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| Inmates' Families Want Phone Rate Cuts |
| By The Star-Gazette |
| Published: 02/17/2006 |
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The families of New York prison inmates who have to pay more than three times the normal charge for telephone calls to keep in touch with their loved ones are essentially paying a "backdoor tax," a family member charged last week. Ken Blatt, a Rensselaer County man whose nephew is in prison in Elmira, said the higher costs lead to less frequent contacts, which leads to other problems. Blatt was one of about a dozen relatives of inmates who came to the Capitol last week to urge the state Department of Correctional Services to negotiate a new contract with Verizon. They said calls to the prisons costs 16 cents a minute, compared with a more typical rate of 5 cents. They said the average call costs $9.41. The state gets a major cut of the extra charges - a total of $22.4 million in 2002, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a Manhattan-based civil liberties group. Mike Fraser, a spokesman for the corrections department, said that money generated from the calls goes to services for inmates such as cable TV, health care and education programs. "These are programs that the state would normally have difficulty funding," Fraser said. The state gets 57.5 percent of the revenue generated from phone calls made to prisoners. Phone calls are through a Verizon telephone service that was formerly MCI until the companies merged in December. The family members said that after 30 minutes, a computer automatically ends the call. Redialing costs an extra $3. The price of a normal Verizon long- distance call can be as low as 5 cents a minute. When calling federal prisons, a caller is charged 7 cents. Verizon spokeswoman Stefanie Scott said that specialized equipment and security features drive up the cost of making a phone call to a prison. The contract between MCI-Verizon and the state Department of Correctional Services, which began in 1996, will be automatically renewed March 31. The state has the option to renegotiate the contract. |
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