It’s a lot more expensive to reach out and touch someone in jail. Just ask LA County.
A county supervisor railed today against the telecommunications company that provides phone service to county jail inmates and pushed for sheriff's staffers to “move full speed ahead” to hang up on the vendor.
“This deal is a scandal,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who alleged that Global Tel Link charges more than any other telephone company in any other jail system in the nation.
The board directed county staffers in April 2008 to develop a bid request for the telephone contract. Apparently there was a small disconnect. Documentation from that time showed charges of $3.54 per minute for the first minute of an inmate call and 10 cents for every minute after that.
“This is an indefensible kind of charge that we're assessing,” Yaroslavsky said.
The supervisor alleged that the county, which gets about $14 million a year via the telephone contract, will make more money by lowering the rate. The number of calls are dropping off, because families won't accept collect calls at these rates, he said.
The discussion came up in the context of the sheriff's budget and a report filed by sheriff's staffers, showing how the department would offset a $25 million shortfall.
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As part of the county's effort to reduce contract costs, sheriff's staff had spoken to Global Tel Link about the terms of a possible contract extension. The company had offered to pay $2 million to the sheriff's Inmate Welfare Fund in exchange for a two-year extension.
Victor Rampulla, director of the sheriff's administrative services division, said that $2 million was not necessary to balance the sheriff's budget, and an extension was not assumed as part of the sheriff's report.
“The plan was to have an RFP on the street by the end of 2009,” Rampulla said, saying the department would stick to that plan. He agreed to return to the board in 30 days with a report on the status of the RFP for a new contractor.
