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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:23 am
Time: 3:23 am
Results for prison telephone industry
1 results foundAuthor: Kukoroski, Drew Title: The Price To Call Home: State-Sanctioned Monopolization In The Prison Phone Industry Summary: Exorbitant calling rates make the prison telephone industry one of the most lucrative businesses in the United States today. This industry is so profitable because prison phone companies have state-sanctioned monopolistic control over the state prison markets, and the government agency with authority to rein in these rates across the nation has been reluctant to offer meaningful relief. Prison phone companies are awarded these monopolies through bidding processes in which they submit contract proposals to the state prison systems; in all but eight states, these contracts include promises to pay “commissions” — in effect, kickbacks — to states, in either the form of a percentage of revenue, a fixed up-front payment, or a combination of the two. Thus, state prison systems have no incentive to select the telephone company that offers the lowest rates; rather, correctional departments have an incentive to reap the most profit by selecting the telephone company that provides the highest commission. This market oddity — that the government entity has an incentive to select the highest bidder and that the actual consumers have no input in the bidding process — makes the prison telephone market susceptible to prices that are well-above ordinary rates for non-incarcerated persons. This fact, coupled with what economists would label as the “relative inelastic demand” that incarcerated persons and their families have to speak with one another, leads to exorbitant prices. The prison telephone market is structured to be exploitative because it grants monopolies to producers, and because the consumers — the incarcerated persons and their families who are actually footing the bills — have no comparable alternative ways of communicating. Details: Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2012. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 1, 2013 at: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/price_to_call_home.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/price_to_call_home.pdf Shelf Number: 128915 Keywords: Families of InmatesInmatesPrison Telephone IndustryPrisoners (U.S.) |