Telephone lifeline from jail costly for family members

Phone calls are sometimes the only comfort for families who live far from the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center, run by the Hampden County Sheriff's Department, where prisoners are held both before trial and while serving sentences. But the calls are costly because they must be made through an outside company — much more costly than for people outside jails. Calls at the jail cost 12 cents per minute. While this is one of the lowest rates in jails across the state, and 42 percent lower than the 21-cents-per-minute rate cap set by the state Department of Telecommunications and Cable, critics say the cost penalizes poor people.  Global Tel-Link Corp. is one of two corrections phone companies that dominate the national $1.2 billion per year industry. It paid the Hampden County department $725,000 for phone calls to and from all its facilities between July 2016 and June 2017, according to records supplied by the department. Phone calls to and from the women's jail during that same period netted the department $110,000. Opponents see the system as unethical and predatory. Companies are using jails and prisons as a profit center, they say, and shifting what should be governmental costs onto people who are poor and powerless.