I also heard the NPR special that AuraSeer mentioned. IIRC, the phone companies kick back a pretty big percentage (40%, maybe?) to the prison/state. That money (allegedly) goes to pay for prisoner services.
It’s all very well to use the money for the inmates, but they’re taking it out of the friends and families of the inmates, most of whom can ill afford it.
I don’t know much about telephony, but I can’t believe that the “extra equipment” needed to record and trace calls is that expensive. The Bells can do it as a matter of course.
I can’t claim to speak as an expert from the telephone end of the service, but most phone services do not routinely cross-check every phone call against a list of approved numbers. I would guess that the computer system for doing this is one of the main justifications for the added expense.
As for the ability to pay for collect phone calls, no one is forcing the inmates to make the calls or the family members to receive them. This may sound harsh, but the alternative is to tell supposed adults how they can and cannot spend their money. I will add that in cases of family emergencies where no one can afford to make a call, we will give free calls to inmates.
As with all major government business contracts, the service is put up for competitive bid, so presumedly the various phone companies are discouraged from padding their costs too much.
You’re mostly right. Barracks are the main accomodation in medium security prisons (for example I work in a medium security prison where 840 inmates live in “dorms” and only 32 live in cells). Dorms are essentially a big room with individual spaces (called cubes) divided by open partitions. In a few cases inmates have rooms. Virtually all maximum security prisons are cells only, but despite what most people think, most prisons are not maximum security. Due to NY’s Rockefeller drug laws, the fastest growing population in our prisons is drug users and dealers and most of these end up in mediums.