[music]

`

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. On April 13th of last year, we received a phone call from a listener who called himself "T" from inside a Westchester County jail.

Prisoner: We're not getting told what's going on. We're being quarantined 14 days. Guys have been catching temperatures in here who are sick. We understand why we've been quarantined but no one has been checking temperatures, we're not getting tested in here. Then, I've been here for four months, I have not been able to talk to my family, the phones are so high in here, I have not been able to talk to my family. Today is the first time they gave us a $5 prepaid calling card that I was able to call out.

The first thing I want to do is call you, I listen to your program, why can't they follow New York City and make the phones free, 15 minutes every three hours? We can't talk to our lawyers. We're in here and it's bad. The commissary is so high, we're not getting the right information of what's really going out there. They're keeping us isolated from what's going on in the world. We're scared in here, guys are getting sick, the officers are getting sick, and it's like nobody's really caring about us as prisoners.

Brian Lehrer: That was one of our memorable callers, and calls from last year, near the beginning of the pandemic, caller "T" from April, calling in to plead with our then guest, the New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to make calls free inside of Westchester County Correctional, as well as Rikers. I should say, as Rikers and all the New York City jails had done in 2019. The Senate majority leader said she would elevate his concern with the Westchester County executive who controls that, not the state.

We have since followed up to find out that they are still charging 15 cents a minute for in-state phone calls, which they say is less than the 40 cents a minute they were charging in 2018 and are now providing monthly $5 prepaid calling cards. In addition, it's unclear whether the calling cards will outlast the pandemic. Incarcerated people, their families, and other allies have been fighting for what they call phone justice for years. Prison call rates can cost $1 a minute in some facilities and the phone companies that contract with prisons and jails make big profits.

With me now are Ulandis Forte, an activist, and grandson of Mrs. Martha Wright-Reed, the namesake of the prison phone justice legislation, and Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises. This segment is part of our series with the Greene Space and Worth Rises about the business side of the prison industry. Bianca, welcome back and Ulandis, welcome to WNYC.

Ulandis Forte: Good morning. Thank you.

Bianca Tylek: Hi Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Bianca, the idea of not being able to afford to make a phone call is striking in any year, but I think this year, especially the phones have taken on this new level of importance. For all of us listening to T's call from last April, what are you thinking about phone justice in a pandemic year?

Bianca Tylek: Hearing that call, I think it's exactly why we're doing the work we are doing, and that we've been doing all around the country. I think hearing the desperation that was in T's voice is a feeling that I'm sure Ulandis can speak to, but so many can speak to. Those of us out here this year, have been finding new ways to connect with our family while can't be there in-person. It's an experience that people in prison have had for a very long time and unfortunately, has gotten worse in the last year because of the pandemic.

Facilities don't have visits right now in many places around the country. Where families may have otherwise traveled to facilities to actually see their loved ones for a moment here and there, that's not even an option. We actually have facilities that haven't had visits for over a year now, yet with the high cost of calls, communication is also dwindling as families, in particular, are struggling financially. Everything's coming together with this crisis to [unintelligible 00:04:45] and highlight an issue that's been an issue for a very long time.

Brian Lehrer: Ulandis, could you tell our listeners the story of you, your grandmother, and the phones back when you were incarcerated?

Ulandis Forte: Yes, and I'll certainly keep it brief. First of all, thank you for having me. My grandmother, who was blind at the time, she's passed now, God rest her soul, she would come and visit me when I was close to home. Once, we started moving when they shut our prison down, our local prison and start sending us out to federal systems, and private prison CCA, that's when we started to have to pay for these ridiculous phone rates.

When we would call home, we would get prepaid calling cards. The problem with those cards was, you would buy these cards, and when you use them, they would cut off on you [unintelligible 00:05:47] the price, you would still get charged. A 15-minute phone call, would cost you $15, sometimes $30 and you only talked for two to three minutes and there was no one you could talk to about it, anything to correct it, but then it became a point where we would make collect calls. My grandmother had received one phone call, a 15-minute phone call as much as $45, one time $60 for one call.

