How Prison Telecommunications Work

You have the right to remain silent. But do you have the right to remain connected via telephone? Movies and TV shows commonly depict the prisoner demanding his right to one phone call. But in actuality, phone use in prisons varies widely. Prisoners must be allowed reasonable access to an attorney, but otherwise, phone rules are largely up to the discretion of the individual prisons or states.

When prisons began allowing inmates to use the phone, they began imposing restrictions on that use. In the U.S., states can institute laws to protect a prisoner's rights to phone use. But according to the federal courts, prisoners can't hide behind the Constitution to use the phone. The First Amendment's right to free speech clause does not give prisoners unrestricted access to a phone, even if it does allow minimal access. Often, prisons consider phone calls perks or privileges, rather than a guaranteed right (excluding certain exceptions, such as contacting an attorney).

Because it's a perk, prisoners can lose phone privileges as punishment for bad behavior. Feeling wronged, many of these prisoners have attempted to sue the prison for legal redress, but often to no avail. Federal courts have commonly cited the fact that, even when prisons deny phone privileges, the inmates are often still free to receive visits from people or send and receive letters, so their ability to communicate is not unreasonably restricted. Also, because of the many illegal activities that can be arranged over the phone, including drug deals, murder orders and prison breaks, the courts have often upheld the right of prisons to restrict phone use as a reasonable security measure.

Despite the disparities among prison telephone regulations, most prisons share some common ground rules for their inmates. For instance, prisons maintain that inmates must make only collect calls. Also, prisons may request the inmate submit a list of 10 people he or she can call. In addition, prisons also will often stipulate that inmates cannot receive incoming calls unless there is an emergency.

Prisons' phone regulations are not alike. Take a look at a few extremes:

For federal prisons, the rules are a bit more unified. Before the 1980s, prisoners in federal facilities were commonly only allowed one personal phone call every three months [source: Fine]. Since then, however, the rules have been loosened, and inmates have the opportunity to make calls much more frequently. This, however, has meant that it has become easier for these inmates to conduct illegal activities over the phone, as monitoring all of these conversations is virtually impossible for the meager-sized staffs assigned to the duty.

On the next page, we'll talk about the practice and legality of tapping prison telephone calls.

If the First Amendment can't give prisoners unlimited phone access, surely the Fourth Amendment's protection from "unreasonable searches and seizures" can protect the privacy of the calls they are permitted to make. Not really, according to the courts. Except for an inmate's discussion with a lawyer, prisons are free to tap into personal phone conversations.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has pointed out that court cases stipulate prisoners can't expect the same privacy in jail as they'd be entitled to otherwise [source: BOP]. And, by the courts' logic, the security concerns constitute a reasonable search. In addition, because prisons make sure to give inmates ample warning that their conversations are recorded, prisoners haven't had much luck trying to challenge this practice [source: BOP].

Even though prisons are free to listen to telephone conversations, inmates still have managed to find clever ways around this surveillance. The Texas Offender's Handbook, for instance, clarifies that inmates must not talk in code or unintelligibly, which implies prisoners have attempted to do so in the past [source: TDCJ]. The Office of the Inspector General, which oversees the BOP, has issued concerns that there isn't enough man power or training for telephone monitoring staffs to successfully tackle the amount of crimes that are committed over prison phones [source: Fine]. To help monitor calls, prisons can employ voice authentication technology, which verifies the identity of the person called [source: Tehrani]. Voice authentication involves recording someone's voice and saving it. From then on, when the prisoner wants to call that person, the technology can compare the sound of that person's voice (including, for instance, its particular frequencies) to the saved file [source: Gilhooly].

In addition, questions have come up in U.S. courts about whether an inmate is allowed to talk on the phone in a foreign language, since this could inhibit the prison's ability to monitor the conversation. Although it's a complicated issue, prisons have tried to accommodate the inmates by merely requiring that they get permission from an authorized social worker to talk on the phone in a language other than English [source: Farber]. A social worker can interview the prisoner to assess his or her risk level before granting the inmate permission for such a phone call.

Even with big brother listening in, many prisoners have successfully circumvented his surveillance simply by obtaining a cell phone. We'll discuss cell phone use in prisons next.

Another way for inmates to dodge prison eavesdropping is to gain their own phones. Prison authorities have found it's surprisingly easy for prison inmates to get their hands on working cell phones (with chargers to boot). One tipoff came from an inmate's mother who wrote to a warden in a Texas prison complaining that her son's cell phone reception was bad [source: Butterfield].

