Knox County Jail Policies Draw Fire Over Prisoner Profiteering

In News by S. Heather Duncanleave a COMMENT

No letters. No in-person visits. And every call or message has a cost. Once you’re inside the Knox County Jail, those who are outside seem much farther away than a few feet of concrete.

Knox County Public Defender Mark Stephens and members of the grassroots Knox County Incarceration Collective are publicly criticizing the Knox County Sheriff’s Office for policies they say sacrifice families, inmate health, and public safety to the almighty dollar.

Stephens says the Sheriff’s Office make it difficult or miserable for inmates to communicate with their families for free, forcing them to pay for the privilege as the county takes a cut of the profits. Historically, at least half of those in the Knox County jail, the work release center, and the Roger D. Wilson Detention Facility are awaiting trial and have not yet been convicted of a crime. 

“The current visitation policy is maybe one of the most detrimental policies to be implemented at the detention facility and jail of any I’ve seen in the 35 years I’ve practiced,” Stephens says. “If we don’t have any compassion for individual defendants within our system, surely to God we have compassion for the children and loved ones of those individuals.”

Defense lawyers and activists claim the county’s money-grubbing extends to deliberately underfeeding inmates to boost revenue from the jail commissary, where those with enough money can supplement scanty meals with snacks. Knox County Sheriff’s Office communications director Martha Dooley provided a copy of the nutritional policy, which requires dietary allowances to be reviewed at least annually by a nutritionist to meet nationally recommended allowances for basic nutrition. But Stephens says 80 to 90 percent of his clients complain of hunger, and his poor clients almost always visibly lose weight in jail.

And who actually pays for any extra food and communication? The families of inmates too poor to afford bond. “Instead of paying the light bill, they put $25 on Johnny’s (jail) account or talk to him on the phone,” Stephens says.

Even putting money in the account costs money: $4.95 from a jail ATM; by credit card for a 10 percent surcharge; or by mail order or cashier’s check for $2.50.

Sheriff Jones provided a response through Dooley: “Our written policy speaks for itself.  If you don’t like our policy and procedures, then don’t break the law.”

The Incarceration Collective, a group of former inmates and family members who seek to improve jail conditions, held a meeting that lasted several hours last Thursday to spread the word about these and other jail policies.

“We should not be bringing another private partner into a prison,” says JT Taylor, who is helping facilitate the collective for the East Tennessee Peace and Justice Center. “They’re making money off of exploiting people not having human contact with their loved ones.”

In the Mail

The mail policy posted on the Sheriff’s Office website—allowing only postcards to be sent in or out of the jail, rather than letters in envelopes—is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against Knox County and Sheriff Jimmy “J.J.” Jones by the nonprofit Prison Legal News in October. For that reason, Dooley says, the Sheriff’s Office won’t speak about the mail policy. She referred questions to Knox County Law Director Bud Armstrong, who also declined to speak about it.

Tina Sparks, a member of the Incarceration Collective whose late husband was an inmate years ago, called the postcard policy an “impersonal and degrading” invasion of privacy. In particular, the retired kindergarten teacher is horrified that children who can’t write are unable communicate with their jailed parent by sending pictures.

“The children are already stressed and don’t understand, and this just adds to their feelings of distress—and that of course affects the inmates,” says Sparks. “That to me is one of the most heart-wrenching parts of the whole thing.”

However, the mail policy may be changing. Stephens says clients have told him that in the last few months the jail seemed to be inconsistently reverting to a version of its old policy, allowing letters but reading them first. “It is so new, that we hear different things from different clients,” he says.

Letters between inmates and their attorneys are supposed to be permitted and private, but Stephens says one of his clients has recently shown him evidence that legal correspondence was read by jail staffers.

“You have to be able to communicate with your client in a confidential way,” says Stephens, pointing out that a letter from him could, for example, identify a new defense witness. “You just can’t have the jail opening legal mail. That’s not acceptable.”

Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News and director of the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center, argues the postcard policy is designed to push prisoners toward types of communication from which the jail profits, part of a national trend to “monetize all human contact between prisoners and their families.” Prison Legal News also sued Sullivan County over the same type of policy a few years ago. Its jail dropped the policy but the case is ongoing, Wright says.

“What is terrible is how elected officials like the sheriff of Knox County have, for lack of a better term, prostituted themselves and their government office on the altar of greed, and sell these hedge fund-owned companies monopoly contracts to exploit the poorest citizens in their jurisdictions—their own taxpayers and voters—like modern-day slave chattel,” Wright wrote in an email.

