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Want Less Prison Violence? Make Prison Phone Calls Free · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of Rallying the Bars. I'm your
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: host man Simussa. Prior to being released from prison, I
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: served forty eight years in days and months. When I
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: first went in prison, we ain't had no telephone system,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: so everything was letters. Then they put the telephone system in.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And when they put the telephone system in just create
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a whole new attitude in the prison population. People was
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: able to get on the phones to talk to their families.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They had organize the phone system where you get designated
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: time so you ain't have to worry about staying in line.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: It was like something unusual, and when they first started
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: talking about it, most of us were skeptic or the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: ain't gonna put no telephone. But now this is a
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: major feature in every prison in the United States of
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: America and county jails and tensistent as well. Join me
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: today to talk about the groundbreaking new report on this crisis.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It's p Mayor. Peter is the author of Critical Connections,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The Power of Free Phone Calls in Prisons in Jail,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and a director of research and data Innovation at WARP Rises,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the organization working to dismantle prison profit as route. Welcome Peter,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Thanks thanks for having me tell all this a little
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: bit about yourself.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: So I am the director of Research and Data Innovation
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: at Worth Rises. As you said, we are organization that
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: works to dismantle the prison industry, and most famously in
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the sector of telecommunications. I come to this work through
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: being an impacted person. Myself spent some time in different
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: county jails. I'm a person in recovery and so this
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: stuff means a lot to me. And yeah, we have
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: just recently released this report that you mentioned. The point
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: of it is that it shows the impact of what
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: free phone calls have done in several states and several
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: dozen counties, which is sort of a new policy, a
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: wave that's sort of happening cross the country as we
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: are trying to make phone calls free for people in
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: prisons and jails.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start with the FCC vote on October
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: twenty fifty rollback rates. Instead of eighty six percent cap
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: provides can charge eleven cent in prison in eighteen cent
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: in jail. What does this rollback mean for families right now?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So, to give the background just a little bit,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, the FCC set caps on how
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: much the telecommunications corporations can charge people incarcerated people in
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: their families per minute for phone calls. And those caps
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: were meant to be six cents in prisons like you mentioned,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: and twelve cents in very small jails. Now, those caps
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: were never completely implemented and in forced as there was
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: change in administration and the caps themselves were delayed. And
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: then more recently, in October twenty twenty five, as you mentioned,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: the caps were increased to eleven cents per minute in
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: prisons and nineteen cents per minute in what they call
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: extremely small jails. Right, perhaps just finally went into effect
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: in the April of this year and now are actually
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: have the force of law. But the difference being I mean,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: like it means that families are exposed to these inflated
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: costs for just connecting with their loved one, right, I mean,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: what we're talking about is like real basic human connection,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: being able to get on the phone, right, I know,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: you know, well, right, like being able to get on
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: the phone and talk to that family member is you know,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: is a basic human need. Right. And the thing is,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: when we talk about these things and we talk about
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the difference between six cents and eleven cents. That may
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: not sound like that much to some people, but when
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: you consider the fact that these are calls that are
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: being made, you know, every week, every month, year, it's
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: stacks and it's stacks and its stacks and stacks. Right,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And we think about when you know, us on the outside,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: who we talk to, right, when we talk to our friends,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: our family members, our siblings, things like that, I mean
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: on the phone for an hour and a half with right, right,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: right sibling or something with my brother or something like that, right,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: that stacks up really quickly. And so what the rollback,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: the increase of those caps means is that families continue
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: to pay for these inflated costs that are really just
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: trying to like offhand the cost of like surveillance to families.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, And in your report, you look at the history
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: of the industry. How did we get from standard phone
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: rates under the old AT and T monopoly to the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: high rate that we see now.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So it used to be that prison and jail
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: phone calls were run by the same corporations that we
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: on AT and T had a monopoly on everything. Then
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: in the eighties, when AT and T monopoly was broken up,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: that all these smaller surveillance firms started to enter the market,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: and they were having a hard time getting contract act
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: with prisons in jails to surveil all calls because they
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: were like, we don't really want to pay for all
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: that for the monitoring monitoring tools. So what they did
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: is they created a new model where they would share
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: a percentage of the revenue with the prison or jail.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: So what they would do is they'd go to that
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: agency and they'd say, okay, we're going to charge let's
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: say fifteen cents a minute, and you're going to get
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: seven cents of that, and we're going to take the
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: other eight cents. And because of that model, prisons in jails,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: who were at the time, you know, populations were starting
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: to explode, as we are and we're having a really
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: hard time sustaining financially, they were like, oh great, here's
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: a new revenue stream, right. And so by doing that
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: split model, which we'd call commissions or kickbacks, those companies
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: were able to start cornering the market like crazy, and
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: they created this incentive not to make the price as
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: low as possible, but to actually for the agencies to
