Deal With ICS Rates, but Not Commission Payments, Wright Petitioners Say
After years of debate, there’s now a consensus among inmate calling service providers that the FCC should adopt interstate and intrastate rate caps, wrote the attorney representing petitioners who had asked the commission in 2012 to take action on high calling prices. Parting ways with other advocates for prisoners, Deborah Golden, an attorney representing the petitioners -- who included the late Martha Wright (see 1501200054) -- wrote in reply comments that the commission should focus on setting rate caps and regulating ancillary fees instead of controversial commission payments from ICS providers to correctional facilities. Tuesday was the reply deadline in the Further NPRM (see 1410230026) on making interim interstate caps permanent, establishing intrastate caps, and taking action on ancillary fees and commission payments.
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Replies reflected the wide differences that remain over several issues, including what the caps should be. The commission hopes to act by summer, a commission official told us Wednesday. ICS providers defended their proposed rates.
The 2012 petitioners “certainly support the elimination of the perverse kickback regime,” wrote Golden, an attorney with the D.C Prisoners Project of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, of the commission payments, which have been criticized as helping raise rates. Given a lack of consensus on what to do about the commissions, including the opposition from sheriffs and correctional facilities to reducing or eliminating them, Golden said that the agency should “not wade into the waters of regulating kickbacks. It is likely that any attempt by the FCC to regulate kickbacks will merely lead to new and innovative strategies by ICS providers and correctional authorities to divvy up ICS revenue.”
The FCC adopted interstate and intrastate caps of 8 cents a minute for prepaid and debit calls and 10 cents a minute for collect calls for prisons, and for jails with more than 350 beds, the petitioners said. Saying jails have slightly higher fees, Golden recommended a per-minute rate of 18 cents for prepaid and debit calls and 20 cents for collect calls for jails with fewer than 350 beds. The cap for both prisons and smaller jails proposed by Securus Technologies and Global*Tel Link -- 20 cents per minute for prepaid and debit calls and 24 cents for collect calls -- is too high, Golden wrote.
The Securus and Global*Tel Link proposal is “the best and most record-based” one, Securus said in its reply. The proposal is based on the ICS cost data collected by the FCC earlier this year. The industry proposal would meet the commission’s dual goal of protecting customers from “exorbitant rates,” while being high enough to meet the commission’s other goal of promoting competition, Global*Tel Link said in its reply. Proposals for lower rates do not take into consideration the unique costs associated with ICS systems, including the need for detention grade equipment, shorter equipment service life, and built-in security features, the company said. Global*Tel Link and Securus oppose higher rate caps for jails.
The Prison Policy Initiative continued to oppose commission payments that raise inmate calling costs, and disputed comments from sheriffs and correctional facilities that the payments cover the cost of providing calling services and pay for services for inmates. The National Sheriffs’ Association made that argument.