It got so bad that my grandmother had to choose whether this month does she want to pay for this bill in order to continue for us to talk, or does she go purchase her medication? Does she need to survive? It put us in a very terrible spot. Of course, I would tell my grandmother, "Hey ma, medicine." She didn't want to hear it. She wanted to do all she can in order to keep me close to home as much as she could, to touch bases with the real world. What people don't know is that you [crosstalk] Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: No, you go ahead. What people don't know is what?

Ulandis Forte: What people don't know is that being in touch with the outside world, it really helps keep you grounded. I was telling Bianca that some of the prisoners would call my grandmother, their grandmother, and would live through me and my grandmother's relationship because they didn't have anybody. They couldn't afford to talk to anyone. I've seen people go crazy. I've seen people commit suicide. I've seen so many things that people couldn't handle because they didn't have anybody who would love them. That's why they have a brotherhood in prison, because they don't have anybody else to turn to because they can't afford to be communicating with their family.

Why make your family suffer? Okay, maybe I did do something wrong, but my kids, my mother, my grandmother shouldn't be able to suffer because of my wrongdoing. That's double jeopardy. Allow me to reach out and get some therapy from people that I know. It goes so far, and it's so helpful.

`

Brian Lehrer: I believe your grandmother has some legislation named after her the Martha Wright-Reed act. What's in it, and how did that come about?

Ulandis Forte: It came a time when my grandmother was just so frustrated with the price of the phone calls. We were getting two different bills, one from the regular phone company and one for these collect calls, which nobody to the date still can explain why this thing was happening. She just got sick and tired and she just reached out to legal aid and to the legal prisoners. Deborah Golden, a few other good people came to our rescue in order to formulate a plan that we need to attack these people and stop them from taking advantage, what they were doing to us because it was wrong. From that point on, the fight started. My grandmother died [crosstalk]

Bianca Tylek: Oh, I'm sorry.

Ulandis Forte: Go ahead. No, please jump in.

Bianca Tylek: No, no, go ahead. Yes, Ulandis, I'll jump in after you're done. Go ahead.

Ulandis Forte: My grandmother passed on my birthday, January 18th. That's in 2015. From then, the torch has really been lit behind me. Whenever I get a phone call, whenever I get an email, anything that has to do with this situation, I'm on it, it's not even a second guess, [unintelligible 00:09:14] phone, whatever I need to do in order to be able to be a part of this great movement, I'm there.

Brian Lehrer: Bianca?

Bianca Tylek: Yes. We're so thankful to Ulandis and Ulandis's grandmother for this fight. This fight has been a long time coming, and in the last few years, we've really started to see the wins that were built on the back of that incredible [unintelligible 00:09:38] that Mrs. Wright had and the fortitude of Ulandis to continue that fight. Just to give a little bit of color to the federal legislation in her honor and with her namesake, it is legislation that would increase the regulatory authority of the Federal Communications Commission.

What a lot of people may not know listeners, is that the way that prison phone calls run is a little bit odd. It's pretty old school, it's still done on a toll rate basis, which means you pay per minute, almost nothing else in society exists like that in communications today, but in prisons and jails, it does. The FCC, which tried to, when Commissioner Clyburn was still, there working with Mrs. Wright-Reed, they tried to regulate the cost of prison and jail phone calls. Unfortunately, a case came down and decided that the FCC does not have authority to regulate what they call in-state calls, and so it could only regulate interstate calls.

Interstate calls is essentially what we used to refer to as long-distance calls, calls with two area codes or in two different states, the caller and the recipient. In-state calls are essentially what we would call local calls, calls with the two area codes, if the caller and the recipient are in the same state. The FCC, because of federal limitations of federal authority, can only regulate interstate calls, and cannot regulate right now in-state calls.

Brian Lehrer: That would leave out most prisoners and their families because typically, you are sentenced by a state court for a crime that you committed in the state in which you live, and the jail or the prison would be in the state in which you live and where your relatives probably live in most cases, and therefore, that federal legislation doesn't actually help with this for most prisoners, it would sound like Bianca, right?

