An inmate telephone system, also known as an Inmate Calling Service (ICS) or Inmate telephone service, is telephone service intended for use by inmates in correctional facilities in the United States. Telephone service for inmates allows for their rehabilitation by allowing consistent communication with their family and legal counsel while incarcerated. [1] : 65–66, 74
In the United States, prison telecom is a $1.2 billion industry, mostly controlled by two private equity-backed companies [2] [3] : 23 —Global Tel Link (GTL) with a 50% market share as of 2015. [2] [4] and Securus Technologies, with 20%. [2] [4] While there have been attempts by the United States' telecom regulator, the FCC, to regulate the costs of inmate telephone services, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that its policy violated the Telecommunications Act, which forbids the FCC from regulating intrastate communications.
In order to use an inmate telephone service, inmates must register and provide a list of names and numbers for the people they intend to communicate with. [5] Call limitations vary depending on the prison's house rule, but calls are typically limited to 15 minutes each, and inmates must wait thirty minutes before being allowed to make another call. [6] Calls are recorded and monitored by the prison's staff. [7] Phone credits are typically accessed via an inmate account card. [8] Since 2001, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has required that use be limited to 300 minutes per-month. [1]
Jails and prisons tend to choose their providers based on which company will be able to pay said facility the most revenue in kickbacks. [9] In the United States, the inmate telephone market is dominated by two providers, Global Tel Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies, with Global Tel-Link controlling approximately 50% of the market and Securus with 20%. [2] The New York-based private equity firm, Veritas Capital, with assets of over five billion, acquired GTL under the tenure of Veritas' founder and CEO Robert B. McKeon. [10] [11] Mobile, Alabama-based GTL was a subsidiary of GTEL Holdings in 2009 and offered "inmate communications, investigative, facility management, visitation, payment and deposit, and content solutions". [12]
New York-based American Securities purchased GTL for $1 billion in 2011, and Boston-based ABRY Partners purchased Securus in 2013 for $640 million. [2] When the global private-equity company Castle Harlan purchased Securus Technologies from Miami-based private equity company, H.I.G. Capital in 2011, they claimed that Securus was "the leading provider" of "inmate telecommunications for the corrections industry". [13]
Rates for the telephone calls from prisons and jails can be shockingly high especially for low income families who are trying to keep in touch with their loved ones. Over the years telephone calls have come down but the rates are still generally too high for many people to stay in contact. Data has shown over the course of 10 years leading up to 2021, phone call per-minute rates have steadily declined. What makes the rates so high as well is the fact that these providers charge two separate rates, depending on same state or different state. [14]
On August 9, 2013, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a report on the high cost of inmate calling services, with proposed reforms. [15] A 2013 FCC analysis, described how, in some cases, long-distance calls are charged six times the rate on the outside, or in other instances, a fifteen-minute call could cost upwards of $15. [16] It also reported that phone rates had "caused inmates and their friends and families to subsidize everything from inmate welfare to salaries and benefits, states’ general revenue funds and personnel training". [2] At that time the FCC proposed capping the charge for interstate inmate phone calls at $3.75 for 15 minutes. [17] The proposal was approved in 2014; a cap was also implemented to reduce the high long-distance charges that inmates incurred to eleven cents per minute, [18] so that a fifteen-minute call should not cost more than $4. According to the FCC, Global Tel-Link had been charging as much as $17.30 for such calls under contracts with facilities in Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota, which resulted in "unreasonably high" phone bills for inmates' families. [19] In retaliation for the change, service providers raised the rates on local calls. [2]
In 2015, the FCC imposed new caps of 11¢ to 22¢ on all inmate calls. The decision was criticized by the industry, who felt that the capped prices would be insufficient to cover the commissions they must pay. By March, the new caps had been stayed pending the result of a lawsuit against the FCC filed by providers, but the FCC stated that it would enforce the existing caps on intrastate calls as well. [20] [21] [22] In September 2015, Human Rights Watch requested that Michael Fisch, CEO of American Securities, the private equity group that owned GTL, step down from their board of directors as "GTL's exploitation of the ability of prisoners to communicate with their families and children is the antithesis of upholding human dignity and advancing human rights, and is in direct conflict with Human Rights Watch’s mission." [23]
In November 2016, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted a stay, requested by Securus, to block a proposed compromise by the FCC to set the rate cap to 13¢ to 31¢ per-minute on inter and intrastate calls. In the wake of the stay, Ajit Pai criticized Democrats for appealing and the courts for intervening on ICS rate regulations. [24] The two ICS providers, GTL and CenturyLink, asked for a delay in another FCC hearing in Washington, that was set for February 6, 2017. By January 19, 2017, the D.C. Circuit still refused to pause the FCC challenge to reform inmate calling rates. Commissioners Ajit Pai, Mignon Clyburn, and Jessica Rosenworcel, who were on the August 2013 Commission when the reform report was adopted, had dissented in 2013, and were likely to find for GTL and CenturyLink. [16] [25]
