A CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PRISON PHONE SCAM

ONE OF THE MAIN lifelines to family for California's 161,000 convicts
locked away in 33 far-flung prisons is the collect telephone call.

Phone calls to the outside world are an important privilege that inmate
advocates insist is vital to rehabilitating prisoners and keeping families
together.

So it was disturbing to learn that the state Department of General
Services' contracts with phone carriers -- MCI and GTE -- gouge inmates and
provide a handsome commission to the state's general fund from each call.

Chronicle staff writer Deborah Solomon reports General Services, which bids
state contracts, picks phone companies that give the largest kickbacks to
state coffers, rather than the lowest rates for inmates. MCI pays the state
44 cents on the dollar, GTE pays 33 cents.

Last year, the state received $16 million from inmate phone calls.
Commissions are expected to exceed $20 million next year as the prison
population grows and phone rates increase.

Those are unseemly profits made at the expense of convicts and their
families, who are often in financial distress.

Currently the 2,400 prison phones -- some 32 percent of the state's pay
phones -- yield 75 percent of the state's pay phone revenues.

It doesn't take an accountant to see the inequity: a 15-minute collect
phone call from San Quentin Prison to Oakland costs about $5, compared to
$2.55 just outside the walls.

Solomon writes of the plight of an Oakland single mother of two who went
broke after amassing $400 monthly phone bills from the father of her
children locked up in San Quentin.

The woman eventually limited the calls to one a week, but Solomon notes
some families are unable to afford the high phone rates, and have lost
contact with inmate relatives altogether.

Advocates warn that inmates who do not maintain outside connections are far
likelier to return to crime when they are released from prison.

California is due to rebid its pay-phone contracts next month. When it
does, the state should consider not just commissions, but the practical
rehabilitative powers of phone calls and family contacts.

The state should make it clear to phone companies that such obscene profits
at the expense of inmates and their families are unfair, unacceptable and
bad public policy.