showed that incidences of inmate-on-inmate violence, disciplinary infractions and possession of contraband all rose after Travis County did away with in-person visitation. Because visitation is so new, these statistics are the earliest indication that the pro-security pitch for video visitation is all snake oil.The problem is that the dysfunction of prison telecom goes bone deep, and reform efforts remain superficial at best. After decades of inaction, the FCC recently tried to impose new price caps of twenty-two cents per minute on ICS companies, but those rules are on hold thanks to a lawsuit from prison telecom operators like Securus that claim prisons face riots if companies can't keep charging consistent rates.
The past decade in research shows consistently (pdf) that maintaining the relationships the incarcerated will inevitably return to for support once they're released is a powerful agent in keeping them from repeat offenses. One study of over 16,000 incarcerated people found that any visitation at all, even just once, reduced the risk of recidivism by 13% for felony reconvictions."
But the core problem remains that such companies get to pay "concession fees" or "site commissions" (read: kickbacks) to prisons for monopoly control over prison inmate communications services. Prisons are paid $460 million annually in such concession fees, and Los Angeles makes $15 million annually off of such fees alone. Obviously that kind of cash quickly kills any attempt at real reform, so not unlike the outside world, prison telecom services remain an ouroboros of profitable dysfunction; a government-sanctioned monopoly with very real human costs, one nobody in the supply chain wants to even examine, much less actually fix.
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Filed Under: calls, captive audience, inmates, prison, video, visitation
Companies: securus
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Prisoners, paychecks, same thing right?
Which is considered a feature, not a bug if you happen to be one of those with a financial incentive to want as many people in jail as possible for as long as possible.
If you're a sociopath that's only making money when other people are locked up then you want them to be locked up as much as possible, because otherwise you won't make as much, and your profits are more important than their freedom. As such doing away with personal visits in favor of crappy video 'visits' is a win-win for people like that, they not only get to gouge people now, they also increase the odds that they'll be able to gouge them again in the future.
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Re: Prisoners, paychecks, same thing right?
And because those kickbacks go into state and local revenue streams, really all this does is shift the tax burden onto the families of prisoners. If the tax burden was on society, there would be at least some financial incentive to try to fix the disaster that is our criminal justice system. But the rich want and get their tax breaks, while the poor and vulnerable are being stolen from with the support of government.
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Re: Re: Prisoners, paychecks, same thing right?
Silly, that's where the predatory payday loan system comes in and "helps!"
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Re: Prisoners, paychecks, same thing right?
Can someone explain to me why shit, as yet, is not being burned to the fucking ground? (Other than the fact that the only people who ever do something of this nature to make it into the news are racist yahoos that actually make the government yahoos look good. Oh, wait, now I get the whole 'corporate press and public opinion' thing.)
Disclaimer - the preceding was a random abstract question of a metaphysical nature, and not in any way incitement for anyone to do anything other than enjoy a scone and watch kittens play with balls of yarn.
Disclaimer The Second - I'm not *really* a ranting loon. Sometimes it's fun to play, though.
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"That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
2. The system would never throw someone into the legal meatgrinder unless they were guilty, so if they're in jail they had to have done something to deserve it.
Pretty much the above, most people don't even consider that maybe, just maybe the system has been corrupted horribly, so if bad things happen to people clearly it can only be because they deserve it, and could never be because the system cares more about bodies in cells and convictions on the record than seeing actual justice done.
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Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
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Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
How long would I have to spend in Irony Hell if I thought that it would be fun to sit back and watch the system destroy everybody, since "every single one of you probably contributed to the mess, so all of you must deserve it"?
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Re: Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
That this does absolutely nothing to stop someone from breaking the law again once they get out, and in fact often increases the odds of such happening isn't even considered, all that matters is making the prisoners suffer as much or more than their victims(assuming there was any for a given crime), and to even suggest otherwise will almost always result in derogatory claims about how the one talking is 'Soft on criminals' or 'Cares more about the crooks than their victims'.
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Re: Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
(It's oddly fun playing with simple stochastic simulations of the justice system, and tossing 'insignificant' quirks of human behavior into the mix as variables.)
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Re: Re: Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
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Re: Re: Prisoners, paychecks, same thing right?
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Re: Prisoners, paychecks, same thing right?
Thank you for making the distinction between sociopaths. Because the money hungry wall street exec wannabe kind of sociopaths or nothing like the honest sociopaths.
Most of us don't care for people but at the same time we don't want to hurt anyone in anyway. So these kind of people are the worst!
By the way, check your state for any contracts with private prisons. More than not you will find that they have clause like guarantied fill rate of 90%.
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Recent Experience
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Mentality doesn't enter into it when your audience is literally captive.
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Re: Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
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Re: Re: Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: "That would never happen to /me/, I'm innocent, but they had it coming."
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