Upon the start of the Trump administration, both Rosenworcel and Pai were nominated to the FCC. In his first week as chairman, Pai began to roll back, or declare his intent to roll back, a number of pro-consumer policies implemented by the FCC during the Obama administration (such as Net neutrality). As a result, Pai instructed the FCC's lawyers to cease defending the commission's actions in court. [26] [27] [28] On June 13, 2017, the Appeals Court ruled in favor of Global Tel Link, arguing that the FCC's attempt to regulate the pricing of intrastate prison calls exceeded its authority under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which forbids the FCC from regulating intrastate communications. [29] [30]
In June 2019, Sen. Tammy Duckworth introduced the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which would once again authorize the FCC to regulate prison phones and cap the rate of calls made from state and local prisons. [31] It was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in January, 2023. [32]
In November of 2023, Massachusetts had became the fifth state to approve free jail and prison phone calls in the nation. This took many years of struggle and persuasion led by many people who are directly affected by the costs and rates of prison and jail phone calls to stay in contact with their loved ones. It is said that counties and the loved ones who provide money for the phone calls will be able to be refunded for their call cost's. It has been mentioned that the rates and costs of these phone calls have effected especially the loved ones of racial inequalities for Latino and Black families seeing as they proportionately earn less than white families. [33]
Telephone privileges in prisons/jails is something these facilities take very seriously. These days inmates have the free range to make calls almost any time during the day if they have the necessary funds. However, in the 1970s , inmates were only allowed about one telephone call to their loved ones every three months. Even though the privileges have significantly opened up for the inmates, these facilities monitor most phone calls. Each phone call made from an inmate to an outside source is recorded for safety and security purposes. The only exception to these recorded calls are the arranged calls between the inmates and their attorneys. The concern over the telephone privileges is the fear of the abuse that inmates take advantage of these calls and partake in criminal activity during discussion within these phone calls. Opening up the free range of unlimited phone calls for these inmates comes at a cost of allowing them to potentially committing serious criminal activity using the prison phones. [34]
Caller identification is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is being set up. The caller ID service may include the transmission of a name associated with the calling telephone number, in a service called Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). The service was first defined in 1993 in International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.731.3.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
A conference call is a telephone call in which several people share a telephone line at the same time. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call or set up so that the called party merely listens into the call and cannot speak.
A telecommunications relay service, also known as TRS, relay service, or IP-relay, or Web-based relay service, is an operator service that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, or have a speech disorder to place calls to standard telephone users via a keyboard or assistive device. Originally, relay services were designed to be connected through a TDD, teletypewriter (TTY) or other assistive telephone device. Services gradually have expanded to include almost any real-time text capable technology such as a personal computer, laptop, mobile phone, PDA, and many other devices. The first TTY was invented by deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht in 1964. The first relay service was established in 1974 by Converse Communications of Connecticut.
The Universal Service Fund (USF) is a system of telecommunications subsidies and fees managed by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promote universal access to telecommunications services in the United States. The FCC established the fund in 1997 in compliance with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Originally designed to subsidize telephone service, since 2011 the fund has expanded its goals to supporting broadband universal service. The Universal Service Fund's budget ranges from $5–8 billion per year depending on the needs of the telecommunications providers. These needs include the cost to maintain the hardware needed for their services and the services themselves. In 2022 disbursements totaled $7.4 billion, split across the USF's four main programs: $2.1 billion for the E-rate program, $4.2 billion for the high-cost program, $0.6 billion for the Lifeline program, and $0.5 billion for the rural health care program.
In telephony, the termination rate is one of the three components in the cost of providing telephone service, and the one subject to the most variation.
Google Voice is a telephone service that provides a U.S. phone number to Google Account customers in the U.S. and Google Workspace customers in Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the contiguous United States. It is used for call forwarding and voicemail services, voice and text messaging, as well as U.S. and international calls. Calls are forwarded to the phone number that each user must configure in the account web portal. Users can answer and receive calls on any of the phones configured to ring in the web portal. While answering a call, the user can switch between the configured phones. Subscribers in the United States can make outgoing calls to domestic and international destinations. The service is configured and maintained by users in a web-based application, similar in style to Google's email service Gmail, or Android and iOS applications on smartphones or tablets.
