From Peter Schulte Tomorrow the Dallas County Commissioners court will vote on a contract with Securus, a company who will provide video visitation in the Dallas county jail. This is an important issue. The media should cover this with great interest. The contract as described is a bad idea for the voters of Dallas county. My colleague, John Michael Gioffredi summed it up well. Here is his latest email to the Dallas county defense lawyers association (DCDLA): The Dallas County Commissioners are poised to approve Securus Technologies as the service provider for the proposed new jail video visitation system. Craig Watkins spoke out against Securus last Tuesday (September 23rd) at commissioners court, and the defense bar is opposed to Securus as well. Securus, in my opinion, is evil. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a company making a fair profit. But Securus is a predatory business which tries to lock in their guaranteed profits by unfairly preying upon the poor. Securus attempts to accomplish that by 1) charging as much as the market will bear for their video jail visitation services (their contract gives them the exclusive right to set fees for their services), and 2) trying to abolish in-person visitation, so that they will be the only game in town (they’ve done that in Illinois, for example.) To their credit, the Commissioners have stepped up and stopped any effort by Securus (or anyone else) to eliminate in-person visitation. But that may not have happened if DCDLA hadn’t jumped into the fight. Before DCDLA stepped in, the Commissioners were going to adopt Securus’ original proposal to eliminate in-person visitation. County Judge Clay Jenkins is opposed to Securus, but the other four commissioners are being seduced by Securus’ offer to install the equipment with no up-front cost to the taxpayers. This is seductive, but it is very short sighted. There will be a big cost to the taxpayers eventually, it’s just on the back end. Securus’ original bid required Dallas county to guarantee 8,250 video visitations per month, which is 3 times the national average for inmates where video visitation is an option. The taxpayers would have been obligated to pay for any shortfall, which has been estimated to be around $45,000 to $50,000 per month. Judge Jenkins wants the service provider to be a neutral provider of video visitation at cost, not a for profit business. The other commissioners see only dollar signs. Securus says that their profit margins are only about 7%. But Securus Technologies was recently sold for $640 million. That doesn’t sound like “only making 7%” to me. See huffingtonpost/…/prison-phone-call-fcc_n_389… Securus sees itself NOT as a neutral service provider, but as a video enhanced super cop, bragging about “helping to solve thousands of crimes a year” (see preceding article). Securus makes a recording of every inmate conversation, then provides copies of those videos to the prosecutors’ office, so that prosecutors can search through those videos looking for evidence of crime. Maybe that’s a good thing, or maybe it’s not, but Securus is anything but a neutral service provider. They attempt to collect evidence of crimes and pass that information to the prosecutor’s office. Securus is supposed to suppress the recording of any attorney-client video visitations, but there have been numerous instances where attorney-client conversations have been recorded by Securus and turned over to the prosecutors’ office, including in Travis county, Texas. Securus has a long track record of doing this, so any remarks about “working to correct that problem” should fall on deaf ears. Securus has 429 complaints (!) to the Better Business Bureau over the last three years. When you consider how few people ever actually take the time to file a complaint, that’s a staggering number. See: bbb.org/…/securus-technologies-in-da…/complaints… A video jail visitation service should be a service to the people who pay them – in this case, the inmates, their attorneys, and their loved ones. Securus does not provide service to these people – it exploits them, charging them as much as they possibly can, then ratting them out to the DA as soon and as often as possible. To me, that’s just plain evil., and Dallas County has no business doing business with this company. John Gioffredi
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 03:29:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015