Out of prison, into a business crusade

When Brian Prins was released from prison in May 2002, the first thing he did - before he saw his parents, before he met with his friends, before he bought himself a decent meal - was head to a small, spanking new office on Long Island, N.Y.

His goal: to start a business that would reduce the crippling phone rates prisoners' families pay to keep in touch with their loved ones. But after 16 months, his company, Outside Connection Inc., is almost bankrupt because a powerful alliance of big business and state government has taken aim at Mr. Prins' operation.

The result is a classic battle that pits prisons, which cite the high costs of their phone security, against inmates' families and prison advocates, who claim the arrangement violates freedom of speech, gouges customers, and protects a monopoly. (Prins' family phone bills ran as high as $1,000 a month when he was incarcerated.) Lawsuits are pending in New York and other states.

"Effectively, this is a tax that's been imposed on inmates' families without legislation," says Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who has filed class- action suits on behalf of families.

The battle stems from the strange and little-known workings of the prison telephone industry.

Most states require inmates to make collect phone calls. And because these states (with a few notable exceptions, like Nebraska) have struck lucrative, exclusive deals with major telecom companies, they force inmate families to pay collect rates as much as four times higher than regular customers pay.

In New York, the Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) has a contract with MCI/WorldCom that gives the company exclusive control over prison telephone services and allows it to boost long-distance rates to 16 cents a minute on top of a $3 hookup fee for every call. Until August, MCI and DOCS charged as much as 36 cents a minute for long-distance calls but opted to reduce those rates and double the cost of local calls, which also require a $3 fee.

In exchange, the state keeps more than 60 percent of MCI's revenue from prison calls. Last year, DOCS netted roughly $24 million.

Prison officials defend the policy, explaining that the higher cost pays for extra security measures that allow them to monitor the numbers inmates dial, whom they talk to, and what they talk about.

Without these measures, they say, inmates could hatch escape plots or dial numbers that have not been approved by prison authorities.

To avoid undermining prison security, "there is no third-party calling," says Linda Foglia, a DOCS spokeswoman.

The department contends Prins's company supplies an "illegal call-forwarding service" and acknowledges punishing a number of inmates for using it.

But Prins describes the department's security concerns as more ruse than reality. "I designed the system not to interfere with security," he says, explaining that his service does not stop prisons from recording phone conversations and that he offered to supply the agency with daily billing information for inmate calls.

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