In 2014, privately-owned Pay-Tel Communications became the first company to begin providing video visitation at the jail in place of in-person visits. The format allows friends and family to talk with inmates via real-time video either from home or at kiosks in the jail. At the time, sheriff’s officials told the Metro Pulse newspaper that this would save hassle for inmate families and reduce jail staffing needs.

Video Isolation

In January, the county contracted the job of providing video visitation—as well as the broader inmate management system, inmate electronic messaging, inmate banking and trust account management, and electronic medical records—to Texas-based Securus Technologies.

In response to pre-bid questions from Securus, the county indicated that during a one-year period between June 2014 to June 2015, residents at the three Knox County detention facilities participated in 16,632 on-site video “visits” (using kiosks provided at the jail facilities), and 3,927 “remote video visits.” (These require a high-speed Internet connection with a camera and mic function, which few of these families have, Sparks points out.)

Securus’s contract involves managing huge amounts of inmate data until 2020, with optional contract extensions of up to two additional five-year terms. Securus provides similar services to 2,600 facilities nationwide, including 39 others in Tennessee, according to the company’s winning bid.

Under the contract, both Securus and Knox County profit from inmate communications. Under its terms, the county gets up to half the revenue from emails and 61 percent of the profits from inmate calls monthly. According to the Sheriff’s Office website, inmates may send and receive emails for 40 cents each.

The county’s cut of the call revenue may change, though. Michael Grider, spokesman for the Knox County Mayor’s Office, says the Securus contract is being amended in light of an FCC rule that went into effect this spring. The FCC moved in October to cap the amount inmates can be charged for local and in-state long distance calls at 14 cents a minute for an inmate population the size of Knox County’s, and banned flat-rate call charges. (An April copy of the call rates at the Knox County jail indicates local calls and in-state long distance calls were being charged at the flat rate of $2.85 each.) The cap has been challenged in court, leaving requirements in limbo.

The FCC described its decision as a justice issue: an effort to “rein in the excessive rates and egregious fees on phone calls paid by some of society’s most vulnerable.” While it did not ban commissions to jails and prisons, the FCC reaffirmed that these are profits and said it “strongly encourages parties to move away from site commissions and urges states to take action on this issue.”

The FCC has also indicated its interest in regulating video visitation, although it hasn’t yet done so.

At the Knox County Jail, remote video visits cost 19 cents a minute for up to 30 minutes each, according to the Sheriff’s Office website. When Pay-Tel was running the video visitation in 2014 and 2015 it generated about $23,500 in revenue over a year, according to Knox County documents. (Pay-Tel was charging $6 per 30 minutes.)

Video visits at the jail kiosks are free, but Stephens say they have been plagued by malfunctions like mics that don’t work, and are deliberately placed next to restrooms where the conversations can be easily overheard. On the other end, the inmate kiosks are set up in a communal space where other inmates can listen and check out the female visitors, causing conflicts. “It couldn’t be any more humiliating, and it’s calculated,” he says.

Drew Krikau served 30 months in the jail between 2009 and 2014, just before the postcard and video visitation policies took effect. He says those changes would have left him much more depressed. He says friends inside have told him the video connection is poor, causing dropped visits which must still be paid for. Only two 30-minute video visits are permitted a week, so losing half of one is not a minor deprivation.

Stephens says his office has repeatedly complained to the sheriff about the video visitation policy to no avail.

Research has shown that visits from family and friends significantly reduce inmate recidivism. For example, a 2011 study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections found even one visit reduced the likelihood of a prisoner’s being convicted of a new felony by 13 percent. Parole violations were 25 percent less likely.

When Josh Thornhill was in jail awaiting trial four years ago, his older brother came to visit him. “It meant everything to see him in person,” Thornhill says. “When you’re inside you feel completely alone from the world. You have no breath of fresh air. You don’t know if you can trust people, if you can go to sleep…. It’s like a constant level of threat.”

Stephens noted that even convicted prisoners at the jail rarely serve more than a year, and most will try to reintegrate into their former lives.

“What is happening is so cruel,” he says. “When you isolate someone like we are currently isolating them, you minimize the chances of a successful reintegration. When you say you can only visit your children two times a week and only 30 minutes for a fee, I don’t see that increasing public safety.”

S. Heather Duncan has won numerous awards for her feature writing and coverage of the environment, government, education, business and local history during her 15-year reporting career. Originally from Western North Carolina, Heather has worked for Radio Free Europe, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London, and several daily newspapers. Heather spent almost a dozen years at The Telegraph in Macon, Ga., where she spent most of her time covering the environment or writing project-investigations that provoked changes such as new laws related to day care and the protection of environmentally-sensitive lands. You can reach Heather at heather@knoxmercury.com

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