🧵 Here’s what you need to know about correctional telecom:

Corrections agencies contract with prison telecom corporations to provide communications and media services to incarcerated people. This includes phone Calls, video Calls, electronic messaging, and media services. The correctional telecom market is a $1.5 billion industry. All three of the largest prison telecom providers are owned by private equity firms. Securus is owned by Platinum Equity, ViaPath by American Securities, and ICSolutions by HIG Capital.

In 2024, we made a lot of strides in our fight to dismantle the prison industry. None of our work would be possible without the support we receive from all of YOU!

Here are a few ways we disrupted the prison industry this year 🧵 📞 Through our Connecting Families work, we moved the FCC to more than halve rate caps for prison and jail calls, as well as ban deposit fees, commissions, and the pass through of surveillance costs. The new regulations will save families over $500 million annually.

This Halloween, before trick or treating, take a moment to learn about the HORRORS of the PRISON INDUSTRY that incarcerated people and their families face everyday. A thread. 🧟‍♂️ CoreCivic is the largest private owner and operator of prisons, jails, and detention centers in the U.S. CoreCivic facilities have been accused of gross human rights violations for inhumane living conditions, medical negligence, physical and sexual abuse, overcrowding, & more.

NEWS! We filed a complaint against @UBS for its investments in private prison firms CoreCivic and GEO Group. The Swiss Nat'l Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct (NCP), a governmental business + human rights watchdog, has accepted the complaint.
business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news…
Our complaint, filed with @BankTrack @NMCIR, alleges that UBS has contravened their responsibilities under the OECD Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct to carry out adequate human rights due diligence with their investments and exert its influence to curb any violations.

BREAKING! The @FCC just sided with families across the country and MASSIVELY REDUCED prison and jail phone and video call rates. The new rules, passed unanimously, will impact 83% of incarcerated people and save families over $500 MILLION annually. Here’s what you should know…🧵 In 2022, Congress passed the Martha Wright Reed Act, increasing the FCC’s authority to regulate prison and jail telecom, mandating that it do so within 18-24 mos. While the FCC can't make prison and jail calls free, it can cap rates. docs.fcc.gov/public/attachm…

A MUST READ this Juneteenth in the New York Times by Worth Rises Director of Research Tommaso Bardelli: "Labor that people have no meaningful right to refuse and that is enforced under conditions of total control is, unquestionably, slavery."
nytimes.com/2024/06/19/opi… Tommaso reminds us that "Congress denounces imported goods made with prison labor in places like China’s Xinjiang province, the offices of many government agencies in Washington... are stocked with furniture and supplies made by prisoners in this country." The irony.

This Halloween, we're pulling the mask off of the prison industry and exposing the ways in which it manipulates language. Prison profiteers use crafty language to make their predatory tactics more palatable for those who know no better. But we do, and now you do too. THREAD 🧵 They say: “Video visitation”

But in reality, they’re just expensive video calls that prison telecom providers convince correctional administrators to replace actual visits by paying them kickbacks.

Have you heard of the Texas Two-Step? It's a controversial tactic used by corporations to avoid paying legal settlements. Corizon—one of the nation's largest private correctional healthcare providers—is using it to get out of 475 malpractice suits. 🧵
businessinsider.com/corizon-health… Here's how it works: Facing legal troubles, a corporation splits into two. One successor gets all the assets, like revenue generating contracts, and continues business as usual. The other gets all the liabilities and then files for bankruptcy, claiming inability to pay them.

Last year, hundreds died in AL prisons, where death rates are the highest in the nation. The response? Gov @kayivey wants to build new prisons using public debt and COVID relief funds and the price tag just increased to a BILLION dollars. (THREAD 🧵)
alreporter.com/2023/03/17/opi… To start, AL’s corrections department doesn’t even notify families of their loved ones death or publish regular death statistics any more. Alabamians must rely on incarcerated people, the people that represent them, and journalists news and numbers.
alabamaappleseed.org/author/eddie-b…

NEW! There are 4,000+ corporations in the prison industry, it's about time we knew who they are. We just released an interactive database exposing them all. Here's a glimpse at just a few. 🧵

Visit data.worthrises.org to dig deeper into the dark web of prison profiteering. 1/ @3M is recognized for brands like @Postit & @Scotch. 3M helps prisons across the country build license plate factories, where incarcerated people work for pennies an hour. They also supply millions of dollars of raw materials to prisons for the manufacturing.