Cell phone accessibility has become a serious problem for prisons -- in addition to the crimes that inmates are known to commit over the phone. Gangs can organize themselves far more easily when members in prison have cell phones. For example, in 2006, incarcerated gang leaders in Brazil orchestrated large, synchronized riots using their cell phones, reportedly in order to prove their influence even behind bars [source: Reel]. The gang caused uprisings in more than 70 prisons, and meanwhile, members outside of the prison caused riots and wreaked havoc on public busses and police stations. Gangs transcend prison bars in the U.S., too, where gang leaders have been able to wield their power from inside prison walls -- even ordering gang murders [source: Dolan].

So, how do inmates get their hands on cell phones? Apparently, visitors and corrupt prison guards have been known to furnish these phones to inmates. To help combat this phenomenon, several states have attempted to crack down by making the repercussions more serious. Courts have allowed punishments for those found with a cell phone on the basis that these conversations cannot be monitored and are thus a security threat [source: Farber]. Several states have made it a crime for a prisoner to have a cell phone, and some are looking to raise that crime to the level of felony [source: Wolverson].

Unfortunately for prisons, cell phone jamming (interfering with radio waves to block cell phone communication) is not a viable option -- at least not in the U.S., where cell phone jamming devices are illegal as a result of property laws. In addition, even if prisons got permission to jam cell phone signals, the jammers could also interrupt the prison's radio signals [source: Butterfield]. Despite these concerns, jails in other countries, such as England, have implemented jammers because of the prevalence of cell phones [source: Northern Echo].

However, some argue that cell phone smuggling simply is a reaction to the outrageous costs inmates' families incur when they must accept collect calls from prison. We'll take a look at that controversy on the next page.

One of the most important advantages of the telephone is that it allows separated families to stay emotionally connected despite geographic and physical barriers. This can be especially important when it comes to prisoners. They can continue to talk to their kids, spouses or parents.

However, jails refuse to incur the costs of inmates' long distance phone calls. Consequently, jails require that prisoners always call collect, meaning that the receiving party accepts the charges of the call. Therefore, in order for prisoners to keep in touch with their spouses, parents and/or children, the family needs to foot the phone bill. When the phone bill arrives, many of these families notice that it is oddly high. That's because phone companies charge much more for a collect call from prison than they would a collect call from any other place.

Looking to cash in on the fact that prisoners are required to call collect, prisons enter into contracts with phone companies that charge exorbitant rates for those calls. In return for this contract, the phone company agrees to share the extra profits with the prison. For example, one protest group claimed the a 15-minute collect call made from an inmate at San Quentin Prison to Oakland would be $5, whereas an equivalent collect call made from outside prison would be about $2.55.

This practice is common in prisons all over the U.S., and New York state prisons have collected about $20 million a year by accepting 57 percent of the phone company's revenue from prisoners' calls [source: Kalish]. Although many believe these rates are unfair, prisons often defend the practice by pointing out that the money covers prison security costs -- for example, it would cover telephone call monitoring expenses. Courts have tried to hammer out this issue, but in many cases, they've decided that the practice doesn't violate equal protection rights, and the recipients who agree to accept the charges of the collect call are limited to the rights of the prisoner who makes the call [source: AELE]. Federal courts have also maintained that prisoners in federal prisons don't have a right to a specific phone rate.

In order to help out these families, a call forwarding service can act as the middle-man and cut the costs of these phone calls. This kind of service is set up close to a prison so that the prisoner calls its number locally. Then the service, which gets competitively-low long distance rates from the phone company, connects the prisoner to a long distance number. One of these services, "Outside Connections" in New York, claims it saves prisoners' families about 12 cents a minute [source: Kalish]. However, prisons claim these services are a security risk, and prisons have been known to punish inmates for using them.

Not all these complaints about unfair phone rates have fallen on deaf ears. South Dakota prisons have instituted a system where prisoners can set up prepaid debit accounts for prison telephone calls [source: SD DOC]. Not only does this let the inmate pay for his or her own phone calls, but the debit account system is a cheaper alternative to collect calls, according to the South Dakota Department of Corrections.

Though telecommunications can lead to security breaches and a variety of abuses, prisoners' phone calls can help them stay emotionally connected to family and friends. This connection, many say, actually contributes to a prisoner's rehabilitation [source: Fernandez].

For more information on prison and telecommunications technology, read the links on the next page.