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: pick whichever company was going to give them the largest
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: amount right right in the kickback.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Just three private corporations have control over the phone system
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: in the United States as a Venor, Buy a Path
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and ICs controls ninety percent. I'm just marketing. So what's
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the resistance y'all getting back from them? Because now you're
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: telling me that you want to come in and bring
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: my financial monopoly up by saying, well, I know you
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: getting two dollars a minute, I'm trying to really get
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: it down to one penny a minute or just free
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: all together. What's their response or what's been their responsible
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: how have y'all maaby gauged?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So just to be clear, I mean that history
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: that I just talked about. What happened is that private
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: equity started consolidating these businesses, buying up and so now
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: we have, like you said, we have Eventive, which is
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: also known as SECURESTS, most people known as Securests, BIOPATH
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: also known as GTL and IC Solutions, and they control
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: nearly noty percent of the market. And what we have
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: seen is that they, you know, they push back through
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: things like pushing back on the FCC, instituting rate caps,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: lobbying against our policies for free communication. Another thing that
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: they're seeing as their revenue stream is really being squeezed
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: in the phone market because of these new caps and
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: these these states and counties going to free communication. What
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: we're seeing is that they're moving into other revenue streams
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and also trying to rebrand their image a little bit.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So they're moving into like content on tablets, like education,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: training content, that kind of thing, and in doing that,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: because their image has become so toxic, they're also trying
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: to rebrand is like, you know, a helpful corporation for
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: people who are incarcerated. When we really make that they're
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: the whole name of the industry is exploitation. Like that
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: is it's the name of the game. It's way it
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: has been for a long time. So we try to
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: not let them get away with that sort of rebranding
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: into something else. One other just small point I'd make
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: is that yes, we have like the FCC rate caps
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  Speaker 2: that make that are like the the ceiling of how
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: high they can charge, and that that's is a good
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  Speaker 2: enforcement mechanism. We really are trying to do is to
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: get states and counties to move to completely free models
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: for incarcerated people, meaning that that that becomes a part
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: of the agency's budget. And when they do that, they
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: renegotiate new rates. So when maybe or you know, families
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: were paying let's say six cents a minute something like that,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: when that corporate, when that, when that Corrections Department decides
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: to go to a free they renegotiate with the corporation
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and they get it down to like one and a
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: half maybe two cents a minute. Right, that shows that
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: like that, you know that with that original cost was
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: completely you know, it was completely inflated right now saying
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: we can't sure we can do it for two cents.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: And to your point, right when the calls are free.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: It created a whole different mindset in the environment. But
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: more importantly, y'all able to show that if whoever paying
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the bill, if the state paying the bill, they're gonna
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: get the best deal possible. But when we're paying the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: bill and they getting the kickback from us paying the bill,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: then they don't care. If it's like five hours. I
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: told you in one place I was in coming to Maryland,
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  Speaker 1: it was five dollars a minute, five dollars and I called.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And when I call, best thing I can say, like
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: this where I'm at I write, y'all but talk about
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: because in your in your report we talk about the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: impact these exorbit phone call prices have on families, talk
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: about that and talk about you know, how much money
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: they going that and how much these families are actually
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: spending per phone call without any regulation.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah sure, so, I mean it ranges quite a bit
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: depending on the rates that are charged, Like we talked about,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, depending on where you're at. It can be
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: a huge difference. Right. What we couple like points we
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: talked about that were done by other researchers and the
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: report is that we know that one in three families
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: with an incarcerated loved one goes into debt trying to
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: stay connected. That's from a previous report by the Labaka
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Center and also on a report done by ford US
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: that was also a co author on that families pay
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: nearly forty two hundred dollars a year costs to like
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: visit support with commissary, all the different like association, lost income,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: those kinds of things. Now, when it comes to just
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: phone calls on the states that went in counties that
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: went free that we did it in an analysis of
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: for this report, what we found is that families were
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: saving between one hundred and seventy two dollars to eighteen
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars a year after the calls went free. So
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: that's the amount that they would have been spending before.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Now on top of that, these families are also getting
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: another two hundred and forty four dollars to almost three
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars in extra call time. So the way to
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: think about that is right, not only are they no
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: longer spending that hundreds of dollars on what they did
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: to just to stay connected a little bit before, but
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: they're also now getting to talk that much more and
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: getting crude value in extra money too. And so what
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: that all looked like in the total and the aggregate
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: is we see six hundred and twenty two million dollars
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: saved to date by families think these jurisdictions going free,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: and most of that is flowing to black and brown
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: communities who have disproportionately borne.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: This car And I know for a fact that when
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: when you find when we find that our family members
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: had to pay, I remember guys was like have to
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: wait like the first of the month, you know, for
