The Will of the Incarcerated Many, Subjugated by Those Suit-Wearing Few

All Of You, Dance Like You Want To WIN.

Back in October 2024, I had expressed joy in learning of the Martha Wright-Reed Act, and its then upcoming impact on prison communications.
Then, a few months ago, I talked a bit about the state of communication behind these concertina wires here in Florida.

In this last gap, the cost of mailing a letter within the USA has increased another five cents to 78¢ plus the cost of an envelope (17¢), a pack of paper ($2.71, 150 sheets) and a pen (34¢, Blue BIC RoundStic pen) if you don't have them. A phone call was supposed to decrease to just 6¢ per minute for we incarcerated many nationwide, thanks to the aforementioned Martha Wright-Reed Act.

Well, that decrease is not happening. In this presidency, the ones who benefit most are the surveillance companies pretending to be communications companies for the incarcerated. I am indeed taking potshots at ViaPath (né GTL), who supply phone service in Florida.

A competitor speaks!

Here, our tablets are provided by Securus (previously, Jpay), a direct and major competitor to ViaPath. While Securus offers phone services in their mélange of offerings as a company, they do not offer phone service in Florida prisons. In our Viewer app, Securus had this to say late last year about the phone rate changes, quoting:

PHONE CALLING
How does the Order impact phone calls?
The Order reduces the overall rates that providers may charge for phone calls and video sessions. If you are at a facility where current rates are above the Order's rate caps, the rates will be reduced in the future. The timing of these rate changes depends on a variety of factors, including our company's existing agreement with each facility. Adjustments to calling rates are generally determined by the facility size and expiration of their current service agreement. You can expect rate changes to take effect beginning in 2025, and no later than April of 2026.

With a hat tip to Bolts Magazine and their excellent article on prison phone calls in North Carolina, I learned the name of a human, appointed by this country's current president: Brendan Carr. This person's appointment resulted in a stay of implementation of the eagerly awaited rules that would benefit the public many in the form of a two-year waiver.

Policy Changes

There was also a mention of ViaPath's policy changes, in which we incarcerated souls only receive one five minute phone call per month, rather than per week, at no cost to us. What separates prisoners in Florida from our North Carolina comrades in captivity is prisoner pay. The vast, vast majority of us in prison in Florida earn nothing but Gain Time for our travails behind the fences, meaning that we can't even afford to pay for our own phone calls and must rely on the kindness and wallets of our loved ones outside to make a second phone call in a month now. As so, I'm reserving my five minute call for the latter part of the month, so I can communicate with a dear friend whose mother is fighting the Big C. I can at least reach her to ask if Mom is okay, but my ability to do that is hindered by our astronomical 20¢ per minute calls and the loss of even the short freebies on a device not catering toward hearing impairment.

Contradictory CEO Statement

Deb Alderson, CEO of ViaPath was quoted as saying, "[...] our primary commitment is to ensure no incarcerated person loses access to crucial connections with their loved ones", but did not even offer Florida prisoners the decency and courtesy of forewarning when the weekly five minute calls went away. We in Blessington found out by trying to call our loved ones and finding out the free call was not there. Three weeks after we found out on our own, a notice was pinned up by Administration in the wing about the new call policy, and its succinctly coded Screw You! if you are a new person on the compound between the 2nd and the last of the month: the free calls roll on the 1st only.

For those of you reading this now and wondering if your beloved husband, son, or brother is okay in Florida or North Carolina because you have not heard from them on the phone in a couple of weeks, please feel free to Dance like you WANT to WIN against ViaPath.

Tough Bites to Swallow

Right now, my little brother JJ is a month and a half from release. He's indigent -- he doesn't get money, because his family couldn't afford it before (due to exorbitant fees for money loads charged by HIG Capital, d/b/a Keefe Commissary Network and Access Corrections), and is not on his visitation list now (people must be on the visitation list to send money to prisoners in Florida). He was using his weekly calls to check up on his mother, his siblings, and nail down the last bits of his plans for his release such as where will he live when he leaves in late August?
He is justifiably distressed at the removal of a legitimate tool that follows the rules of the compound.
Writing letters from here would add 2-4 weeks of round trip on his communications, viewable only in 15 minute increments on a kiosk, meaning that by the time he gets answered, he's leaving this place for good... and without a clear path forward.

Another number of gentles here tells me their mothers are aging (70s to 80s in age), and the weekly check-ins they were doing going away hurts them deeply. In some cases, they have a little money they received from the outside; they now sacrifice a $4 stick of antiperspirant to the phone gods, that they might be able to call mama for a few minutes a week to make sure she is okay, and to receive her love while they can. Others can't even afford that, running indigent in incarceration with their books in the negatives from negligent medical "care" and their $5 fees.

I'm thinking back to my previous cellie -- we'll call him Painter -- who had the money to spend. The 5-minute call annoyed him, but the rules that were supposed to go into effect would have benefited him by reducing the overall cost of his calls that he used to stay in the lives of his sons. He has another decade to go in this system here, which means he misses the formative years of their lives, like their first goal at a football game, or first home run in baseball, the first time they rode their bike without training wheels... Spelling tests, puberty, possibly even graduation from High School.

These are stories repeated across the peninsular state of Florida, with echoes up the eastern seaboard. They are true, and these stories are silenced by rules that apply frequently to me, and not to thee.

Talk time is cheap.

In an age where cellular plans are getting cheaper and cheaper, where a carrier can offer you a $5 a month unlimited talk plan, someone help me to find logic in refusing to invest in a better outcome for justice-impacted individuals by reducing the cost for them to make phone calls, please.

If everyone were to take off their dance shoes, put on their protesting kicks, their lobbying loafers, and start pounding the pavement to move Florida and North Carolina to become the sixth and seventh states that gave everyone free calling, I expect there would be a positive difference.

Now if only I could actually use my tablet as a doggone phone... :)