Cheaper prison calls on hold

OLYMPIA – Families of inmates cheered last year when Washington state lawmakers passed a bill intended to pare back the high costs of accepting a collect phone call from someone in prison.

At a time when it’s easy to find phone cards that charge less than 10 cents a minute for long distance calls, AT&T’s long-standing contract with the state prison system was charging up to $5.31 for the first minute and up to 89 cents a minute after that.

“Once that went into law, we had a big hoot and holler,” Caron Berrysmith, the mother of an inmate in the Walla Walla state penitentiary, said of the legislation mandating lower rates.

But 16 months after then-Gov. Gary Locke signed the bill into law, nothing’s changed. The contract’s the same, and people with loved ones in prison are still paying the same rates they’ve paid for years.

What happened? The state Department of Corrections made a mistake and, after months of legal wrangling, has to start the bid process all over again.

“We messed up,” said Eldon Vail, deputy secretary of the department.

Last year’s change came after years of lobbying by people with family or friends in the state prison system. In what was originally intended as a safeguard against harassing calls from inmates, the system only allows collect calls.

In legislative hearings last year, phone companies testified that modern phone systems can provide the same security – recording all calls, monitoring them, and carrying an announcement that a call is from a prisoner – without necessarily being expensive collect calls. The bill approved by lawmakers would allow prisoners to use prepaid phone cards or a debit system funded by families or prison-labor wages, so long as the security measures stay in place.

“The rates are too high,” Vail said. “These are some of the highest phone rates in the country, and it just doesn’t feel right.”

Families of prisoners – many of which have lost their primary breadwinners – often struggle to pay the phone bills, according to Ria Devin, president of the Washington chapter of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, an inmate advocacy group.

Many families of inmates have had their phone service disconnected because large bills went unpaid, said Devin, whose husband died at Walla Walla.

She said it’s common for families to deplete their savings, have members take second jobs or hold garage sales to keep up with the cost of phone calls.

“The thought that they might be cut off from communication is just absolutely horrible,” she said. You don’t know if there’s a lockdown, or a fight. You want to know that your loved one is safe.”

“With children, letters don’t work like a phone call. They need to hear that voice,” said Nora Callahan, executive director of the November Coalition, a Colville-based advocacy group for imprisoned drug offenders. Federal prisons, she said, use a debit-card phone system.

In Washington, Senate Bill 6352 was popular. Out of 147 state lawmakers, only two voted against it. Gov. Locke quickly signed it into law, and the Department of Corrections called for bids.

When the bids came in, corrections officials told a California company, Public Communications Services Inc., that it was “the apparent successful vendor.” It was a contract worth $132 million, according to court documents filed later by PCS. The company said it would charge half of what AT&T has been charging.

“I can hardly wait to have the option of prepaid calls,” wrote Gary Bower, a 64-year-old prison inmate in Monroe, in a letter to a reporter shortly after Christmas.

Within a week of notifying PCS, however, the state received a complaint from AT&T, which had held the state prison contract since 1991. The Department of Corrections then decided that it hadn’t had the authority to issue such a large telecommunications bid, and that the state Department of Information Services should have done it instead.

“We got into it a little deeper and decided we were wrong. … We exceeded our authority,” Vail said.

“We just missed it,” he said of the rule. “It had been a long time since we’d done this.”

Corrections told PCS that it wasn’t the bid winner. PCS sued.

Last month, Washington’s Division II Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state. Vail said Corrections is about to re-issue a request for proposals. Essentially, the process is starting all over again.

It will probably take two to three months to settle on a bid, and then months more to begin installing new phone systems, probably one prison at a time, Vail said. All told, he said, it could be “eight or nine months, at best” before the new system is working.

“It will be sooner rather than later,” he said. “We’re not looking to string this out.”

Inmate advocates and family members are skeptical, because the state collects millions of dollars from inmate phone calls each year. Under the current contract, the Department of Corrections gets about 40 percent of the cost of each call, according to Corrections official Don Wilbrecht. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2005, the state’s cut of the phone revenue added up to more than $3.8 million. The law passed by legislators mandates that the new contract bring in at least as much money.

“It’s a big amount of money, and that’s why they don’t want to let go of it,” said Berrysmith.

“If there’s a way to gouge the inmates and their families, they (Corrections) are looking for it,” said Devin.

Vail says it’s not gouging. A quarter of the money raised goes into a fund for crime victims. The rest is spent on inmate extras: salaries for recreation leaders, gym equipment, ice machines, fatherhood programs, holiday celebrations and religious supplies.

“All of which cost money,” Vail said. In the past, he said, taxpayers would pick up the tab for such things.

In Seattle on Friday, Berrysmith sighed when told that the new system probably won’t be set up until next year. Most of her income is from Social Security. To keep up with the cost of talking to her son, she said, she puts off the $5 cost of getting her nails done at a local beauty college.

“It’s very important to stay in touch,” she said. “Sure, we write, but it’s good to hear someone’s voice sometimes. It’s reassuring.

“Most of them will be returning to society,” she said. “We want them to stay humanized.”