A study conducted in 2010 reported that, in the US, there are more mentally ill people in jails than hospitals. Lack of proper contact with family members due to overpriced prison calls can further inflate this statistic. The study also found that the percentage of inmates and prisoners with serious mental illness had shoot up […]
Thanks to President Donald Trump, America’s private prisons appear to be entering a golden age. The stocks of the two biggest private prison operators — CoreCivic (formerly know as Corrections Corp. of America) and Geo Group — have doubled since election day. CoreCivic (CXW) is up 140% since Trump won in November; Geo Group (GEO) […]
Jeremy Barrett remembers very little of the assault that would change his life. He was at the end of a three-year sentence in a Florida state prison when he was caught stealing potatoes from the prison kitchen. As punishment, he was sent to confinement with a cellmate who, according to court filings, was “severely mentally […]
Almost a decade ago, a petition by the families of inmates tired of paying sky-high rates for prison telephone calls landed at the Federal Communications Commission. Martha Wright-Reed of the District, an 86-year-old former nurse who’s blind, and other petitioners didn’t think it was right for their incarcerated sons and daughters to pay so much […]
The cost of a phone call today is no more of a thought than the air we breathe. The cost of a phone call from prison, however, can take your breath away. For those who must pay such costs, which can easily average as much as a monthly luxury car payment, breathing just got a […]