Bianca Tylek: Right. Well, not the legislation, the legislation would change that. The current situation is that. It's actually 80%. That exact number is 80%. 80% of calls are in-state and therefore not regulated by the FCC. What the bill would do that's currently in Congress, is that it would give the FCC very simply, the regulatory authority over all prison and jail phone calls.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, we want to open up the phones appropriately on this conversation about phone calls. If you have experienced high phone prices at a jail, or a prison, either as an incarcerated person yourself, or someone who wanted to reach an incarcerated person, a mother, a father, a child, a spouse, a friend, how much are or were phone calls to prison, or out of prison, or jails costing? What has been your experience paying for them, and what would you like to say about this issue? 646-435-7280. Just as "T" called in from a correctional facility in Westchester County last April, and we just replayed that call, maybe somebody who's incarcerated is listening right now, or anyone else. 646-435-7280 on this issue.

Ulandis, let me go back to you because I read that, in addition to charging for phone calls, prisons and jails also charge for transaction fees. For example, making people on the outside pay a fee every time they deposit money into the phone account of their incarcerated friend or family member. Can you talk a little bit more about how those transaction fees add up?

Ulandis Forte: First of all, they were in it real quick. They saw many ways in order to manipulate the system as far as the phone calls and communication was concerned. Like I said, they were charges for these debit cards. I had experience with the account where the family must state where your family send you money. If they send you money in order to be able to purchase a card, but not just an account just regulated for phone calls itself. They send you the money order and then you purchase the card.

Now, we had that one situation, then we had the situation we were just making collect calls, and that's where they were overcharging those phone calls. Again, they would cut the phone calls short. This wasn't coming from a regular AT&T, this wasn't Verizon, this wasn't a regular phone company. Again, we were getting two different bills, two separate phone call bills. One just for collect calls itself, and that's why they were getting over, because nobody would come forward and say like, "Hey, we're in control of this, we're in control of that." We couldn't find the bottom line of where it was coming from.

It cost my grandmother thousands and thousands of dollars. I would talk to her twice a week. It went from twice a week, to once a week, to once every other week because it just got ridiculous. So many people, they couldn't afford it. They couldn't afford it, and we need that communication. It's imperative. Family, friends, we have kids, we still have influence, positive influences over people whose lives that we do affect in a beautiful way, our children our significant others, our mothers, our fathers, uncles, we're uncles to our nephews and nieces. It's no reason for this communication line to be cut short because of somebody else's greed. At the end of the day, that's what it is.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just tuning in, this is this week's edition of our series in conjunction with the Greene Space and the advocacy group Worth Rises, called Punishment and Profit. It's about who profits from things that happen inside jails and prisons. My guests today are Ulandis Forte, activist, and grandson of Mrs. Martha Wright-Reed, the namesake of prison phone justice legislation, and Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises. The topic today is, These Charges and Who Profits From Them that take place when people make phone calls into, or out of jails and prisons. I think Amy on Long Island is going to get right to the heart of the matter here. Amy, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Amy: Hello. Thank you. I'm upset to hear about how people incarcerated are punished, not just twice, but their families are punished by the charges, excessive charges of phone calls. Aside from the morality of doing that, who exactly is profiting, because I know that there may be charges assessed for the calls, but who exactly is authorizing these charges? Who's collecting the money, and whose pocket is it going into?

Brian Lehrer: Amy, thank you very much. Bianca, that's your specialty, right? Can you answer Amy's questions?

Bianca Tylek: Yes, Brian. Absolutely. I think it's a great question. The people who are profiting off of this incredible harm that they're causing to folks who are incarcerated, to families, to communities are a few different parties. Let me give you, and we're going to bring this home right here in New York City, I'm really particular. The prison industry, the prison telecom industry is a $1.4 billion industry. That's how much money is made every year just on phone calls.That industry is dominated by just three companies. There are three companies that own about 90% of the market. That is three companies named Securus, GTL, and IC Solutions. All three of those companies are owned by private equity firms. These are big investment funds, billion-dollar investment firms. The people who invest in those firms are public pensions like the New York City Pension.