Platinum Equity, LLC is an American private equity investment firm founded by Tom Gores in 1995, headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. The firm focuses on leveraged buyout investments of established companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
American Securities LLC is an American private equity firm based in New York with an office in Shanghai that invests in market-leading North American companies with annual revenues generally ranging from $200 million to $2 billion and/or $50 million to $250 million of EBITDA. American Securities and its affiliates have approximately $23 billion under management. American Securities traces its roots to a family office founded in 1947 by William Rosenwald, the son of Julius Rosenwald, the longtime CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Video visitation is the use of videoconferencing and/or analog CCTV systems and software to allow inmates and visitors to visit at a distance as opposed to face-to-face. It allows people with a computer, internet, webcam, and credit card to communicate with inmates at select jails. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 74% of jails dropped face-to-face visitation after installing video visitation. As of May 2016, over 600 prisons in 46 states across the U.S. use some sort of video visitation system.
Global Tel Link (GTL), formerly known as Global Telcoin, Inc. and Global Tel*Link Corporation, is a Reston, Virginia–based telecommunications company, founded in 1989, that provides Inmate Calling Service (ICS) through "integrated information technology solutions" for correctional facilities which includes inmates payment and deposit, facility management, and "visitation solutions". The company's CEO is Deb Alderson. In 2020, GTL delivered 4.1 billion call minutes to incarcerated individuals and their families.
Traffic pumping, also known as access stimulation, is a controversial practice by which some local exchange telephone carriers in rural areas of the United States inflate the volume of incoming calls to their networks, and profit from the greatly increased intercarrier compensation fees to which they are entitled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Toll-free telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan have the area code prefix 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888. Additionally, area codes 822, 880 through 887, and 889 are reserved for toll-free use in the future. 811 is excluded because it is a special dialing code in the group NXX for various other purposes.
Mignon Letitia Clyburn is an American former government official who served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2009 to 2018.
Voxbone S.A. is a global communication as a service (CaaS) company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandwidth, Inc., with offices in locations including Brussels, London, San Francisco, Austin, Simi Valley, Dublin, Singapore and Iași. Voxbone became a part of Bandwidth on November 2, 2020.
Ajit Varadaraj Pai is an American lawyer who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2017 to 2021. He has been a partner at the private-equity firm Searchlight Capital since April 2021.
Jessica Rosenworcel is an American attorney serving as a member and chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). She originally served on the FCC from May 11, 2012, to January 3, 2017, and was confirmed by the Senate for an additional term on August 3, 2017. She was named to serve as acting chairwoman in January 2021 and designated permanent chairwoman in October 2021. She was confirmed for another term by the Senate in December 2021. Rosenworcel's current term runs for five years beginning July 1, 2020.
In most jurisdictions, prison inmates are forbidden from possessing mobile phones due to their ability to communicate with the outside world and other security issues. Mobile phones are one of the most smuggled items into prisons. They provide inmates the ability to make and receive unauthorized phone calls, send email and text messages, use social media, and follow news pertaining to their case, among other forbidden uses.
Securus Technologies is a technology communications firm serving department of corrections facilities and incarcerated individuals across the country. The company is a subsidiary of Aventiv Technologies. In the past, the company has faced criticism over phone call pricing, data security, monopoly and product innovation.
Lifeline is the Federal Communications Commission's program, established in 1985, intended to make communications services more affordable for low-income consumers. Lifeline provides subscribers a discount on monthly telephone service purchased from participating providers in the marketplace. Subscribers can also purchase discounted broadband internet from participating providers. The Lifeline program is funded by telephone fees as part of the Universal Service Fund.
Notes: Veritas made a major play in homeland security in the 2000s. Its portfolio includes Raytheon Aerospace (June 2001) (Vertex Aerospace LLC), Dyncorp International LLC (2004, MZM Inc., and Lockheed Martin)
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(help)GTL offers integrated information technology solutions for the corrections market. The company provides inmate communications, investigative, facility management, visitation, payment and deposit, and content solutions. Global Tel*Link Corporation was formerly known as Global Telcoin, Inc. and changed its name to Global Tel*Link Corporation in May 1999. The company was founded in 1980 and is based in Mobile, Alabama. Global Tel*Link Corporation operates as a subsidiary of GTEL Holdings, Inc.
Up until now, sky-high rates for phone calls charged by providers. ... Meanwhile, just last week Securus received another round of negative ... leaked to The Intercept – calling into question the "security" of Securus's business.