PRISONERS OF HIGH PHONE RATES

What is it with the state of Florida's willingness to treat telephone
customers so shabbily? It allows residential customers to be taken
advantage of. And then it takes advantage of citizens on the outside
of the prison system who have friends or family on the inside.

Last year, the Legislature changed the law to allow the largest
residential telephone rate in state history. Not exactly in the spirit
of the season, the Public Service Commission handily approved the rate
increase just before Christmas. Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist
believed the law was so unfair that he intervened at the PSC hearing
- -- and is appealing the decision to the Florida Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, The Miami Herald reported that a Seattle-based human
rights magazine is suing the Florida Department of Corrections in
federal court. The magazine has been banned from the state's prison
system because it contains an advertisement that tells inmates how to
avoid a highpriced long-distance service and use a lower-priced
service to make collect calls instead.

A DOC memo said Prison Legal News contains "advertisements that
encourage phone companies other than those assigned to the
institution."

Roughly translated: The state could lose a big pile of money if this
catches on.

MCI is the state-authorized long-distance carrier. An inmate can make
a collect call for $4 for five minutes -- an 80-cent-aminute rate that
would send anyone with a free choice to a competitor. The state then
gets a cut of the profit for allowing MCI to provide the service.

For the fiscal year ended 2003, it was a tidy sum indeed: $16.6
million.

The Prison Legal News offers an ad for Outside Connection. Using
what's termed "call routing technology," the company sets up a local
telephone number that an inmate can access from prison. When that
number is dialed, the call is rerouted to the inmate's friend or
family member. A company spokesman said bills

are cut by half or more in most cases.

"It's a perfectly legal way to help prisoners' families avoid being
gouged with unconscionable long-distance rates," said Mickey Gendler,
attorney for Prison Legal News, to The Herald. The Florida Justice
Institute is also representing the magazine in court. Institute
attorney Randall Berg said the state's ban on the magazine "is the
kind of censorship you'd expect in Cuba or Iraq, but not in America."

Set up in mid-2002 by an exconvict who was upset by the high rates his
parents had to pay for his calls from prison, Outside Connection is
accustomed to such shenanigans by prison officials trying to protect
their telephone gold mine.

MCI had a contract to provide service to New York's state prison, and
blocked telephone numbers set up by Outside Connection. And the state
of New York's corrections system declared the service an illegal
company, and, citing security concerns, instituted its own blocking of
calls.

A spokesman for the Florida DOC told The Herald that DOC Secretary
James Crosby recently stepped in to help the friends and families of
inmates. "MCI wanted to increase the rate recently, but DOC Secretary
Crosby said it was high enough," the spokesman said.

It sure was. What a prince of a fellow.