prisons – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Decades Late, The FCC Might Start Cracking Down On Terrible Telecom Prison Monopolies. Maybe.
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
However terrible telecom monopolies are in the free world, they’re arguably worse in prisons. For decades, journalists have outlined how a select number of prison telecom giants like Securus have enjoyed a cozy, government-kickback based monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services, resulting sky high rates (upwards of $14 per minute) for inmate families.
Efforts to do something about it were scuttled by FCC boss Ajit Pai, whose former clients included Securus. Pai not only routinely opposed efforts by ex-FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to drive change in the prison telco sector, one of his very first acts as FCC boss was to pull the rugs out from underneath his own lawyers as they tried to support those reforms in court (they, as intended, lost).
Fortunately for inmate families, things finally shifted thanks to the passage of the Martha Wright-Reed Act, which quietly amended the Communications Act to give the FCC the authority to “ensure just and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention facilities.”
The legislative update removes a loophole that prevented the FCC from taking action against the $1.4 billion prison telecom industry, whose members (like Securus) have also routinely found themselves facing scandals for recording privileged communications between inmates and their lawyers, then covertly sharing it with law enforcement.
“I am committed to working with my colleagues on the Commission to expeditiously move
new rules forward to fix this problem,” FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “I also want to highlight the late Martha Wright-Reed for her courageous voice and thank my former colleague Mignon Clyburn for carrying this issue forward at the FCC.”
Granted the FCC still has to actually take action, not exactly its strong suit when it comes to lumbering telecom giants with powerful lawyers. And that’s before you factor in the fact that the agency still lacks a functioning voting majority thanks to the sustained, telecom-industry backed campaign against Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn, a battle that will extend well into 2023.
Filed Under: exorbitant phone rates, fcc, inmates, monopolies, phone, prisons, social justice, telecom
AI Surveillance Of Prison Calls Scooping Up Millions Of Conversations, Producing Little Actionable Info
from the everything-scales-but-the-effectiveness dept
There’s not much privacy in prison. And there’s going to be even less. Inmates are warned that all calls are monitored. How often this goal is achieved is impossible to say, but tech advances are making it a reality. Attorney-client privilege is supposed to be respected in prisons, but we’ve already seen instances where it hasn’t been, thanks to automated monitoring equipment.
What’s already been a problem is going to get worse. AI is doing the eavesdropping, and it’s far from perfect. A new report from Thomson Reuters shows prisons are investing heavily in automation to ensure as many conversations as possible originating from prisoners are recorded, captured, and mined for useful info.
When the sheriff in Suffolk County, New York, requested $700,000 from the U.S. government for an artificial intelligence system to eavesdrop on prison phone conversations, his office called it a key tool in fighting gang-related and violent crime.
But the county jail ended up listening to calls involving a much wider range of subjects – scanning as many as 600,000 minutes per month, according to public records from the county obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
There’s the stated intent: “gang-related and violent crime.” Then there’s the actual use. Utilizing a scanning system powered by Amazon’s speech-to-text tech, Suffolk County jailers utilized keyword searches to flag conversations for further examination. Some keywords were questionable, like the Spanish word “mara,” which can refer to a gang or just a group of friends. But it wasn’t just serious criminal activity being flagged.
Sheriff’s deputies in Suffolk County also circulated a regular intelligence brief of prisoners the system flagged for illegally collecting unemployment benefits while in the jail.
Then there are the seriously concerning keyword scans deployed elsewhere by prisons and jails using similar tech.
Emails and contracts from eight states show the tool is used to scan a wide range of calls, for example conversations involving mention of the Spanish word for lawyer or accusations that detention facilities were covering up COVID-19 outbreaks.
If the conversations including terms for lawyer were flagged as potentially off-limits, then the tech is being used responsibly. If those were flagged for further review, that’s a huge problem. So is the flagging of COVID-related conversations, which could indicate prisoners were being flagged for complaints and possibly retaliated against for informing others about unsafe conditions. While some use was related to containing outbreaks (as is detailed in the documents obtained by Reuters), there are also indications that information about prison conditions was gathered for less-than-idealistic reasons.
In Calhoun County, Alabama, prison authorities used Verus to identify phone calls in which prisoners vouched for the cleanliness of the facility, looking for potential ammunition to fight lawsuits, email records show.
Is this really a good use for tech purchased with the stated intent that it would be used to combat criminal activity behind bars? And those flagging calls for complaints about conditions seem intent on thwarting whistleblowers or heading off lawsuits by subjecting complainants to retaliatory activity.
