O.C. Lawsuit Hits Inmate Phone Policy

A former state prison inmate says corrections officials are sending out a wrong message. Literally.

As state prisoners chat away on the phone, a message is played every now and then: “This call is from an inmate at a California state prison.”

State officials say the message helps prevent prison-run phone scams. But Colleen Abbas of Garden Grove contends in a class-action lawsuit filed recently in Orange County Superior Court that the message violates the privacy rights of the state’s 130,000 inmates and “is ruining family ties.”

Case in point: Abbas, 42, who was released from prison last year after serving time on drug and possession of stolen property charges, said her 3-year-old granddaughter hung up the phone in tears after hearing the recorded message while talking to her.

“In some cases communication has been prohibited by this practice,” Abbas alleges in the lawsuit, in which she is acting as her own lawyer. “[For example], the family does not want the grandparents to know that a grandchild is in prison because it would cause them unnecessary mental anguish and worry.”

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Tip Kindel, a Department of Corrections spokesman, said he had not yet seen the lawsuit, but defended the practice as a legal safeguard for residents against fraud and harassment.

“I can appreciate there may be some families and friends who are surprised to find the person is in prison, but on a broader scale, it is protecting an awful lot of people from taking calls they don’t want to take,” Kindel said. “On balance I don’t think that many individuals are being harmed. And I think there are a lot more protected by this system.”

Victims rights groups agree. Judith Rowland, director of legal services with San Diego-based California Crime Victims Legal Clinic, said she’s worked with victims who have received harassing calls and mail from inmates.

“If you have to balance, I think it needs to balance in favor of victims who don’t need to worry when they go to the mailbox or answer their phone when it rings,” she said.

Officials began playing the phone message in February, 1994, Kindel said. In July, 1993, officials started stamping mail identifying the sender as an inmate after a convicted child molester at Pelican Bay State Prison used the mail to harass a San Francisco woman who aided in his arrest.

That same summer, investigators busted a fraud ring involving Soledad Prison inmates who were accused of using prison telephones and credit card numbers stolen from two Newport Beach restaurants to buy thousands of dollars of gold.

The Pelican Bay and Soledad incidents were key in leading to the new regulations, which Kindel said have proved effective. The phone message is repeated 45 seconds after it is first played on inmates’ collect calls--the only type they may make--and then at random every few minutes. That way, even if the call has been forwarded to someone else, that person also will hear the message, Kindel said.

But Abbas contends that the practice goes too far. She said prison officials are making all inmates, and their family and friends, pay for the crimes of a few.

“People say, ‘Hey you’re in prison, what do you expect?’ ” said Abbas, who was released a year ago from the California Institution for Women at Frontera after serving time for possession of stolen property and narcotics charges. “But I don’t expect the people I call to be penalized.”

Since her release from prison, Abbas said her own calls with her fiance, serving a life sentence at Folsom prison, have been strained because of the “obnoxious” recurring messages.

She contends that prison authorities can already read prisoner mail and record phone calls, and could control problems by punishing those who break the rules. She also is alleging in the suit that prison officials failed to follow proper procedures in implementing the phone regulation.

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Kindel said authorities continue to monitor calls and mail at random, but the new system, operated under a contract with MCI, is more effective and cost efficient, with the service being paid for by the tolls on the calls.

Rebecca Jurado, a professor at Western State University College of Law specializing in the rights of women prisoners, said courts through the years have given states power to monitor the mail and phone calls of prisoners, but she is unaware of any cases dealing specifically with playing warning messages during phone calls.

Jurado questioned the phone and mail measures, saying she believes they “affect everybody like they’re all guilty.”

Steve Fama, a staff attorney with the Prison Law Office in San Rafael, said he has concerns that stamping mail and branding calls stigmatize prisoners more than is necessary.

“If the concern is simply prevention of fraud on the public, that’s what disciplinary rules are for,” he said. “If a single guy at Pelican Bay did something wrong, the answer is punish and prosecute that guy. Instead, they take the wholesale approach to the problem and in the process, I think, increase the stigma of being in prison.”

Victims rights advocates, however, said they welcome measures that protect the public, especially those who have been victimized before.

Kelly Rudiger, executive director of Sacramento-based Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau, said she understands how the phone messages might trouble inmates trying to keep their incarceration secret, but she said they should have thought about that before they broke the law.

“It’s a sad state of affairs, but they have to take responsibility for being there in the first place,” she said.

Abbas said she realizes she has a tough fight ahead, but is eagerly awaiting a court date and hopes an attorney might be able to help her case.

“You earn these phone calls,” she said. “It’s a privilege. Why earn something that has no value?”