Don’t be fooled: No-cost calls for incarcerated people is good policy
No-cost call policies in prisons have been wildly successful. Don’t let sheriffs — and their media minions — fool you.
Hey everyone,
Today, I’ve got a guest piece by Bianca Tylek, who writes in response to an absurd story by WJAR claiming without evidence that a state law allowing incarcerated people to make no-cost phone calls is somehow driving crime.
WJAR published this hit piece under its “I-Team” moniker as though it were investigative journalism — but all reporter Tamara Sacharczyk did was regurgitate misinformation fed to her by a sheriff who opposes the policy. It’s embarassing garbage, and Tylek sets the record straight.
Don’t be fooled: no-cost calls for incarcerated people is good policy
By Bianca Tylek
Last week, local NBC station WJAR ran a story that is plainly irresponsible and harmful copaganda, parroting claims from Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux that giving incarcerated people access to no-cost phone calls has caused increased crime in his jail. Let me explain why his claims are ridiculous.
For context, last week marked the first anniversary of no-cost calls implementation in Massachusetts, a legislative effort that made all calls across the state’s prisons and jails free. Backed by a strong community coalition, it’s been very successful, increasing connections across the state for incarcerated people and their families.
But one headline — based entirely on the unchallenged account of a single sheriff — would have you think otherwise. The headline at issue claims that crimes committed by incarcerated people inside jails (measured in criminal charges, not convictions) are up by 50 percent this year due to free calls. Heroux wants you to ignore that we’re talking about just 35 charges in a facility that holds more than 650 people on any given day and focus on the 50-percent figure because that seems dramatic.
Yet in the very last sentence of that article — but conveniently omitted from WJAR’s broadcast segment — the “investigative” reporter who authored it admits that crime in the jail peaked in 2021. That year, there were 44 charges, which is 26 percent higher than this year’s total. And that was two years before free calls were implemented in the jail.
Since such percentage fluctuations are normal with small figures, it’s not even worth trying to explain the reasons for this year’s uptick. After all, this year’s figure is generally in line with the jail’s five-year average.
But I’ll offer an obvious explanation the reporter ignored: increased capacity for monitoring and enforcement. Since 2021, when criminal charges peaked, the jail has struggled with staff vacancies. But over the past year, it brought in a net increase of nearly 100 officers.
Still, further parroting Heroux, the reporter goes on to blame free calls for increases in various types of misconduct despite it being utterly ridiculous to conclude that charging for calls would have prevented them. For example, the sheriff claims that drug-soaked pages were smuggled into the jail through legal mail and then sold for more than $4,000. Let’s assume this smuggling is somehow phone related (a major question): Is it reasonable to assume that the previous cost of a call, $2.10, would have prevented it? No.
The sheriff also claims that restraining-order violations increased. However, all jail calls come with a notice to the receiving party, who must accept the call. People receiving unwanted calls also have the option to block the number. While incarcerated people can switch their PINs, something the sheriff alleges is driving cases of harassment, they were also able to do this before they had access to free calls.
The litany of claims made in this article aren’t backed up with evidence, and in many cases the alleged crimes simply couldn’t possibly be caused by access to free calls. These claims are designed to fearmonger and move the public against smart criminal-justice policy.
Now, of course there is crime in prisons and jails for many reasons. But forthcoming research by Dr. Panka Bencsik shows that free-call policies decrease violence and misconduct significantly, by as much as 32 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Past research has shown similar figures. And most importantly, this research is consistent with what we’ve heard from other jurisdictions with free-call policies. A New York City Department of Correction spokesperson once explained that providing free calls is “humane and positive” and that not doing so could endanger incarcerated people and staff.
Beyond that, research has shown that incarcerated people who are in consistent contact with their support system come home faster and stay home. They are more likely to have housing, employment, and other social supports that make reentry possible.
So that brings us to the price tag of the free-calls program in the jail, which Heroux complains is $1.5 million. If this figure is true, it represents incredible financial and operational mismanagement that should warrant the sheriff’s removal from office. Given the jail’s population size, this figure suggests that it’s paying about $0.14 per minute, the same price families paid before the free-calls program. But doing so is irresponsible as every other agency with this policy renegotiated rates of just a penny or two. The county should be spending under $200,000 annually.
It should be noted that the jail is operating with half the incarcerated population it did a decade ago, but with a higher budget of $58 million. In other words, taxpayers in Bristol County are now paying more than twice as much per incarcerated person, and this ballooning carceral budget has nothing to do with free phone calls.
For that, taxpayers are getting the deadliest jail in the state. In recent years, the jail held 12 percent of the state’s incarcerated population but accounted for 25 percent of suicides in prisons and jails. Although this problem predates Heroux taking office, walking back a policy that connects incarcerated people with their families would only add to the despair that leads to some of them taking their own lives.
Knowing all that, it might not be surprising that the state legislature didn’t trust sheriffs with the money allocated for free calls. Rather than offering it up front, it made the funds available on a reimbursement basis. And maybe that’s why Heroux is acting out.
The bottom line is that incarceration is family separation, and incarcerated people should have access to free and regular communication with their loved ones. When implemented properly, which Worth Rises is always happy to support, it’s the smart and right thing to do.
We urge WJAR to retract and pull down this wildly misleading story that could never qualify as investigative reporting and for NBC to generally be mindful of how its brand is used by its affiliates. This is plainly lazy and irresponsible reporting.
Bianca Tylek is the executive director of Worth Rises, a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry and ending the exploitation of those it touches. You can follow Tylek on Bluesky and Twitter.
I should add that Tylek, myself, and others raised some of these criticisms with the WJAR “I-Team” reporter, Tamara Sacharczyk, on Twitter, and she has not responded to any of them.
I’ve also got to give a shoutout to Bill Shaner, who writes in Worcester Sucks about the newly published US Department of Justice report that found a pattern of egregious criminality and misconduct by Worcester police officers:
The 43-page document is a stunning summary of police abuses of power and lack of accountability. As an indictment, it is damning. But, unfortunately, the solutions proposed are lacking. Even more unfortunate: the city has already taken an antagonistic position, opting to kick and scream over engage with the document in good faith. And they’re being used by an ambitious Trumper in doing so, but we’ll get there.
Read the whole story here:
And if you missed it, check out my piece from earlier this week documenting the amazing story behind the Running for Innocence team, which has spent the last decade raising money to get wrongfully convicted people out of prison.
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Anyway, thanks for reading! That’s all for now.