More Prisons Banning In-Person Visits, Adding To Securus Tech's Pile Of Cash
from the it's-ok-because-prisoners-aren't-human-beings,-amirite dept
Jails and prisons continue to sacrifice what few physical interactions prisoners have with loved ones on the outside to phone service provider Securus. The New Orleans Advocate reports a local jail is the latest in a long line of correctional facilities to ban in-person visits, replacing them with Securus communication software and hardware.
Inmates at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna will no longer be able to receive in-person visits from relatives and friends beginning Oct. 10, when the facility will begin a "video visitation" program similar to one put in place at New Orleans' lockup a couple of years ago.
To jailers, this move just makes sense. It all but eliminates contraband smuggling and allows prisons and jails to allocate fewer staffers to monitoring prisoner visits. But it makes little sense for those stuck inside and even less sense for those on the outside who will be spending a lot more money on visits that used to be free.
The Sheriff's Office said 20-minute sessions will cost nearly $13.
At this per minute rate, it makes no difference visiting hours are being expanded. While it may sometimes be more convenient to Skype prisoners than visit in person, no one's asking for $0.60/minute communications to be their only option.
But this is something Securus has pushed for a long time. Back in 2015, Securus finally dropped a clause in its contracts that mandated correctional facilities using its equipment move to video-only visits. But that doesn't mean jails aren't still heavily encouraged to ban in-person visits. The pivot to video doesn't just generate an absurd amount of income for the communications provider. It also pads the pockets of prisons.
Jails stand to make a profit by adopting this type of visitation. If families do a video visit at the jail, it's free, but if they do it from their home computer, it can cost $1 per minute. Securus promised the Cheshire County Jail a 20 percent cut of the thousands of dollars those fees bring in — that cut totaled $2,500 for the jail last year. The county paid $30,000 to install the video system.
This perversity incentivizes prison and jails to further dehumanize inmates by cutting them off from most, if not all, outside human contact while incarcerated. Jails don't have to step up to full-on bans to discourage visits. They can just enact highly-intrusive search policies and shorten visiting hours to achieve the same effect.
The push to video further benefits the state by ensuring almost every communication between prisoners and outsiders is recorded. In-person visits may be lightly-surveilled by staff, but calls routed through Securus hardware/software are swept up in their entirety, easily accessed by the government.
It's not like prisoners aren't warned that all calls are recorded, but these bans eliminate any possibility of an intimate one-on-one conversation with a loved one or family member.
Just as problematic is the government's access to every conversation. While prisoners have an extremely diminished expectation of privacy, the government has repeatedly overstepped the very minimal boundaries remaining to listen in on privileged calls from prisoners to their legal reps.
And if the per call price seems high now, it's only going to get worse. Along with attacking net neutrality and loosening regulation of telcos and cable companies, FCC chairman Ajit Pai has made it clear the sky's the limit for prison phone call fees.
In the end, very little will be done about it. Convicted prisoners are the least sympathetic group when it comes to pushing new legislation. Very few politicians are willing to go to bat for incarcerated people and even fewer constituents are willing to support candidates who appear the least bit empathetic for those behind bars. Topping it all off is the fact that those affected the most cannot vote, despite being handy sources of federal revenue for states and cities housing inmates.
The push will continue to further isolate prisoners, which is only going to serve to reduce the chances of societal reintegration after they've done their time. But that's OK, because the harder it is to return to normal life, the greater the chance released inmates will end up back in prison racking up $15 phone calls that benefit Securus and others willing to shamelessly exploit a very captive audience.
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Filed Under: fees, prisons, video calling, visits
Companies: securus
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Sadly, cruel and unusual punishment is being inflicted on the prisoners AND their families.
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Say what? They are busy sucking telecom dick... what is this discussion about whether they will bow to shit?
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I imagine Mr. Pai is already loosening the belt on his trenchcoat and applying lube while still in the cab on the way to telecom HQ.
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Wouldn't having the prisoners and visitors speak through a window with a small grill do the same thing?
You could still charge $13 every few minutes to cover the operating costs of that small grill and to research the next generation of wire mesh grill technology.
