Families spend millions on phone calls from Louisiana inmates

By NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune 

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on January 11, 2017 at 7:00 AM, updated January 11, 2017 at 8:40 AM

Sitting in her New Orleans office, Sibil Richardson pulls up her phone bill from Securus Technologies, the Dallas-based company contracted to provide telephone service to the Louisiana Department of Corrections. She's billed $2.31 for every 15 minutes her family spends on the phone with her husband, who is serving a 60-year sentence at Louisiana State Penitentiary for bank robbery.

To keep Robert Richardson in the lives of the couple's six kids, she pays anywhere from $260 to $450 a month.

Phone calls are often the only way children can maintain regular contact with an incarcerated parent, given the hundreds of miles separating some families from their loved ones in prison.

The benefits of these calls go well beyond the families, experts say, to broader areas of public safety, public health and public dollars. They help children cope with the upheaval that follows the loss of a parent to prison, the trauma of which can lead them down the same path that put the parent in jail.

The calls also give incarcerated parents an incentive to remain out of prison upon their release, thus lowering crime rates and reducing the burden on taxpayers paying for the care and housing of inmates.

"We were sure people coming out (of prison) without any community contact were more likely to fall into traps and get in trouble again," said Charles Levesque, a Loyola University New Orleans law school graduate who helped write legislation as a Rhode Island state senator to make calls more affordable in that state.

"When you send people to prison, obviously you're trying to punish someone who did something wrong," he said. "But the basic premise is rehabilitation and entering them in the community. Otherwise it's kind of barbaric if all you're doing is punishing somebody."

But staying connected comes at a hefty price for families, many of whom were living on the edge of poverty even before a family member ended up behind bars.

Louisiana families spend millions of dollars every year to stay connected with their loved ones in the state's prisons and parish jails, The Times-Picayune has found through a series of public records requests.

The money generated by the families' calls is divided between telephone service providers and correctional facility operators, who are paid through commission fees. Those fees, ranging in Louisiana from 34 percent to 87 percent of total phone revenue, end up in parish coffers to be used at the discretion of sheriffs and government leaders.

In 2015, commission payments generated nearly $5 million for the state's Department of Corrections and $6 million-plus to sheriff's offices and parish governments across Louisiana, the review of billing records found.

Prisons and jails are not required by law to provide telephone service, and the higher rates and fees attached to inmate telephone calls are necessary, prison officials and phone company executives say. Advanced features like voice recognition and call-forwarding detection justify the added costs, and the task of monitoring, recording and storing inmate phone conversations -- which has provided evidence to aid in criminal prosecutions and helped warn guards of impending trouble behind prison walls - should be paid for by those who use the service, they say.

"That technology should never be ignored or minimized," said Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre. "There's a cost to that. It should not be law-abiding taxpayers who shoulder that cost."

But prison reform advocates say that is exactly who is bearing the costs: the families of inmates.

"Predatory phone companies gouge already poor families, and it is disgraceful," said Katie Schwartzmann, co-director of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, the nonprofit law firm that represented inmates in a class-action lawsuit that led to a federal consent decree at the Orleans Parish jail.

"Families have to choose between filling prescriptions, keeping the lights on, and being able to communicate with a loved one who is behind bars. In the end, we all lose because the person locked up is deprived of the benefit of community and family support in moving forward with his or her life."

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A 15-minute call from Louisiana's prisons can cost as much as $4.50. A New Orleans family could expect to spend $126 a week on daily one-hour phone calls to a loved one in Orleans Justice Center jail. That same family would spend about $6 a week on similar phone calls to India via Skype.

Nationally, Louisiana is ranked 30^th for inmate call affordability by the Florida-based nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center's Prison Phone Justice campaign. The organization calculated the cost of an average 15-minute call to prison systems in all 50 states and the federal prison system.

North Dakota comes in last, according to the campaign, at just over $6 for a 15-minute call. In 10 states, the average 15-minute call costs less than a dollar.

Inmate phone calls once cost the same as those made outside prison walls. That changed in the 1980s when the U.S. Justice Department broke up the Bell System's telephone monopoly. Smaller companies seized the opportunity to provide phone service to millions of inmates in prisons and jails. Revenue sources soared during the decade's ramped-up drug war.

"These companies invented this industry out of whole cloth," said Carrie Wilkinson, director of the Prison Phone Justice campaign. "They created these phone systems and sold them to correctional facilities. The big problem with this industry is it has for a long time been unregulated, and these companies have been able to charge whatever they want ... For the longest time, no one has cared."

The price of a 15-minute call soared to a dollar a minute in some places. Fees on everything from depositing money in an account to refunding money after a prisoner is released could, in some cases, double the cost of inmate telephone calls, according to a May 2013 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit group focused on issues of mass incarceration.

