NY Prison Phone System: Model Letter of Complaint

[egs]

If folks want to CC your letters to DOCs and MCI, addresses are included below…

Hon. Jaclyn Brilling
Acting Secretary to the Commission
NYS Department of Public Service
3 Empire State Plaza
Albany, NY 12223-1350
RE: Case #03-C-1058

Dear Hon. Brilling,

I am writing you to join my voice with others in my community who disagree with you’re the exploitative collect call rates between people in prison and their families/friends at home. These rates cause financial hardships which prevents us from maintaining communication with our loved ones. Communication between family members in and outside of prison helps cultivate community ties that keep released inmates out of prison.

Profiting from such tragedies is unjust and immoral!

We join the Prison Families Community Forum and the New York State Inmate Telecom Coalition in demanding a public hearing to give those of us who pay these phone bills and the general public the opportunity to review this rate structure. We also want to see fair and equitable rates; a choice of service provider; a voice in prison telephone decision-making; and the preservation of safe and adequate inmate/family-based programming.

Sincerely,

CC:
Mr. Glenn S. Goord, Commissioner
Department of Correctional Services
Building #2, State Campus
1220 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12226

MCI WORLDCOM COMMUNICATIONS
205 N. Michigan Avenue
Suite 3700
Chicago, IL 60601
Attn: Inmate Services
----------------------------------------------------------------
STOP THE CONTRACT
JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN -Second Thursdays of the month in MANHATTAN at the Center for Constitutional Rights offices 666 Broadway, 6th Floor (from 6-8 pm). Next meeting September 11th!
don't just sit there...DO something!
http://www.petitiononline.com/stop_mci/petition.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------

[mdsmith]

egs- Have your heard the new rate system. $3 connection fee and 16 cents/min thereafter - for everyone - local or long distance - so that sort of takes away the incentive to use one of those call forwarding places. It's good for me - I'm in VA and he's at Clinton - a 30 min call will go from 12.50 down to 7.80

[underpants]

whenever my friends calls from attica it's like $8 for a half hour! is this letter to disagree w/ the new lower prices to try and get them to lower it even more, or to switch companies? just wondering. of course, i have no problem at all w/ people wanting to lower it even more! you won't hear any complaints from me!

[egs]

I posted this thread for those who affected by the prison phone system in NY only. There is another post [written prior to this one] that details the advococy that is going on in NY to fight the MCI contract.
I no longer receive prisoner collect calls but when I did I used remote call forwarding [check out threads r/t this process in the prison phone forum] which reduced my calls from $18.00/15 minutes to about $4.00/call.

[lisac117]

That's the thing that sucks about this whole "rate change" business. The further away you live, it's cheaper. But for those "lucky" enough to live an hour or two less away from their loved one, their bill is gonna be through the roof and that's not fair! We SHOULD be able to have CHOICES and we DON"T. WRITE YOUR LETTERS EVERYONE AND SIGN THE PETITION!!!!!!!


Lisa