It's easy to feel sorry for the city fathers of Sayre, OK, which recently lost its biggest cash cow, a privately-run prison, in an arcane dustup over long-distance phone rates charged to inmates. (In a demographic twist that probably makes perfect sense in the world of for-profit penology, the facility housed 989 prisoners from Wisconsin.) Then you read down to the part of this New York Times story that contains the financial details: AT&T and the town split, roughly 60-40, the revenues from the prisoner calls, which ran to $3.95 for a connection and 89 cents per minute, or about $22 for a 20-minute call.
October 13, 2003
Bill Barol
I'm a freelance writer in Santa Monica, Ca. But what I really want to do is not get paid for blogging.
this is pretty standard prison phone rates in the U.S, hard to see why they this bit of gouging should be a problem.
Posted by: bryan | October 20, 2003 at 02:37 PM