Years after jail phone call reform, families of Utah inmates still struggle to keep in contact

Para leer este artículo en español, haz clic aquí.

Cassie Beggs keeps a notebook on her at all times so that when she thinks of something to tell her fiance, she can jot it down.

He’s incarcerated at Beaver County Jail, where each 15-minute phone call costs close to $4 with tax. They speak for the full 15 minutes every night — and they used to talk more often at the beginning of his incarceration there five months ago, but the cost became too much, Beggs said.

Compared to $1.50 in the prison system, the average 15-minute jail phone call in Utah costs about $2.59 from a local number. But it varies depending on where an inmate is located. Different counties have negotiated contracts with various third-party phone companies.

Beaver County Jail uses Securus Technologies, the most common contractor in the state, and calls there are equivalently priced at the Federal Communications Commission maximum of $0.21 per minute. The limit applies to federal and state prisons.

Keeping in contact with loved ones can be a vital lifeline for incarcerated people, one jail official told The Salt Lake Tribune. It can also help reduce recidivism, research indicates. But according to a nationwide Ella Baker Center for Human Rights study, over a third of families with relatives in prison go into debt to pay for phone calls and visits alone.

Beggs, 36, is a nail tech supporting four children. To stay in touch and save money, her fiance, John Ketchum, first calls her several times a day for two to three minutes.

“It feels like our phone calls during the day are more of a question-and-answer session: Hurry up and tell me this, hurry up and tell me that,” she said of wedding planning, discussing the kids and discussing their finances. “It almost feels like business calls.”

In the evenings, they try to talk like a normal couple for a full 15 minutes. But it never feels like enough, Beggs said.

They communicated more often — and for less money — at the beginning of the year, when Ketchum was at the Utah State Prison, where he was initially incarcerated after pleading guilty to forgery and possession of a stolen vehicle. There, a half-hour on the phone cost half the price of a 15-minute call at the county jail, where he was transferred on good behavior.

Now, Beggs pays more for lower quality calls. Ketchum often sounds like he’s underwater, she said. Calls will cut out on occasion, and she still has to pay for the lost minutes.

She was spending upward of $400 a month before they cut back on their conversations, she said. She doesn’t understand why the jail charges more.

“It’s costing me double just to be able to hear his voice while he’s gone,” Beggs said.

Prison calls, by comparison, ‘insanely cheap’

For those in other jails, the price can be even higher.

Christina Messmore’s husband, Justin Messmore, was transferred to Utah County Jail from Iowa in early 2021, where he stayed until last November.

Since at least 2016, the jail had originally charged $0.29 a minute for phone calls, the highest in the state. The rate changed in 2021, when the facility entered into a contract extension with Securus, the same third-party company that Beaver County uses, to comply with a new state law passed that year.

That law limited the amount that county jails could charge for a phone call to 25% above the federal maximum — amounting to about $0.26 cents a minute.

Under the contract extension, the Utah County Jail should now be charging people $0.21 cents a minute for both in-state and out-of-state calls, according to Lt. Regan Clark, with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office corrections division. The total amounts to $4.20 per 20 minutes, and according to the contract extension, the county recoups 75% of that revenue.

But Christina Messmore’s billing statements from 2022 indicate that she was overcharged. Multiple times last year, she paid $5.51 to talk with her husband for 20-minute increments. According to the billing statements she provided The Salt Lake Tribune, that amounts to $0.27 a minute.

When asked about the discrepancy, Clark did not comment, and instead told The Tribune to file a public records request.

Messmore’s husband, a sex offender, is now incarcerated at the Central Utah Prison, where out-of-state fees apply — but even after all the additions when she calls from Iowa, it ended up being around $2.80 per 15 minutes for them to chat.

“The first time I deposited for him to make phone calls from prison, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be how much?’” she said. “That’s insanely cheap.”

Rep. Cheryl Acton, R-West Jordan, sponsored the 2021 bill that would make Messmore’s apparent $0.27 rate illegal. The legislation’s goal was to lessen the amount of repeat offenders, because constant contact with loved ones can reduce recidivism, she said.

She couldn’t say why Messmore appears to have been overcharged. Acton said to her knowledge, the measure has no loopholes.

‘Contact kept him alive’

More than half of all Utah jails contract with Securus Technologies for phone calls, along with video calls and texting services, though those come with a price tag too.

The company bills itself as the nation’s “largest incarcerated individual communications provider” on its website. But not without controversy.

In 2020, plaintiffs in Maryland filed a federal suit that named Securus Technologies as a defendant, alleging that the company and another inmate call provider, Global Tel Link, conspired to inflate the price of prison phone calls.

A federal judge in Maryland dismissed the case in 2021, but an appeal was filed. After arguments before a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in January, the appellate judges on May 25 vacated the previous court’s dismissal and remanded the case for further proceedings, court records show.

Securus Technologies, along with private prison company CoreCivic, also agreed to pay a group of Kansas attorneys $3.7 million in 2020 to end claims that it violated wiretapping laws by recording client-attorney phone calls. Attorneys in Maine filed a lawsuit the same year alleging similar practices.

But Securus Technologies isn’t the only option in Utah. Salt Lake County uses ViaPath Technologies to provide phone calls to both the Metro and Oxbow jails. Both of those jails are tied for the lowest costs in the state at $0.10 per minute.

Salt Lake County created a cooperative contract with state officials to replicate the rates that Utah charges through GTL for prison phone calls, said Cole Warnick, a spokesperson for the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

”I think it really helps with the rehabilitation process while they’re here,” Warnick said, “and staying connected to the outside world is very important for us to provide every inmate.”

Carbon County Jail and Emery County Jail use Turnkey Corrections and Inmate Canteen, respectively, which are smaller phone companies. Both jails have costs under $0.15 per minute. Davis County Jail uses NICIC, at $0.19 per minute.

At least 13 other county jails that use Securus all have rates at the federal limit of $0.21, except for Weber County Jail, which negotiated down to $0.13 per minute.

Heidi Franke’s son, Mitchell Solstad, is incarcerated in Salt Lake County Jail as he awaits a trial in July for a manslaughter and reckless driving case. He has been there for the past two years, she said, and is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.

When he first arrived, he was on suicide watch, Franke said. Now, after spending about $100 a month since then so she and other family members can talk with him, her son’s condition has vastly improved, she said.

“Contact kept him alive,” Franke said.

Still, even while her son remains in custody at a jail with a relatively low call cost, 64-year-old Franke struggles to keep up with the payments. She is a retired nurse on a fixed income, and has had to dip into her mother’s retirement funds to pay for them. Even though Franke’s mother has urged her to keep doing that, she doesn’t think she can for much longer.

At the end of the day, Franke thinks the calls should be completely free, she said.

“It feels like we’re incarcerated with them,” Franke said. “It’s the strangest feeling in the whole world.”

Correction • June 26, 1:30 p.m.: The story has been updated to correct the name of the phone call provider that Utah state prisons contract with.