this was in the montgomery newsaper on march 31st... scary stuff!

Inmates' families, prisons in phone bill fight
By Robert Tanner
The Associated Press

With a husband in prison, Gillian Bennett's soaring phone bills were one more painful burden. So she signed on to a service that cut her monthly costs from $500 to $50 -- and skirted the prison system's expensive rates.

But what sounded like a good financial move quickly turned sour. New York state and the phone company said she broke prison rules and blocked all calls from her husband to their Albany, N.Y., home. Her husband, imprisoned hours away, was threatened with solitary confinement.

The Bennetts' story is just one of many as disputes arise over prison phone charges in states including New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and New Hampshire.

Citing security concerns, authorities are cracking down on new businesses that have jumped in to offer cheaper phone service to inmates' relatives.

Prison authorities and phone companies say their more expensive services should be the only choice because they are designed to be monitored to ensure inmates don't commit more crimes, like making threats or drug deals. They also profit from the calls -- prison phone service nationwide generates as much as $1 billion a year, some estimate.

Advocates for inmates claim authorities have created a modern version of the old mining town's "company store" -- charging exorbitant prices and allowing no choices. Prisoners can't receive calls, they can only call collect.

But in the last few years, the market has given inmates families' another option -- call forwarding.

With some variations, the systems work like this: An inmate's relatives establish a number near the prison that the inmate can call at the prison's local rate. The call is then forwarded to the relative's home, at a privately negotiated rate well below what the prison would charge.

In New York and Ohio, the states or phone companies are pursuing and blocking such calls. Others are moving to do the same.

Yep, this is scary and some out there have suffered for setting up remote call forwarding... It may be a short lived saving... Sorry for the negative but we are biting the hand that feeds the state and feds so they are bound to say "Ouch" one day and move to cut this off too! Some states you can lose your phone calls for this I believe...

Everytime my fiance calls, the recording says: "Don't use call waiting or call forwarding or your call will be disconnected". There has got to be some way to get around the exhorbitant costs of these calls! Why punish the families any more than they already do??

I have read many glowing reports about this service and always feel the need to share our personal experience with it in spite of the fact that it is not a positive one.
We signed up with Tele-Net and they assured me it is NOT call forwarding, it is remote dialing. Ya right. But I WANTED to be a 'rule follower' because as someone else just stated, it says right at the onset of the phone call that call forwarding is not permitted..............
I got signed up, we used it for about four months.
The Warden there at Easterling called me one day PERSONALLY and began to question me about why I had two phone numbers listed, one of which was right there in Clio when she knew I lived in NW Wisconsin. My husand had gotten WRITTEN PERMISSION from the officer in charge of the phones to have another line for me since I was planning to be spending the summer down there (didn't work out) and that was why we did that. Or at least that was what we told them at the time. I saw no other choice but to tell the Warden that we had signed up for that reason AND to save money on the bill. WHAT ELSE COULD I DO, I knew she was pissed but felt I had no option but to be honest about it.
"NO MORE PHONE PRIVILEGES UNTIL I INVESTIGATE THIS" was her decision. She agreed that Yes it is LEGAL to have a phone in another state or anywhere else for that matter, but AGAINST HER PERSONAL RULES FOR THAT PRISON. (And Mamaspooh can attest to what it is like to work with this woman!)
To make a long story short, she withheld all of our phone privileges for SIX MONTHS with NO NO NO NO NO formal disciplinary written. During that time I called and wrote her several [very respectful] letters and spoke to her with only the kindest of attitudes. At one time I even was having a kidney transplant to save my niece's life and BEGGED her to allow us to talk before or after the surgery. Her response? "After you get out of surgery, write him a letter and tell him how you are." (Unbelievable woman).
Long story short: She turned it into [internal affairs] to have it thoroughly investigated and I don't even remember HOW I found out the Investigator's name who handled our case but I spoke to him personally and he assured me that he saw that we did nothing wrong (LEGALLY) that he could see......and that (this was at about the 4 1/2 month mark) he had just phoned the warden and told her the results and that as far as HE was concerned, she could restore our phones. SIX WEEKS LATER....... My husband and I began writing about how I had found a lawyer who would handle the case pro-bono (and even named the lawyer) and sue for doing this UNCONSTITUTIONALLY since no disciplinary was EVER written for it, well -- what do you know, one day he tried to put the call through (as usual) and he almost fell over when it went through. She had given us back the phone and didn't even have the decency to tell him.
By the way, I planned and we carried out our WEDDING within this time too!! I KNOW she never thought I had the tenacity to do it without the luxury of phone calls but I did it and that's another whole subject in itself since they did everyting possible to prevent the wedding. PS The Probate Judge finally told me that if I got to the prison and they still gave me ANY static at all (The Chaplain even refused to marry us and we had to find our own minister) that I should call her immediately and SHE would come and marry us there! Anyhow, I am rambling I know. But what I wanted to say about the whole phone thing is that I know we cannot possibly be the only ones who have ever had a negative experience with it. Sure I heard about and read about others who warned us about the possibilities but we felt it was worth the risk.
For US, it wasn't.
So I guess if you are really SURE you want to use this kind of thing (and I DO know of others who have been doing it for years and have never been caught), at least know that the prisons use contracts with the [ 'normal' long distance] phone companies because they are HUGE money-makers. I read statistics in a book on Prison Industries that say each EACH EACH EACH pay phone in any given prison will NET the prison about $10,000 PER YEAR. Do you really think they will allow you (if they knew) to get by with a lower phone bill???!??!?!?
Please be aware of the risks when choosing to do this, ESPECIALLY IN ALABAMA where the so-called rules are shifting sand.

