John,
When over 2.2 million incarcerated people are separated from the ones they love, something as simple as a phone call can mean so much. Hearing the voice of someone we care about, sharing a story about their day, wishing them a good night, or telling them “I love you,” are invaluable moments but in some facilities, a 15-minute phone call can cost up to $21.801 That means that calling someone as infrequently as every other day could cost a family over $300 a month. Prison telecom companies like Securus, have sought to place a price on human connection--- and have been cashing out in the process.
The presence of prison telecom companies is not new but they have managed to operate under obscurity and by staying away from the public eye, they’ve remained on the periphery of national conversations about criminal justice reform. That’s why Color of Change is dragging these companies into the light by developing new online tools and campaigns that will target these corporate profiteers-- but we need to raise $25,000 to do it.
For over 4 years, Color Of Change has been in this fight against the prison telecom industry- and we’ve been winning:
- In 2015, we worked with partners to stop the egregious price gouging that telecom companies were engaging in, where in some states calls could cost up to $14 per minute! By pressuring the Federal Communications Commission we helped set rate caps on these prison phone calls.
- Last year, we achieved a major victory by making jail phone calls free in New York, a city that had been extracting $8 million annually in jail phone calls alone.
Now, we’re taking this work even further with new projects and campaigns targeting the prison telecom industry. This includes, Carceral Co., a website we’re developing that will expose the private companies that invest in, provide services for, and profit off mass incarceration. Users will be able to dive into different types of industries, such as telecom, and interact with features like monthly fee calculators, or simulations of what a Securus call sounds and feels like, in order to understand the financial and emotional impact of incarceration and learn what they can do to help mobilize against it. But we need your help to make this groundbreaking tool a reality.
Securus may be a major player in the prison telecom industry, but it exists as just one of many companies that contract with correctional facilities to provide everything from prison meals to overpriced commissary products. Given that major companies are so deeply tied to the carceral system, Color Of Change refuses to accept money from corporations. That makes contributions from everyday people like yourself all the more crucial.
We already know that the criminal justice system is not “broken,” it’s operating exactly the way that it was intended to: stripping Black people of our freedoms, separating families, and exploiting the most vulnerable to turn a profit. Our next step is understanding every aspect of that profit incentive in order to expose who has the biggest stake in upholding the system as it currently stands. When we wield that knowledge and our collective power, we can realize a world where mass incarceration is not big business and where the liberation of our people takes precedence over protecting corporate bottom lines.
Until Justice is Real,
--Clarise, Rashad, Arisha, Scott, Erika, Malachi, Marybeth, Marena, Madison, Leonard, Tamar, and the rest of the Color Of Change team
References:
1. "State of Phone Justice." Prison Policy Initiative. February 2019. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/193707?t=6&akid=36387%2E4731121%2ERmIAd6
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