Terie and Rachel Starks face significant stress managing contact with their incarcerated nephew, limiting conversations about his son or sacrificing on other expenses due to the high costs prisoners are charged for phone calls.
State prisons offer phone calls for about 10 cents per minute, but jails and county correctional facilities — such as the Plymouth County House of Correction, where the Starks' nephew is incarcerated — often impose charges up to $6.15 for a 15-minute phone call, costing families thousands of dollars per year, according to the group Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts.
The Starks spent Wednesday alongside more than a dozen other family members of inmates pressing lawmakers to support telephone access and in-person visitation reforms, arguing that more humane treatment of inmates will help improve rehabilitation and reduce recidivism.
"Put it this way: it would help him be able to communicate and have a better outlook on life when he comes out," Terie Starks told the News Service after attending a lobby day on the legislation hosted by the PLSMA. "He can share the good, the bad and the ugly while he's in there."
As they prepared to meet with lawmakers, attendees took an informal poll. About 10 raised their hands to indicate they had to pay to make phone calls with loved ones currently in prison. Several said they had been mistreated in a visiting room, and several more indicated they had been blocked from meeting someone incarcerated solely because of their attire.
Supporters at the event, which included families and criminal justice reform advocates, pushed for the Legislature to advance several bills pending before the Public Safety Committee.
The bills share a common theme of improving ease of communication, whether by limiting the high rates prisoners are charged for phone calls (H 3452 / S 1430), making those calls free to users (S 1372) or rolling back restrictions on prison visitations (H 2047 / S 1397).
While the former set of bills would not make prisoner phone calls free, it would require penal institutions to choose phone service contracts with the lowest price to inmates and their families. The phone rates at houses of correction are set by county sheriffs, while the DOC handles the rates at state prisons.
The bills would also prevent them from accepting commissions - payments that providers offer to facilities. Massachusetts prisons and jails received a combined $9 million in commissions in 2018, according to the Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts.
"It should not be this expensive and this difficult for families to maintain this lifeline to the community," said Anne Johnson Landry, chief counsel for Sen. William Brownsberger, who filed the free phone calls bill.
Lawyers representing prisoners filed a lawsuit last year arguing that they were unfairly charged far more to make phone calls from the Bristol County House of Corrections — up to $4.76 for a 10-minute call — than the 10-cents-per-minute rate in state prisons run by the DOC. That case is still pending, and advocates said Wednesday they see legislation as the best route for change.
In March 2018, the Department of Correction implemented a new rule limiting the number of unique individuals that can visit an inmate. Criminal justice reform advocates have criticized the change as harming the social and emotional well-being of prisoners. Felons with large families, they say, are disproportionately affected because they have to choose which relatives they can see.
One year later, the department increased the limit of individuals who can visit and allowed prisoners to update the list more frequently. The Black & Latino Legislative Caucus praised the change at the time.
"The Department of Correction recognizes the importance of visits from family and friends," DOC spokesman Jason Dobson said in a Wednesday statement. "By collaborating with various stakeholders, we’ve been able to update our policies further in a way that supports successful re-entry and our commitment to the safety of inmates, staff, and the public."
The visitation legislation advocates backed Wednesday, filed by Rep. Marjorie Decker and Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, would further amend some of the original changes, stripping the cap on visitors and preventing denial of visitors based on attire or past volunteer work in a correctional facility.
At the lobby day, Decker said she corresponded for years with a childhood friend who spent decades in prison and saw firsthand the benefits he gained as a result.
"All of the research shows us that people are less likely to recommit a crime once they're out when they have that kind of contact with a loved one or an advocate," Decker said. "They're safer on the inside having that ability to stay connected and stay grounded."
Advocates briefly discussed whether, while pushing lawmakers to make prison contact reforms, they would face questions from lawmakers about last week's assault on three correction officers by inmates at the state's maximum security prison in Shirley.
Organizers responded that the topic was separate, but stressed that they see no evidence that the state's 2018 criminal justice reform law played a role in the violence as the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union argued it did.
In a Monday press release, the Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts said the union's allegations were "wrong and irresponsible."
"Instead of blaming a law that has barely been implemented, we should wholeheartedly embrace it and just maybe we’ll reap the same benefits other states have and improve safety for all of us," the group wrote.
