Fairfield Daily Republic.

 July 21, 2000

 Paying their debt--Prisoner advocates say inmates charged too much

 By Inga Miller

 VACAVILLE - Getting a $5 doctor visit might be a bargain anywhere else. But family of state prison inmates say on the inside, it's hardly a deal at all.

 The medical fee is just one of several prison fees that go toward paying the cost of incarceration.

 And the debate about just how much inmates - and their families - should be charged for services received while incarcerated promises to heat up as summer draws on.

 This year's budget includes $5.2 billion for the state Department of Corrections. And while costs of housing prisoners will probably always exceed what they pay back to the system, officials are reconsidering one of the state's most controversial sources of revenue from inmates - telephone calls.

 "One of our priorities is to find a way to lower the fees a little bit for the inmates, but we have other priorities, too," said Cynthia Larson-Schwartz, a deputy director within the state's telecommunications division of the General Services Department which is in charge of telephone contracts at the state's prisons.

 As it stands, each phone call an inmate makes costs $3, plus an additional charge for each minute. And the state gets 33 to 44 cents on every dollar.

 The telephone charges are a way to recoup the costs of implementing expensive phone-monitoring systems, state officials said. But a group of legislators staunchly oppose the practice, countering that it makes a state profit at the expense of those least able to pay.

 "In most cases, it isn't even the inmates that end up paying for the calls - it's their families," said Rand Martin, chief of staff for State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose. Vasconcellos is pushing for a changed system One parent of an inmate, prisoner advocate Cayenne Bird, said she can't even afford to receive calls from her son.

 "He really needs a lot more than I can afford," Bird said. She said she regretted not being able to offer more.

 The fees are unreasonable to lawmakers because the costs are levied on those not in prison, Martin said. Drawing on inmates' own resources for some of the costs incurred during their $21,470-a-year stay is still contested by prisoner groups, but has generally attracted less skepticism.

 Inmates who participate in private sector work programs have paid $5.2 million statewide since that program began a decade ago. Under the system, inmates pay 20 percent for room and board, 20 percent for taxes, 20 percent for victim compensation and 20 percent for family support. They are allowed to save the remaining 20 percent.

 That has translated to $1.8 million for room and board during the nine years. While it is a minute fraction in comparison to even this year's overall budget for housing state inmates, it's far more than the state previously received from inmates.

 "The state joint venture program is the only one where inmates pay a portion of their wages back to the prison," said Terry Thornton, a spokesman for the corrections department.

 With no such program at either the California State Prison at Solano or the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, revenue generated there is comparatively nominal.

 And for the most part, the other costs inmates encounter there are aimed at either discouraging waste and repaying the state for property damage.

 "Inmates (here) don't pay for room and board," said Lt. Terry McDonald, public information officer at the prison. "They may pay for items if they damage state property. Through the disciplinary process they may be ordered to pay for anything as small as sheets to as large as a cell."

 Some inmates burn their cells by lighting them on fire, McDonald said, and periodically an inmate will rip a toilet or sink from the wall.

 At the California Medical Facility last year, for instance, inmates paid a total of $401 for library books they destroyed, $289 for tearing up their prison identification card - or changing their appearance soon after receiving the ID - another $388 for stolen or tampered with food, $365 for clothing, and $1,472 for building damage.

 The money received for the destroyed property only occurred in the minority of cases. Actual damage to the institution, McDonald said, far outscaled the payments made, by a ratio of 10 to one.

 Again, the $7,377 in medical co-payments made by inmates at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville last year, hardly dents the facility's $55 million medical budget.

 As a treatment center for inmates with health problems, however, CMF doesn't have the same potential as other state facilities to generate revenue from inmates. The joint venture program wouldn't work, McDonald said, because many inmates would be unable to participate.

 Mostly, McDonald said, the fees they do charge are meant to discourage waste or destruction of property that generate further cost to the institution.

 The $5 co-payments inmates are charged when they go to a medical appointment at the prison, for instance, isn't charged when inmates are seriously ill or when they don't have enough money on record at the prison.

Inmates also avoid the fee when they are officially asked by the institution to seek treatment or testing.

 The same goes for the Solano County jail where inmates are charged $3 for visits, when they can.

 The only major cost the county is reimbursed for are the $135.89 costs of booking an inmates. The cities where police arrested the suspect are charged the fee, and then can pass the fee back to the state.

 County officials have considered implementing fees at the jail to help pay the costs incurred there, but the idea has never gotten off the ground, Deputy County Administrator Darby Hayes said.

 "The big problem with charging (inmates) for boarding-type fees is how to collect them," Hayes said. "Generally speaking, people in jail - at least those who have been convicted and sentenced - don't have a lot of money, and I would think that one of the reasons they got there is because of a lack of funds in the first place."