The report determined that fees cost the families of incarcerated people nationwide $386 million a year.

A class-action lawsuit was filed in 2000, challenging telephone contracts between five phone companies and private prison operator Corrections Corporations of America, Inc. The named plaintiff, Martha Wright, was a Washington, D.C., grandmother who said the price of phone calls forced her to decide between paying for medication or talking to her grandson imprisoned in California.

Wright's lawsuit was eventually transferred to the Federal Communications Commission. In 2013, the agency capped telephone rates on calls made from one state to another. Telephone providers, arguing that the FCC's proposals left them unable to cover their costs, successfully fought off two subsequent regulatory attempts.

In Louisiana, the debate on prison phone regulations has been driven in large part by Foster Campbell, the Democratic Public Service Commissioner who lost a December runoff for the U.S. Senate.

Campbell said inmate phone service first came to his attention during his time in the Louisiana Senate, when a bill to seek bids for a lower-priced service provider to the state Department of Corrections mustered few votes.

"The best way to rehabilitate inmates is for them to talk to their families. You can't do people that way and expect that they try to rehabilitate themselves," Campbell said. "It's morally wrong to charge people these expensive calls when they're in prison and are trying to talk to their families outside. Inmate families didn't break the law."

After years of sometimes-heated debate, the Public Service Commission eventually passed new rate caps in April 2016: 30 cents a minute for collect calls and 25 cents a minute for prepaid/debit or credit calls. The commission also limited and capped fees and surcharges. 

Sibil Richardson and her sons were among those who testified before the Commission. She remembered a line of questioning about her husband's crime, and how to her, it seemed like some commissioners justified the expense of phone calls as a rightful punishment for that crime.

"Children have a right to their parents regardless of whether or not the parents have broken the law," she said.

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While Louisiana regulators have reined in phone rates and limited fees, neither they nor the FCC have addressed the commission system that some reform advocates say is the primary motivator for expensive inmate telephone calls.

As inmate phone providers sought to secure business, they offered to share a percentage of call revenue with prison and jail operators in the form of commissions. The more they offered, the more likely they were to get a contract.

A May 2013 report from the Prison Policy Initiative found examples of jail operators looking to commission payments, often called "kickbacks," as the driving factor in awarding phone contracts. The report also connected commission payments to the rise in fees, which go entirely to the phone company.

"Kickbacks artificially inflate rates," said Wilkinson with the Prison Phone Justice campaign. "That's all paid for by prisoners' families, and there's not much of an argument they are disproportionately poor. They need to stay in touch the most, but can't because of the cost of calls."

The largest chunk of phone revenue goes to the Arizona Department of Corrections, which receives nearly 94 percent of all gross telephone revenue. The Louisiana Department of Corrections receives 71 percent of gross telephone revenue as part of its contract with Securus Technologies, generating $4.9 million annually.

Commission fees are also paid to sheriff's offices and parish governments in all but two of the state's 64 parishes, The Times-Picayune found through a series of public records requests. The two exceptions, Jackson and Richland parishes, have privately run jails and do not receive commissions from phone service, officials there said in response to the paper's records request.

In Louisiana, 10 different companies have paid out commissions ranging from 34 percent to 87 percent, depositing more than $6 million into sheriff's office and parish government coffers in 2015.

The highest commission percentage goes to Morehouse Parish, which receives 87 percent of gross phone call receipts through its contract with Securus. In 2015, Morehouse made just over $284,000 in commission. Morehouse Parish Sheriff Mike Tubbs did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment for this story.

Orleans Parish, with an 86 percent commission fee from Securus, received the largest commission at $1.2 million. A spokesman for Sheriff Marlin Gusman said commission payments are "consistent and in compliance with all federal laws and regulations."

Sheriffs and phone providers say commissions help cash-strapped agencies provide service to inmates, and afford the expense of administering phone service inside jails and monitoring those calls.

"I know that we provide a vital source of information to sheriff's offices," said Mitch Kalifeh, president of Ally Telecom Group. "All that comes at a certain cost. It's not free. But at the same time, I like to think I'm out there doing the right thing."

Based in Metairie, Ally provides phone service to jails in 15 Louisiana parishes, paying more than $2.7 million in commissions in 2015.

"There are a lot of sheriff's departments having a tough time economically trying to do their jobs, and this is important to them," Kalifeh said. "If we can operate at rates the FCC regulates and pay commissions, and they deemed it a fair and proper price, why shouldn't I pay something back to a sheriff's department?"

