By Dana Beyerle
Times Montgomery Bureau
September 22, 2002


MONTGOMERY - Kathy Cameron visited the Etowah County Jail to see her husband because it's cheaper than talking on the telephone.
She said her mother-in-law once got telephone bills totaling $700 during four months for accepting collect calls from the jail. "We paid it," Cameron said.
Beatrice Styron of Tuscaloosa agreed it's expensive to accept telephone calls from a county jail in Alabama. One local call a day adds up to almost $90 a month.
"Some people call 10 or 11 times," said Styron, who's accepted collect calls from her daughter. "I had to put a block on it."
A local call from a jail in Alabama is $2.85 for 15 minutes - the maximum allowable charge is $3, according to the Public Service Commission that sets the rates. A long distance call is 30 cents per minute more.
The charge of $2.85 is the same as an operator-assisted local telephone call from a pay phone in Alabama.
Sheriffs don't set the rates but do make commissions from the telephones, commissions that help pay for jail operations or help county general fund budgets.
Jail telephone providers generally charge the local and long distance calling rates set by BellSouth and AT&T, the dominant local and long distance carriers in Alabama.
In any event, said Styron, "It isn't cheap."
Since coins and calling cards aren't allowed in jails, friends or relatives pay the bills for accepting telephone calls.
No one knows how much telephone charges are for the 9,500 or so men and women in the 67 county jails, but the Department of Corrections said telephone calls by the 24,000 inmates in state prisons generate about $500,000 a month in commissions from the telephone providers.
The cost of keeping in touch with relatives on the outside falls greatly on the poor primarily because someone who is calling regularly from a jail generally hasn't been able to make bail.
The cost of calling has attracted the attention of a national group that is trying to lower the cost by removing commissions paid to state prisons or county jails.
"It's a poverty issue in many ways," said Lucia Penland, director of the Prison Project in Alabama, an inmate advocacy group.
Rosemary Collins, state representative for Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, said CURE is trying to organize a boycott of state prison inmate telephone calls in October but there's no similar effort in Alabama at the county level.
Jail telephone providers say they have to cover the cost of their equipment and make a profit.
A spokesman for Evercom Systems Inc., the dominant company that provides phone service to about two-thirds of the 67 county jails, declined to say how much money the company grosses from its jail operations.
"We make what I consider a decent return," said John Viola, the company's vice president and general manager.
Viola added that a major effect on what the company makes and the commissions paid counties are the uncollectable accounts, which for his company is 25 percent.
"Twenty-five cents on the dollar is significant," Viola said.
Jail telephone service in Alabama used to be lucrative for the companies but that could be changing under a ruling by the Department of Examiners of Public Accounts that said inmate telephone service is subject to the state's bid law.
Bidding has increased the percentage of commission paid to Lauderdale County, from 47 percent under the old contract to 49 percent under the new, bid contract.
County officials and sheriffs are aware of the effort in other states to lower telephone costs and wonder how and when that effort could begin affecting them.
"I have to use the phone revenue to offset the expenses these inmates bring us," said Tuscaloosa Sheriff Ted Sexton, whose jail is the only one in Alabama accredited by the American Corrections Association.
Sexton said a successful move to end commissions paid by phone companies would hurt inmates who use phones. "What we'd consider is taking them out," he said.
The Tuscaloosa County jail got a commission of $176,000 last year from Evercom, the county's jail telephone provider. Sexton said that averages about 13 cents a call.
Between Sept. 1, 1998, and May 2001 his department made $553,000.
Sexton said commissions from telephone calls pay for a variety of inmate services he said either taxpayers would have to underwrite or would be eliminated if the commissions ended. The services include drug and psychological counseling and GED training.
"Taxpayers tell me they pay enough for inmates now," Sexton said.
Colbert County Sheriff Ronnie May said telephone commissions cover the cost of the phones and provide money for the county. "I think it could be a major funding mechanism," he said.
The county commission gets the commission; it got $14,039 from Oct. 1, 2001 through Aug. 31, Colbert County Administrator Donna Llewellyn said.
Between Dec. 1, 1997, and April 30, 2000, the commission was $36,000, according to the Department of Examiners of Public Accounts.
The county gets 38 percent of the phone revenues in commission, Chief Deputy Travis Long said. The next contract will have to be bid, giving the county an opportunity to increase its commission.
Etowah County Sheriff James Hayes said his jail is under a federal court order to provide phones to inmates, apparently the only jail in Alabama under such an order. "Part of the complaint was they couldn't call lawyers," Hayes said.
He said the phone and commissary funds help buy basic hygienic products like toothpaste and shower togs for inmates.
"If an inmate comes into my jail and they don't have the money for something you have to give it to them," said jail administrator Wes Williamson.
Etowah County takes in about $115,000 to $120,000 a year from the inmate telephone commissions - the county's commission from Evercom is 45 percent - but only half is kept by the sheriff's office.
Etowah County Administrator David Akins said the other half goes to the county's Retired Senior Volunteer Program.
Lauderdale County Jail Administrator Jackie Rickard said jail phone profits are a secondary benefit. Discipline comes first, she said.
"An inmate can lose phone privileges," she said. "The TV or commissary is the first line of discipline."
Lauderdale County makes about $90,000 a year from the jail telephone commission, money that helps defray the jail's $1.4 million annual appropriation, Lauderdale County Administrator Jenoice Bevis said.
"That's a good source of revenue," she said.
Most jail telephones have call-blocking to keep inmates from calling certain telephone numbers - such as relatives who don't want to pay for the calls or partners in criminal enterprises or 1-900 numbers.
Inmate phone calls also can be recorded (they're told the calls are recorded) and any conversation can be considered evidence and can provide leads for investigators.
Inmate advocates say that telephone companies and sheriffs could allow the use of pre-paid phone cards and allow a debit system of telephone service. Either could eliminate uncollectable accounts, the advocates said.
But Tuscaloosa County's Sexton said he can deal only with the technology available to him.
"An arrest is an expensive proposition," he said. "We have to pay for people who come to our jail. That's not the taxpayer's burden."