My guest today is author, attorney and progressive activist, Eric Lotke. Welcome back to OpEdNews, Eric.
JB: You've written two novels that have incarceration as a major theme and two of your most recent op-ed pieces are on the subject. Why are you fixated on our prisons?
EL: Heavens! I don't think I'm "fixated on prisons." But I do care a lot about justice. Unfortunately, in modern America, justice is wrapped up in (locked up in?) the prison system.
My new novel (Making Manna) takes a global view on prisons, humanity and the economy. My two recent op-eds each take on a specific issue about prisons.-- One is about private prisons and the other is about the exploitative pricing of phone calls from prison. But really they both go beyond prisons. Really they're about privatization and the abuse of public trust. Private prisons create a market for something that isn't actually needed;
prison phone companies engage in legalized extortion.
JB: How's that?
EL: The prison (or jail) phone companies charge people roughly a dollar per minute or $16 for a 15 minute phone call. Would you pay that much for a phone call? No. You'd change phone companies.
But families of people in prison are required to use the prison phone company, or not talk by phone at all. They're not allowed to mail pre-paid cards, use dial around services like 1-800-CALL-ATT, or change carriers. They must accept collect calls at the institutional rate or there's no phone. So the companies create an artificial monopoly and then take advantage of the captive market.
In a $16 (15 minute) phone call, the actual cost to provide the service might be roughly one dollar. The phone company keeps $5 as profit and pays the remaining $10 in commissions to the sheriff or whatever public agency grants the contract.
JB: Lovely for the phone company and the prison, less so for everyone else. Are you sure you're not exaggerating?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
