Stupid and Unjust: The Highway Robbery of Prison Phone Rates
To call home, America’s prisoners (well, really their families, who accept the calls collect) pay rates many times what you or I spend on phone calls, the consequence of a dysfunctional marketplace in which the users have no choice but the phones provided — literally a captive market — and prison administrators can exact exorbitant commissions for providing the service. In Maryland, for example, where the commission can comprise up to 60 percent of the cost of a call, the rates are $2.55 for the first minute plus 30 cents per minute for intrastate calls and $2.70 for the first minute plus 30 cents for every minute thereafter for interstate calls. The state collected $5.2 million from such commissions in 2010. In effect, the high rates are a fee leveraged on the inmate population through which the prisoners fund their own incarceration.
In Canada inmates are only allowed to make calls to landlines. They have phone cards controlled by the prison that they’re only allowed to fill once a month and it’s ridiculously expensive. They can make collect calls, but it more expensive for the folks they call than accepting a collect call from anywhere else. Bell makes a lot of money off prisons here.
“We often talk about the “school-to-prison pipeline” for boys —but for girls, it is a totally different narrative, more readily identified as the “sexual-violence-to prison pipeline.” According to the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention, approximately 600,000 girls are arrested in the U.S. annually. Most of these girls are remanded for non-violent offenses such as truancy, running away, loitering, alcohol and substance use, and violations to prior court orders for non-violent status offenses. Moreover, evidence shows that 73 percent of girls in juvenile detention have previously suffered some form of physical or sexual abuse. This abuse is often the factor that propelled the child into the juvenile justice system, as it is often the abuse that is the root cause of the girls’ running away, becoming truant, substance abuse, etc. Family court judges and detention center staff are rarely provided appropriate trauma training and are generally unaware of the damaging impact of policies such as strip searches, physical restraints, and particularly solitary confinement on survivors of physical and sexual abuse and trauma. There is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates the severe psychiatric consequences of placing individuals, and particularly children in solitary confinement. Prisoners who have experienced solitary confinement have been shown to engage in self-mutilation at much higher rates than the average population. These prisoners are also known to attempt or commit suicide more often than those who were not held in isolation. In fact, studies show that juveniles are 19 times more likely to kill themselves in isolation than in general population and that juveniles in general, have the highest suicide rates of all inmates in jails. Despite all these facts, when girls in the juvenile justice system express evidence of or the desire to self harm, the typical response is to put them in solitary confinement. While these girls are being placed in solitary for their own protection, there is no consideration given to the fact that such practices deepen existing trauma.”
Yasmin Vafa, “Invisible Prisoners: Why Are So Many Girls Placed in Solitary Confinement?” (via politicsoflocation)
It’s a similar story in Canada. The Elizabeth Fry Society reports (pdf):
“Eighty percent of all federally sentenced women report having been physically and/or sexually abused. This percentage rises to 90% for Aboriginal women.”
More facts sheets from EFry here
(Source: thetart)
Queering Prison Abolition, Now?
must read article by Captive Genders co-editor Eric A Stanley & Normal Life author Dean Spade!
FYI: Link takes you to a PDF document, not a website.
Black people serve 60% longer sentences than whites who commit the same crime
“A new study by M. Marit Rehavi of the University of British Columbia and Sonja B. Starr of the University of Michigan Law School shows that Black Americans receive almost 60% long prison sentences than white Americans who committed the same crime.
The study covered 58,000 federal criminal cases and found that there was a significant difference between the sentences given to Black people to those given to white people.”
I think this is an excellent study to shove in people’s faces when they stubbornly believe the disproportionate amount of POC in prisons is down to them being inherently more criminal and not down to a racist justice system in a racist society.
