Originally Posted - January 23, 2007

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"This is Correctional Billing Services. Please press 5 to receive an important message", the recording blared in my ear as I answered the insistent ringing phone, the fourth such call within six hours.

"Your calls from correctional facilities served by Evercom have been blocked", I was told.

Not surprising. Such is routine for Evercom, the system used by Ottawa County Jail in Ohio for collect inmate telephone calls and at dozens of other facilities across the country.

Talk is not cheap.

Evercom is in dire need of a federal investigation as they are engaging in virtual extortion of an inmate's family and friends, charging $17.34 for a 15 minute phone call and arbitrarily setting a threshold of $130. Once they claim that you have reached your threshold, although Correctional Building Services refuses to tell you their criteria for setting that amount, you're blocked and can't receive any phone calls from an inmate for the next 90 days. Think about it, how'd you like to go 90 days without being able to talk to your loved ones. Just because you made a mistake and are incarcerated doesn't mean that the government and Evercom should rape you and your family by imposing outrageous costs.

Evercom doesn't reach out and touch you, they slam you into debt.

In the case of The North Country Gazette, the blocking wasn't surprising. Less than 24 hours previous, as Elsebeth Baumgartner was trying to spell the name of the Ottawa County Jail administrator who had told her she couldn't receive any news articles downloaded from the Internet, the Evercom operator terminated the call and claimed that there had been a "dialing of extra digits".

Each time she calls back, there is a charge of $17.34, regardless of whether you are disconnected or not.

Lt. Donald Lochatzki is the administrator of the Ottawa County Jail and his edict came after Baumgartner had received a mail packet of news articles from the Internet, including articles concerning her case which had appeared in the North Country Gazette.

Among the articles was one written about her May, 2005 arrest as a result of Ottawa County Sheriff Robert Bratton's call to the Bay View Police Department, telling them that he had received a "tip" that Baumgartner was eating dinner at a local tavern. He claimed that there was an outstanding warrant for her arrest, one that he claims he had entered into the department's database.

However, as of this date, special prosecutor Daniel Kasaris has yet to produce a copy of the alleged warrant under discovery and neither Bratton nor Bay View Police Chief Helen Prosowski will produce a copy of the warrant. Bratton says the bench warrant is for a probation violation, Prosowski says it's for failure to appear.

Even more interesting is that when police couldn't produce a copy of the warrant and had threatened to harm Baumgartner who was sitting in a car parked in the restaurant parking lot, when she drove out of the lot, police began a pursuit.

Joining in the pursuit was one off-duty police officer, Captain Lochatzki, giving chase in his private vehicle, which would seem to be a violation of departmental policy and law in that the pursuit of a person at high speeds in an unmarked, non-police vehicle would seem to be endangering the public's safety. However, although federal law requires that police agencies maintain a pursuit policy, to date Prosowski has not produced a copy of Bay View's pursuit policy to NCG. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/2007/010107StillMissing.html

When asked to further identify Captain Lochatzki of the Bay View Police, including his first name and asked if he was related to Lt. Lochatzki of Ottawa County Jail who seemingly doesn't want Baumgartner to read about her own case, Prosowski failed to answer.

Evercom, Correctional Billing Services, their practices and rates, are cause for frequent anger on prison blogs and message boards.

The jails and prisons contracting with Evercom get a generous kickback from the phone company and as many note, some of the costs are beyond exorbitant and border on grand theft.

Complaints to the Federal Communications Commission, to the Public Service Commission and to prisoners' rights groups are needed to effect the necessary and overdue changes and to reduce the costs of the collect calls.

"I am very angry as well... at a certain "quarantine" facility in Jackson, Michigan, the inmate calls are currently $17.34 per 15 minute call!", the poster on one message board says. "Quarantine facilities are the first point of entry into the prison system and they are usually filled with young, first time offenders that have never been through the system before. These individuals really need to call home to hear a loved one's voice! They "need" a support system! Many families of inmates are NOT rich! They cannot afford such rates! Correctional Billing Services and other like companies are making a killing off of loved ones of inmates! This is simply unacceptable and something has GOT to be done! I am amazed, shocked, STUNNED that these kind of charges were ever allowed! UNBELIEVABLE!!! "Sick" is really the word for it!".

Another poster writes, "My boyfriend is incarcerated and he would call me regularly. My phone bill was always too high. We are in different states...each call to accept is $4.84, then .84 each additional minute...Well, to make the story short, I requested prepaid $50 a week. Every week I would send a check by phone for $50. Now my phone is blocked and when I call the representative from Correctional Billing Services, they never set up my account and that I have to pay a $735.55 bill before my phone can get unblocked. Meanwhile, I paid already close to $1,400 in four months for calls that get disconnected after just one or two minutes.

