When I heard that Genesee County Jail (located in Southeast Michigan, servicing Flint, among other cities) would be offering video chatting for people visiting inmates, I was at first intrigued. I am a long time digital justice organizer, and so I was aware that because so few corporations provide phone service to prisons and jails, the corporations that do service these areas have a virtual monopoly over a literally captive consumer base. As a result, phone corporations often charge as much for a 15 minute call as they did for an entire month of non-prison/jail service. What makes this even worse is that the inmate population is often extremely poor with very poor job prospects once they are out of jail. Or, in other words, they are the people least likely to be able to afford high prices even as they have no other choice but to use the service.
So, yes, I was intrigued with the idea of video chatting for visitations. With video chatting, families could visit imprisoned family members from the facility or home. They could visit multiple times a week without the heavy toll long drives and hours long waits often take on them, especially if they are lugging small children along. They could also use video chatting to bypass the high cost of phone calls, which still remain unaffordable for many, even with the FCC’s new regulations.
But as I began looking more closely at the new system and how it would be run, all sorts of red flags began popping up. The biggest and reddest flag being that the corporation that is offering the video chatting for visitation is one of the same corporations that the FCC said was monopolizing and price gouging the prison/jail phone market. Securus Technologies, based in Texas, offers phone, video and email communication services to prisons and jails throughout the US. It was also one of two corporations that petitioned against the FCC regulations.
Digging around more, I was not surprised to see that the video services Securus offers remain unregulated. I was even less surprised to find out that there is a wildly inconsistant payment schedule for different jails using the services. Securus proposed charging Dallas County inmates $10 for a single 20 minute chat, while a jail in Tavis County, Texas is paying $20 for a 20 minute chat. Genesee County inmates will be paying $5 for their 20 minute chats. There is no explanation as to why rates are so vastly different or what, if any, differences there will be in the services.
Even worse, hidden in the contracts that jails are signing is a clause that mandates that in person visits with inmates end or get severely limited by the jail. In other words, families would no longer be able to see their loved one in person during visits, but would instead be restricted to the flat screen of a video chat. While jail officials and Securus both repeatedly state that these restrictions are meant to help curtail fights that happen at visits or contraband being snuck into the jail, it’s hard not to notice that when the FCC enacted their regulations on phone calls, Securus said they stood to lose up to $10 million in revenue. A more cynical view of the visit restrictions coupled with the inconsistent pricing of video chatting might be that Securus found a way to ensure a new revenue stream. What could be better for a corporation than an imprisoned imprisoned consumer base that has no other choice but to use their services? Unfortunately, yet again, it is the people who are least likely to be able to afford the cost that now have no choice but to use the services if they want to see their loved ones.
Among some of the other red flags that popped up for me is the digital divide and recognizing that many communities still, after all these years, lag far behind wealthy communities on access to computer and internet technology. Many communities I’ve worked with through the years still see the majority of people without regular access to computers or who can only access the internet through their phones. What does this mean for all those communities and their supposed ability to have visits from their homes? The jail in Genesee County will have portals for visitors to use, but there is no evidence that all jails are required to have portals. How are people who either use their phones or the library to access the internet (if they are able to do even those things) supposed to do to visit their loved ones? This places an extremely unfair and particularly heavy burden on communities to find their own computers and internet access to communicate with their loved ones.
Another glaring red flag is that all of the videos are going to be surveilled and stored. I was unable find any mention of how long the videos will be stored or who will be storing them. Knowing how the storage of communication by the general population is being used by the NSA, this surveillance and storage brings up several questions particular to inmate populations. If you are arrested at 18, can what you say then in a video chat be used against you when you’re arrested at 45? Even if you weren’t convicted at 18? Could it be used to show a “pattern” and thus increase your sentence? What about the video created by those who are found innocent? What happens to their videos? Another less immediate issue, but still very important to consider: how will having a surveilled jail visit in the “comfort” of your own home blur the boundaries around private citizen and what can and can’t be surveilled or controlled by the government?
I don’t think that video chatting as a communication option for inmates is an entirely evil choice. As I mentioned, it can actually help a great deal with a lot of problems that families who have loved ones in jail are negotiating. My problem is when video chatting, and especially video chatting that families and inmates must pay for, is the only choice. There are simply too many opportunities for corruption and human rights abuses to occur. The video chatting implemented in Genesee County and other jail systems across the US reeks of a scam that a corporation that saw its profits limited by regulation in one area is now using to make unregulated profits in another.