Prison system changes inmate phone service to EMBARQ

CARSON CITY -- A state panel headed by Gov. Jim Gibbons voted Tuesday for a new contract giving families of Nevada prison inmates a break on phone charges. But the costs for some calls from convicts will run as much as $1 a minute.

The Board of Examiners approved a $7.2 million, three-year contract with EMBARQ, a Kansas-based communication services company, for the entire Nevada prison system, now housing about 13,000 inmates. The company also provides such services in many other states.

"It's a tough call," Gibbons said when asked about the costs for families. But he said a percentage of the revenue goes to an inmate welfare fund that's used to help cover costs of a library and other services for inmates.

"If you don't want to pay those prices, don't go to prison," Gibbons added.

Pat Hines of Friends and Families of Incarcerated Persons said she was disappointed with the board's action, and her group may ask the 2009 Legislature to force cuts in costs of the phone system. She termed the state's cut from EMBARQ profits a "kickback."

Hines said many states are going to far cheaper calling arrangements and getting rid of the profit-sharing percentage to a state that "comes from nowhere but off the backs of the families" of inmates.

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 nonlocal call within the state to $2.73 for 16 minutes. With a surcharge added, that's 17 cents a minute. The $2.73 compares with the old charge of $4.48.

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.

Prison officials say the contract is a good deal for inmate families, even though the costs are far above what the general public pays. They said without the contract inmates wouldn't have any phone service.

The rates charged by MCI had been criticized by an inmates-rights advocacy group that said the prison system was making money on that arrangement through a clause that gave the prison half the profits. Hines said the state's percentage cut from EMBARQ will be 54 percent, up from 52 percent with MCI.

A paper by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, has criticized high phone rates at prisons in other states, calling them "corporate exploitation" and noting that calls from all federal prisons cost just seven cents a minute.