~~And if you made it all the way through to the end of my rantings, ramblings and frustrations on the subject, THANKS FOR READING!!

~~cARE:) :( :eek:

Hate to hear you had such troubles there, Care. From all I've read about that particular warden, my instincts kinda say all this happened mainly because (A) she is vengeful, mean and vindictive and (B) has WAY too much time on her hands.

I am experiencing excellent service and really have no worries, but then again we took an extra precaution. Let's just say my name only appears on that particular phone list once. :)

Having two different numbers (different states) on his phone list is definitely what caught her eye...I'd bet the farm on it.

Like Lysbeth, my name only appears once on the phone list (he removed my RI number, waited two weeks, then submitted the new KS number). As a precuation, he also gave a local KS address to go with it (TeleNet provided that, LOL), just in case anyone was suspicious.

I do think about being "discovered" from time to time...but in our case, the risk is worth it. I can't afford AT&T at $1 a minute, so it's TeleNet or it's nothing!

Sorry to hear the hassles you went through; that warden sounds like a b*tch, through and through :(

Susan in Providence

Lysbeth & Susan,
There is much more to all of this but to avoid being reprimanded for gossipping about somebody who hated me enough to rat us out, I'll leave that subject alone........
:-) It really didn't have anything to do with having two numbers, that part was approved beforehand. It was four months later when it fell apart because of a situation with someone in one of the forums. Enough enough enough, I'm shutting up ~~ please don't kick me out of here!
Thank you both for taking the time to welcome me and reply to the post. Feels good to be back in a well-balanced forum again.
~Care

Originally posted by bamadixiebelle
Everytime my fiance calls, the recording says: "Don't use call waiting or call forwarding or your call will be disconnected". There has got to be some way to get around the exhorbitant costs of these calls! Why punish the families any more than they already do??

I believe they mean actually placing a 3-way call on the phone while the inmate is on the line, in this case. You will have to check the specific prison systems rules to find out what they have laid down for RCF.

Care9,
We're very glad to have you here with us and thanks for sharing your story. Sorry to hear about what you went through.

Fed-X

Joe is at Bibb CF, which most of you know. I basically hear the same things when he calls, "do not use call waitting or call forwarding or your call will be disconnected". What I wasn't aware of is that they think that any click is reason for disconnection. I answered the phone in the back of the house one day and had one of my children go get the cordless when I turned the cordless on our call was disconnected. Joe told me that he was told that I couldn't switch phones like that. One thing I can say, my bill is alot cheaper now then what it was when he was in the county and Kilby.

your phone campanies should be locked up for the BS they pull!

It's bloody criminal to charge the way they do and I fail to see the sense in it at all.

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm getting shirty with any of you, but seriously , from here I look at this crap and I see a Country of beaurocrats who are greedy beyond rationality!

They won't give you free health care, they won't give you decent rate phone calls, they put your prisoners in conditions one can only consider sub human ....

IS THERE ANY THING TO DO AT ALL FOR YOU FOR NOTHING????

For crying out loud, tell em to F* emselves and move to Australia! :P

We had call waiting beep in one day and our phone call was disconnected. Needless to say, I called the phone company and had call waiting taken off.

Care here. We are now billed through T-Netix (not one of the services to offer cheap rates) and although they are MUCH better to work with than Correctional Billing ever was, their phone lines are soooooooo touchy! We often get disconnected if I make a certain sound with my voice. You know how when you are disgusted and you make that "tsk tsk" kind of thing? Well, only one "tsk" and the next thing I hear is "Special calling features are not allowed on this phone" or something along that line and click, we're done. They will NOT credit us for these stupid mistakes on THEIR part and if we want to talk and finish the conversation, he has to call me again and are 'penalized' with the "First minute rate of $5.86 and .89 cents for each add'l minute" And this is not the real rates, when the bill comes, there is always about 12.00 in various taxes and stuff tacked on. Like I said.....GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. So now I talk with my FINGER in my mouth to remind me not to TSK!! I sound funny but at least we don't face the risk of being disconnected, lol!!
~Care

My finace calls four times a week and after his four calls they put a block on my phone so he can't call my house anymore. When I call T-NETIX they say there is no block on my phone so why can't Rickey call after the four phone calls. These phone companies that the prisons use are worthless and they are suppose to be "helping us stay in touch with our loved ones" what a crock of crap.

noey i think when i first signed up they told me the limits i was allowed to have... it was something like 100$ per week or 300$ per month then i would be blocked until the new week/month started. i would call tenetix and wait to get someone on the phone and ask them exactly what your limits are. im warning you it might take a while tho, ive never called t-netix and waited less than 20 mins to get a human on the line. ive waited up to 90 minutes sometimes!!