Captive markets & phone company profits: prisoners and soldiers.

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Last Wednesday, I was listening to Marketplace (produced by PRI) on my NPR affiliate. They did a story on how the telephone companies make millions from prison telephone calls.

This story related all the hallmarks of the insanity of late capitalism. No longer is making money (if it ever was) about competitors competing for business on a level playing field in a marketplace where consumers have a choice.

What the story was about was the way politically connected companies get contracts to provide outgoing phone services in municipalities with huge prison populations. You can only make collect calls out of prisons -- and legislatures aren't about to change the law to help families of the MILLIONS of prisoners we stick in prison save money. So once you have your legislated monopoly, you get your captive audience, and you force them to buy your goods. Welcome to the end days of capitalism!

Here's the story: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2004/05/26_mpp.html ("Phone Prisoners" -- scroll down).

Today, I read this story: http://biz.yahoo.com/law/040528/f2ab5ace5ffaa0bbe27a0ed4f14d526a_1.html. Guess what? Lawyers are finding charges on their phone bills for calls from their clients in prison that they never received. Hmmm. The easy profits weren't enough for the phone companies from the quasi-legal sources, so now they're trying to get even more profits by sticking fraudulent charges into the bills of customers they think are least likely to notice them?

Here's a great quote from the article about the suit:

At the center of the dispute is how collect calling works at prisons and county jails. However, the technology used to run jailhouse phone systems is a closely guarded secret. As a result, many case documents in Condes have been put under seal. In addition to a protective order, some documents have been marked for "attorneys' eyes only" to prevent defense attorneys, for example, from passing along a rival phone company's trade secrets to a client. In fact, plaintiffs attorneys declined to describe how the collect calls work because doing so might violate protective orders in the case.

Triple fucing "hmmm."

Curious about how wide spread the outrage over this issue (which is clearly worth a lot of money to the telecoms and is bleeding a lot of people dry) I did a google search. I came up with these links: http://www.curenational.org/new/highbills.html and http://www.prisoners.com/greedatt.html . A priest wrote the second one, which is critical of AT&T.

Now, all this triggered another memory for me. Back when the Iraq War started, I remember there was a big "support the soldiers" push to get people to buy them phone cards, and it was reported that the US Army does not give the soldiers free telephone service to call people back in the US.

Hmmm, again. Late capitalism: politicians create profits for corporations by taking a captive audience, separating them from goods and services they can't get in a competitive marketplace, and then stick their preferred party donor in that marketplace as the only provider. Voila! Profits.

A sense of outrage, anyone?

Wasn't the damn Telecom Bill enough for these companies to make a profit? Must politicians also destroy all competion and choice in the marketplace too?

Also makes you wonder if we're putting people in jail and sending soldiers overseas in order to make profits for these companies. (Well, that one's actually pretty obvious. You don't have to wonder.)

[Laughing Mirror]

1. "This is a collect call from a correctional facility"

Every time I pick up my ringing phone and hear those ominous words (and with two family members currently incarcerated with a lot of time on their hands, it is a regular occurrence) I automatically add at least $15, before taxes, to my monthly phone bill. Just a few such calls per month brings my bill to more than $200, rather than the $35 it would be otherwise.

I am a poor person, but not as poor I would venture to say, that the majority of other people with friends of family members behind bars are. As much as I try to support and "be there" for them when they call, it gets to the point that you hesitate when the phone rings, or you let the answering machine answer, or you try to limit the times you pick up and accept the call. Because even a phone bill of $100 (meaning 4 prison phone calls) is a terrible hardship on anybody poor having to pay it.

The phone scam is just one of the scams perpetrated on the incarcerated and their families. There are many others.

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2. Prison makes so much money for private corporations. It's a transfer in...

...wealth from bottom to top.

And the people this phone scam hurt the most are people with very little political power (their family members wouldn't be in prison if they had some pull).

I just hope people get mad about this.

Thanks for kicking this.

[Laughing Mirror]

3. Most often, family members wouldn't be in prison

If we had some sort of health system to handle their drug problems.

The worst is, when they call, after fifteen minutes (read 15 dollars), the connection is terminated, and they usually haven't finished with their conversations, so they call right back. Add on another 15 dollars. When you get your phone bill, with all the added state, federal, local taxes, etc., those two little phone calls amount close to $35.

And then there's all the money you have to send them to deposit in their prison accounts to buy such things as shoes from the prison store, because you cannot bring in any such items from the outside and give them. This goes for paper, envelopes and stamps as well.

Those costs add up at the end of the month, believe me. And it's for people who shouldn't be locked up in the first place, oftentimes.

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4. You should follow some of those links I googled above and see if there

is some way you could get active on this issue.

I think once the public realizes that this is just a scam and that the technology exists which could reduce the cots for families, the telecoms would have no leg to stand on.

You should try to increase awareness of this issue.

it's important for society to keep money in the pockets of people who need it the most and work hard to get it, and not just transfer it all to rich companies which have a lot of it and are only getting more not because they're workng hard for it but because politicians are protecting them and because people don't know the evil things that are being done to give them that money.

[Laughing Mirror]

5. I try to be active on this issue

And constantly talk about this to anybody willing to listen.

Here's another helpful link, for anybody (few are) concerned:
http://www.prisonactivist.org/crisis/

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6. kick