[asterisk-biz] Asterisk for Inmate Communication Services?

[Michael Welter]

Denver county recently published an RFP for jail telephones.  It was 
obvious from the RFP that this was an income stream for the county.

Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-02-26 at 14:07 -0800, Douglas Garstang wrote:
>> Aren't pay phones the defacto standard for correctional facilities?
>>
>> Doug
>>
> They have a different line class in the US denoting they are from a
> correctional facility, and generally there is something like the
> truephone system (they have the BOP.gov contract) where inmates have
> money stored on an account and its a prepaid calling system.  The
> product itself I believe is called "ITS"
> 
> The way that the BOP wants it (and presumably others too) is
> recording of all calls held for 90 days unless marked for longer
> 	lawyer calls are supposed to be marked, and not 
> 	listened to but um yeah they listen they just dont
> 	use it in court - ask any federal lawyer
> ability to listen live to calls in progress
> daily and monthly total minute quotas
> lists of numbers allowed to be called
> 	all calls must be registered first,
> 	there is generally an intake phone that
> 	lets you call anyone collect only
> 
> 
> Each inmate is assigned a phone code, they have to use that 
> for all calls.  There is actually a lot of money in this given 
> that truephone charges like 20 cents/min for a US 48 call.
> 
> There are also some behind the scenes data manipulation going 
> on, one thing that is often done is cross referencing inmates that
> have the same number, that way they can see if inmates are sharing
> their phone codes with someone else.  This is done either by extortion
> or outright purchasing of the minutes.  Generally they resolve this by
> flagging the inmates account, when a call is made they will listen and 
> ask the guard in that block to identify the inmate at phone X to 
> see if its the right one.
> 
> So its more than just a normal payphone at many of the facilities.  
> And some of them are doing deals to get basically kickbacks for the 
> usage of the phone, where the super high charges made are in part that 
> high so the jail can get some extra cash from people who are forbidden 
> from actually working for that money.
> 
> 

-- 
Michael Welter
Telecom Matters Corp.
Denver, Colorado US
+1.303.414.4980
mike at TelecomMatters.net
www.TelecomMatters.net