Heather Ann Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History" (pdf)
By the close of the twentieth century the United States had incarcerated more people than any other country in the world, and the nation’s social, economic, and political institutions had become inexorably intertwined with the practice of punishment. Historians, however, have not yet considered what impact the rise of a massive carceral state might have had on the evolution of the later postwar period. argues that such an examination of the later twentieth century is crucial if scholars are to understand fully the dramatic transformations that occurred after the civil rights sixties, including the origins of urban crisis, the decline of the American labor movement, and the rise of the Right.
(Source: educationforliberation)
Recommendation: Queer and Trans Prisoner Correspondence
Alison recommends…
Queer and Trans Prisoner Correspondence
A pen-pal program.I was hesitant at first, when starting to learn about it, but the more I read the more I became…
From the project’s website:
“The Prisoner Correspondence Project aims to match up non-incarcerated queer, gay, and trans-identified folks to correspond with folks identifying along similar lines behind bars. By becoming a penpal you can help create relationships of friendship, support, and solidarity between inside and outside folks and help break isolation for incarcerated members of our communities.”
Definitely poke around the website and read the information on there, especially the expectations and guidelines for non-incarcerated penpals, and the “further reading” section!
Arizona To Charge People To See Incarcerated Family And Friends
The Arizona legislature has passed legislation that will now allow prisons to charge $25 for people to visit their family and friends in prison. It is a remarkably cruel law since many of these visitors are coming from low income families and have to travel great distances. Yet, legislators are pointing out that they originally wanted to charge babies and children as well but decided to be nice guys.
The fee is being justified as a one-time “background check fee” for visitors, but staffers admit that it is an effort to increase revenue at the expense of these families. Wendy Baldo, chief of staff for the Arizona Senate, confirmed that they “were trying to cut the budget and think of ways that could help get some services for the Department of Corrections.”Prison visitation has an extremely positive impact on inmates both psychologically and socially. It maintains and strengthens family bonds that will be needed to keep them from recidivism and can weaken the hold of gangs and other bad influences. Now the state is going to tell tell families on assistance that in order to see their loved ones, each adult will have to fork over $25. The article below also details how people have had difficulty paying the fee in advance. Visiting a loved one can be a terribly traumatic experience for a family. Yet, Arizona will now be there to get its cut.
As someone who has worked in prisons for decades, I find this absolutely appalling. From the beginning of correctional systems, the one right that virtually all societies have afforded inmates has been visitation. To now charge for the right to visit is gratuitous and cruel.
No gif can express my distaste.
WHOA
WTF is going on with Arizona?
this is just reprehensible. appalling. a human fucking rights disaster. abusive. I just…the level of violence of this country knows no fucking bounds.
This is so horrific I don’t even know what to say.
Not even acceptable, state of Arizona. Considering that it’s not the rich people, by and large, who are in prison, this is definitely a strike at them and a way to use that fact against the prisoners and their families/friends.
This is not even acceptable. Ugh. I am beyond disgusted at the Injustice System here in the U.S..
Also, the state of Arizona has just been WALLOWING in the fail lately.
This makes my head and heart hurt so bad. Prisons are usually fucking far away from anything, so to visit people often have to take off work and travel. So add that to the cost of the visit. And prisoners make pennies an hour for their work (in Canada it’s under $7 a day) but are expected to buy their own toiletries (in Canada this includes tampons - prisons issue giant fucking ridiculous maxi pads) and have to buy stamps and phone cards (in Canada the phone cards are fucking expensive and calling collect from a prison is more expensive than regular collect calls. And Bell profits from it.). I don’t know exactly what the pay rates and costs are for people in prison in Arizona, but from what I do know I imagine it’s the same or worse. So it’s not just $25 (per adult!), it’s $25 on top of a lot of other expenses. And as it’s been pointed out, it’s not rich people who are sent to prison, it’s poor people. Fuck everything about this.
(Source: letterstomycountry)
August 10th is Prisoners' Justice Day
On Prisoners’ Justice Day we remember and honour those who have died in prison of unnatural causes.
Follow the link for an excellent history of prisoner resistance in Canada.