A lot of what’s happening here appears to be mission creep. While the systems have shown some effectiveness in obtaining information about criminal activity and identifying prisoners who engaged in self-harm or are suicide risks, a lot of what’s being flagged appears to be the result of opportunism. The legal justification is already there: all calls are monitored. If so, why not use the systems to flag anything of interest to prison officials, even if it’s far outside of the stated scope of the surveillance?
Why not, indeed. That’s how the system used in Suffolk County scooped up 2.5 million phone calls in the space of one year but returned only 96 “actionable intelligence reports.” Not every call is worth listening to, but now prison facilities have the luxury of listening to all of them and no reason not to.
Filed Under: attorney client privilege, phone calls, prisons, recording phone calls, surveillance
UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
from the DOJ-is-heading-down-a-pretty-dark-path-here dept
Julian Assange and Wikileaks did a lot over the past few years to destroy the goodwill they’d managed to accumulate prior to that by being a fearless publisher of leaked documents. At times, Assange has acted hypocritically and there’s some evidence he worked with Russian operatives to gather information in an attempt to damage the Democratic Party’s 2016 election hopes.
That being said, the on-again, off-again attempt to prosecute Assange over alleged Espionage Act violations threatens journalism as a whole. The DOJ occasionally appeared to recognize this, hence its stop-start prosecution effort. Attempts were made to get President Biden to drop the case, but there appears to be no turning back now. The US government has won its appeal of the UK court’s decision to refuse extradition.
Here’s a very brief summary of the UK court’s decision [PDF]:
Today, the U.S. won their appeal against a UK High Court ruling that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could not be extradited due to concerns over his mental health. Julian Assange can now be extradited from the UK to the U.S.
That’s courtesy of the ACLU, which also released this statement:
Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, had the following reaction:
“The prosecution of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to press freedom. Bringing criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information establishes a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets. Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. The government needs to immediately drop its charges against him.”
All of this is true. And it’s also true, as Marcy Wheeler points out, that Assange’s legal representation engaged in some bad faith arguing while trying to keep Assange from being extradited.
But the US is hardly without fault. It has made assurances about Assange’s treatment in prison, including a promise to keep him out of solitary confinement. Even if those making these assurances firmly believe them, the US prison system is far from willing to ensure Assange and his health conditions are treated humanely. The system does not work that way. Prisoners are considered interchangeable pieces of meat, stripped of their humanity as soon as they’re processed.
Here’s Wheeler’s take on the bad faith on both sides.
These two issues go to the dubious credibility of both sides. The High Court ruled that Kopelman did not give unvarnished expert opinion (he was in no way the only one of WikiLeaks’ experts to do so), but found that could not, at this point, affect the legal analysis. And it found that US assurances that US jails would treat Assange humanely were sufficient, even though I believe there is a high likelihood that Assange will do something that ends up getting him put in some form of isolation.
WikiLeaks has lied systematically throughout this extradition process — about why Assange was charged when he was, about what he was charged with, about how strong the case against him is, about what a Yahoo article actually said. I have described how a very close Assange associate ordered me, in advance of the first extradition hearing, to stop doing factual reporting on Joshua Schulte’s case because it would undermine the story about journalism WikiLeaks wanted to tell, which is one way I’m absolutely certain the lying is intentional. They have affirmatively told a story that was most useful to their propaganda effort, one they knew to be false.
[…]
That said, the US is little more credible. There’s scant reason to credit US assurances on jail and prison conditions. That’s true — and would be true for all international extradition cases — because our jails and prisons are shamefully inhumane. But it’s also true because a national security defendant like Assange would have little leeway before triggering more severe restrictions.
This is an example where neither side should be credited.
Without a doubt, Assange will soon find himself on the receiving end of the worst things the US penal system has to offer. Even at its best, it’s still pretty terrible.
Beyond the threat to Assange’s life and health, there’s the existential threat this prosecution poses to journalism. Assange faces 18 charges. Seventeen of those target things journalists do regularly. Sources with access to confidential and classified information are pursued. Leaked information is published. While the First Amendment tends to do a pretty good job protecting publication, it’s not nearly as helpful when it comes to the act of newsgathering, especially when the news is information the government would like to remain secret.
That these charges are being brought under the Espionage Act means Assange’s defense will be extremely limited. The newsworthiness of published classified information doesn’t matter and there’s no public interest defense to be raised. The prosecution makes its case and the defendant, for the most part, is expected to just sit there and take it.
This is why Edward Snowden fled the country. As he pointed out then, if there was a chance he’d be given a fair trial, he’d return to the US and face the DOJ in court. But the Espionage Act makes a fair trial impossible. That’s why the charges against Assange are so dangerous. If they stick, the DOJ will have little reason — other than an equally on-again, off-again sense of decency — to not bring criminal charges against journalists who seek out and publish classified information.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, extradition, journalism, julian assange, leaks, prisons, uk, us, whistleblowing
Private Prison Company On The Hook For Legal Fees After Suing Investment Group For Saying It Was Doing Stuff It Was Actually Doing
from the civics-obviously-not-its-strong-suit dept
Private prison company CoreCivic has just learned a civics lesson. [I’ll show myself out.] Possibly a very expensive one.
