BSG Improving Life on the Inside

We’ve had phones for more than 100 years and prisons as long as there have been people, so you might think all the issues between the two had been worked out. Not so.

In the last week, inmate phone calls have been at the center of human rights and privacy rights issues, a nationally followed missing child case, the end of an era in Alaska, the loss of a $4.5 million contract and, yes, some technology innovation that makes life easier not only for inmates, but for their contacts on the outside.

At long last, Alaska will bring a long-standing tradition to an end and begin charging inmates for making local calls. While their initial booking call remains free, or rather no-charge, those receiving calls from an inmate will be charged two dollars.

In San Diego this week, a lawyer had the recording system of the county jail shut down over having his attorney-client conversation recorded, raising concern over constitutionally protected confidentiality. On the other end of the country in Orlando, Fla., last week, Circuit Court Judge Stan Strickland cited the First Amendment when he upheld the decision to release taped phone calls between a woman and her mother. The woman was accused of child neglect for not reporting her child missing after more than a month.

And in June, in the State of Connecticut, Global Tel*Link acquired the inmate phone system portion of MCI/Verizon’s contract with the Department of Corrections. The DOC earned $4,536,103.51 in 2006 as commission from inmate phone calls, according to a document from lawyer Christopher Reinhart.

The contract went up for bid so the DOC could come up with more creative ways than collect-calling for inmates to cover the cost of their phone calls.

One of the problems with collect-calling is that calls to cell phones are prohibited in most penal institutions. That is the problem BSG has begun to solve. The company introduced a collect-calling feature on its Bill2Phone Mobile automated billing solution. It enables cell phone users to add incoming collect-call charges directly to their mobile telephone bills.

The company has a long legacy of working with collect-calling for many Tier 1 service providers. It says the proliferation of wireless phones has created a problem in that most people aren’t aware they can’t place a collect call to a mobile phone.

“As people cut the cord and go wireless, they may not know they have cut off communication to those who are incarcerated,” said Betty Cockrell, director of industry relations at BSG.

Mobile phone numbers typically are blocked from receiving collect calls because most operators have no automated billing mechanism to charge the recipient. Those who do connect these calls require the recipient to pay with a credit card.