HARM SCORE: 14

Over the past 13 days, from Labor Day to Constitution Day, we have released one story each day from someone who has been forced to labor under the exception in the 13th Amendment. Here are all their stories. 🧵

Take action to abolish slavery for all at EndTheException.com! Except for Johnny

https://twitter.com/worthrises/status/1566788239972655104?s=46&t=OI6BY41uG3pYcHCjEyZo9g

ANNOUNCEMENT! We just released two new tools for the fight for prison phone justice — a game-changing, real-time rate map and a national PSA featuring NBA coach and former player Caron Butler @realtuffjuice that reminds of the people behind the numbers. Let's #ConnectFamiles! 🧵 @realtuffjuice The PSA follows Euriya, one of the 1 in 29 children in the US with an incarcerated parent, as his family navigates the financial hardship of staying connected. The burden is too much for him and his mom, so he misses out on doing homework with dad and often hearing "I love you."

Predatory prison telecom Aventiv (parent of @SecurusTech & @JPay_com) once offered prison college programs free access to its tablets but not anymore. Why? The ban on Pell grants for incarcerated students was just lifted, and they see $$$.

THREAD
motherjones.com/crime-justice/… In 1994, Biden’s infamous crime bill, banned Pell grants for incarcerated students. Within a year, the number of incarcerated college students fell by an estimated 44%. By 1997, out of 772 prison college programs that operated in the early '90s, only eight were left.

Did you know that the 13th Amendment, celebrated for abolishing slavery, includes an exception for criminal punishment? Neither do 88% of Americans.

teenvogue.com/story/slavery-…

Worth Rises' @BiancaTylek explains in @TeenVogue. Help end slavery at endtheexception.com. After the passage of the #13th, Southern and other states used ‘Black Codes’ to criminalize and re-enslave newly-freed Black folks — these were laws that prohibited Black people from owning land, moving freely, being unemployed, and more.
nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/b…

“I am writing to your company, Global Tel Link, but I seek to appeal to a human being. How you have treated me and my family...through your business practices has caused us great harm.” - Miguel, San Quentin

Read this powerful letter to @GTLCorporate & @AmerSecurities. THREAD Miguel hasn’t seen his family for more than a year.

“Covid isolation has meant sporadic and limited phone calls with poor sound quality that are... interrupted every few minutes by needless recordings, without privacy... and on 12 phones for 700-800 individuals.”

Imagine getting a hand drawn birthday card from your kid. Now, imagine that instead you got a photocopy of that birthday card -- or worse, just a small digital copy on a tablet -- AND that someone threw your kid's card in the trash in some corporate warehouse.

Angry? THREAD. PA did it first: replaced direct mail in prisons with privatized mail photocopying. Now, this cruel practice is quickly spreading. It's already been rolled out in many local jails, and is being piloted in the federal prison system and in MA prisons.

"I was in prison on my daughter’s 8th birthday... I had seen it happen over and over to the men around me: active and willing fathers who lost their babies because of the cost of a call." - Jewu

You minced no words with this one, Jewu @ctbailfund!
ctpost.com/opinion/articl… "That’s right, amid a fight over prison calls, the state signed a second predatory contract with the same corporation to further exploit families with incarcerated loved ones. But what can we expect when the state has its hand in the cookie jar?"

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was created by the first #COVID19 stimulus bill to help small businesses retain employees. Only 5.7% of US businesses received a PPP loan, but among them, infamous corporations in the prison industry. These may shock you…or not. (THREAD) While many are struggling to pay for calls with their incarcerated loved ones, the corporations exploiting them are getting bailouts. NCIC received a $1-2 million PPP loan while charging families $7.50 for a simple 15-minute local phone call.

act.freepress.net/sign/justice_p…

Yes, we must #DefundPolice. We cannot reform a system designed to brutalize and exploit Black people. We must dismantle it. We do that by removing its financial power.

It's time we unpack how police and prisons are funded.

(Thread) 1) Rightfully the focus of most demands to #DefundPolice, legislative budgets are the largest source of police and prison funding. These budgets are proposed, negotiated, passed, and signed at the federal, state, and local level.