The PrisonCare Podcast
The PrisonCare Podcast
Couldn't Phone Access in Prisons Be Easily Improved?
Sabrina shares some of the specific limitations on phone access, and wonders respectfully about whether there aren't some easy improvements to be made...better options for EVERYONE in the prison.
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http://prisoncare.org/community.html
Time Markers:
1:59 Punitive vs. Rehabilitative - a Quick Review of the Paradigm
6:00 Let’s Talk About Phones
8:00 Why So Pricey?
9:52 Wait, People Can’t Get a Call from Their Lawyer??
13:58 “Leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you…” Except You Actually Can’t
21:57 What About Emergency Calls?
26:58 Yes, But People Could Abuse That Access
28:50 Tell Sabrina She’s Wrong
Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
The Fool, original recording music and lyrics by J. Bloom © 2022.
Used with Permission on The PrisonCare Podcast.
For the full song, visit the PrisonCare, Inc. YouTube Channel:
Couldn’t Phone Access in Prisons Be Easily Improved?
This is THE PRISONCARE PODCAST! I’m Sabrina Justison, your host, the founder and Executive Director of PrisonCare, Inc. where we are committed to equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters!
(theme music intro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I want to be as relevant to you as you are to me…
…am I the fool who’s dreaming? I’ll wait.”
Support PrisonCare with a donation of any size:
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
Time Markers:
1:59 Punitive vs. Rehabilitative - a Quick Review of the Paradigm
6:00 Let’s Talk About Phones
8:00 Why So Pricey?
9:52 Wait, People Can’t Get a Call from Their Lawyer??
13:58 “Leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you…” Except You Actually Can’t
21:57 What About Emergency Calls?
26:58 Yes, But People Could Abuse That Access
28:50 Tell Sabrina She’s Wrong
Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
The Fool, original recording music and lyrics by J. Bloom © 2022.
For the full song, visit the PrisonCare, Inc. YouTube Channel:
(theme music outro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I’ll wait. I'll wait until I break.”
Hello friends. I am so glad you are here because I'm hoping you could help me figure out a mystery. You know, that our goal at PrisonCare, Inc. is to remain diligently non-partisan, to dismantle, the “Us versus Them," mentality that is making prison culture toxic for everyone inside the fence, no matter which uniform they're wearing. So, well, I will be exploring some hard questions in today's episode. This is an effort at understanding…understanding the complexities and searching for realistic changes that could be encouraged.
Okay? This is not a rage against the system episode. That's not going to help anybody. But there has to also be a way to ask some hard, “why?” questions. So, I'm going to be asking a lot of questions today, questions that are aimed at figuring out, “Why is the system doing this seemingly counterproductive thing? Why are there rules and practices in place that just don't make sense. If there is a goal of rehabilitation.”
{ 1:59 }
Now we've asked in earlier episodes whether the goal really is rehabilitation, because the system is designed as a punitive system. It's a punishment based system. And yet, we say that we want rehabilitation, the rehabilitative language is always there, and 97 or 95 percent (depends on which stats you read), but the vast majority of people who are in prison will be coming out again. They will be re-entering society and living in our neighborhoods. And shopping at our grocery stores and working in our workplaces. They will be returning citizens, right? So wouldn't it be a good idea for them to experience rehabilitation while they are serving their prison sentences?
{ 3:00 }
So the system itself in the U.S. is primarily set up as a punitive system, but it is one that carries with it, the window dressing, the language of rehabilitation, and more and more, we as a country are recognizing the desperate need for rehabilitation while people are in prison, because we have found that a simply punitive prison sentence does not typically yield a person who is ready to be a returning citizen at the end of their sentence.
So the model that we're operating out of, a punitive model, is not working out very well for us. We have added rehabilitative language and programming here and there and sort of nods to this and that that sound vaguely rehabilitative. But the fundamental problem is still there. Okay.
So, I'm taking all of that context, as, “That's okay. It is what it is.”
I would love to see all of those things changed, and there are amazing wonderful groups that are working to change those things. Prison reform agencies, and advocacy groups, and legislative lobbyists, and just all sorts of things that are working to change that fundamental shape of our system from a punitive one into a rehabilitative one. But I am the mom of an incarcerated person, and I'm interested in what can I do to support the rehabilitation in my own kid, and in others like him who want to experience deep and positive change in their lives, who are serving sentences now, in this system that is trying to be two things at once, and that is coming out of over a century of a punitive model. So I want to know what I can do right now, while I'm waiting for the big change to come.