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: their family get checks. You know that they they call,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you know, like they want them to call all family
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: men want you to call all the time. Uh. Family
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: members have like more than one child in prison, so
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: like I'm I'm I'm in one prison, somebody in the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: county jail or somebody in another prison, all of us
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: making uh calls at home to get to a point.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I know one family member got to a point where
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: the mother just said, look, I can't, I can't accept
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the calls no more. You know, so if you can't
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: write a letter, then you know, and and it created
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: it created a whole different attitude in the environment. Black market,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of drama, lot of violence, right, talk about yeah,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: you share some personal stories like the woman Lorraine who
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: say her husband and finally here you know, just information
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: or sensory. But talk about that because I know from experience,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and I know I interview somebody who's got his children
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: on the phone every day and did their homework with him.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And twenty years thirty years later, it's a child that
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I interviewed. The son I him graduated from college honor.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: But it was his father's ability to talk to him
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: on the phone or had that communication with him, had
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: him do some talk about some of them things that
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: y'all you know, y'all was able to get information about
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and the impact that it has on people in general.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely so as part of this report, a big
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: part of it was used. We did be carried out
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: qualitative interviews and a number of those interviews were with
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: incarcerating people and their families, and then we did some
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: with staff as well, and we heard so many powerful stories, right,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, just like the value of these free calls
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: is immeasurable in the amount of moments that people would
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: then get to share with each other, because the difference
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: was that, like you're talking about when a call is
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: really expensive, like all people are doing is like a
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: lot of all people can afford a lot of times
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: is a quick check in, you know, I'm being okay,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: you know, like or I'm not doing okay, what's going on?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: That kind of thing. Right, Some relationships they completely wither,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: right because it's like I can't afford to talk to
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: that person, you know, after calls go free. Now we're
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: seeing people like have regular engagement and presence in their
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: family lives, and because of that, they are feeling better. Right,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: They're having more of a reason to go on and
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: to work on their rehabilitation, to think about what's going
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: to be happening after this. I mean, we're hearing like
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: you were talking about. We heard from parents who said
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: that they would after calls been free, they would call
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: their kid every morning before school and talk to them
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: every day every night after right, they'd help them with
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: their homework, they get to hear about that sports game,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: what the updates were right after. You know. We heard
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: from people who said, like, you know, one of our
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: one of our favorite quotes in this is an incarcerated
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: man who said, the difference is that you can hear
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: the smile and a call, right, we all kind of
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: know what that.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Means, you know, like when you're on the phone with
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: somebody and you can kind of tell that they're smiling,
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: you know, like, and so that's the difference, right, is that,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: like people are having real everyday presence, and it makes
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: such a big difference both for the communities on the
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: outside and for the incarcerated person on the inside.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: And that's not just like one. It is an incredibly
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: valuable story, I think in terms of just human connection
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: and everything else. It's also a really important policy point
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: because these are all things that will strengthen public safety.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: These are all things that strengthen communities. These are all
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: things that will make what we purport the system to
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: be able to supposedly be doing this will actually do
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: that right. And that's that's why these personal stories in
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: the aggregate really show us that free calls is a
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: policy that works.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it makes sense. You know, you old concept
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: of crime and punishment is the crime committed crime. The
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: sentence that I get is the punishment the sentence that
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I get. Don't say that I'm sentencing you to like
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: sold twenty years of solid turk and finement, I'm sentencing
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: you to scroll the floor with a toothbrush. They say,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sentencing you to this time. That's your punishment, the sentence.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Nowhere in any criminal code do it say, I'm sentence
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: you to pay astronomical prices for to communicate with your family.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm sentence you usually pay astronomical commissary prices
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to eat. I'm sentenced you to pay for your own
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: clothing or your own room board. That's just not the polsity.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: That's that's just something that it's it's the profit. And
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: in prison, when they say crime don't pay, crime does pay.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: They pay corporations and pay corporations and form like like
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about now when phone I remember when
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: they had a commissioner correction in Maryland and everything they
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: came across his desk, he had to prove it. So
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: one of the things he's seen while he was in
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: office was that everybody wanted clothing packages, so you know,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: tennis shoes and stuff like that. When he left that agency,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: he went and got contracted with a clothing agency and
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: was selling clothes to the prisons. So because he recognized
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: a profit marger. But talk about finally, your report outlined
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: for major policy recommendations, how do we successfully reform government
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: contracts to build a phone system their focuses on human
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: connection rather than corporate profit.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so our policy recommendations are for all
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: states and counties to transition to this free system, right,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: and in that we talk about a few different things.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: We talk about the actual policy that you design. In
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: some most states, that's been legislation that says phone calls
