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News :: Crime & Police |
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LOCAL GROUP ADVOCATES FOR CHANGES IN RESPONSE TO JAIL SUICIDES |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sandra Ahten
Email: spiritofsandra (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified!)
Phone: 217-367-6345 |
29 Dec 2004
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A group of local citizens is joining together to encourage the Champaign County Sheriff and Champaign County Board to make adjustments to the local jail system on the heels of three suicides in the county jail in the last six months. |
The group, CU Citizens for Peace and Justice, is also insisting that an outside agency investigate the possibility of criminal responsibility for the deaths. Currently the investigations are being conducted by the Sheriff’s Department, with supplemental reports from the Urbana City Police, and technical assistance from the Illinois State Police. The Chicago Tribune reported in 2002 that there are eight or nine jail suicides per year in Illinois. If statistics bear out, Champaign will have been the site of 30% of these this year.
Although some of the inmates at the Champaign County Jail have been found guilty and are sentenced to time there, most have not been found guilty and are awaiting their court date. Due to an urgently clogged court system, court dates are routinely six to eight months from the time of arrests. Those who have the funds usually have family post bond. Hence it is those who cannot afford bond who more often are held in the jail.
CU Citizens for Peace and Justice agrees with Sheriff Walsh who has stated that communication between inmates and their families should increase. The advocacy group contends that phone practices and visitation policies in particular need to change.
PHONE EXTORTION
In December 2002 Champaign County Board approved a contract with Evercom of Irving, Texas to provide inmate phone services. Under this agreement, in order to make even local calls, inmates are required to call collect at rates far exceeding any standard telephone rates. In return for signing this agreement, Champaign County received a $10,000 “signing bonus” and a promise of 48.5 % of revenue or $14,000 guaranteed per month, in kickback from these calls. The county has received $14,000 per month every month except one – when the percentage of revenue was higher and the County received $15,308.00. In two years the County has profited $347,308.
Inmates who use the phone service place a collect call, which the person receiving the call can accept or reject. An example of typical charges for a local collect call using the Evercom service is $6.14 for a 15-minute phone call. For comparison, a “local long distance” call of 15 minutes made from Urbana to Tuscola would cost $4.51 at most. As another comparison, a thirty-minute collect call from an Illinois Department of Correction Penitentiary (more than 200 miles away) to Urbana costs $10. In addition, calls are unlimited in the number that can be placed, but are limited to 15 minutes in duration. If the inmate needs to talk longer he/she has to call back and again pay the initial “connect” charge. Ideally, for local calls from the County Jail, collect services should not have to be used at all, and the call would cost just a few cents.
This contract with Evercom is set to expire on Feburary 1, 2005. Denny Inman of the Champaign County Administrator’s office has asked that the contract be bi-laterally extended to March 10. This matter is set to be discussed at the following Champaign County Board Meetings at 7 pm at the Brookens Administration Building, 1776 W. Washington Urbana IL:
Jan 3 (Monday), Justice and Social Services Committee
Jan 5 (Wednesday), Policy Procedures and Appointments (discussion of phone contract, with Evercom representative requested to be present)
Jan 20 (Thursday), Full Board
VISITATION PRACTICES
In addition to the detrimental phone practices, restrictions on visitation also impede contact between inmates and their families.
In state and federal prisons, visitors can usually have a four-hour visit. It is logical that in county jail the need for communication with family is even greater. The county jail is where people are usually held immediately after their arrest. Because of this there is a crisis nature to their circumstances – with legal as well as family decisions to be made.
At the Champaign County jail visitors routinely have to wait in line up to three hours for a twenty-minute visit. Family members or friends with jobs or other obligations often cannot breech this hurdle. The reason for the three-hour wait in line is that there is a maximum number of total visitors that the jail allows on any given visiting day. Currently that number is fifty. So, even if visiting hours are from 12 - 3pm, if fifty visitors have been processed, then the visiting period is over. A woman and her children who had driven down from Chicago was recently denied a visit with her husband at the downtown jail before visiting hours were scheduled to be over. No one was waiting – and yet the officer turned the woman away because fifty people had been there before her.
Visiting hours are limited to twice weekly. Each inmate can have a maximum of twenty minutes of visiting during this time, for a total of forty minutes per week. If there is more than one visitor, the twenty-minute time is split up. People routinely arrive three hours before visiting hours start so they can be assured a visit with their incarcerated family member or friend. In addition, the visitors often have to wait outside, they have to form and monitor their own line, and someone among them has to organize a sign-up sheet so they know who got their first. Although things usually go smoothly, occasionally someone leaves to get something to eat, care for a child, or someone jumps ahead in line and it causes disruptions. If there are any disruptions, the visitors are threatened that visitation will be cancelled. Cancellations, though not routine, do happen. In fact it is the opinion of many who wait in line at the county jail that the whole visiting scenario seems to be designed to discourage visits, which are of course vital to the mental health of inmates.
FUTURE
Two years ago seven members of the Champaign County Board voted against contracting with Evercom for telephone services. CU Citizens for Peace and Justice believes that with the rash of suicides at the jail and new County Board members taking their seats that the current Board will not agree to this phone extortion on the backs of the families of prisoners. A petition to voice your opposition to renewing the current contract can be viewed and signed at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/cucfpj/petition.html
GET INVOLVED
To be informed about action that you can take, including:
Getting petitions signed, enlisting endorsements from organizations you are involved in or have contact with (including churches, businesses, social and political groups), and making telephone calls to members of the County Board, Please contact Sandra Ahten at 217-367-6345 or spiritofsandra (at) hotmail.com
Please forward this information with the link for petition signing to all possible allies. |
See also:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/cucfpj/petition.html
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This work is in the public domain |
