Why Prisons Shouldn’t Exist: Expensive Phone Calls, Predatory and Exploitative Companies Global Tel Link

Every day I expect to get at least one phone call from GTL. Global Tel Link provides telecommunication service to more than half of the nation’s inmates from prisons, jails and detention centers in 33 state department of corrections. I don’t drink coffee every morning or eat out much but I budget spending at least $10 each day on phone calls. That’s not even an hour of conversation, interrupted every fourteen minuets by a 1 min warning. Global Tell Link is the statewide phone number on every prisoner’s family and friend’s call log. Long prison sentences are a profitable marketing technique for GTL, the longer the sentence the more money every individual prisoner brings in for the company. For example, if Derrek is serving a 10 year sentence and he calls his mother every other day, his children every morning, his wife every night and his brother once a week to keep up with family business, Derek is making 13 fifteen minute calls every week and GTL is getting an around $156 for his calls each month. Not to mention Connect Network’s charge of $3 for every transaction into the prisoners phone account. How is an inmate supposed to make $150 to spend on phone calls each month by making cents for each hour of work? This cost is inevitably shifted onto the family.

Although GTL’s services are costly they’re completely unreliable: reception is spotty, breaking up, fading out, calls drop often and take extended periods of time to connect. Phone calls as expensive as GTL’s should not be so unreliable. There will be times when the call will disconnect before ringing through. GTL isn’t motivated to improve their service to their clients either, they have no respect for their client base who’re forced to use their service because they have a monopoly on prisoner telecommunications. Global Tel-Link profits off of prisoners loved ones while rewarding the prison system. The ability to freely communicate over long distances has become a privilege that many prisoners and their families cannot afford. Although it is an essential part of personal relationships, GTL completely abuses their position as a phone service provider for financial gain by exploiting those who desperately need these services the most. Many of whom who are unable to see their incarcerated loved ones through in person visitation because of the many obstacles that I described in yesterday’s piece.

It’s unrealistic that Derek, a husband, son, father, brother and friend would only maintain relationships with 4 people by phone over his ten years in prison but for the purposes of this example after 10 years GTL would steal nearly $20,000 off of this family. Instead of paying for a child’s education, investing in a home or starting a business this family is forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to maintain a relationship with their loved one. For many families phone costs can reach up to an average of $500 each month and for a family whose previous breadwinner is now unable to provide, this is a huge cost to stay in touch. If that’s not a form of slavery then what is? Knowing that GTL is financially sustainable through longer prison sentences, Why would they advocate for shorter ones? Why would they advocate for rehabilitation, knowing that higher recidivism rates would hurt their profits. GTL is an evil company who’s business model is dependent on the desperation of families, the oppression of marginalized communities, the displacement of loved ones, longer prison sentences, high recidivism rates and inequality in educational opportunities. Knowing all of this we still pay our monthly bills to GTL, hoping that the call will go through so that we’ll know who we care for behind bars is staying strong and doing ok.

 At the beginning of last month the FCC placed caps on phone call rates that GTL has already stated they fully intend to disregard. It’s funny how GTL has blatantly stated they’re intention to disregard Federal law with no consequences as they grossly profit off of the lives of those who are heavily punished for their treatment of the law. The new Federal bill, the Inmate Calling Technical Corrections Act of 2018, would finally ban GTL’s predatory phone call business by capping phone calls at .11 cents per minute, cutting the costs of inmates phone calls for Michigan in half. For other states like Virginia, where phone calls are over a dollar a minute, this bill would drastically reduce costs by more than 110%. GTL’s resistance to following Federal regulation is a dark reminder of how corporations are treated with more respect than the citizens of this country who are invaluable to their survival. FCC official Mignon Clyburn has called GTL’s inmate phone rates across the country “the greatest and most distressing type of injustice I have ever seen in the communications sector”. This is an explicit illustration in modern-day of why prisons shouldn’t exist. People should never be forced to use a service like GTL, but prisoners have no other option and are treated as a class a people whom companies can exploit for financial gain and experimentation. Residents of this country, regardless of their background, should never be treated this way and this is regularly the case for prisoners and prisoner phone calls should not be a for profit business.

Last year prisoners across the country went on strike against Global Tel Link sacrificing their contact with family and friends in order to prove the point of the injustice against them and their families by GTL and then at the beginning of the following year the Inmate Calling Technical Corrections Act of 2018 was introduced. Individuals regardless of their standing in society can make changes within our society, especially when we choose not to spend our money at companies who disrespect and exploit our people. In order to de-incarcerate America we must make incarceration unprofitable, when being in jail isn’t a money-maker then companies won’t advocate for more prisoners. We must continue to identify ways to pull profits out of this system and advocate for the change needed to transform the lives of our loved ones trapped within.

Again after failing to push Good Time through the house of representatives, legislatures reschedule the vote for HB 5666. Please Sign and Share Michigan’s Good Time Initiative Petition: https://sawarimi.org/archives/1775

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

theverge.com/2018/3/13/17113712/prison-phone-call-bill-reform-senate

http://www.gtl.net/news/gtl-will-oppose-fcc-order-on-reconsideration-for-interstate-ics-phone-call-rates/