{"id":977,"date":"2013-09-10T12:06:02","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T16:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=977"},"modified":"2014-09-25T13:21:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T17:21:40","slug":"huffpo-securus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/10\/huffpo-securus\/","title":{"rendered":"A prison phone industry giant said what??"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <i>Huffington Post<\/i> just published the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/09\/09\/prison-phone-call-fcc_n_3894556.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&#038;ir=Politics\">first article<\/a> we&#8217;ve seen on prison phone market regulation that includes a public interview with Richard Smith, the CEO of Securus, which is the second-largest corporation in the prison telephone industry.<\/p>\n<p>In the year we\u2019ve spent doing <a href=\"\/phones\/\">detailed analyses<\/a> of this industry\u2019s shenanigans, we can\u2019t help having gotten a little jaded. But the industry keeps on shocking us with new lows. Here&#8217;s a teaser from the article.<\/p>\n<p>First, Mr. Smith likens corporate phone companies to selfless public servants:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost like throwing firemen and policemen under the bus, it just isn&#8217;t fair.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>He then turns right around and admits that the corporate bottom line is his top priority:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It isn&#8217;t an altruistic business. It&#8217;s a business for profit. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The article also cites our work, pointing out that in the few weeks since the FCC has voted to regulate the prison phone industry Securus has actually <a href=\"\/blog\/2013\/09\/05\/securus-fees-2\/\">raised its deposit fees<\/a> <i>even higher<\/i>. Now, instead of costing $7.95 to make a deposit over the phone, Securus charges $9.95.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Huffington Post just published the first article we\u2019ve seen on the prison phone regulation that includes a public interview with the CEO of Securus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","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=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}