Costs of Inmates' Calls Cut

In what some are calling the first tax cut of the Spitzer administration, New York is slashing the cost of phone calls between prison inmates and their families, friends, and lawyers by more than half.

Governor Spitzer said yesterday that starting April 1, the state will no longer collect a share of the gross revenue generated by the state prison collect call service operated by Verizon Communications.

Critics of the contract said the commission paid to the state is tantamount to a kickback and the extra collect call fees passed on to the families of inmates is a backdoor tax on one segment of the population. People calling inmates and the 68,000 prisoners calling the outside world must use the collect service and pay the fees.

State prisons in New York charge the highest fees among correction facilities in the nation — about five times the 7-cents-a-minute rate it costs to contact federal inmates.

Under the current terms, the cost of a 20-minute phone call is $6.20, which includes a $3 connection fee. Spitzer officials said the total charge would drop to about $3 under a renegotiated contract.

The state has been collecting between 57.5% and 60% of the gross revenue from the service since it first negotiated a contract in 1996 with MCI, which later merged with Verizon. The deal with the phone company has generated about $16 million a year for the State Department of Correctional Services, which has used the money for a Family Benefit Fund to pay for family inmate services such as nurseries.

Spitzer officials say the state will make up for the lost revenue by squeezing money out of the prison department and that the fund will not be affected.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal organization suing the state on behalf of three relatives of inmates to challenge the collection of the fees, estimates that inmates have paid about $175 million in excess fees between 1996 and 2004.

The New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, is hearing arguments on the case today. The center is seeking a court order eliminating the commission and providing a recovery of excess fees, while lawyers for the Department of Correctional Services contend that a statute of limitations to challenge the most recently negotiated contract lapsed in 2003, months before the case was filed.

Spitzer officials said it wasn't known what impact the governor's action would have on the case.