Posted on 03/30/2015 7:24:01 AM PDT by edwinland
Since the Pennsylvania police arrested Anthony Kofalt last March for walking out of a Walmart with 21 boxes of Crest White Strips he had not paid for, his wife, Heather, has spent $3,000 — about $60 a week — on phone calls to the prisons and jails where he has been held.
The cost of a 15-minute call is $12.95, although Mr. Kofalt is in a prison only a few hours’ drive from his wife’s home in Franklin, Pa. The cost for a similar non-prison call would be about 60 cents.
And every time Ms. Kofalt deposits $25 into the prison phone account, the private company that runs the system charges her $6.95.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Stamps are cheaper than phone calls.
If you lift up the rock of prison services like phone calls and food, you will see a lot of ugly stuff. This is one example. The state and these companies make a fortune off of charging for even local prisoner calls that would cost pennies if done through normal phone lines. Same with food, there is a several hundred percent — perhaps even 1,000%, mark up. And because a lot of people don’t have sympathy for prisoners, the state and their crony capitalist service providers get away with it. It needs to stop.
Well the inmates do use them to produce income as in supplying Russian brides and drugs to people
Ideally the prison pays a little more than $0 for the calls and the balance is actually a “fine” of sorts that acts as a deterrent to placing phone calls. The excess is returned to the taxpayers or used to lower the operating costs of the prison.
Reality = a democratic crony is getting rich and uses part of the excess to fund his political patron.
b) you don't get sent to prison for a shoplifting offense unless you have a pretty patterned history
c) It's prison, not your bedroom. You're damn lucky you get to use a phone at all. Think of your family next time you consider committing another felony.
d) If your wife had any self-respect, she would not spend 3 grand calling you, she would dump you and move on
Lastly, screw you, NYT. It sickening watching you exploit the emotional weaklings that read your rag and take it seriously.
I am concerned about prisons for profit. If you read up on it, you’ll see that opens up a lot of opportunities for abuse.
For-Profit Prisons: 8 Statistics That Show the Problems
Innocent family members are the ones being overcharged.
Does the local call include recording, detection equipment to tell if a third party has been included in the call, and a voice over that warns that this call is from a prison and recorded? Does the phone company have to deal with continual subpoenas that result from these calls?
Rates seem rather reasonable considering all that goes on and the associated costs to cater to criminals using the phone system.
It sounds to me like a racket. The outside company pumps up the price of the service provided far above the cost of providing that service, and makes a huge profit. And they have a captive audience, assuming that prisoners and families have no choice to make phone calls any other way.
Reminds me a bit of the red light cameras in use in so many places. Much of the money generated in fines from red light cameras goes to the companies which provide the cameras, rather than to the locality in which people run red lights.
As we know, in the Obama/Holder era, everyone who is in prison is guilty and deserves to be there.
Who gets the phone? Hell, sheriff's department who run the jail.
Perhaps the criminal should have considered *all* the possible drawbacks of committing a crime before having done so.In addition to the obvious ones there is,among other things,contracting AIDS after having been raped in the shower and seeing your family have to shell out serious $$$ just to talk to you.
This is a really nutty way of recouping incarceration expenses. If you want to make prisoners pay, make them work for their meals. No work, no meals.
Don't forget ordering hits.
Hebrews 13:3
Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
Matthew 25:35-36
For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
One reason cellphone smuggling is such a booming prison business.
Locally, the jail quit allowing face to face visitation with family members. Instead, family members had to video chat through the internet - for a premium.
They reversed this policy, after it got some public scrutiny.
I'm sure that in this imperfect country of ours it's *never* been true that *everyone* in prison is guilty as charged.But I'd wager that there's video of *this* guy walking out without having paid for the items in question.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.