« Filling Our Prison System Isn't Likely to Unlock Justice | Main | "Million Dollar Blocks" »
November 17, 2004
MCI and Telephone Justice Campaign in NYC
Message from Dana Kaplan:
There has been a lot of press recently on the campaign here in New York to end the contract between MCI and DOCS – a lot of it driven by the billboard that was donated to us on the corner of 125th street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. The billboard has generated some very interesting reactions, and is especially ironic located on the strip of 125th that represents the heart of the gentrification of Harlem, snadwiched in between starbucks, the body shop, staples, and the many other billboards using Black historical figures to hawk goods such as Adidas and Hennessey. We’re setting up on a soapbox this Saturday to speak out on the issue and have cell phones available for people to call the Governor.
To see the billboard go to:
http://www.telephonejustice.org
New York Daily News, Tuesday, November 16th, 2004
Innocent victims
On the southwest corner of 125th St. and Lenox Ave., cater-corner from a Starbuck's in the heart of a newly revitalized Harlem, a billboard recently went up that sounds a jarring note amid the prosperity. "Greed, Corruption & High A-- Rates," it says. "A joint venture of MCI and the New York State Department of Correctional Services. Robbing your communities of $25 million a year." Poetry, it's not. But the sign points to a grinding injustice inflicted on thousands of families across the state. MCI, the phone service giant, has an exclusive, sweetheart contract with the state correction department that forces anyone trying to communicate with prison inmates to pay punitively high phone rates.
Every collect call from a prisoner costs $3 plus 16 cents a minute - more than six times the cost of a regular phone call. A typical call from prison lasts 19 minutes and costs the recipient $6. It's not unheard of for families to pay $300 to $700 a month to talk with someone in prison, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. Cheaper alternatives, like phone cards or commissary accounts, are prohibited by the state. Why? More than 57% of the money from the MCI calls goes straight to the correction department. In fiscal year 2002, for instance, prisoners made 7 million calls lasting more than 124 million minutes. That generated $39 million in fees, more than $22 million of which got kicked back to the state. Since 1996, the department has raked in $175 million from these calls in what amounts to a forced tax on the mothers, children and spouses of inmates, people who have not committed any crime and are largely ill-equipped to handle such bills. The prison systems of 44 other states have similar monopoly deals with phone companies. It's a billion-dollar-a-year business, and New York and MCI charge the highest rates in the country.
A more humane alternative would be for New York to imitate the federal prison system, where inmates can use an 800 number for which their families pay 7 cents a minute. Gouging inmates' families is not only unfair, it's bad for public safety. Experts say a key to rehabilitating offenders is to have them maintain positive contacts with the outside world before they return. High rates cause many families to limit calls drastically.
The great irony, of course, is that MCI is the new incarnation of WorldCom, which in 2002 acknowledged shady accounting that amounted to the largest case of corporate fraud in American history, causing $11 billion in losses. The company later reconstituted itself as MCI, but former WorldCom executives still face the possibility of jail sentences for the ripoff. And the prison phone deals continue. The Center for Constitutional Rights has sued the state over the MCI deal and plans to hold a rally in front of the Harlem billboard on Saturday. Protesters will be phoning Gov. Pataki's office - (518) 474-8390 - to demand a complete, immediate rollback of the punitive rates. Here's hoping they call collect.
Posted by lois at November 17, 2004 09:35 AM