20¢ per minute.
This is the current cost for a resident in the Florida prison system to call home, at least from my privately run facility.
- You got a Hi! of ☎️. -5 Mood
So here is something to chew on.
In the free world, I had a phone plan that was $19.91 per month with taxes, and it gave me unlimited talk time and texting to any US-based number. Most of you with phones have plans with similar unlimited talk options at this point, I'm fairly certain.
In prison, either I, or my loved ones have to go through trouble with GTL ViaPath to make it so that I can call them. Here at Blessington, I can put credits on the phone out of my commissary funds (which is my food and hygiene money, as well as my medical callout money) and call anyone willing to receive a call from a corrections facility and be subject to monitoring. I can also use the weekly 5 minute call we get statewide.
In State-run facilities, the person I want to call has to put money on their forced account with GTL ViaPath, or the system will only let me call them once for a few minutes, mostly to tell them they need an account and to put money in it. After that, you cannot call that person again without the 5 minute weekly free call, or the monthly 15 minute call that only State-run facilities offer to their inmates if they are Disciplinary Report (DR) free for at least 90 days.
(Of note: the funds used to pay for those 15 minute calls come from canteen sales.)
For people with families or loved ones they want to talk to, they find themselves between a rock and a hard place
After all, at least in Florida, it's rarely ever the inmate paying for the call because we don't get paid for the vast majority of our labor.
It's the Free Worlders who care for and about the inmate that shell out twenty cents a minute to remind the inmate in Florida that despite the situation, someone loves and cares for them.
I argue that communication is vital, even critical to maintaining the mental well-being of a person in prison. When we have something or someone to lose, we are more apt to do our best to do right, to learn how not to end up in this place of pain again.
When a person has nothing to lose, you start to change them into a monster.
Secretly, monitored to death?
We are, of course, subject to monitoring with every call we push through GTL ViaPath's system. ViaPath, of course, sells this phone package to prisons, promising next level surveillance to identify hot phrases and words that Security are looking for.
Securus, our tablet provider, is no less innocent as they farm my messages, but their phone offering (which Florida refused) offers just as much surveillance as their competitor.
Compounding the issue is the cost and resultant profit sharing between Securus, ViaPath, and state prisons, farming the wallets of the families of the incarcerated.
At $1 for five minutes, people with a large circle of care are punished more, turned into Yet Another Profit Center for the corrections systems. Talking for a half hour costs $6.00 in the age of unlimited talk plans everywhere.
Imagine for a moment:
A couple were just making ends meet, and just had a child.
The father makes a poor life decision that ends up with him going to prison for, say, three years.
The mother loses his share of the household income, and is surviving by the blessings of her support group and the public safety nets of food assistance (SNAP benefits), rent assistance, and a LifeLine phone from the US Government.
The phone has unlimited text and talk, and 5GB of data.
She is in no financial state to talk to her husband.
Even though she has infinite minutes on her phone plan, ViaPath insists she pay 20¢/minute to talk to her husband if he has no free calls.
How does a father stay in the life of his wife and child in a situation like this? The answers, according to these systems, can be "He can't," or "She has to sacrifice even more."
The Magic of Communication, No Anger
I maintain that being able to communicate positively with people who care for your well-being, even in a place such as this -- especially in a place like this is practically a requirement to come out of this on the other side as a human being. I also maintain that being in continuous contact with the people in your life is also important to the people in your life.
However, taxing and surveiling their loved ones unnecessarily and unceremoniously is a main, major threat to the intent of a Correctional Institution -- to provide a place of learning and a road to redemption for the incarcerated.
How many families, circles of friends, relationships crumble like an overbaked cookie dropped on the floor in the absence of us behind these fences and concertina wire?
I know I've lost many friends, even as I fight for my freedom, waiting for the courts to allow me the right to return.
I miss all of them, even if they do not miss me, for they were important in my life.
Were I able to call them, text them, email them, I would still hopefully have contact with them all.
Ah, fun trivia, and something to heed:
Keep a business card sized piece of paper in your wallet or purse with contact info for five or ten people you care about, especially including phone numbers. You don't get to keep your phone when you get arrested, and this may be your only lifeline to reach them.
Going to jail or prison gives you a brand new set of numbers to memorize in a high stress situation, new rules to learn, new threats to assess.
This card may save your sanity.
I can't hear you over the sound of twenty cent teardrops.
As we decry the financial abuse, know that in the last two years, five states have moved to make phone calls free for prisoners.
Let's encourage the other 45, shall we?
Thanks for stopping by. :)