Telephone Justice

Ethical Cornerstones
A commitment to restorative justice means addressing the hurt of each person whose life has been touched by crime. Retributive justice often reflects the spirit of vengeance and ignores the systemic societal dimensions associated with crime. The challenge is to incapacitate offenders in a manner that limits violence, and holds open the possibility of conversion and restoration. (ELCA Statement on the Death Penalty).

Restorative justice points to government responsibility for
· protecting society.
· promoting wholeness of life (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
· encouraging family support (support of loved ones is essential for wholeness of individual and society).

Problems with Present Prison Telephone Plan
· The average person receiving a collect call from a person in prison can expect to pay 630% more for the call than if the call was received from someone outside the prison system.
· Collect calls from a person in prison cost $3 to initiate the call and 16 cents per minute.
· Verizon/MCI advertises rates as low as $5 per month and 5 cents per minute to the general public.
· The average prison phone call is billed at 19 minutes, costing just over $6.
· Verizon/MCI kicks back 57.5% of their profits to the Department of Correctional Services (DOCS), which gains almost $16 million a year and more than $175 million in the last ten years from the arrangement.
· The benefits received by Verizon/MCI and DOCS come at the expense of New York’s most impoverished families.

What Will Help
S5299-C (Nozzolio)/A07231-C (Aubry) would do four things:
· Require facilities to emphasize cost to the telephone user when procuring telephone service.
· Offer people in prison either a "debit" or "collect call" system or a combination thereof
· Under the "debit" system, funds may be deposited into an account to pay for station-to-station calls
· A "collect call" system shall provide the lowest market rates available
· Prohibit the Department of Corrections from accepting or receiving revenue in excess of reasonable operating cost for establishing and administering telephone system services
· Direct the Corrections Department to establish rules and regulations to ensure that any prison phone system provide reasonable measures to safeguard the security and privacy of correctional facility staff and persons outside a facility who may receive calls.

(5/2006)