New prison phone rates to give inmates’ families a break
CARSON CITY -- Families of state prisoners will get a break on charges for phone calls from locked-up relatives under a new contract announced by the Nevada Department of Corrections. But the prices are still high compared with phone call costs on the outside.
The $7.2 million, three-year contract with EMBARQ, a Kansas-based communication services company, covers the entire Nevada prison system, now housing about 13,000 inmates. The company also provides such services to prisons and jails in many other states.
With the EMBARQ system, prison officials say inmates' families will pay $1.45 for a local call lasting 16 minutes, down from $1.89. The $1.45 is a surcharge, and there's no per-minute rate.
The price jumps for a non-local call within the state to $2.73 for 16 minutes. With a surcharge added in, that's 17 cents a minute. The $2.73 compares with the old charge of $4.48 for the same call.
Out-of-state calls are down from more than $18 to $16.14 for the same 16-minute call. But that's about $1 a minute, surcharge included, not a lot less than what the outgoing provider, MCI, charged. On the outside, such calls could be made for a few cents a minute with a calling card.
Prison officials say the contract, up for approval at a Feb. 12 state Board of Examiners meeting, is a good deal for inmates' families -- even though the costs, especially for out-of-state calls, are far above what the general public pays. It's also a good deal for the state, which gets a percentage of the phone system profit.
"There are complaints due to the rates," prison spokesman Greg Smith said. "A lot of families do complain that it's expensive, but it's an intricate system, it's not cheap...We didn't negotiate this to create more revenue for us."
The rates charged by MCI had been criticized by an inmates-rights advocacy group that said the prison system was making money through a lucrative profit-sharing clause that gave the prison half the profits. The state's percentage cut from EMBARQ wasn't immediately available.
