Cost of Inmate Phone Calls to Plummet

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Thanks to recent action by the Federal Communications Commission the cost for calls from inmates in Tennessee and across the country are set to fall dramatically, but the change won't go into effect until early next year.
The FCC, in the second phase of a crackdown on excessive phone costs for inmates, has set new caps on the amount prison phone carriers can charge per minute. Charges for collect calls from prisons will be capped at 14 cents a minute.  The cap will drop to 13 cents a minute on July 1, 2017 and to 11 cents a minute on July 1, 2018.
Under the order jails, facilities that generally hold prisoners awaiting trial, will have higher caps.
The changes will start to take effect 90 days after the new rules are published in the Federal Register, which is expected shortly. The commission approved the new rules Oct. 22.
Tennessee officials, meanwhile, say they will set an even lower cap of seven cents a minute for calls within the state and eleven cents a minute for other types of calls.
Alex Friedmann, of Prison Legal News, said in a statement that while he was pleased the Tennessee agency was responding to the federal mandate, he had called on state officials two years ago to cut the rates.
"The FCC's recent action will significantly reduce the cost of phone calls for families of Tennessee prisoners, who for many years have been required to pay exorbitant phone rates to receive calls from their incarcerated loved one," Friedmann said.
Noting that under the existing contract with Global Tel Link, the state shares in the company profits, Friedmann added "it's a sad commentary that it took action by a federal agency before our state Department of Correction finally reduced the high phone rates that have long been a burden on the families of Tennessee prisoners."
Tennessee has been collecting some $2.6 million a year under its prison phone contract,
Neysa Taylor, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections, said that the prison phone charges were currently in compliance with the existing rules and they will comply with the new rules once they go into effect.
She said that currently the average length of calls from inmates is 19 minutes.
Davidson county officials also promised to conform charges to the new rules once they go into effect. Melinda McDowell, spokeswoman for the Davidson Sheriff's office said all mandated changes will be implemented. The county contracts with Global Tel Link, the same firm that holds the state contract.
Friedmann and others noted the FCC action could still face legal challenges from Global Tel Link and Securus, two of the major prison phone service providers.
Those same firms challenged the FCC's authority to regulate their activities two years ago when a cap was set on interstate prisoner calls.




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Commissioner Has Ties to "Independent" Accreditation Agency

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Tennessee Corrections Commissioner Derrick D. Schofield has close ties to the accreditation agency he has called on to conduct an independent assessment of the problem plagued department he runs.
Schofield, according to the web page of the American Correctional Association, is a member of the association's Committee on Standards.
In addition the accreditations of the ACA have come under scrutiny both in state and federal litigation and by prisoner advocacy groups.
According to Alex Friedmann of Prison Legal News, the association, headquartered in Alexandria, Va. "is a private organization composed of current and former corrections officials that basically sells accreditations to prisons and jails."
Friedmann added that the ACA sets its own standards and has no oversight.
"It thus has an inherent conflict of interest," Friedmann continued, "as corrections officials are accredited or audited by their own peers."
"Any review of Tennessee's prison system can not be called independent by any definition," he concluded.
Records show the agency is incorporated as a non-profit. Tax returns filed by the ACA show annual expenditures of about $8.4 million, with the majority of the income generated by inspection fees.
Records show that Davidson Sheriff Daron Hall has served on the association's board of directors.
Schofield announced Thursday that he had called on the ACA to conduct an independent review. The action comes as the agency has come under increasing fire, much of it directed at Schofield and his administration of the agency.
Friedmann noted that attempts by corrections officials to use the ACA accreditation to rebuff legal challenges to prison conditions and treatment of inmates have largely been rejected by numerous courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.