Just a week before the 9/11 terror attacks, The Virginian-Pilot editorial page wrote: “It is not in the state’s interest to gouge the people whom prison inmates call collect, usually loved ones. This, however, is precisely how the present system works. It must be changed.”
I’m proud to have been on the editorial board that wrote the opinion piece in 2001.
Less so the fact the high cost for families is still an issue in the commonwealth. Many relatives of those behind bars are poor. Exorbitant phone fees place an extra, unnecessary burden on them.
Inmate advocacy and re-entry groups, as well as equity-minded state legislators, have worked to change the past parasitic formula. The current rate is a little more than 4 cents a minute; the department reduced it to that amount in 2015, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Before then, the rate had been 33 cents a minute for prepaid calls, and the department had collected commissions between 35% and 41%.
Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, sponsored a bill this General Assembly session requiring state prisons to use pay phone and debit-card calling services at the lowest possible rate. HB801 passed both chambers easily after Rasoul’s bid to offer free calls in corrections facilities was amended.
“Staying in touch with family motivates incarcerated people to engage in prosocial behavior and rehabilitation while serving their sentence and is critical to their successful re-entry into society upon release,” noted a 2022 report by a work group studying phone fees, among others, in Virginia correctional facilities.
The increased contact with relatives benefits prisoners, their families and the public, the report added.
Other states even decrease the cost for these services. The report cited Illinois, which has a prison population similar to Virginia’s, for charging families roughly a penny per minute per call.
It’s true the situation regarding prison communication costs is better today than the unseemly treatment families in Virginia faced at the start of the 21st century. Back then, WorldCom Inc. – which later became synonymous with accounting fraud – imposed a $2.25 surcharge and up to 37 cents per minute per call.
Gordon Gekko would have been proud.
The state also got a 40% commission for the punitive practice. The lucrative deal made officials slow to change the status quo. Department of Corrections bigwigs even rejected a WorldCom proposal to lower rates, The Pilot’s 2001 editorial noted.
So much for compassion for the families. They pay the overwhelming amount of such costs because prisoners are limited in how much they collect for their labor.
Thankfully, the state no longer gets a commission on calls. It receives some money on a separate contract to provide tablets with products and services. Global-Tel Link now provides prison phone services in the state.
Rasoul’s legislation now heads to Gov. Glenn Youngkin. A spokesman told me by email the governor is reviewing all bills that reach his desk – a typical non-indicator from this administration of which way the guv is leaning.
If we want people leaving jails and prisons to reintegrate into society successfully, everyone should support policies that connect people to their families. After all, many incarcerated individuals are freed each year in Virginia.
The nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, for example, reported that nearly 300,000 people are released from state jails and prisons annually in the commonwealth.
About 95% of people incarcerated eventually return to the community at some point, Sheba Williams, founder and executive director of Richmond-based nonprofit Nolef Turns, told me in an interview.
“It’s a benefit for the community” to maintain those familial ties, added Williams, who was part of the state work group that studied onerous prison fees. “There are vendors that will provide lower costs than what the Department of Corrections has contracted for.”
Rasoul’s bill “is a step in the right direction,” she said.
Sandra Brandt is the longtime executive director of Norfolk-based STEP-UP Inc., which fights recidivism among former prisoners. “The rates used to be outlandish,” Brandt told me, recalling one woman who racked up a phone bill of $1,000 while contacting a relative behind bars.
Rasoul’s legislation “will be a blessing for a lot of families,” Brandt continued.
This bill should be an easy choice for Youngkin.
You can be tough on crime while also fighting recidivism. Reducing the cost of communications is one way to do just that.
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