Last March, it sued [PDF] Candide Group, an investment firm that “directs capital away from an extractive global economy towards investments dedicated to social justice and sustainability.” CoreCivic was one company Candide reps wanted money directed away from, citing its participation in separating parents from children at our nation’s borders. (But really only the Southern border if we’re honest.) Candide also claimed CoreCivic lobbies for harsher sentencing and tougher immigration laws since both of those would naturally provide more business for CoreCivic.
CoreCivic’s libel lawsuit said these two “falsehoods” were spread throughout the web via sites like Forbes and multiple social media platforms. It denied both assertions and said they were stated with a reckless disregard for the truth. Candide responded with an anti-SLAPP motion [PDF], which pointed out that not only could CoreCivic not prove the statements were false but also that it had filed its lawsuit past the one-year statute of limitations.
The motion worked. After some back and forth discussion about the merits of the arguments, the court disposed of CoreCivic’s lawsuit with a very short dismissal [PDF] in November. The order doesn’t say much but it says enough to indicate just how weak CoreCivic’s allegations were.
A multitude of issues have been tendered on defendants’ motion to dismiss and to strike the complaint for defamation. It turns out, however, that CoreCivic, Inc., did, in fact, operate detention facilities for parents separated from their children pursuant to the Border Patrol’s family separation policy. Thus, even though CoreCivic did not operate the detention facilities in which the children themselves were housed, CoreCivic did house the other half of the afflicted families or at least some of them. Therefore, the allegedly defamatory statements were true enough under the First Amendment and under California defamation law. Truth being a defense, the complaint is DISMISSED WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND. It is unnecessary to reach the remaining issues tendered. All other motions are DENIED AS MOOT.
Anti-SLAPP laws work. CoreCivic didn’t like being publicly criticized, especially by an entity that could shift investors’ money elsewhere. That these actions may have damaged CoreCivic’s future profitability isn’t really relevant — at least not when its allegations of libel couldn’t be sustained.
Whatever money is now leaking from CoreCivic is going to be (mildly) compounded by its inability to recognize largely truthful statements as protected speech, rather than the defamation it clearly desires them to be. The court says [PDF] Candide is entitled to collect legal fees from CoreCivic — an important facet of any good anti-SLAPP law. Candide’s legal reps are asking for about $165,000 in fees. However, the tail end of the order suggests it won’t be nearly that much.
First, defense counsel’s hourly rate is inflated way beyond the amount charged to the client. The anti-SLAPP attorney’s fee provision protects defendants from shouldering the costs of meritless litigation so fees should be limited to what actually “compensate[s] a defendant for the expense of responding to a SLAPP suit,” and not result in a bonus for attorneys.
[…]
_Second, defense counsel spent too long on the motion to strike, especially in light of the experience and expertise of the attorneys which should have allowed them to make quicker work of this matter. Especially where hourly fees are high, there is “an expectation that [counsel] will complete tasks efficiently and that its more senior attorneys will limit their involvement to tasks requiring their level of expertise._”
All anti-SLAPP motions are not created equal, but Judge William Alsup says this one is not that much more equal than others.
Other courts have determined a reasonable time expenditure for an anti-SLAPP motion to be between 40 and 75 hours, not 407.9 hours as here.
Whatever fees are eventually settled on, this case highlights the importance of having a strong anti-SLAPP law to work with. Without it, this case could have gone on for several more months and even a clear win for defendants would rarely result in fee shifting. CoreCivic sued because it didn’t like being criticized for doing things it was actually doing. A suit like this is designed to silence critics and deter others from making similar statements. If a defendant bleeds long enough, an eventual victory is ultimately meaningless. The damage has been done and the threat remains.
Filed Under: anti-slapp, border, defamation, detention centers, prisons, private prisons, separated families, slapp, statute of limitations
Companies: candide, corecivic
Florida Prisons Are Buying Up Location Data From Data Brokers
from the pretty-extravagant-solution-to-a-well-contained-'problem' dept
Everyone loves buying location data. Sure, the Supreme Court may have said a thing or two about obtaining this data from cell service providers but it failed to say anything specific about buying it from third-party data brokers. Oh well! Any port in an unsettled Constitutional storm, I guess.
