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PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

1 edit

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

VoIP helps inmate families avoid phone ripoffs.

People in jail are often charged outrageous prices to make phone calls to their families. And that's bad, because keeping close to their families can help in eventual rehab.

Paying a $4.25 connection fee and then 75 cents per minute thereafter seems costly, unless, perhaps, we’re talking about a phone call from our future Mars colony back to Earth. It is, though, what an operator at the phone company Global Tel*Link says it costs for a call from Pennsylvania’s Carbon County Correctional Facility to anywhere beyond the local calling area. That’s in line with the rates other companies charge for prisoners around the country to make simple long-distance phone calls.

»www.salon.com/2012/10/01 ··· e_bills/

$4.25 connection fee and then 75 cents per minute thereafter:

Wow, now THAT should be illegal.

----------------------

VoIP providers in general can help with this by providing DID's that are local to the jail, so the call from the jail will be a local call rather than a LD call.

And two lower-cost providers are specifically targeting this market:

JailCall
»www.jailcallservices.com/

ConsCallHome
»www.conscallhome.com/index.cfm?

LazMan
Premium Member
join:2003-03-26
Beverly Hills, CA

LazMan

Premium Member

It's a low, down dirty game - but the phone providers typically do revenue sharing with the facility; so the jails/prisons not only tolerate it; but are active participants.

Years ago, a company I worked for had an almost identical name to one of these outfits... To say we got some incredibly pissed off people calling us from time to time, would be an understatement - and trying to explain to someone who has a loved one the joint, that they have the wrong company, wasn't a fun, or easy, conversation...

VexorgTR
join:2012-08-27
Sheffield Lake, OH

VexorgTR to PX Eliezer704

Member

to PX Eliezer704
As long as nobody is plotting a break out, or organizing crime from inside the walls, so much the better.

I imagine they monitor call content as it is.

FiReSTaRT
Premium Member
join:2010-02-26
Canada

FiReSTaRT

Premium Member

If anything this insane pricing scheme ends up forcing the proliferation of prepaid cell phones which facilitate planning breakouts and organizing crime from within the walls. If I ever ended up behind bars (God forbid), I'd find the tiniest possible cell phone with rounded corners before my sentencing hearing

pende_tim
Premium Member
join:2004-01-04
Selbyville, DE

pende_tim

Premium Member

Phone , OK. The charger could be the sticking point (:>0]
stufried
Premium Member
join:2003-10-13

stufried to PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

to PX Eliezer704
Michigan used to have it. We now charge something like 13 cents a minute flat for prisoner collect calls anywhere in the USA. It is not a great deal, but it isn't extortion.

I'm an attorney and I have a client from India doing life for killing his brother-in-law. Twice a year, I bridged a call to his family in India. It used to shock me that the leg of the call between Detroit and Bangalore was significantly cheaper than the leg from the local prison to my office.
rudeboy24
join:2002-10-14
Welland, ON

1 recommendation

rudeboy24 to FiReSTaRT

Member

to FiReSTaRT
said by FiReSTaRT:

If anything this insane pricing scheme ends up forcing the proliferation of prepaid cell phones which facilitate planning breakouts and organizing crime from within the walls. If I ever ended up behind bars (God forbid), I'd find the tiniest possible cell phone with rounded corners before my sentencing hearing

butt would you wanna stick it near your face after that ..lol

FiReSTaRT
Premium Member
join:2010-02-26
Canada

FiReSTaRT

Premium Member

said by rudeboy24:

butt would you wanna stick it near your face after that ..lol

Considering the alternative......