On Tuesday the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to accept a new contract with Public Communications Services—or PCS—to provide the phones that inmates use to makes calls home from inside the county’s various jail facilities.
On Zev Yaroslavsky’s blog the deal was pronounced a WIN-WIN. And maybe it is.
But like most things in California that involve criminal justice, politics and money—it’s complicated.
Here’s the deal: back in 2008, activists complained to the Los Angeles County Supervisors that the collect calls inmates were allowed to make from county jail were too expensive. To their credit, the Sups agreed and thus declined to extend the incredibly lucrative existing phone contract—which was then held by Global Tel*Link—and instead voted to open the matter up for competitive bidding.
So how lucrative is the jails phone contract? Suffice it to say that when GTL was trying to talk the Sups into extending their contract, the company offered the county an extra $3.5 million to…you know….sweeten the deal.
Everybody benefits from correctional phone contracts. The provider makes a boatload of bucks. And the county or state that run the correctional facilities gets a healthy cut of the phone company’s profits.
Everyone benefits, that is, except the inmates’ families, who are the folks who take the fiscal hit for all this cheery prosperity.
We are living in a world few people in America pay by the minute for phone calls within the US and, even without Skype, calling China or Estonia costs far less than your mother used to pay to call her mother in Portland. But calling collect from jail costs $3.54 for the first minute, 10 cents for each minute thereafter, meaning a 10 minute call from lock-up to one’s mom costs $4.44 and a 30 minute call to talk to one’s wife and kids is $6.54.
To be fair, it needs to be pointed out that correctional phones in the jails and in the state prisons are expensive to maintain. They must be extra sturdy as, like payphones in rough areas, they are repeatedly damaged and often have to be replaced. Plus there are other expenses, like the fact that the phones are wired for the electronic eavesdropping necessary to try to keep inmates from engaging in nefarious activities.
Nevertheless, in this era of unlimited calling and texting (and Skyping) corrections contracts are among the few true cash cows remaining in a highly competitive industry. And since Los Angeles has the nation’s biggest jail system, the contract just voted on by the Supervisors on Tuesday, is a prize contract indeed.
(FYI: I did an extensive article on this issue in 2001 for the LA Weekly in which I went into even more detail about this industry and its history.) .
In any case, the RFP for the LA County contract went out in 2009 and enthusiastic bidding began. The bidding closed in August of 2010 having attracted four main candidates.
The ultimate the winner of the bidding battle was Public Communications Services.
Everyone seemed pleased by the outcome.—including Global Tel*Link, which promptly bought PCS three weeks after the bidding was over.
And, the new contract is also marginally better for the inmates—or at least their families who, after all, are the ones who pay for the pricey calls. (It is worth pointing out that the majority of those in jail are inside because they are awaiting trial, not because they have been convicted. And, of course, inmates’ families have not committed crimes but are simply trying to get by the best they can while their husband/wife/mother/father/son/daughter/brother/sister is in jail.)
Under the new contract, the first minute is $1.25, which is a big improvement over the existing $3.54 for the first minute. However, the subsequent minutes are 15 cents a minute under the new contract, rather than the old per minute charge of 10 cents—a 50 percent increase. Granted, on a 17 minute call—which the CEO’s office says in the average call length from jail—the inmates’ family will pay $3.65 for that call instead of $5.14, a 30 percent drop.
However, the real attraction of the new PCS (GTL-owned) contract is that a larger chunk of the profits goes to the County than under the old contract.
Specifically, the Sheriff’s department is guaranteed to receive at least $4 million more in annual revenues, with the Minimum Annual Guarantee from the phone company jumping from $11 million to $15 million. (And, remember, that’s the least the LASD will make.)
In addition, under the old contract, the County received only 52% of all phone revenues, with the phone company pocketing the rest. Under the new one, the LASD gets a whopping 67% of the profits. With inmate populations rising, the county is likely to realize a good chunk of bank as the years go by.
So what, you might ask, happens to that $15 million (or more) that the Sheriff’s department will gain in yearly commissions from this new phone contract?
By law the county’s portion of revenues from jail phones must go into what is called the Inmate Welfare Fund, a pot of money that underwrite educational, recreational and other projects that are geared to the general welfare of inmates. This means it’s supposed to be spent on things like education programs, drug and alcohol treatment, other rehabilitative programs, the jail library….that sort of thing.
When I say, “by law” I mean this mandated use of commission money is written into the California penal code.
But are the funds truly spent on inmate programs, welfare and benefits?
A quick glance at the most recent County audit detailing how those funds are spent does not exactly make clear that lots of the phone contract $$ are being use for inmate programs.
But I’m looking further into the question and should know more a bit later.
In the meantime, it’s nice that the County is going to make out on this newly-minted contract. But it’s less nice to know, that despite the marginal price cut, calling from jail is still more expensive than nearly any other kind of call in the world. As a consequence, the sheriff’s department is still making substantial profits on the backs of some of the LA County families who can least afford it.
Photo of an inmate on the phone at the L.A. County Men’s Central Jail by Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times