The DEA buys this data. So does ICE and the CBP. The Defense Department does it. So does the Secret Service and, at least once, so did the IRS. Data harvested from apps ends up in the hands of companies like Venntel and Babel Street. These companies sell access to this data to a variety of government agencies, allowing them to bypass warrant requirements and phone companies. Sure, the data may not be as accurate as that gathered from cell towers, but it’s still obviously very useful, otherwise these brokers wouldn’t have so many powerful customers.
The latest news on the purchasing of location data comes to us via Joseph Cox and Motherboard — both of which have been instrumental in breaking news about the government’s new source of third-party data capable of tracking people’s movements.
So, who’s using this data now? Well, it’s a government agency overseeing a very captive audience.
The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC), which runs state-owned prisons in the state and is the third largest state prison system in the country, bought access to a tool that lets users track the location of smartphones via data harvested from ordinary apps, Motherboard has found. The tool, called Locate X, allows users to draw a geofence around a particular area, see which phones were at that location, and then follow them onwards or back in time to other places.
Unlike other uses of this data, the FDC’s contract indicates it wants to know who’s using phones inside its prisons. Most prisoners aren’t going anywhere and even if they escaped, location data pulled from apps would be possibly the least useful way to track them down. Instead, it appears this data is being used to locate contraband phones being used by inmates.
But are contraband phones so much of a problem the Department of Corrections should spend nearly $70,000 a year on data broker services? That seems unlikely. And even if prisoners are having phones smuggled in, it would be a stretch to assume they’re all being used to engage in criminal activity. Prison phone services are prohibitively expensive and internet access is severely limited. Some of these phones are being used for nothing more than allowing inmates to stay in contact with loved ones without draining their bank accounts or subjecting them to eavesdropping by prison staff.
Then there’s the unanswered question as to whether the FDC is limiting its data searches to the confines of prisons. If it isn’t, it could be tracking the movements of visitors and making some inferences about their day-to-day existences.
For now, this is all pretty Wild West. No court decisions directly address this and, despite efforts from legislators like Senator Ron Wyden, data brokers haven’t really been willing to share information about their practices and government business partners. And not much has been said by federal and local agencies buying this data, which has filled this void in caselaw with more questions than answers.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, data brokers, florida, location data, prisons
After Years Of Ignoring Abuse At A Women's Prison, Department Of Corrections Suspends Nearly Three Dozen Employees
from the ohhhhh-you-mean-the-thugs-and-rapists-not-currently-serving-time dept
How does something horrific become an epidemic? Well, if you ignore any problem long enough, it’s pretty much guaranteed to get worse.
Early last year, the DOJ released its report [PDF] on New Jersey’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility. The facility houses around 400 female inmates and is overseen by a little over 400 employees. Years of complaints from inmates prompted the DOJ to open an investigation in 2018. It found a pattern of rights violations, pointing out that five corrections officers had been convicted of sexual abuse charges from October 2016 to November 2019, including these three:
In May 2018, an Edna Mahan correction officer was found guilty of five counts of sexually abusing prisoners. According to the sentencing judge, the “pervasive culture” at Edna Mahan allowed this correction officer to abuse his “position of authority to indulge in [his] own sexual stimulation.”
In July 2018, another Edna Mahan correction officer pled guilty to three counts of official misconduct after he admitted sexually abusing three separate prisoners.
In January 2019, another correction officer pled guilty to official misconduct charges after admitting that he repeatedly sexually abused two Edna Mahan prisoners over a period of several years. In sentencing him, the New Jersey court concluded that the officer had “sexually assaulted a vulnerable population.”
That’s only the tip of this iceberg. The Wikipedia page for the corrections facility lists seventeen instances of corrections officers being convicted, charged, or fired for sexual misconduct, rape, or sexual assault. The list dates back to 1994, showing this to be an ongoing problem that the New Jersey Department of Corrections has yet to bring under control.
This failure to address the problem made it systemic. Here’s the conclusion reached by the DOJ following its two-year investigation:
The Department’s investigation has uncovered facts that provide reasonable cause to conclude that Edna Mahan (1) fails to protect women prisoners from sexual abuse by staff in violation of the Eighth Amendment; and (2) exposes women prisoners to substantial risk of serious harm from sexual abuse in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Systemic failures in Edna Mahan’s policies and practices discourage reporting of sexual abuse; do not provide an adequate response to and investigations of allegations of prisoner sexual abuse; and result in inadequate supervision that provides opportunities for further sexual abuse.
The details in the report are extremely disturbing.
Substantiated incidents of staff sexual abuse of prisoners at Edna Mahan are varied and disturbing. Some staff abused prisoners through unwanted and coerced “sexual contact” or “sexual penetration.” In other instances, prisoners were forced to perform fellatio on or touch the “intimate body part” of staff. In still other instances, staff required prisoners to undress or masturbate in their cells—or even engage in sexual acts with other prisoners—while staff watched. In at least one instance, a correction officer forced a prisoner to keep watch as he sexually abused her to prevent detection of his crimes.
