Criminals Make 600mn Telephone Calls from Behind Bars

Did you know that the 2.2 million incarcerated criminals behind bars in our nation's jails have acces to inmate telephones? Did you know that they make several billions telephone call attempts and complete about 600 millions calls every year?

This industry is a growing $2.5 billion a year business with about 50% of the money kicked back to the institutions as commissions. Sure it's expensive for the inmate's friends and families to receive the collect calls or pay for the prepaid calls, but they do it so they can talk to their loved ones.

The inmates like it because they can continue their criminal activities from behind bars. Did you know that almost 70% of the criminals return to jail (recidivism) because they get caught committing new crimes or violating their parole conditions? That should tell you that when behind bars, they get their PHD on how to improve their criminal abilities. This is not make believe but a repeat of documented evidence.

And the vast majority of citizens don't know this practice and industry exists until they get a crank call from an inmate who tells them some cock and bull story about illegal incarceration and having problem dialing a number, and could the unsuspecting citizen help them complete the call to their loved one. This happens thousands of times a day. Inmates have nothing to do but try to bend and break the rules of the prison. And they work at it 24 hours a day.

Sure there are restrictive features that help prevent or stop some of the pranks inmates attempt, but because prisons officials are in short supply, extremely low paid with many being bribed or blackmailed by the wealthy inmates, they pay little attention to managing the inmate telephone system. But the wardens and sheriffs like to high commissions they receive, and freely admit that there are crimes committed by the inmates. They don't necessarily try to improve the management because they are always under staffed and over budget.

Therefore, this nation suffers from a little known dichotomy called "greed marketing" which because of "free found money" coming into these institutions, authorities turn a blind eye to the problem. Who suffers? Joe and Jane citizen, that's who.

If we truly punished criminals rather than trying to rehabilitate them, (remember 70% return to jail anyway), we would have a lot less crime in this country?
The public should contact their local, state and federal representatives and ask them if they know of this problem and insist that something be done to drastically reduce or eliminate this oversight.