{ 4:59 }
And PrisonCare is all about figuring out, what, some of those things are things that would support a more positive prison culture, finding ways to equip other people to also do some of these things, and then look at it from all sides, to try to determine coming up with something that yes, would be supporting positive rehabilitative work in the lives of prison inmates, but it would be doing so at the expense of Corrections Officers and other Staffers, like case managers, mental health workers, medical workers, kitchen, staff, facility management, all that stuff. Okay, I'm trying to get best of all possible worlds here. And I'm trying to make it practical and available for people to become involved, simply because they care.
{ 6:00 }
So, let's deal with a couple of areas of the system that I have found to be very frustrating in my efforts to support positive prison culture from the outside. And I don't quite understand why these things have to be this way.
Let’s start with telephones - phone calls. There is absolutely no question among anyone, who's done any research that phone contact with people outside the prison is a positive factor in the life of prison residents. It is both something that the residents will tell you is very helpful, helps them maintain their emotional regulation, it helps them continue to have hope, it keeps them in relationships that are very important for their lives big picture.
But staff would also tell you that regular contact, especially with stable voices on the outside, makes for a less violent prison. When people are cut off from their loved ones, their frustration levels are higher, and they are more likely to act out. So if everyone agrees that regular phone contact is a good thing and that it is helping people in both kinds of uniforms, (in particular, if it's phone contact with people who have a track record of being voices of encouragement, and grounding and wisdom, not just somebody who has a dysfunctional boyfriend or girlfriend on the outside, and they scream at each other on the phone on a regular basis, you know. They’re listening into these phone calls, so they know, they know. And there are a whole lot of people who are receiving wonderful support from the outside via phone calls.
{ 7:57 }
The first big question is, why are these phone calls so, very expensive?
And there's not a good answer for that one. Because the only honest answer is that, there's a company with shareholders who are getting very rich because of the amount that they charge for phone calls. There’s not a good reason… the technology is such that those phone calls do not need to be cost prohibitive. Even if you don't go as far as like, California is trying to do this right now, with calls from County Jail, making them free.
Even if you don't go all the way to the free end of the spectrum, they could cost less. They could definitely cost less. There could be a cap put on what those companies are allowed to charge. You know, these the companies that handle the Telecommunications within the prisons of the US, they operate as contractors and they bid on and win the contract with the state or the feds, whatever, to earn the right to provide this service for a fee. And then the fees that they set are just really high.
So my first question is, why is that allowed? When we know that this is something that is good for people who are serving prison sentences? When we know that having access to phone time is helping create a less violent and more positive culture on the inside. Why are we allowing corporate greed to set the prices for those phone calls?
{ 9:52 }
Second question is, why is there not something different available for calls with your lawyer? This was news to me, when we first became involved with the prison system, I assumed that lawyers could call in to the prison, to speak to their clients.
They're allowed to speak to their clients on a secured line, where they're not being monitored. Their conversation is not monitored, and it made sense to me that lawyers were special. If you had someone who was representing you, and they needed to speak to you because the court had just changed a date or a time, or just changed the requirements, or needed an additional waiver, or…there’s so many things that the courts do with no warning. And it happens very quickly, and all of a sudden things have changed.
I would think that a lawyer would be able to reach his or her client to tell them about that, and that is not true. Lawyers can't call in any more than moms can. And so that puts the burden on the inmate, to first of all have enough money on their books to make those phone calls, and then to call their lawyer’s office in the hopes that their lawyer is actually in at the time that they're allowed to access the phones. And of course, lawyers spend some time in their offices but they also spent a lot of time in court. And they are not always easily reachable, and so, okay. They need to call their lawyer. They have to do it just, you know, willy-nilly, whenever they get phone time available.
So, they could at least leave a message asking for an update and you know, maybe even asking the lawyer to drop something into an email, into a Jpay — a paid for email, right? There are no free emails. They're all paid for. — But no, that's not even an option, because an inmate calling out cannot leave a voicemail. So the automated system that controls the flow of the telephone calls makes it impossible for them to leave a recorded message.