And it gets worse:
Similarly, numerous prisoners report that, during unnecessarily close contact with male correction officers, some correction officers “rub” or “press themselves” – that is, their clothed genitals – against prisoners. Others report being strip searched with several other women at the same time or while male correction officers watched. In one instance, a prisoner reported that a male officer watched as she inserted a tampon. In another instance, it was reported that a group of officers had “viewing parties” of a prisoner with mental illness on suicide watch who believed she was a male and would follow officers’ instructions to dance and show her “penis” while undressed.
Much worse:
Correction officers and staff at Edna Mahan routinely refer to prisoners as “bitches,” “hoes,” “assholes,” “dyke,” “stripper,” “faggot-assed bitch,” “motherfuckers,” and “whores.” They graphically comment on prisoners’ physical appearance or remark about their perceived sexual inclinations and histories.
Prisoners reporting sexual abuse by corrections officers were retaliated against, sent to solitary confinement after being shackled and placed on a Body Orifice Security Scanner, supposedly to check for evidence of assault. (Even if true, these examinations could be performed without shackling prisoners to a chair and subjecting them to a device that searches for hidden contraband, rather than evidence of rape.) Additional privileges were also stripped from those reporting assaults by officers, with some of them losing personal possessions or work opportunities.
In addition, the reporting system was inadequate to handle complaints. And investigations by the prison were deliberately less than thorough, resulting in unearned exonerations and abandoned cases.
Almost a year after the release of this damning report, the trickle of disciplined corrections officers has become a deluge. Following these horrifying allegations, heads have finally begun to roll en masse.
One woman, Ajila Nelson, told NJ.com that officers at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility on Jan. 11 handcuffed her and others, before punching, kicking, stripping and dragging her to a shower, after which she says an unidentified male officer got on top of her and groped and sexually assaulted her.
Prisoners have told family members and advocates that at least three women at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility were hurt by officers Jan. 11, including one inmate who now has a broken eye socket and a transgender woman beaten so badly she cannot walk and is now in a wheelchair.
That got the attention of state lawmakers. And with their attention engaged, the NJ Department of Corrections finally decided — almost a year after the DOJ released its report — to start taking the problem seriously.
Thirty-one staff members at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, New Jersey’s only women’s state prison, have been suspended following reports of inmate abuse by prison guards.
The New York Times reports 22 guards, nine supervisors and the prison’s top administrator have all been suspended. The New Jersey attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into the matter and the State Assembly announced it will be holding hearings to look into the accounts of abuse.
The prison that refused to properly investigate itself is now under two new microscopes. And it has responded by suspending 7 percent of its staff. That’s huge. And there will likely be more names added to the list before these concurrent investigations are concluded.
As a nation, we claim to believe in justice: the payment of debt for wrongs against society. But what we’re really doing is handing human beings to people who don’t believe those in their charge are anything more than receptacles for abuse. It’s not enough to take their freedom away. They must also be stripped of their humanity and agency. And when crime goes down we applaud the improvement. But the criminal acts that occur in prisons and jails go ignored because it’s easier to believe whatever happens to incarcerated citizens is something they’re obligated to endure.
It’s this attitude that allows behavior like this to fester and expand until it can no longer be ignored. Edna Mahan isn’t an anomaly. It’s just the way things are. Most of it flies under the radar. Every so often, the ugliness pokes its head out of the ground and it’s no longer able to be ignored. The NJ Department of Corrections had years to address this and it chose not to. That it’s doing it now is better than nothing. But any agency that gives a damn about the people it’s overseeing would have dumped these abusers and enablers years ago — not just when faced with a bunch of bad press and government investigations.
Filed Under: doj, edna mahan correctional facility, new jersey, new jersey department of corrections, prisons, sexual abuse
Securus Quietly Settles Lawsuit Over Illegally Spying On Inmate Attorney Conversations
from the dainty-little-wrist-slaps dept
Mon, Jun 1st 2020 03:44pm - Karl Bode
We’ve noted repeatedly how interstate inmate calling service (ICS) companies have a disturbingly cozy relationship with government, striking (technically buying) monopoly deals that let them charge inmate families $14 per minute. Worse, some ICS companies like Securus Technologies have been under fire for helping the government spy on privileged inmate attorney communications, information that was only revealed in 2015 after Securus was hacked. Given the apathy for prison inmates and their families (“Iff’n ya don’t like high prices, don’t go to prison, son!”) reform on this front has been glacial at best.