To actually bring that home, take Securus security as a quick example, Securus own 40% of the market. It's owned by a private equity firm called Platinum Equity. The founder and CEO of Platinum Equity is also the owner of the Detroit Pistons. He's worth $6 billion. His name is Tom Gores. He makes millions every year, $700 million to be exact, Securus makes every year off of taxing families. The biggest investor in the Fund that bought Securus back in 2017, was in New York City Public Pension.

In terms of who is making money, it's corporations, it's billionaires, it's owners of NBA teams, it's our public pension, which means, unfortunately, pensioners without even knowing. The one last piece, I'll just say is, I think most people would be surprised to know that many of these really high rates are brought up even higher because the jails themselves get a portion of the proceeds. They get something called, what the industry likes to call a commission, but what we would probably recognize as a corporate kickback. For every call, let's say in New York City, when we were able to make phone calls free at the time, 81% of the revenue was going back to the DOC, The Department of Corrections for the city. It was a corporate profit-sharing agreement between the corporation, which again, for the city was Securus and the city jail itself.

Brian Lehrer: Juan in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi Juan.

Juan: Hello, how are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead Juan.

Juan: I'm 36 now, I served 16 years in total in New York State corrections. I've gone back to Eliot Spitzer when he got rid of, I forgot the company that in 2007 that had the phones, it was at an outrageous price. To connect, it was like $3.29. I know a 15 minutes or half an hour phone call was an absurd price. He comes into office and he does that immediately and then the next thing you know, he's getting set up with the prostitution XYZ.

Long story short, this is just something that-- it's just what they do. Corrections makes money off of people. Bob Barker, the lady just mentioned the owner of the Detroit pistons. I'm putting that on Facebook right now. People just don't understand how bad it is, the morality, the karma for the nation to treat your fellow citizens like this, to profit off of other human beings in these ways is just so bad.

Brian Lehrer: Juan, thank you for chiming in and for sharing your experience. Bianca, you want to say anything with respect to Juan, it makes me wonder. Your last answer before his phone call did also, where are the pressure points here to get this changed?

Bianca Tylek: Yes, it's a great question. I think it is, to Juan's point, it's absolutely awful that people profit off of people's suffering in this way and that they exploit it. The reality is we were able to make phone calls free in New York City by organizing with more than a dozen organizations to get that done, we were also able to then do it in San Francisco and most recently, San Diego as of two weeks ago, just became the third county in the country to make phone calls entirely free. We have now legislation in multiple states. Actually, as we're talking right now on the radio, there was a hearing going on in Connecticut. I will be testifying, I'm number 69, so hopefully, it's not going to pop off while we're on the radio, [chuckles] to actually make phone calls free in the entire prison system for the state of Connecticut.

We now have the support in Connecticut, for example, the Senate president who already testified in support of this bill of ironically, two now major corporations, Verizon and AT&T have stepped in. The victims' rights folks, the child advocates. At this point, the coalition is so wide, not just in Connecticut, but across the country that we are hopeful that we're going to begin to see the end of this industry but we need to keep that pressure up. It's thanks to the incredible work of Ms. Martha Wright-Reed for many years and others who've been fighting.

Brian Lehrer: That's so interesting about Connecticut, having the unfortunate title of the most expensive state in the country for prison phone calls. That stands in contrast to New York City where in 2019, they did make local phone calls free in all of their jails. To give a sense of what it was like before, a call from Rikers cost 50 cents for the first minute and 5 cents for each additional minute. Those, just the local numbers. There were 26,000 calls from the city's jails every day that generated more than $20,000 a day in revenue. Bianca, who pays for the calls now and what happens to that loss of revenue that I guess was going into the correctional system?

Bianca Tylek: It's a great question. When phone calls become free, obviously somebody does pay for the service and the city will pay for that directly. That cost is one that pales in comparison to what happens to families and communities when they don't have the cost of communication. In New York City, for example, the city was actually making $5 million a year off of the cost of calls, to provide calls to families. Families were spending over about $10 million a year when you consider the fees, you mentioned earlier Brian, taxes, the cost of the calls, all those things.