{ 11:59 }
So even if they have a question for their lawyer, the lawyer that they have paid to have represent them, or if their public defender that the state has appointed to them, that’s a part of their constitutional rights is that they have the right to representation. They just don't have any predictable, consistent way of contacting that representative. That’s weird to me.
I don't think that the technology should be that limited, where there's not a special code, a special number that someone who is the lawyer on file for this particular inmate can punch in that allows them to call in at a set time, an appointment time. Now, as a visitor, I can schedule a video visit at the prison, and I pay for it and it's set for a specific date and time, and it has to be scheduled X number of days in advance. It's not very far in advance.
And on that day and time, my loved one is escorted to the room where the video monitors are, right, to see that call. It just seems to me that that same technology could be used for lawyers representing their clients, that they could with 36 or 48 hours notice arrange for a video consult with their client, and that that would be something that is considered necessary for adequate representation. But unfortunately, that is not a thing.
So it seems to me that the technology is in place and actually is already being used. It's just being used in a for-profit way for the family members of loved ones to pay for video visits, and yet there is no recognition of the fact that lawyers need to have access to their clients.
{ 13:58 }
Okay. Final thing about phones is this thing about not being able to leave a voicemail. This is something that you probably wouldn't realize or think about until you walk in shoes that look like mine, where you are the mom, or the wife, or the child of a loved one who is incarcerated, someone with whom you have worked very, very hard to build a supportive, rehabilitative relationship. Someone whose work on themselves you are actively supporting and, you put money on their books for phone time, you do a prepaid account, whatever, for your own phone. And then you just wait to see when they call and hope that you can pick up.
{ 15:00 }
And when you can't, there is like a whole psychological thing that happens there that I would never have thought about. It's a horrible, panicked, feeling when my cell phone rings and I see that it's J’s number coming in. My heart immediately speeds up. My blood pressure immediately goes up and I begin almost panicking. When I answer the call, there's an automated system that tells me who's calling and prompts me to press 5 to accept the call. So I have a few seconds of delay there, once I take the call. If I need to, like, step out of a meeting, you know, sometimes I can go ahead and answer as I'm walking out the door, because then I know there's going to be this few seconds while I punch in five to actually take the call.
But when I'm driving…My car is stick shift. So it's not easy to just quick swipe to answer the call. My car is also an older car. It doesn't have Bluetooth; it doesn't have hands-free. So I need to pull over and park somewhere safe in order to safely answer a phone call. And so, sometimes I am scrambling with this panicky feeling, because I don't want to miss that call. Because what, if it's one of the calls where are my son is in crisis? You know, most of the time when he calls, he's not in crisis. Most of the time we're catching up. Most of the time, it's fine. I'm eager to take the call, but I'm not causing a problem, you know, if I can't talk right, then.
{ 16:48 }
But there are times guys, there are times where he's in crisis, and he is reaching out for a lifeline. And I've experienced that enough times in the last five and a half years to have my heart speed up as soon as he tries to call.
If he were allowed to leave a voicemail, it would be really helpful. For example, if he was calling and it wasn't anything urgent, it was just a regular check-in. If he was allowed ten seconds, a voicemail where he could just say, “I'm okay, Mum just touching base. No worries. I'll try you again later.” Then I could listen to that and I could know, “Okay, everything is alright.“
But because he can't leave a message. If I have to miss a call, all I know, is he tried to reach me, and I didn't answer. It's more emotionally painful than you would imagine. We have a system where when he calls me, he tries to call twice. If I don't pick up on the first attempt, the thought is that I might be trying to park safely somewhere on the side of the road so that I can answer, or maybe that I'm stepping out of a meeting and, you know, sort of disengaging. So he'll wait a few seconds and try again.
Now he can't wait longer than that because there's usually a line for the phones. Right? So he can't just say, “I'm going to wait 60 seconds or a minute and a half and then I'm going to try her again.” He's going to have to get back at the end of the line. So he'll wait just a few seconds and then he'll redial and try to reach me a second time. And if I don't pick up the second time, then he assumes that I'm not available to talk right then. And if he's in crisis, and I don't pick up on the second call, then he calls a third time. And if I see three calls go off right in a row, then I know that it's an emergency, and I do everything I possibly can to answer that third call.
