AG Healey: Phone calls from inmates to loved ones too costly

[unhappycamper]

http://www.wcvb.com/news/ag-healey-phone-calls-from-inmates-to-loved-ones-too-costly/35972276



Cost of 15-minute phone call per day can cost $160 a month, Healey says

AG Healey: Phone calls from inmates to loved ones too costly
Published 8:29 PM EDT Oct 21, 2015

BOSTON —Attorney General Maura Healey is pressing federal regulators to overhaul the system by which inmates can phone family members.

Healey said in a letter Wednesday to the head of the Federal Communications Commission that the existing system causes serious financial strain and prevents incarcerated individuals from staying connected to their families.

Healey said the cost to a family of a 15-minute daily phone call can top $160 per month. She said that can make it difficult for inmates to plan for their lives after release by exploring employment and housing options.

Healey said she also discourages commissions through which telephone companies agree to pay a portion of their profits back to correctional facilities. She said that can range from 25 to 60 percent of a company's gross revenue in Massachusetts.

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I worked at New England Telephone/NYNEX/Bell Atlantic/Bell Atlantic/Verizon for 21 years in the IT field.

A land line long distance call costs the phone company exactly one penny ($0.01) a minute anywhere in the continental United States. The hardware and software to do this was purchased and amortized over 100 years by the Bell system.

[TexasProgresive]

1. This is another way of profiteering on families

I don't know how prisoner phone calls are handled in Massachusetts but in Texas the jail and prison phones are installed and maintained by companies other than ATT, Verizon or Windstream. These companies charge the receiver of the call around $14.00 per minute. A portion of that goes back to the county sheriff's office or prison.

[unhappycamper]

2. If they are using a land line, the cost to the phone company is one penny per minute.

Period.

[TexasProgresive]

3. These companies in Texas are resellers

The tariff requires the land line companies charge 73% of what the would charge for a basic business line. The land line companies are really out of the loop in this state when it comes to jail/prison phone calls.