More Prisons Banning In-Person Visits, Adding To Securus Tech's Pile Of Cash
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Jails and prisons continue to sacrifice what few physical interactions prisoners have with loved ones on the outside to phone service provider Securus. The New Orleans Advocate reports a local jail is the latest in a long line of correctional facilities to ban in-person visits, replacing them with Securus communication software and hardware.Inmates at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna will no longer be able to receive in-person visits from relatives and friends beginning Oct. 10, when the facility will begin a "video visitation" program similar to one put in place at New Orleans' lockup a couple of years ago. To jailers, this move just makes sense. It all but eliminates contraband smuggling and allows prisons and jails to allocate fewer staffers to monitoring prisoner visits. But it makes little sense for those stuck inside and even less sense for those on the outside who will be spending a lot more money on visits that used to be free.The Sheriff's Office said 20-minute sessions will cost nearly $13. At this per minute rate, it makes no difference visiting hours are being expanded. While it may sometimes be more convenient to Skype prisoners than visit in person, no one's asking for $0.60/minute communications to be their only option.But this is something Securus has pushed for a long time. Back in 2015, Securus finally dropped a clause in its contracts that mandated correctional facilities using its equipment move to video-only visits. But that doesn't mean jails aren't still heavily encouraged to ban in-person visits. The pivot to video doesn't just generate an absurd amount of income for the communications provider. It also pads the pockets of prisons.Jails stand to make a profit by adopting this type of visitation. If families do a video visit at the jail, it's free, but if they do it from their home computer, it can cost $1 per minute. Securus promised the Cheshire County Jail a 20 percent cut of the thousands of dollars those fees bring in — that cut totaled $2,500 for the jail last year. The county paid $30,000 to install the video system. This perversity incentivizes prison and jails to further dehumanize inmates by cutting them off from most, if not all, outside human contact while incarcerated. Jails don't have to step up to full-on bans to discourage visits. They can just enact highly-intrusive search policies and shorten visiting hours to achieve the same effect.The push to video further benefits the state by ensuring almost every communication between prisoners and outsiders is recorded. In-person visits may be lightly-surveilled by staff, but calls routed through Securus hardware/software are swept up in their entirety, easily accessed by the government.It's not like prisoners aren't warned that all calls are recorded, but these bans eliminate any possibility of an intimate one-on-one conversation with a loved one or family member.Just as problematic is the government's access to every conversation. While prisoners have an extremely diminished expectation of privacy, the government has repeatedly overstepped the very minimal boundaries remaining to listen in on privileged calls from prisoners to their legal reps.And if the per call price seems high now, it's only going to get worse. Along with attacking net neutrality and loosening regulation of telcos and cable companies, FCC chairman Ajit Pai has made it clear the sky's the limit for prison phone call fees.In the end, very little will be done about it. Convicted prisoners are the least sympathetic group when it comes to pushing new legislation. Very few politicians are willing to go to bat for incarcerated people and even fewer constituents are willing to support candidates who appear the least bit empathetic for those behind bars. Topping it all off is the fact that those affected the most cannot vote, despite being handy sources of federal revenue for states and cities housing inmates.The push will continue to further isolate prisoners, which is only going to serve to reduce the chances of societal reintegration after they've done their time. But that's OK, because the harder it is to return to normal life, the greater the chance released inmates will end up back in prison racking up $15 phone calls that benefit Securus and others willing to shamelessly exploit a very captive audience.
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Known Terrorists Under Witness Protection Roaming The Country Pretty Much Unattended
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The FBI loves its counterterrorism work. Loves it so much, it's pretty much abandoned all pretense of being a law enforcement agency. It acts as though it's somewhere between the NSA and the ATF: interested mostly in picking through surveillance dragnets and running sting operations that turn people who have trouble with basic skills like holding down jobs into national security threats.But it can't score anti-terrorism goals on unguarded nets without a crew of informants. It works with immigration authorities to coerce visiting foreigners into providing the agency with intel. It goes further than that, though. It also operates a witness protection program for informants/witnesses actually involved in actual terrorist activity.Considering the danger inherent to letting these informants run on a long leash, you'd think the FBI would keep close tabs on some of its more dangerous helpers. But that isn't the case. The DOJ's Inspector General has released a heavily-redacted report [PDF] on the government's use of known suspected terrorists (KSTs) as temporary allies in the greater War on Terrorism. These are handled by the US Marshals Service, with the FBI acting as an intermediary. More government agencies are involved as well -- or at least should be. But one of the many problems the OIG found was a lack of communication.We found several deficiencies in the process OEO [the DOJ's Office of Enforcement Operations] followed in analyzing these case files and in sharing information with the FBI. Specifically, we believe, and the FBI agrees, that OEO should have shared the information with national security stakeholders for all [redacted] individuals identified by the USMS, rather than conducting its own secondary review. If OEO had passed along all of the case file information that the USMS identified from its case file review, the FBI's counterterrorism experts - not just OEO - would have had the opportunity to evaluate whether any of the [redacted] individuals were KSTs. Under the process used, that did not happen for a majority of the individuals. We also found that neither OEO nor the FBI was able to provide evidence of a consistent application of the criteria each used for its reviews, and both lacked adequate support for their respective determinations.In addition, OEO's sharing of information with the FBI was often marked by delay and the FBI's assessments of that information were inadequately documented. Of particular concern, we found that although the USMS began identifying to OEO individuals it believed had a potential nexus to terrorism in November 2013, OEO did not begin sending that information to the FBI for possible watchlisting until March 2014, and we found delays of weeks or months in OEO's handling of many of the individuals the USMS identified in late 2013 and early 2014. This lack of info sharing combined with the agencies' inadequate documentation to create some horrifying problems. Known suspected terrorists were allowed to board planes on multiple occasions. Some continued to commit criminal acts. And in some cases, no one had any clue where their KST informants had vanished to.As of November 2016, counting those KSTs identified during our May 2013 report, the FBI, OEO, and USMS have identified [redacted] KSTs who were previously admitted into the WITSEC Program. As of November 2016, the FBI had located [redacted] of these [redacted] KSTs, and were in the process of verifying the location of the remaining [redacted] individuals. In one case, two KSTs were already watchlisted by the National Joint Terrorism Task Force. Nonetheless, they continued to engage in criminal activities for five months before they were arrested. They weren't the only ones. Other KSTs engaged in criminal activity without being terminated from the WITSEC program.[D]espite four termination requests in 9 months from the USMS, OEO delayed the termination of a WITSEC Program participant who had allegedly sexually assaulted five individuals in an 8 year period, including three minors. Other WITSEC participants used the system's lack of oversight and flawed interagency communications to their own advantage. One KST used both his real identity, along with the new one provided to him in the WITSEC program, to game the system. Once terminated from the program, the KST was asked to return the new-name documents. Apparently, he never did. And no one followed up until the OIG got involvedBy retaining these documents, KST 70 was able to use both identities for years. For example, KST 70 was receiving [redacted] benefits in KST 70's new name while receiving [redacted] retirement benefits in KST 70's true name. [...] We also found that KST 70 was able to use KST 70's new name, including a [redacted] driver's license. In fact, KST 70 checked into a hotel the night before the [redacted] with that [redacted] driver's license. We find it very concerning that KST 70 was allowed to use both identities for so long. The OIG has a long list of recommendations to fix the ongoing KST/WITSEC issues. Unfortunately, you won't be reading them. They're 100% redacted. But we can assume it means a lot of changes in a system of utmost importance -- as is the case with anything national security-related -- that's treated like an afterthought by its many participants.
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