From the Editor
by Paul Wright
As this issue of PLN goes to press the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that on October 22, 2015, they will be issuing rules regulating all prison and jail telephone calls, including setting rate caps for debit and prepaid calls of $.11 per minute at prisons and $.14 to $.22 per minute at jails, plus banning most ancillary fees, among other reforms. We will report the details in an upcoming issue of PLN.
The critical point is that after the prison phone issue has languished on its docket for 12 years, the FCC has acted. In 2011, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which publishes Prison Legal News, founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice with the Center for Media Justice and Working Narratives, with the goal of reducing the cost of prison and jail telephone calls. We are proud that has finally happened, and we would like to thank all of our readers and supporters over the past four years who have donated to and supported our efforts. The FCC also announced it will be revisiting prison phone issues within the next two years.
But more work remains to be ...
October 23, 2015
From HRDC executive director Paul Wright:
Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission took a historic step by capping the cost of prison and jail phone calls. For decades, prisoners and their families have been ruthlessly exploited by telecom companies and their government collaborators who monetize human contact and want people to pay as much as possible to communicate with their loved ones in prison. Since 1992 the Human Rights Defense Center has been in the vanguard challenging these exploitive practices and seeking to end them. In 2011 we co-founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, with the express goal of getting the FCC to end abusive phone rates for prisoners and their families. We have poured thousands of staff hours into the Campaign, as well as many trips to DC to meet with FCC staff, and it paid off.
The FCC action significantly reduces the cost of prison phone calls to no more than $.11 per minute and also reduces the cost of calls made from jails. It bans all but three ancillary fees charged by the telecom industry to bolster their profit margins and bottom lines. Most of the reforms will go into effect within 90 days ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Next April will mark the 20th anniversary of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) – the continuing legacy of President Clinton and Congress which has done more to undermine the rule of law and constitutional rights since the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.
When the PLRA was enacted in 1996, prisons and jails in some 42 states were under court injunctions or consent decrees designed to remedy unconstitutional conditions of confinement. In one of the most reactionary pieces of legislation in several generations (today no one remembers that Congress passed and Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act to ensure gays and lesbians could not be married at the same time the PLRA was enacted, and while DOMA has since been found unconstitutional, prisoners remain screwed), the PLRA served to ensure prisoners face extraordinary barriers just to have their constitutional claims heard by a federal court. No one else in America needs to exhaust an administrative remedy system set up by the very same people who are violating the Constitution in order to have their claims heard in federal court.
While the propaganda of the time claimed ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Since PLN first began publishing in 1990 we have reported on parole systems and their inherent arbitrariness and cruelty. Today there is a lot of rhetoric about a “liberal-conservative alliance” on criminal justice issues and the need for reform. This is hardly the first ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
For several decades PLN has reported on the intersections between mass imprisonment, the criminal justice system and the environment. Most specifically, the environmental destruction and degradation that prisons impose on surrounding communities – whether it entails building prisons in pristine environments like the High ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Over the past 25 years of publishing PLN we have run numerous stories about the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, generally dealing with guard brutality and medical neglect. Despite several major class-action suits and hundreds if not thousands of other lawsuits, ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
The one area of American life where no one is calling for gender equality or parity is that of mass incarceration. Prisons are and remain a tool of social control aimed primarily at men, who make up 91% of all prisoners. The number of ...
The first issue of Prisoners’ Legal News (PLN) was published in May 1990. It was hand-typed, photocopied and ten pages long, and mailed to 75 potential subscribers with a budget of $50. The first three issues were banned in all Washington state prisons, the first 18 in all ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
It doesn’t seem like this is the 301st issue of Prison Legal News. When we published our first issue in 1990 I didn’t have an expectation of how long the publication would last nor did I think about its longevity very much. ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
In 25 years of publishing Prison Legal News, we have reported a number of recurring themes where the only specifics that change are the names, dates and locations. But the broader issues – prison slavery, government corruption, guards raping prisoners, brutality, medical neglect, ...