The 2015 Hacker-obtained data featured 70 million records of phone calls (and recordings of the phone calls themselves), placed by prisoners in at least 37 different states over a two-and-a-half year period. Of particular note were the estimated 14,000 recordings of privileged conversations between inmates and their lawyers:
“This may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history, and that?s certainly something to be concerned about,? said David Fathi, director of the ACLU?s National Prison Project. ?A lot of prisoner rights are limited because of their conviction and incarceration, but their protection by the attorney-client privilege is not.”
Two former prisoners and a criminal defense attorney sued Securus for the practice, and last week Securus quietly settled that suit (pdf) after spending years insisting that the recording of privileged calls was a system error. While the company promised to improve its lax use of call recording technology, most of the more significant demands were stripped from the final settlement:
“The lawsuit had sought 5,000foranyonewhoseconversationwaswronglyrecorded?resultinginadamagespayoutashighas5,000 for anyone whose conversation was wrongly recorded ? resulting in a damages payout as high as 5,000foranyonewhoseconversationwaswronglyrecorded?resultinginadamagespayoutashighas70m ? though the class action’s lawyers ultimately dropped the demand after the courts repeatedly ruled against them on what they needed to prove to win the case. A US federal judge in San Diego decided the lawyers would have to prove that Securus intended to record the privileged calls. They appealed the decision, and the Ninth Circuit refused to hear the case.”
Securus has promised to cover attorney costs of 840,000and840,000 and 840,000and20,000 to each of the class representatives while denying any wrongdoing.
Granted this is just one small subset of the problem that is Securus’ cozy, monopolized relationship with the US law enforcement and prison apparatus, which in addition to aggressively overcharging inmate families for 20 years, has also resulted in scandals relating to the abuse of sensitive location data obtained from mobile carriers. That scandal also resulted in some performative wrist slaps and a few pinky swears as US lawmakers and regulators, with very few exceptions, continue to look the other direction.
Filed Under: attorney client privilege, conversations, inmates, phone records, prisons, surveillance
Companies: securos
New Jersey Corrections Officials (Temporarily) Banned Released Prisoners From Talking To Journalists
from the furloughing-rights dept
Our nation’s prisons and jails are coronavirus incubators. Everyone inside is stacked on top of each other and the notion of “social distance” doesn’t have much meaning in a place where sheltering in place means breathing the air of everyone else being forcibly sheltered in place.
Taking the risk of appearing soft on crime, some states have begun releasing at-risk prisoners, subject to a long list of exceptions that still leaves plenty of people in jail (and plenty of people tasked with watching over them). Since most crimes don’t come with death sentences, it seems kind of cruel and unusual to subject minor criminals to the increased possibility of dying, but only a small percentage of inmates meet the criteria for release.
However, enough of them have that Rikers Island — New York City’s most infamous jail — has seen its population dwindle to its World War II numbers. Like most jails, Rikers Island’s population includes people who have yet to be convicted of a crime — jailed until their trial date. With courts handling fewer cases than usual, jailings have become more indefinite than usual while awaiting trial.
Testing has ramped up in federal prisons and local jails, bringing with them severe spikes in confirmed cases. This never looks good on the COVID-19 balance sheet, but jam enough people into enclosed spaces and bad things develop quickly during pandemics.
Releasing at-risk inmates is a good idea, even if it’s still mostly an unpopular one. The state of New Jersey decided to show some much-needed compassion by releasing some of its inmates. But that compassion came tied to a long list of restrictions that somehow included First Amendment violations, as NJ.com reports.
As New Jersey prepares to temporarily release some state prison inmates to stem a spike in coronavirus deaths behind bars, corrections officials threatened to throw anyone who talked to the media back in their cells, NJ Advance Media has learned.
The gag order was among more than two dozen conditions prisoners had to agree to in order to get temporary medical leave under an executive order signed by Gov. Phil Murphy this month, which sought to reduce prison populations by moving sick, elderly and other prisoners to home confinement.
Fortunately, this bonus Constitutional violation was stripped from the updated list [PDF] of requirements and restrictions given to released inmates. But it only happened after the ACLU complained to the state attorney general about the unconstitutional aspects of the release terms.
According to a spokesperson for the state’s correctional facilities, this First Amendment blunder was the result of copy-pasting a bunch of home release stuff into a single one-size-fits-all document. That apparently included restrictions commonly placed on prisoners still in prison, but not one routinely foisted upon them once they’re no longer under the guardianship of the state’s correctional facilities.
That was the only comment given by the state on the issue, leaving unanswered questions about any vetting of the document before release or who might have greenlit the violation of released prisoners’ rights.
It’s not as though many temporarily furloughed prisoners will have much of an opportunity to talk to the media. The restrictions forbid leaving their homes for anything but a medical emergency and requires twice-a-day check-ins. It also forbids them from opening bank accounts, securing loans, operating vehicles, or getting married while they’re under house arrest.
