Cutting ‘bribes’ could save inmates money on jail phone calls » Urban Milwaukee

For Rebecca AubartMaintaining contact with an imprisoned husband came with a cost.

She said she charged herself thousands of dollars for phone and video calls during the man’s five-month stay in Polk County Jail in 2022.

“I had no money — I had to spend all of it on credit cards,” Aubart said. “I saw my life savings and everything else wiped out, mostly because of these huge fees.”

Aubart welcomes recently approved changes by the Federal Communications Commission that will put a cap on the fees charged to people calling to and from prisons.

The rules will go into effect in January for prisons and large jails, and in April for medium and small jails. They will limit per-minute call charges in prisons and large jails to no more than six cents per minute, down from the current limit of 14 cents.

The smallest prisons will be allowed to charge no more than 12 cents per minute for phone calls. Currently, these small facilities can charge up to 21 cents per minute.

And for the first time, the FCC is setting limits on video calling rates. These temporary rates will allow prisons to charge no more than 16 cents per minute for video communications, while very small prisons could charge up to 25 cents per minute. Eventually, FCC officials said they plan to replace the temporary video calling rules with permanent regulations.

Prison fees vary widely across Wisconsin

Polk County currently charges people 21 cents per minute to call from the jail, according to the website of the provider Securus. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to emailed questions from WPR.

Farther south, the La Crosse County Jail offers two free 20-minute phone calls a week, but there is a 21-cent fee for each additional minute, the jail captain explained. Jim’s Poem he wrote in an email. A video visit there costs $6.95 for 20 minutes or $13.90 for 40 minutes, Verse said.

The Dane County Jail currently charges 14 cents a minute for phone calls and 25 cents a minute for video calls. The per-minute rates will drop to seven cents for phone calls and 12 cents for video calls when the law goes into effect, said Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Elise Schaffer.

Legislation eliminates surcharges, impacting Wisconsin state prisons

In Wisconsin state prisons, the new limits will not affect per-minute charges for phone calls, a Department of Corrections spokesman said. Beth Hardtke he said.

That’s because Wisconsin adult prisons currently charge six cents per minute for phone calls through their provider IC Solutions, which already meets the threshold set by the new rules.

Still, the new rules are expected to cut costs for Wisconsin prisoners in other ways as well.

Among other restrictions, the latest rules eliminate most types of surcharges. IC Solutions, for example, charges a $3 processing fee to add money to an account needed to communicate with an inmate.

However, from 2025, this type of fee will be illegal.

Wanda Bertram Prison Policy Initiatives notes that while there are several companies that contract with prisons and jails to make phone calls, incarcerated people do not have a choice in which service provider they use.

“For decades, people in prison or jail and their loved ones have been charged rates and fees that would surprise and shock us if they appeared on our phone bill,” Bertram said.

Prison Policy Initiative research found that in 2021, a 15-minute phone call from a local jail in Wisconsin cost an average of $3. That was roughly in line with the national average and included incidental fees.

FCC cracks down on gambling commissions that give outlets ‘kickbacks’

Bertram said so-called call fees are a major reason for the high costs of calls from prisons and jails.

This long-standing practice allows facilities to receive payments from vendors with whom they have contracts for telephone and video calls.

“Companies started offering what are called location commissions, (which) are really bribes to the prisons and jails that contract with them,” Bertram said. “So we saw companies paying more than 50 percent of their total revenue to local governments and corrections departments, and they were doing that because they wanted to get the contracts.”

However, recent regulations prohibit such commissions in most cases.

A 2021 contract reached by the Prison Policy Initiative shows that under the agreement with Securus, Polk County received a commission of 44 percent.

Aubart believes the payments create a problematic incentive by prompting prisons to charge more to talk to loved ones.

“I would say they are stealing money from families,” she said.

Within the state prison system, two-thirds of the commission money goes to the Wisconsin Department of Administration and one-third goes to services that “directly benefit” incarcerated people, a DOC spokesman said.

Last fiscal year, IC Solutions paid the state nearly $6.3 million in fees, including $2.1 million to DOC.

Calls to and from Wisconsin’s juvenile detention centers cost one cent per minute, and IC Solutions keeps all of that revenue. For adult calls, DOC charges a fee of four cents for every six cents billed per minute.

According to a DOC spokesperson, a portion of the commission revenue goes toward a wide range of services for inmates, including free postage-paid envelopes, live movie subscriptions, bus passes and ADA accessibility.

In addition, DOC officials said they are using the Wisconsin Commission to subsidize the cost of video calls. Currently, IC Solutions charges $5 per minute for video calls, but DOC covers half of that cost, so inmates pay $2.50 per minute.

According to the DOC, it is not yet clear what impact the new rules eliminating commissions will have on video chat fees in state prisons.

“The Department of Corrections is still reviewing the new FCC rules to fully understand their impact,” Hardtke wrote in an email.

Phone calls are a lifeline to resocialization, say those affected by imprisonment

For the past decade, federal regulators have tried to cap the cost of phone calls for incarcerated people. The current rate caps were the result of an FCC order issued in 2021 and will be replaced by the latest order passed in July.

Jean-Michel Delonget He currently works as a CAD engineering administrator after earning his degree behind bars. He was released to extended supervision in January after spending two decades in Wisconsin prisons.

He said phone rates were particularly high during the early days of his incarceration. He recalled watching his peers save money on phone calls by using earnings from prison jobs that paid less than minimum wage. At times, he said, that meant forgoing basic necessities at the police station.

“A lot of us would just plan accordingly, just put it off and call every now and then,” he said. “If you’re someone who doesn’t have outside support … you basically give up your toothpaste and shampoo and call this week.”

Most people imprisoned in Wisconsin will eventually be released, and Randy Forsterling Social ties are essential to facilitate this transformation.

“I’ve seen a lot of guys argue with their girlfriends or wives or family members and say, ‘Hey, I need you to put money on my phone, I can’t call,’” said Forsterling, who is currently on community supervision after serving time in prisons in Wisconsin. “That creates a lot of tension and stress in those relationships, and that all affects whether someone gets out and is successful or not.”

Aubart viewed phone calls to her husband as a vital support system. She tried to call him every day, a routine she began while he was locked up in Polk County.

He is currently housed at Chippewa Valley Correctional Facility in Wisconsin, a minimum-security facility for drug addicts. He was transferred earlier this year from Stanley State Prison.

During phone calls, Aubart reads him materials she receives from Narcotics Anonymous, which she said was necessary because treatment options in the prison system are limited.

“It’s very difficult to get into any kind of programming,” she said. “And it was really disturbing to us that we were basically just warehousing people in Wisconsin for an extremely long time.”

Wendy Heredia said she spent close to $100 a week keeping in touch with her partner while he was in prison.

Her current husband was paroled in 2022 after spending more than 20 years in state prisons.

She saw firsthand how incarcerated people used telephone calls to keep in touch with their lawyers and families.

Often – as she herself said – it is their only source of hope.

“They live through you — I hear that all the time from people who are incarcerated,” she said. “They want to know what you did this weekend. They want to know if you went camping? If you went to a family reunion? Who was there? Because when they get off the phone, they go back to their room and they almost relive it in their mind.”

Listen to the WPR report

Phone call costs to drop for many Wisconsin inmates after federal rule changes was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.