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Securus corporation = Criminals
ie - they should be imprisoned for grand theft.
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People who couldn't take the time or mileage to get there - or who can't bundle up the kids and bring them regularly - could sign in and pay the fee (which actually strikes me as cheaper than transport for most visitors, given how jails and prisons tend not to be right on the easy bus line). Would probably result in lots more visits, which supposedly help keep prisoners socialized.
People who want face time could make the trip. Visiting days would be less crowded, and cheaper to administer.
Win-win. Except the jail signed the lousy deal with the vendor that says we'll make sure you make money by banning in-person visits.
Allowing both might have made it unsustainable financially, I suppose, but they should share their reasoning publicly so it's transparent what kind of decisions are being made o/b/o the people.
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"Racketeers do not contribute to election campaigns"
I'm pretty sure this hasn't been true since prohibition.
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Preparing for re-integration?
Bwahaha, who am I kidding. Re-integration isn't on the list of goals of the US prison system. Repeat customers is what they want!
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Sadly, cruel and unusual punishment is being inflicted on the prisoners AND their families.
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TV ads
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"Cruel and Unusual"
It sucks to be a convict - it's supposed to suck.
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Re: "Cruel and Unusual"
I'm sure that's the case.
And, in fact, the people who know exactly how bad it is in there will be the ones for whom the disincentive will surely work best. That is, once you've gone to jail, the worse the treatment is, the less likely you'll be to reoffend.
That being the case, the recidivism rate (the rate at which released criminals reoffend) in the US must be much lower than that in countries where they coddle their criminals (that is, treat them like human beings).
What? You say that recidivism is much lower in Scandinavian countries, where the focus is on rehabilitation and helping the person reintegrate into society rather than inflicting punishment?
Clearly, that's fake news. Or so we'll tell ourselves to justify our need to be cruel to people we see as less human than ourselves.
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"Willing to commit crime."
We all commit three felonies a day, and it's only due to prosecutorial discretion that each and every one of us is not in lockup.
Every year it's more and more convincing that fewer and fewer of our impacted penal population was convicted for a crime that they actually committed, what with perverse incentives and false forensic science and all.
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Re: "Willing to commit crime."
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Inmates are not convicted of anything yet. They are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty yet still have all of their rights stripped from them.
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Re: "Cruel and Unusual"
Where on earth did you get this twisted line of logic from? A whip across my back hurts just as much no matter how many times I've had it applied.
It's this exact kind of uncaring attitude that leads people to repeat their crimes and increases crime in general. Someone doing something wrong does not make it right to toss them to the dogs. The point of ANY punishment short of capital should always be to help the person want to change.
Any punishment that doesn't have that as it's goal is just torture for the pleasure of the punisher.
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Re: "Cruel and Unusual"
Increased levels of cruelty does not stop the crime.
But it does get votes
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Slight edit needed:
"To jailers, this move just makes sense. It all but eliminates contraband smuggling" by visitors, which was creating too much competition with smuggling by staff, whom have always been responsible for most of it.
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This is happening because no one cares.
They are in jail, they deserves bad things.
We get a little tingle on the inside when we read about how their lives were made a little worse, & refuse to understand the idea that perhaps doing these sorts of things "hardens" a criminal.
But they are only doing it to poor people, who just refuse to lift themselves up by their bootstraps & expect the world to be fair.
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Except some of them do not belong there
"But they are only doing it to poor people, who just refuse to lift themselves up by their bootstraps & expect the world to be fair."
I'm certain many actually think that ... I guess it allows them to sleep better.
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Expecting the world to be fair
The Department of Justice closes cases about 35% of the time and that's including those in which they pinned guilt on a convenient bystander by planting evidence or lying in court.
Once we dispell the myth that society is, at least, trying to enforce a certain degree of fairness, then there's no reason not to go into crime, when it offers a decent increase in the opportunity for a better life. If all of society gives no fucks, why not subvert it? When the police are too busy chasing and seizing assets to enforce law anymore, legitimacy and righteousness is determined only by strength of force.
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