{ 18:55 }
And that's all okay. As far as it goes. But it's an emotional roller coaster. I have become so afraid of either losing my phone, even just putting it down in the other room and not realizing that I don't have the ringer turned all the way up, so that I'll be sure to hear it at the other end of the house.
I fly a lot. I travel a lot for various things that I do for work, and the turning my phone off to airplane mode when the plane is about to take off is frightening every time. Because it may be hours, then, before I can turn it back on again, and who knows what might happen?
Now that's true with all of my people, right? Any one of my kids could be in a car accident, could have an appendicitis, my husband could have a stroke, you know, something horrible could happen anywhere. And someone in my family might try to reach me.
But y'all here's the thing: if they can't reach me, they can reach somebody else. I will be sad and upset to know that I wasn't available because I was on an airplane when one of my other kids has something happen, but they can call their dad. They can call their grandparent. They can call a friend to come and pick them up. They can call 911, whatever! They can call somebody else.
See, J can only call people who are on his approved phone list, and that is a very short list. And of the people on his phone list, there are very few who understand enough about what's going on with his mental health, to be able to really be a support to him over the phone.
If somebody on the outside has a mental health episode, and they call and can't reach their therapist and can't reach their whoever their closest person is, and they have to call someone who doesn't really understand it. that person still can do something like, “Let me come pick you up, and we'll go get something to eat, and I'll just be with you, right? Even if I don't know exactly how to help you, like, I can just be with you.”
The people who are incarcerated do not have those kinds of backup support in the ways that I would like for them to, and so that can be very unnerving. If voicemails were allowed to be left, and if there was a crisis, and if I couldn't pick up on that third ring, and there was a voicemail saying this is a mental health crisis, there could theoretically be that line, like that special lawyer line, where I could call the prison, where I could call and identify myself as the contact person, the special contact or whatever.
{ 21:57 }
And say, “I am now available by phone. Please have my loved one call me as soon as they can get to a phone.”
And if things are on lockdown, and that's hours, okay, I get it. That's prison. After lockdown.
But if there is access to a phone, wouldn’t it be wonderful for my loved one to know that now I am available? And if they've been curled up in their bed, sobbing for four hours while I wasn't available, and someone were able to say, “Hey, your mom's available now. Come on, let's get you to a phone,” wouldn't that be wonderful for everybody? I can't imagine that it's that impossible.
I think that our phone technology is pretty solid anymore to offer these kinds of options. And instead, everything is just within this little box that is owned by GTL, and they set the prices, and they set the access. And there are no exceptions made for things that would actually help everybody.
{23:00 }
It would, it would help the COs on the tier. If somebody was having a horrible day, and they fear that they are volatile, if they were able to connect them with their spouse or with their parent, who is an ongoing support person…You know, it's interesting.
I was told that the facility where J was originally housed, a few months ago gave forms to every inmate there, asking them to list the name and phone number of anyone that they would want called on their behalf if they were experiencing a mental health crisis. If they were suicidal, if they were self-harming, is there someone that is a trusted person for them, and where it would be a help for them. An emergency contact, right?
So they all apparently filled this out and put the name and phone number down, and it was, it was weeks before J's incident in which he was then put on suicide watch for 12 days, so, apparently, they thought he was experiencing a mental health crisis. But do you know that I never received a phone call?
So that says to me that there are ideas about mental health support, that there are ideas about, “Oh, this would be better. This would be a positive piece of the rehabilitative picture here,” right? “Hey, we should do this. We could all bet there's people, Okay? Maybe we can't hire enough psychologists or counselors to have on-site here. But what if we at least had an emergency contact for each person who has someone, for each person who says, yeah. Actually, my brother is my rock. And if I'm having a mental health crisis, calling my brother would be really, really helpful.”
Someone had that thought somewhere along the way, enough so that a form was created and distributed to all of the residents, and they were asked to fill it out. And that information was put into a database somewhere, or filed in the circular file. Who knows what they did with those forms? But even with that idea, they didn't do it.
They didn't do it. And so, not only did they contribute to the Mental Health crisis that J was experiencing, they gave me a mental health crisis, too. It was a brutally disconnected period of time, knowing the little bit that I knew from a friend of his, who reached out to another PrisonCare staffer who is on their approved phone list. And to know that it was bad, but not to be able to talk to my son during that time. It really did a number on me.
