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| Phone calls now cheaper at WV prisons, but not jails |
| By wvgazette.com- Erin Beck |
| Published: 06/22/2015 |
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A local prisoners’ rights organization is calling on the West Virginia Regional Jail Authority to reduce what it says are exorbitant fees for inmate phone calls, now that the state Division of Corrections has done so. The state Division of Corrections previously charged a 46 percent commission on each phone call, as well as various fees that resulted in 15-minute calls costing several dollars. The commission rate under the new contract, awarded to ICSolutions, or CenturyLink, is 0.1 percent. “Isolation is one of the ways that prisons break people down,” Jonathan Sidney, a volunteer with Stories from South Central, the prisoners’ rights group, said in a news release. “Making it cheaper for people doing time in West Virginia to stay in touch with friends and family improves their quality of life and make re-entry to the outside world easier.” Under its previous contract with GTL, the Division of Corrections also charged various fees, depending on whether the call was in-state or out-of-state, and prepaid or collect. Under the new contract, which technically began in February but won’t take effect in the prisons until later this summer, the new rate is 3.5 cents per minute for all calls. A 15-minute call will cost about 53 cents, regardless of whether it is in-state or out-of-state and whether it’s prepaid or collect. In comparison, under the previous contact, a 15-minute collect call out-of-state would have cost about $8, while an in-state prepaid 15-minute call would have cost about $3. Inmates paid surcharges of 85 cents for collect calls and 75 cents for prepaid calls, plus per-minute fees ranging from 16 cents per minute in-state to 50 cents for collect calls out-of-state. Read More. |
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