While it’s good to see the unconstitutional ban on talking to the media was quickly excised once state officials were made aware of it, it’s concerning that no one presiding over the temporary release took a better look at the restrictions before making them official.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, covid-19, early release, free speech, journalism, new jersey, prisons
Drug Tests Administered By Prison Staff Aren't Much Better Than The Terrible Ones Deployed By Cops
from the zero-incentive-to-solve-the-problem dept
Faulty drug tests deployed by law enforcement continue to ruin lives. Usually, it’s cheap field tests used by officers during traffic stops that turn legal substances into illegal substances, resulting in hefty criminal charges for people who’ve never used drugs, much less carried them around in their cars.
The current faulty drug test debacle isn’t likely to generate as much sympathy or result in wide-ranging investigations of drug testing tech. These drug tests are negatively affecting people who are already locked up, which isn’t quite as disturbing as minor moving violations escalating into felony drug charges.
But it’s still disturbing, even if it isn’t taking innocent people off the streets. Documents leaked to Gothamist show hundreds of inmates have been subjected to harsher punishments, extended sentences, and loss of privileges thanks to drug tests corrections officials knew were unreliable.
New York state corrections officials believe that approximately 2,000 prisoners were subject to a flawed drug test that produced false positives and led to increased punishment across the state, according to documents obtained by WNYC/Gothamist.
The problem may have been caused by a chemical mishap known as “cross reactivity,” which can lead to a clean subject falsely appearing to have used drugs, the documents say.
Roughly 300 prisoners were affected at the Fishkill Correctional Facility alone, according to a staff memo.
In one case reported by the New York Daily News, an inmate in a drug treatment program saw his time in the New York correctional system turned into a complete nightmare by inaccurate drug tests.
Anthony Cortes was in school at New York’s Willard Correctional Facility’s drug treatment campus in early March when he got called for a routine drug test.
[O]fficials told him the test came back positive for Buprenorphine, a medication commonly prescribed to treat opioid addiction. He was booted from Willard’s program, transferred to Five Points Correctional Facility and thrown into solitary confinement. A second drug test in April came back with the same results and more time in isolation.
Yet by mid-September — following nearly 200 days in solitary and four and a half months after his scheduled release — officials realized they had made a grave error.
Cortes is now suing the state over its use of faulty drug tests and the deleterious effect it had on his incarceration. Cortes isn’t the only one suing over these tests. Courthouse News Service reports a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of an unknown number of inmates who have been punished for “failing” faulty drug tests.
[Nazeda] Steele-Warrick, who lives in Queens, filed a federal class action Wednesday against two diagnostic companies whose drug tests she says produced false positives, leading to punishment for inmates who were in fact clean. The 36-year-old former inmate sued Delaware-based Microgenics Corporation, which makes clinical diagnostic products, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, which manufactured the urine-analysis drug tests.
According to Warrick’s lawsuit [PDF], the state’s Department of Corrections later confirmed the test results jailers used to strip her of privileges were erroneous. But before that happened, this happened:
Individuals assigned to keeplock have limited access to their property, packages, telephones, correspondence, and visitors, and their commissary privileges are suspended, pending a disciplinary determination.
Ms. Steele-Warrick felt tremendous shame and humiliation as she was marched away in handcuffs past her peers and friends.
Unlike her private room, which had a door she could self-close and open, Ms. Steele-Warrick’s keeplock cell was behind locked and secured steel bars. The room had only a locker, sink, and toilet. It did not have the night stand, radio, or closet that Ms. Steele-Warrick had in her private room. Her meals were delivered through a “feed-up slot” in the bars.
Ms. Steele-Warrick did not have access to any of her belongings in her keeplock cell. Her first day there, she could not access her toothbrush, shampoo, or soap. Although she eventually obtained those items, she did not have any of her other personal belongings, including her books or magazines.
While Ms. Steele-Warrick was confined in keeplock, correction officers emptied out her private room, searching and cataloguing all of her personal belongings and securing away most of it in storage.
A package of food from Ms. Steele-Warrick’s husband arrived while she was in keeplock, and correction officers confiscated all the fresh vegetables and produce, later leaving Ms. Steele-Warrick with only a couple of canned items.
The false positive also had the potential to disrupt Warrick’s immigration proceedings, which relied on her being able to demonstrate she was not dangerous person in order to continue living with her family. It also caused her to be cut off from her family when her visitation rights were revoked.
This isn’t new and this isn’t limited to New York. Prisoners in Washington have filed enough complaints the Department of Corrections is finally allowing challenged test results to be retested. And in 2013, New York’s top court gave a probationer permission to sue drug testing equipment manufacturers directly for the faulty drug test that resulted in the revocation of his release.