{ 26:00 }
And I am, weeks later, still trying to recover from that myself.
I don't think that there is any good reason for the way this played out. I think that phones have a whole lot more potential for supporting positive prison culture, and I think that it would be a benefit to staff as well as to inmates, if there were some additional possibilities for the use of phone for contact with lawyers, for contact with a loved one, an approved loved one, in the midst of a mental health crisis.
And for the ability to leave a voicemail. Just a short little 10-second voicemail. Hey, I know that there are people who would abuse that, right?
{ 26:58 }
a boyfriend harassing a girlfriend and filling up her voice mail with long messages and driving her crazy right, okay? But if she's on his phone list, she can remove herself if that's happening. Additionally, what if there were just a second little check box, that would have to be toggled saying, “not only do I agree to be on this person's phone list, but I give them permission to leave a 10-second voicemail.”
I could just give permission for that ,and then I could withdraw that permission if J ever abused it and it was filling up my voicemail and harassing me. I can press a number to block future calls from someone. I have a degree of power in protecting my own voicemail and protecting access to me, but I don't have any way to give additional access, if I want to, and I don't think that makes any sense, I think that
{ 27:59 }
their giving approval, and there being an automated cut-off after 10 seconds, so that my son could leave me a 10-second voicemail saying, “Everything's okay, Mum,” I think that would be a really easy thing to implement And I think it would be really good for everybody. It would lower the stress levels surrounding phones.
We're going to do another episode where we're going to talk about some of these things that are not phone related. This took up, you know, a whole episode’s time here, just with these questions revolving around the phone. We’re going to talk about access to supplies and we're going to talk about status checks, and affiliation. But I'm going to save that for another episode.
{ 28:50 }
If you have ideas, in particular, if you have worked in the prison system and you're thinking, “Okay, Sabrina, I hear you but you don't realize that this would be impacted.” If you recognize dominoes that would fall over if these changes to phone access were implemented, I genuinely would love to hear them.
I want to understand, and I get that it is a complex system, and I think even the way that I presented my, “Ooo, man, it would be nice if…” suggestions in this episode, I think I couch them in language that makes it clear that I know it could be abused.
There's always the potential for someone to abuse any access. But, I feel like there's quite a bit already in place to protect against those abuses for these things that I've raised about phones. And if I'm wrong, I would really love for you to set me straight and tell me how it really works, because maybe I am missing some big piece of the puzzle.
So you can always reach me by email, you can send it to Sabrina@prisoncare.org, and I genuinely value being told when I'm wrong about something, when I have someone explain the pieces of it that I don't know yet. We are all in a position to learn something from one another about how to make things better, about how to make it possible to support a more positive prison culture from the outside.
If you would like to learn more about supporting positive, prison culture from the outside in all sorts of ways, because you are coming to believe that everyone. Inside matters and is being negatively impacted by the current level of toxicity in the US prison system. Please visit prisoncare.org. We have resources there, free pdf, videos, and we are constantly adding to those and expanding that.
{ 30:56 }
And you can find things there that will challenge your thinking, that will raise your awareness, that will hopefully inspire you to become involved. There are more ways to be involved than simply being a penpal encourager, although we still love the impact of our pen pal encourager program, but beyond that, there's also just a lot of awareness materials.
And there are ways to give to support, to gift specific books, in particular self-help, personal growth titles, to gift those to either a prison Library, to an individual pen pal who has requested it, and then ask them to share it, and then donate it to their prison’s Library when they're finished with it.
There's all sorts of new ways that we're coming up with ideas and protocols for, “Here’s how you could do this, and wouldn't that be cool?”
So visit prisoncare.org, get some cool ideas, share some cool ideas, and share your story with me.
I think that I have a lot to learn. I think you probably have a lot to learn, too. And I think if we're all willing to learn, we can learn new ways to actively care for prisons, rather than only caring about them. Thanks for listening in today, and I look forward to connecting with you on future episodes.
(theme music outro, “The Fool,” by incarcerated artist J. Bloom © 2022, used with permission)
“I’ll wait. I'll wait until I break.”
For the full song, visit the PrisonCare, Inc. YouTube Channel: