Caitlin Sepeda: Will county sheriff advocate for free inmate phone calls?

A provision in the House version of next year’s budget would require the state Department of Correction and county sheriffs to provide free phone calls to prisoners, with no cap on the number of minutes or calls. The $20 million bank created during last year’s legislative session remains available in order to cover this cost. A bill in both the state Senate and House aims to formally address this issue.

In an interview earlier this year on WHMP, Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, discussed how this issue could potentially affect the Hampshire County Jail and House of Corrections (HCJHC) given that the current phone contract (2020-2023) expires later this fall. It is up to the voters in this county, as they are the only group to whom the sheriff answers, to ask the sheriff about his plans for the new contract, whether he will waive the current 60.6% commission kickback in light of pending legislation and what other services might be included in a new contract and at what cost.

In 2018 the state auditor completed a financial audit of the HCJHC. The last page of the audit noted that the HCJHC uses approximately 58% of these kickbacks to provide legislatively required goods to those incarcerated via the Inmate Benefit Fund (IBF) rather than submitting adequate annual budget requests. This has long been the case. While legally allowable, whether this passes the ethical sniff test is up to voters, given that the IBF is nearly exclusively funded, to the tune of nearly $275,000 in FY2017, by phone and commissary commissions, which come directly from those incarcerated, or their families.

If contractual kickbacks are necessary in order to provide required goods, rather than appropriate fiscal planning and reasonable legislative requests, and a legal mandate would now exist that eliminates the call cost, what will the HCJHC do? How voraciously will the HCJHC advocate for free phone calls? It will be interesting to note the nature of any new telecom contract given the legislative proposals, audit recommendations and their level of implementation.

Caitlin Sepeda

South Hadley

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