Thus far this year, the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) has been confiscating cell phones at a rate of 39 phones per 100 prisoners per year. Cell phones are illegal to possess or use in U.S. prisons and jails. Legally established U.S. prison telephone systems include special call restriction, call recording, and call monitoring capabilities. These capabilities control prisoners’ ability to use phones to harass others or to plan or participate in criminal activities. They also make prisoners’ calls a valuable law-enforcement intelligence resource. Prison phones’ call-control capabilities add costs to prison phone calls. Prison phone rates are much higher than the rates that persons outside prisons typically pay to make calls.[1] Prisoners seek contraband cell phones to avoid prison call controls and to make calls more cheaply.
Despite aggressive efforts to confiscate contraband cell phones at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP) and other incarceration facilities across the U.S., prisoners have been successfully acquiring and using cell phones. The call volume through MSP’s prison phone system in 2010 is only 40% of what it would be if prisoners were using that system to make calls at the frequency they did in 2007. Prisoners at MSP value cell phones at $300 to $500 per phone. Under plausible parameters, a model of contraband cell-phone value suggests that cell phone calls in MSP amount to 3.7 times the number of legal prison phone calls.[2] Prison administrations typically take from prison phone providers about half of the gross revenue from prison phone service. At the FCC’s recent Workshop on Contraband Cell Phone Use in Prisons, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Commissioner stated that MDOC has lost about $2 million in inmate phone revenue due to contraband cell phone use.[3]
In August of this year, MSP installed a managed-access system that blocks illegal cell-phone calls. The system blocked about 8 times as many illegal cell-phone call attempts as occurred legal prison-phone calls on average in prior months. With the cell-phone-blocking system operating, the number of completed legal phone calls rose 15% in August. MDOC revenue from prison phone calls rose 16%.[4] Given this success, MDOC has decided that, as of Oct. 1, 2010, any inmate caught with a cell phone in Mississippi will be transferred to MSP. In addition, the cell-phone-blocking system will be installed in two other large MDOC prisons by December, 2011.[5]
Systems to suppress contraband cell phones have significant costs. The Director of the Mississippi Department of Corrections said that the cell-phone-blocking technology had no cost to them. He stated that the system was installed as an “added value” service by its communications service provider, Global Tel*Link. Global Tel*Link apparently will recover its additional costs through higher prisoner call rates.[6] The Director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections estimated that installing a managed-access, cell-phone-blocking system would raise the average cost of prisoners’ calls in South Carolina from $1.57 per call to a little over $3 per call.[7] The Director of the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services has received estimates of $250,000 cost per facility to implement cell-phone-blocking technology. The Director suggested that raising prisoners’ phone rates might not be possible in Maryland.[8] Members of U.S. Congress judiciary committees have made clear to the Federal Bureau of Prisons that raising its phone rates for prisoners would not be permitted.[9]
High prison phone rates encourage prisoners to acquire and use contraband cell phones. Since cell-phone blocking technology is new and requires considerable site-specific customization[10], some prisoners are likely to find ad-hoc means for circumventing it. In discussing cell-phone jamming technology, prison officials have emphasized the importance of having a variety of tools to suppress contraband cell phones.[11] Changing prison phone rates is a tool for changing incentives to acquire and use contraband cell phones. Unfortunately, raising prison phone rates to recover cell-phone suppression costs will push against the objective of lessening contraband cell-phone use.
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Data: contraband cell phones in Mississippi (Excel version)
Notes:
[1] The Campaign to Promote Equitable Telephone Charges lists state prison phone rates calculated for a 15-minute call. On Nov. 3, 2003, petitioners Martha Wright et. al. asked the FCC to take action to lower prison and jail phone rates. The petitioners filed an alternative petition with the same objective on Feb. 28, 2007. Prison telephone systems are similar in other countries. On prison telephone systems in Britain, see Ofcom’s response to the National Consumer Council’s super-complaint on the cost of calls from prisons (Sept. 22, 2008).
[2] Here’s the contraband cell phone capitalization model. For sources and calculations concerning call volumes and call frequencies, see the contraband cell phone trends worksheet. Much of the data in that worksheet is from MDOC’s Operation Cellblock presentation.
[3] See video of the FCC’s Workshop on Contraband Cell Phone Use in Prisons, Sept. 30, 2010 [FCC Workshop video, available in the live events archive], statement of Commissioner Christopher B. Epps, Mississippi Department of Corrections, about video time 39:02. The $2 million statistic was not precisely specified. For figures and calculations suggesting a half-million dollar loss across all incarceration facilities in Mississippi for the full year 2010 (assuming no cell-phone-blocking system), see the contraband cell phones trends worksheet.
[4] MDOC Operation Cellblock presentation, p. 24.
[5] Commissioner Epps’ presentation, FCC Workshop video, beginning at video time 35:00.
[6] See FCC Workshop video, beginning at 87:00.
[7] Id. , beginning at 87:50.
[8] Id., beginning at 93:10 and 87:00.
[9] Id., beginning at 92:20. In the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a fifteen-minute phone call costs $0.90 for a local call and $3.45 for a non-local call. These rates are for calls paid by the prisoner through a debit system. The cost of a 15-minute collect phone call is $8.45.
[10] Id, beginning at 85:09.
[11] Id., passim. Cell-phone jamming technology interfers with cell-phone radio communications. Cell-phone blocking technology (managed-access technology) blocks unregistered cell-phone communications from entering the normal cell-phone communications network. The former technology has been much more controversial, as a matter of law, policy, and industry interests, than has the latter. Here’s some analysis of the peculiarities of radio regulation.