Meanwhile, drug testing equipment aimed at visitors to correctional facilities are generating false positives that punish both inmates and their families.
The ion scanners devices are designed to detect trace amounts of particles. Correctional Service Canada has placed these devices in the lobbies and mailrooms of some of its prisons in a bid to reduce the flow of drugs into its facilities.
The devices are extremely sensitive, and MOMS [Mothers Offering Mutual Support] says in its petition that the scanners set off false positive readings at an “alarming” rate.
Anne Cattral, whose son is incarcerated at Ontario’s Warkworth Institution, said she has lost count of the times she has tested positive for morphine, hash, opium and heroin. She follows a rigorous regime of washing, cleansing coins and jewelry and driving with plastic gloves before visiting the prison to limit the chances of a false reading.
Cattral said a positive test can lead to the visit being denied. It is also recorded on an offender’s file, affecting future private family visits, transfers, and parole, she said.
It may well be the country’s correctional services know they’re working with unreliable equipment. But the best kind of deniability is the plausible kind.
[CSC spokesperson Esther Mailhot] said CSC does not collect data on false positives in testing.
Yeah. You don’t want to be doing that. That only helps litigants suing the CSC and does nothing at all for CSC officials who don’t like to be sued.
It’s your word against theirs (the government’s) out in the free world. Once you’re incarcerated, you pretty much don’t even have your word any more. If someone convicted on drug charges tests positive for drugs, everyone just assumes everything is working correctly, even if it actually isn’t. Maybe these lawsuits will alter this assumption just a tiny bit.
Filed Under: accuracy, drug tests, junk science, prisons
Prison Telecom Monopolies Bring Their 'Innovation' To Prison Ebooks
from the ill-communication dept
Mon, Dec 2nd 2019 06:05am - Karl Bode
Over the last few decades, companies like Securus have managed to obtain a pretty cozy, government-supported monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services. Like any monopoly, this has pretty traditionally resulted in not only sky high rates upwards of $14 per minute for phone calls, but comically poor service as well. Because these folks are in prison, and as we all know everybody in prison is always guilty, drumming up enough sympathy to convert into political momentum has long proven difficult. Recent efforts to do something about it were scuttled by FCC boss Ajit Pai, whose former clients included Securus.
Apparently we’re now taking the predatory idiocy that has been a cornerstone of prison phone service and applying it to… ebooks. Reason recently had a great write up on how the West Virginia Division of Corrections struck a deal in February with GTL (formerly Global Tel*Link), one of several government-pampered prison telecom monopolies. As part of that deal, prisoners would be given access to restricted tablets to access books and some internet content. The results are just as stupid as you might imagine:
“According to the contract, detailed by Appalachian Prison Book Project, using the tablets will cost 0.05perminute(currentlydiscountedto0.05 per minute (currently discounted to 0.05perminute(currentlydiscountedto0.03) to read books, listen to music, or play games; 0.25perminuteforvideovisitations;0.25 per minute for video visitations; 0.25perminuteforvideovisitations;0.25 per written message; and 0.50tosendaphotowithamessage.ThePrisonPolicyInitiativeestimatedin2017thatwagesinWestVirginiaprisonsrangebetween0.50 to send a photo with a message. The Prison Policy Initiative estimated in 2017 that wages in West Virginia prisons range between 0.50tosendaphotowithamessage.ThePrisonPolicyInitiativeestimatedin2017thatwagesinWestVirginiaprisonsrangebetween0.04 and $0.58 an hour.
Alex Wright, of Level and the Inside Books Project, told Gizmodo that at least eight other states, including Colorado, Missouri, New York, South Dakota, Indiana, Delaware, Maine, and South Carolina, are also offering inmates “free” tablets with absurd restrictions. The WDVC informed the outlet that use of the tablets is optional, and some proceeds will go to fund other projects:
“The West Virginia Division of Corrections collects a 5 percent commission on the charges, but a spokesperson clarified to Gizmodo that all proceeds go to a ?benefit fund? for ?open house visitation, recreational equipment, holiday dinners, and other opportunities that would not otherwise be available.? They further stated that they are still collecting book donations and that using the tablets are optional.”
The big question however remains: why are terrible companies with long histories of terrible behavior being given these contracts in the first place?
Securus and other such companies are part of a dangerously cozy and captive market, where prisons get paid upwards of $460 million annually in “concession fees” (read: kickbacks) to score exclusive, lucrative prison contracts. In this comically absurd environment, the service pricing and quality are just about what you’d expect. Government oversight of these businesses have been virtually non-existent, despite accusations that these companies have allowed some law enforcement to monitor what should be privileged attorney client communications and embroiled in location data scandals.