New bill could change how inmates make calls

The telephone fees help pay for inmate recreational items, including a library.

By MARY GRZEBIENIAK

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

MERCER, Pa. — A bill in Congress could affect calls inmates make from the Mercer County Jail and impact the county’s budget.

Warden Jeff Gill reported to the County Prison Board recently that he received a memo from the Pennsylvania Bureau of Prisons stating that U.S. House Resolution 555, a bill to regulate inmate telephone service rates, could force private industry out of providing phone service to jails.

Mercer County uses Inmate Telephone Inc., of Altoona, Pa., to provide phone service to inmates. Their rates, Gill said, are about $2.92 per 15-minute call for inmates who have a debit arrangement and $3.27 per 15 minutes for inmates who make collect calls. The jail receives a commission of $4,000 per month from the phone company plus a percentage of any additional profits. In April, this amounted to $5,134. This money is used to pay for inmate recreational items, including satellite television, a library, newspapers and miscellaneous items.

What could happen

Sponsors believe the bill is needed because, according to the text of the bill, they believe that many jails use the “highest priced method of dialing out collect calls.”

Gill said some jails in Texas, for example, “charge five times the rate we do.” He said the county jail’s rates for phone calls are average for Pennsylvania.

However, Gill said that the state prison bureau fears private vendors will no longer want to provide the service to prisons if regulation cuts their profits. If the bill passes and jail commissions vanish, the county would have no other source of money to provide extras to inmates except from the county general fund. Information on what action has been taken on the bill since its introduction was unavailable.

Also, District Attorney James Epstein, who serves as prison board president, said recently that the jail’s strip-search policy is being reviewed to make sure it is consistent with security concerns as well as prisoners’ rights.