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GAITHERSBURG, Md. – Quinzy Fraser’s youngest son was 2 years old when Fraser drove drunk and slammed his vehicle into a bicyclist in 2010.
The victim died and Fraser was sentenced to 10 years in a Maryland prison.
The incident was so tragic and unexpected, Fraser’s wife, Bethany, wasn’t sure what to tell her two young boys, ages 2 and 7 at the time. In shock, she wasn’t even sure what to tell herself.
“You have to be in shock to get through some of those situations,” she said. “[My husband] was certainly able, willing, and wanting whatever punishment was going to come for whatever he did… You know, you do something, and you have to deal with the consequence, so this was the consequence.”
When she learned her husband would be going away to prison, she began to think of her two children, and whether they would be emotionally punished as a result of his absence.
So, Fraser did everything she could to keep them in touch with their father while he served out his sentence.
“Over time, I realized how important it was…to stay connected,” she said. “For me, if the kids are my core concern, they need to know that, ‘Hey, I do have a dad. He’s not here. He cares about me. What he did has nothing to do with me.’”
What she didn’t realize, however, was the financial price she would pay for keeping her children in contact with their father.
“I easily could have spent maybe up to $500 per month,” Fraser said of her phone bills after receiving calls from her husband in prison. “The hardest thing was when I knew he was calling and I couldn’t afford to get it.”
The high prices Fraser paid are not unlike the ones other family members across the country pay to to reach many of the 2.2 million people in U.S. prisons and jails.
Peter Wagner, the executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, an organization that researches the effects of mass criminalization, says the issue is about more than just dollars and cents. The family ties and emotional bonds kept alive in prison phone calls, he says, are key to keeping former inmates on the straight and narrow.
“When it’s too expensive for people to call home, they don’t,” he said. “And then, family ties start to be strained, and it’s harder for people when they get back out of prison.”
Fraser knows that sympathy for her situation may be hard to find from some. She’s heard it before: If you want to be able to communicate with your family, don’t commit the crime.
“I totally get [it], and you’re right. I agree, and I wish it didn’t happen,” she said. “But my kids didn’t do it.”
This week, the FCC announced that it would vote later this month on a proposal to cap the price of all phone calls made from jails and prisons.
Critics have long accused leaders of the $1.2 billion prison phone industry of price gouging and unfairly taking advantage of a captive market by driving prices as high as $1 per minute. One leading telephone provider charges 7 cents per minute for a non-prison long distance call.
The commissioners, who voted two years ago to place a 25 cents-per-minute cap only on out-of-state phone calls, will also consider whether to ban excessive fees and whether to discourage commissions paid by phone companies to jails and prisons.
Two major providers of contracts to jails and prisons, Securus, and Global Tel Link, are currently in a pending legal battle with the FCC regarding the 2013 regulations.
Peter Wagner
executive director, Prison Policy Initiative
Although the commissions that jails and prisons receive vary around the country, more than 200 sheriffs wrote letters to the FCC earlier this year to defend the commissions they receive.
Some even suggested that an inmate’s access to jail phones could be limited or eliminated as a result of the FCC’s future actions.
Sheriff Dana Lawhorne of Alexandria, Virginia, said jails and prisons vary across the country when it comes to commissions, calling rates, and fees. Some are much higher than others, he said.
He defended the commissions he receives.
“Somebody making a telephone call to your house is far different than somebody making a telephone call from inside the jail,” Lawhorne said.
Lawhorne said his jail receives $150,000 in commissions each year, which pay for basic inmate services like televisions and microwaves. The commissions also help pay for the high cost of monitoring inmate phone calls for criminal behavior.
“People are known to run murder for hire cases of out jails to continue to run drug rings,” he said. “It’s not just somebody sitting around just making telephone calls back home to mom. There are people making many, many calls to many, many different people and not always for the right reason.”
Ahead of the FCC’s proposal announcement, Lawhorne, who insisted the calling rates and the commissions his jail receives are fair, told America Tonight any change would be “challenging,” but that it would be figured out.
“Just come up with something that’s a fair balance,” he said.
Fraser, who testified in front of the FCC, said she would not benefit from any of the proposed changes involving prison phone calls because the father of her children has been released from prison early.
She said she feels her involvement in the fight for what, she says, are fair calling rates will pay off for another family in the future.
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