I've been trying to get this solved for the past two weeks and n one can help me... They said my total balance since day one is $1,300,meaning I should have credit... Now I'm afraid not to pay cause I don't wanna hurt my credit but I don't think I should pay either. Help".

To read more comments about the protested policies and costs of Evercom, see http://forums.treemedia.com/fb/showthread.php?t=713 and http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff140152.htm

New York State got a reprieve from the high costs of collect calls from inmates after the Center for Constitutional Rights took the issue all the way to the state's highest court. On the eve of a scheduled argument before the Court of Appeals, to stop state government and MCI from charging exorbitant phone rates to families and friends of prisoners, Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced that the state would voluntarily reduce rates.

New York was one of the cheaper rates, forcing recipients to pay $3 per call and 16 cents a minute for a total of $8.40 for 15 minutes as compared to Evercom's $17.34, more than double New York's rate.

The court has yet to decide the legality of the previous administration's policy relating to the telephone costs in Walton v. New York State Department of Correctional Services.

The new rates, will take effect April 1, will charge only the cost of the call, allowing families to maintain contact with their loved ones and friends without the undue financial burden.

Something has to be done to force Correctional Billing Services and Evercom to reduce its rate and to stop its price gouging, penalizing mothers and fathers, girlfriends and boyfriends, sisters and brothers and friends who have done nothing wrong but charging them outrageous rates, penalizing them. Efforts are underway to learn how much Sheriff Robert Bratton and Ottawa County benefit from the exorbitant costs of inmate calls.

Correctional Billing Services, a division of Evercom Systems of Selma, Ala., appears to be charging the highest rates in the country. www.correctionalbillingservices.com

To complain about rates for intrastate (within a state) collect calls from public phones in prisons, contact the state public utility commission in the state where the call originated and terminated. State public utility commission addresses may be found at http://naruc.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=15 or in the blue pages or government section of your local telephone directory. To complain about interstate and international rates, file a complaint with the FCC. http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/Inmate.html

The Public Utility Law Project is also addressing the situation and information about inmate phone calls and what to do can be found at their website at http://www.pulp.tc/html/inmate_phones.html

"For many years, inmates of jails and correctional institutions had extremely limited telephone service to make collect telephone calls to a restricted list of specified friends and relatives", PULP says. "Typically there was occasional access to a specialized payphone. Modern advances in technology resulted in automation and improved efficiency in accounting for inmate calls, monitoring and recording conversations for security and law enforcement purposes, restricting the list of numbers which any particular inmate may call, and preventing fraudulent or criminal schemes. Jail and prison administrators began to see telephone service as a reward for good behavior and as a source of revenue for their agencies. Also, because most inmates sooner or later return to their communities, the maintenance of communication with family is seen as a generally positive influence for the inmate's reintegration in the larger society after release.

"Inmate telephone service is now a very competitive industry that advertises its services to institutional administrators. Despite competition and reduced costs of service due to automation, the rates and charges that must be paid by persons receiving the calls from inmates are very high. Much of the inmate population comes from low income families, and thus the high cost of telephone service is a significant burden to many families that would like to maintain regular contact through telephone conversations with an incarcerated spouse, child, sibling or friend, often at a distant prison. In many instances, the cost is so high that otherwise welcome calls must be blocked or refused; in other cases, persons with limited incomes endure significant financial hardship paying for calls they really cannot afford.

"A major reason for the high rates for those who pay for the calls is that institutions select winning bids for inmate telephone service on the basis of the vendor's promise to provide of commission revenue to the institution. Commissions from 20% to 60% are common. News reports have indicated that in New York, the state earns $20 million per year in commissions on telephone charges to recipients of calls from state prison inmates.

"In reviewing the reasonableness of rates for calls from inmates, some regulators have allowed rates that are equal to or less than the most expensive operator assisted collect calls from payphones. Those rates, however, are inapplicable to the highly automated inmate telephone systems, and are often avoidable. Recipients of calls from inmates, however, have no alternative choice of telephone service provider.

"Jurisdiction over the rates for telephone calls from inmates is split between federal and state jurisdictions. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in recent years has issued several orders dealing with inter-state aspects of charges to recipients of inmate telephone calls, but has declined to take action to reduce the charges. Efforts to allow the long distance portion of the service be provided by the receiver's chosen long distance provider ("Billed Party Preference") failed to gain approval at the FCC in the mid-1990's. The FCC has indicated there is a greater role for state commissions in this area. State public utility commissions may approve contract rates for local and intra-state call service.

The high cost of collect calls from inmates affects a significant number of people who are now organizing to bring about change. It's going to take a large outcry and an organized effort, such as was mounted in New York, to attack Correctional Billing Services. 1-23-07

© 2007 North Country Gazette