A federal appeals court today struck down price caps on intrastate phone calls made by prisoners. Inmates will thus have to continue paying high prices to make phone calls to family members, friends, and lawyers.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with prison phone company Global Tel*Link in its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. But that's exactly what the FCC's current leadership wanted. The FCC imposed the prison phone rate caps during the Obama administration, but current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai instructed commission lawyers to drop their court defense of the intrastate caps.
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Court Wipes Out Inmate Intrastate Calling Price Caps
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:23PM (3 children)
Simple fix: send the signals out of the state and back!
I'm sure appearing weak on crime will be a top priority for Congress, especially after one of their own was shot today.
What do we call the opposite of criminal justice reform again? Bizarro justice reform?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:07AM
>Simple fix: send the signals out of the state and back!
Simple, and almost certain to get the inmate in terrible trouble.
Call forwarding is strictly forbidden in every facility I've heard of and the regulations are viciously enforced. You can end up in the hole for eight days, four of them on 24-hour lockdown, without a change of clothes, and spend an extra three weeks in prison because of lost good conduct time simply because of making a three-way call to family members.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 15 2017, @03:30AM (1 child)
I don't understand why the logic of just about every other Commerce Clause case in the past 75 years doesn't apply here. Wickard v. Filburn was based on the notion that even stuff you grow on your own land affects the "market" for everything around you. That's generally how Congress gets around "interstate" issues to regulate commerce in a state -- you just argue that the external interstate market is affected. If phone companies charge X instead of Y for intrastate calls, won't that affect how much they tend to charge for interstate calls? I could really only seeing this apply (maybe) to a case where you had separate providers for inter vs intra state, and even then it would likely only be an issue due to an unnecessary monopoly granted to those providers... In a free market, it would all affect interstate commerce.
(To be clear, I'm actually not a fan of the expansionist reading of the Commerce Clause, but I'm not sure I understand why this case should be different.)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 15 2017, @04:02AM
The outcome may have been different had it been appealed to the Supreme Court. But since the new government just gave up on the case, we won't know.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:41PM (3 children)
We need to get rid of these needless, job killing regulations so that the free market can take care of these problems.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @05:43PM (2 children)
I note your sarcasm, but in fact the problem is that this is a case where Global Tel*Link has a monopoly on the prisons it serves, so market forces cannot solve the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @06:30PM (1 child)
A government granted and enforced monopoly, to boot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:15PM
FTFY
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Osamabobama on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:46PM (2 children)
A confluence of state-granted monopoly, captive customer base, and an unsympathetic public allow these phone companies to get away with screwing their customers.
A hundred years ago or more, we had the phenomenon of 'company towns,' which were set up by a large company in charge of a remote, long-term infrastructure project. The workers would live there in company housing, but have nowhere to shop but company stores, which would charge high prices in the face of no competition. In that case, though, the workers could organize, and could inspire sympathy from the public at large. Prisoners, on the other hand, are prevented from organizing, and are literally vilified in public opinion.
In all, it's a better recipe for rent-seeking than even the teachers' union could realize.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:40PM
Ava Maria, FL
People don't get to vote. Nearly all land is owned by one company under the control of one man, with the remainder being a university that he owns 50% of. The place is surrounded by miles of swamp, so you can't trivially go to the next town over for anything.
If you annoy the company, the cops will block your access to places and will threaten you with arrest. You will surely lose your job too.
It's a planned Catholic community too, so you can't buy birth control or porn anywhere in town.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:15AM
But wait, there's more!
Those phone vendors with exclusive (monopoly) contracts pay a "commission" to the prison. If you're a warden, just award the phone contract to the company with the worst rates, and you get a stream of money for your budget independent of what the legislature doles out to you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:48PM (1 child)
Chairman Pai is a good lapdog.
I'm glad prisoners will be back to working 6 hours (or their family two minimum-wage hours) for every minute they wish to call their family.
Best way to help them be ready, when they get out after their 10 years minimum sentence for walking in the wrong place while not white.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:17AM
Not only that, when they get out it will be critical to their re-integration to have live family ties. Simply as a public safety thing the phone calls to family should be charged at market rates at most.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NewNic on Wednesday June 14 2017, @05:17PM (1 child)
That's what the interstate commerce clause is.
Apparently it can stop the federal government from regulating the cost of phone calls within a state, but not prevent the federal government from regulating what I grow in my garden.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday June 14 2017, @05:49PM
you got that right, nudenick, fucking kongresskritters use the so-called 'commerce clause' to stick their fucking noses in all sorts of shit they should not be touching...
it has become a catch-all for doing whatever the fuck they want, even if otherwise directly contradictory to the constitution and small-dee democracy...
reason being, they can give a kevin-bacon-like six degrees of separation from ANY HUMAN ACTIVITY on the planet, and 'splain how that effects 'interstate commerce'...
it is all bullshit, but WHO is going to call them on it ? ? ?
.
when those in the system (MOST especially including kongresskritters) who are set up to be the 'checks and balances' in the equation, stop checking and balancing, then there is nothing to stop the power elite from simply ignoring the -now- TOTALLY THEORETICAL 'checks and balances' and doing whatever the fuck they want with no consequences...
.
gee, how *did* we get in this mess ? ? ?
*snort*
let's see: we set up a system of profit uber alles, and are then surprised when humans have no value in such a system ? ? ?
HOW can you be surprised ? ? ? WE SET UP THE SYSTEM that way and allow it to run amuck...
what ELSE did we expect ? ??
like a galbraith quote about capitalism (paraphrased, TLTG*) : capitalism is the insane idea that allowing the most greedy of men to run things based on their predatory actions will result in the best of outcomes for everyone...
sumpin like that...
.
(*TLTG = too lazy to google)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:45PM (7 children)
Bad influence encourages a criminal life.
Friends and family need protection from a bad influence. The other way applies too: friends and family may have helped to create the criminal. Breaking up criminal social groups is the first step if we are going to be serious about rehabilitation. If we don't break those social groups, we might as well lock them all up and throw away the key because the criminality won't stop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @10:10PM (1 child)
Bullshit! The social influence your referring to mostly influences the young and mentally deficient/unstable. The fact of the matter is, draconian drug laws are responsible for 90% of inmates in prisons, and a good portion of those that weren't locked up for drugs are in there over some other petty shit. "Justice" is an ugly ideal and the reality is even uglier.
(Score: 3, Informative) by KGIII on Thursday June 15 2017, @01:00AM
Not according to Google. The percentages are much lower, abiut half for Feds and it looks like about 16% for State.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @11:22PM (4 children)
So the only people a criminal should have social links with are other inmates? And you call this "serious about rehabilitation"? I thought you were just stupid till you said that -- now I know you're trolling. (But maybe stupid, too.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:25AM
Correct. I don't feel like spending the time to dig up citations now but there's plenty of empirical evidence that recidivism goes down when connections to the outside go up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:41AM
I dunno, its not outrageous enough to be a decent troll. Reeks of teenage idealism and naivety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:07AM (1 child)
No prisoner should be able to contact any person who has ever been convicted of a crime or any person who is currently charged with a crime. Yes, this requires sound-proof doors and ventilation ducts.
Prisoners should be able to talk to lawyers and prison staff. Anything else invites trouble, but we could perhaps carefully vet people as we do for security clearances.
(Score: 1) by StarryEyed on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:15AM
We got that covered:
http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/78/590x/prison-626944.jpg [express.co.uk]
When the food stops being eaten, just drop another prisoner into the hole. No unnecessary contact.