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: are going to be free now in a few places.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: New York is an exception on New York State where
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: they passed it as a budget measure where they just
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: added in to the budget. This is how much the
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: doc is going to have this in their budget to
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: pay for this. And so there's the legislation piece and
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: then there is the procurement and the implementation piece. So
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: on the procurement side, we also have how the Corrections
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Agency actually contracts out this work and then implementation of
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: how this actually all goes through. And what we really
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: are trying to emphasize in here, without getting too much
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: into the technical weeds, is that this is not only
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: very doable, it's actually advantageous right for states and corrections
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: departments because it's a good public safety investment and it
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: will pay off in the end. And how they need
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: to be able to do this is to one design
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: policies that will guarantee access so that means tablets need
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: tablet access for people inside so that theyody can actually
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: get a hold of on the phones and you know,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: lot any security issues around like scarcity, right, because phones
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: can become a flashpoint when there's only a few phones
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: and everybody wants that time, right, So tablets make that
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: not so much of an issue. And we saw Corrections
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Department officials that we interviewed. They loved that because people
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: are in their cells. They're engaged, right, they're engaged, and
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: they're not congregating in the common areas with idle time,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: where there's more time for things to go wrong. People
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: aren't fighting over the wall phones, they're on their tablets.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: So that's one big piece. Another piece that we talk
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: about is that the pricing is transparent and that agencies
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: renegotiate their costs with corporations. So like like I touched
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: on briefly before, like when a state decides to go free,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: then that Department of Corrections needs to go back to
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the company that they're going to contract with and say,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: we want a lower price because we know you can
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: give us a lower price. And when we saw like
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: California as a price around one point five cents a minute,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: that's one of the best prices we've seen country. So
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: we want these agencies to go and say, if you
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: can do this for California, we see we see some
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: lower Sorry to be clear, we see some lower costs
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: for other states that haven't gone free yet, but that
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: was the lowest implementation costs for free calls was California's.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: So we want states and counties to say we see
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: that this can be this cheap. We need to get
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: these lower costs other things we want. It's like we
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: want to make sure that they're not that things like
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: video calls are not going to be used to replace
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: visitation because that can happen sometimes and we don't want
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: like like we don't call it video visits because they're
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: not visits, right, a visit somebody actually comes in. It's
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: a video call, right, so don't try to replace it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Other pieces have to do with We would like to
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: see agencies start to unbundle these things. So part of
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: the power of the monopoly is that like when an
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: agency gets a contract, they put all of it together
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: in one thing for that company. So that means where
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: they're getting the tablets, the surveillance and security infrastructure in
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: addition to the actual the actual telecommunication infrastructure. We would
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: like to see them start debundling this right and having
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: a bidding, competitive bidding process for the tablets themselves, a
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: competitive bidding process for just the telecommunications service, and then
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: pay for whatever security they want on top of and
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: separate from that so that it doesn't all get lumped
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: together into.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Work which is being used like not allowed a service.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: But how do you see what do you see on
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a landscape when you look at it down the road.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Do you think we ever get to a place in
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: this country where, taking all the things into account how
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: profitable this stuff is, did we get to a place
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: where phone service would be free for people that's in
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: conspert or would it always be we would always be
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: negotiating Pennie penny day, which is not bay but versus
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: no money.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, if I didn't believe we would get to
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: a place that where it could be free for everybody,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure like we'd all be doing this work right.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: I Mean, the thing about Worth Rises is that you know,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: we really imagine you know, when this organization was started
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: by our executive director back in twenty eighteen, this was
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: like an impossible dream. Now we have multiple full state
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: corrections agencies doing free calls and a number of counties
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: right and it's moving in other places too. I absolutely
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: think we're going to get to a place. I think
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: we're going to get to a place someday where we
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: look back on this and say, how could it ever
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: have been that way?
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Right? Right?
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Right, like, I think we're already moving pretty quickly towards it.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: We just need to continue the momentum on the policy
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: front of may of corrections agencies and counties making this free,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: and then also start to reform the actual industry so
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: that it's not not these corporation monopolistic corporations taking advantage,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: but we make it more like it is for any
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: other like any other state agency. Right if they were
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: setting up their phone calls or setting up like tablet
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: acquisition or things like that, they wouldn't do it all
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: through one company. They'd be doing each little piece in
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: different procurement like you or I. Like, you know, we
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: pay we pay per line for our phone, right, we
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: don't pay per minute, you know what I mean? Like
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: this should reflect more accurately like the actual industry instead
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: of being the way that it is. This model is outdated.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: It was built to it was built to exploit, and
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: it is going to go away eventually,