Now that the city is actually paying for the calls directly, the city is paying just two and a half million dollars. Put that in comparison to a budget, The New York City Department of Corrections budget is $1.4 billion. When you think about what the cost is, how minimal it is to the city to actually do something that is by far the most effective way to ensure that people come home and can reenter successfully, that they have somewhere to go home, that they have people in the community who are there for them that can help them get on their feet and all of those things, that takes communication, that takes connection all of that while you're incarcerated.

It's the kind of thing that pays back tenfold over the years. As the caller said earlier, it's not even just about the money, it's about ethics at some point, and what we're doing to families is really ruined it.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take one more call before we run out of time, Elizabeth calling from Cleveland. Hi, Elizabeth. You're on WNYC.

Elizabeth: Hi. How are you, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: I'm okay, thank you. You?

Elizabeth: Oh, good. I listen to your show. I'm originally from New York and we've been in Cleveland since 1976, but I just wanted to just mention the fact that our son is incarcerated in one of the facilities in Ohio. There is such a, just like the person said, there is such a punishment for the families besides that our son being in prison. Every transaction that you do, there's a charge and just to send emails, you have to buy stamps and this transaction fee and just to purchase things in commissary, there's just an expensive charge there. Everything is money-related and it's just unfortunate that the families have to be punished for just keeping our son safe in a facility.

Brian Lehrer: Did you tell our screener emails too?

Elizabeth: Yes. Everything. The phone calls are monitored along with emails, everything gets filtered through, mail in particular. It's anything that you can imagine that's going on is going on there and people have no idea. You're there and we don't even know half of it, just what our son tells us.

Brian Lehrer: I am so sorry that you're going through that and your son is, and so grateful that you called in and made more people aware of it. Elizabeth, good luck to you and your family. We're almost out of time, but let me ask each of you one last question, Ulandis, for you, she mentioned how it's not just phone calls, phone companies are now expanding into video conferencing, which is a good thing, and it would allow incarcerated people to see the faces of their loved ones. Are the costs any different with these technologies?

Ulandis Forte: Me personally, I don't know because I didn't experience it. Right before I came home, we were starting to get emails. Was progress, another way to communicate and was less strenuous on the family financially. The issue I only had with that was, it takes maybe three or four days before you get the email, because of course, they have to analyze it, go through it and check it. As far as to vouch for the video, I didn't experience that.

Brian Lehrer: Last question for you Bianca, Ulandis just mentioned and Elizabeth in her call from Cleveland, mentioned things being monitored as they go through. I just saw a story in the daily news over the weekend. Maybe you already know about this because the work you do that the phone company Securus, which contracts with the city's jails mistakenly recorded 1,500 protected jailhouse phone calls between defendants and their legal advisors in what would amount to a breach of attorney-client privilege and could compromise over 400 court cases if the recordings got into the hands of prosecutors. I'm just curious if you have in our last minute, a sense of how something like that may have happened and the context for it?

Bianca Tylek: Absolutely [unintelligible 00:29:58] really quick thing. One, video calls definitely cost a lot of money and emails also, as was noted by Elizabeth, also cost money. They're not real emails, they're all sending messages, but they require stamps. Every type of communication that they introduced while good in theory, comes with exorbitant costs. Yes, all these different types of communications are either recorded or surveilled live. There's all different types of surveillance that happen. Securus has actually been caught doing this in particular, what you just mentioned, which is surveilling, recording privileged attorney-client calls in many, many states.

In fact, it baffles me. They've been sued and they've paid fines in every single case that we know, in essence in that way, because of what you just explained, turn it over to prosecutors. [unintelligible 00:30:52] a lot of folks probably, a lot of cases and things of that sort because they were trying to work with their attorney on their case. It's awful. It's so detrimental and yet they face very few consequences.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you can learn more about this topic tomorrow night because the Worth Rises group and the Greene Space are hosting a panel discussion about the issue of prison phone justice at seven o'clock tomorrow night. Ulandis Forte will be there along with other guests. You can find a link to that on our segment page, along with more information about this fantastic Greene Space series, Punishment & Profit. We'll have another episode in conjunction with it on this show next Monday. Thank you both so much.

Bianca Tylek: Thank you, Brian. Take care.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.