{"id":1417,"date":"2014-01-07T17:21:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T21:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=1417"},"modified":"2024-08-05T13:56:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T17:56:19","slug":"nyt-1-7-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/nyt-1-7-14\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times editorial cites PPI research on correctional video communication industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/01\/07\/opinion\/unfair-phone-charges-for-inmates.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/newsthumbs\/nyt-1-7-2014-250w.png\" alt=\"New York Times thumbnail\" width=\"250\" height=\"212\" class=\"reportcover right\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today the <i>New York Times<\/i> issued a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/01\/07\/opinion\/unfair-phone-charges-for-inmates.html\">strong editorial<\/a> praising the Federal Communications Commission for acting to <a href=\"\/blog\/2013\/11\/13\/fcc-register\/\">regulate<\/a> inter-state prison phone call charges, and proclaiming: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The commission now needs to be on the lookout for \u2014 and crack down on, if necessary \u2014 similar abuses involving newer communication technologies like person-to-person video chat, email and voice mail.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The editorial cites our <a href=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/phones\/filings\/6017482105.pdf\">recent submission<\/a> to the FCC detailing why it should keep an eye on the prison and jail video communication and email markets:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/phones\/filings\/6017482105.pdf\">An analysis<\/a> provided last month to the commission by the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts research group, urged similar rules for video visitation, email, voice mail and other systems. It said that for-profit video visitation systems (allowing families and inmates to talk using, in some instances, personal computers outside the prison and video terminals inside) are being &#8220;driven by the same perverse incentives that caused market failure in the correctional telephone industry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Absent regulation, prisons and phone companies will simply use the video chats to get around the price caps on interstate calls.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the technology, gouging prison inmates and their families is both unfair and counterproductive, weakening family ties that could be critical to an inmate\u2019s adjustment to the world beyond bars.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to weigh in, too, please do so on the <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20151117093632\/http:\/\/apps.fcc.gov\/ecfs\/proceeding\/view?name=12-375\">FCC&#8217;s website<\/a> before the current comment period closes on Monday, January 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;\u2026the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts research group, urged similar rules for video visitation, email, voice mail and other systems.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16283,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions\/16283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}