How Prison Phone Calls Become A Tax On The Poor.

 

Whilst the prisons should be a correctional facility, where people are rehabilitated while being remanded for their offences, it has somewhat become the opposite in Nigeria. It is like the place where you go to that you may or may not return. People thrown into prisons join the multitude of people, guilty people, innocent people who have found themselves in the spot with little or no help forthcoming. Continue Reading and see more picture after cut...


The number of awaiting trial inmates in different prisons is alarming. Some people have spent eight years waiting for trial. These are factors that the government should look into. The current state of the prisons is really saddening. 

Il give this real life experience of a mother whose daughter was put in prison and has to pay so much in an organised society and compare to the Nigerian situation.
 
 
 On a recent sticky morning in a trailer park in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mary Jo Barnett switched on her 8-inch Samsung Galaxy tablet to speak with her 20-year-old daughter, Amber, who suffers from bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Amber is currently locked up 490 miles away in the Marion County Jail in Ocala, Florida, and these video visits are her only lifeline to her family and the outside world. 

Without communication, Mary Jo says she fears her daughter may suffer a mental breakdown or start a fight, which could lengthen her jail sentence. “Just getting to talk to her and interacting with her can make the difference in her mindset,” Mary Jo says. 
Communication, however, is enormously expensive for Mary Jo, a 52-year-old grandmother who lives on $733 monthly disability checks. 

The video visitations cost $10 per 30-minute visit, or $19.99 per month. Phone calls, meanwhile, cost $3.98 for every 15 minutes, plus a $9.95 fee to load money into an account.  Part of the reason the calls are so expensive is because a private company, Securus Technologies, has an exclusive contract to operate the phone and video visitation system in the jail. But an even larger reason the phone calls are so expensive is because the local sheriff’s office takes a large cut of the money, called a “commission.” Last year, Marion County received $549,804.52 in commissions from Securus, according to contracts and financial documents obtained by International Business Times through a records request. 
Studies have consistently shown that communication with family members lowers the rates of inmate recidivism. But calls are often too expensive for lower-income people, which make up the vast majority of those who are incarcerated. 

Mary Jo, who recently had to borrow money from Amber’s older sister to load money into her account, says she’s thankful she can even speak to her daughter at all. She has a tablet computer, which means she can sign up for the video visitations for $19.99 per month. But she says other inmates in the jail have it much worse. In fact, she says that her daughter will relay messages from inmates whose families can’t afford the calls at all. 

“It’s mainly hard on her children. They can’t speak to their mother. Because I can’t afford it. I can only do like $20 per month. That’s all I can afford. That’s only three phone calls.”

Pretty much all of the messages, she says, are pleas from inmates to family members to place more money on the inmate’s commissary and phone accounts. But often, she says, the family member will just say they can’t afford it. “Some of them just say, ‘Hi, I love you,’” she says. 

In this way, Mary Jo has met Omarah Zemorah, a 42-year-old resident of Ocala, Florida, and the mother of a 24-year-old inmate, Estrella King, who is pregnant with her fourth child. Zemorah, who makes $8 an hour as a cashier, says her daughter, who is locked up because she violated her parole, will sell her food to other inmates in order to get them to relay messages to her and her children. “I can’t afford to talk to her,” Zemorah says. “My daughter sells her trays [of food] inside the county to be able to call me... It’s mainly hard on her children. They can’t speak to their mother. Because I can’t afford it. I can only do like $20 per month. That’s all I can afford. That’s only three phone calls.”

In my country Nigeria, U never have a phone conversation with an inmate. Aside from the ones who are able to bribe their way through their fellow inmates (much money) to make life easy for them.Its a Survuval of the fittest in there. 

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