In his opposition to the agency's most recent regulation efforts, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, using data from the National Sheriffs' Association, determined that jails across the country spend $244 million on administrative costs for inmate phone service.

"The evidence submitted by sheriffs, inmate calling service providers, economists and state commissions all demonstrated that the costs to facilities - and especially our nation's jails - are real and substantial," he wrote.

Wilkinson, with the Prison Phone Justice campaign, disputes the need for commissions to pay for facility operations or phone security features.

"A lot of sheriffs say, 'Don't go to jail if you don't want to pay.' It's just not that simple," she said. "The way we pay for things is through taxes, and we all pay the same taxes whether we use the services or not. I don't have children, but I pay for schools.

"The cost of jails and prisons is a state and county expense. They are required to provide those services. Prisoner families should not be subsidizing the government for those costs. It's a regressive tax." 

Though most of Louisiana's correctional facilities receive a majority of the money families spend on phone calls, the revenue represents tiny portions of their operating budgets.

The Department of Corrections' $4.9 million commission, for example, makes up 1 percent of its $500 million budget. At the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, which has a 67 percent commission with Securus, the $688,000 it received in fiscal year 2015-16 accounts for a half-percent of its total revenue.

"It's a small piece of the pie, but every chunk is valuable," said Franklin Parish Sheriff Kevin Cobb. The department contracts its jail phone services to Ruston-based Correct Solutions Group, getting about $217,000 in fiscal year 2015-16 off its 70 percent commission rate.

Cobb said commissions are probably 2 percent of the overall budget. The money goes into facility operations: staffing, medical treatment, offender programming. And while acknowledging the importance of phone calls as well as the expense, he said he could not support any effort to eliminate the commission system.

"From our point of view, it's a situation where every dollar counts," Cobb said. "We get cut on many levels, but at the same time are required to offer more and more services. I would hate to see there be a push for those commissions to go away because it ultimately, in my opinion, would lower the services available to be able to house offenders."

Webre, the sheriff in Lafourche Parish, agreed that phone commissions are an important funding source for jails, and call rates - if reasonable - should be borne by the families of inmates using the service.

"To believe it all should be completely free is not realistic," he said.

Webre's office also contracts jail phone service through Securus, receiving a 52 percent commission that yielded about $118,000 in fiscal year 2015-16. But with a new jail under construction, his office is seeking new service proposals that would lower phone costs and offer free calls to inmates "as incentives without safety compromise."

"The people who suffer greatly are the family members of the incarcerated," Webre said. "Someone they love and care about is away from them, and in some cases away many miles. That telephone call is the only connection they have. From a moral standpoint, I want to make sure that opportunity exists and is not dependent on whether you are rich or poor."

In Winn Parish, which contracts phone services with Bossier City-based City Tele Coin, Inc., inmate families contributed to a $14,000 commission payment to the sheriff's office in 2015. Yet longtime Sheriff Cranford Jordan said regulators and media scrutiny have him considering pulling phones from his tiny jail.

"Most people serving time in jail, this is not the first bite of the apple," Jordan said. "If they were really worried about contact with their family, after the first time they got in trouble don't you think you'd stay out of it after that? I would dare say that most of the inmates we have, when they're on the outside they have nothing to do with their family. They could care less about their families. If it was up to me, I think all the sheriffs should just pull the phones out and be done with it."

*****

In the FCC's August 2016 proposed rates, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn urged state and local leaders to rein in commissions.

"Site commissions comprise just a small fraction of correctional budgets, but have a massively regressive economic impact on inmates and their families," she wrote. "To be sure, there are costs that facilities may incur in providing (inmate calling service), but there are no costs that justify the scope of most of these commissions."

Any proposal to eliminate commissions in Louisiana would likely be met with strong opposition from sheriffs. Gov. John Bel Edwards, who won election with strong support from the Sheriffs' Association, did not address whether he would favor a ban on commissions, saying instead that inmate telephone service, though important for rehabilitation, comes at a cost.

Ten states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have eliminated commissions. The Prison Phone Justice campaign ranks eight of them among the top 20 for call affordability.

California's Department of Corrections received a fixed commission of $26 million a year before 2007, when lawmakers passed legislation that phased out commissions over four years. Phone rates subsequently dropped, from $3.75 for a 15-minute local call to $1.44 four years later.

Commission fees generated nearly $1.3 million in South Carolina before the state eliminated them in 2008. Tom Barrett, assistant director of information technology for the state's Department of Corrections, said lower phone rates have meant more phone calls. And with more phone calls, the state's phone provider was able to continue providing the same service and support.

"Companies make more money because more people talk on the phone, so you can ask for more services," he said. "There is a happy medium here. People can have services and rates can be lowered."