collect calls and cell phones
one time i attended a training on what to do if there was a raid in your workplace or home. a raid carried out by immigration and customs enforcement (ICE). there the speaker mentioned that cell phones can not recieve collect calls. this may not seem like such a big deal at first but i have recently had the experience that a friend of mine was put in jail. he can’t communicate with his mom, who is not home, becuase her cell does not accept collect calls, and his visiting day is only one day a week.
when he called me i did not pick up because i did not know it was him, until i heard the message on my phone saying i had a collect call from the cook county departmant of corrections. that my cell did not take collect calls but that if i wanted to i could call a number and set up an account. i did just that . the charge was of 25 dollar increments and right away they charge you five. i talked to him like three times and the money was then all gone. i was being charged 2 dollars and something cents plus like twelve cents every minute. it was a complete rip off.
when i told my parents they were bothered by the fact that it is so expensive and hard to be in communication with the people in jail. i mean most people in jail do not have vasts amounts of money to begin with.
i tried to get this number to his mom but i could not find anyone who knew what it was. none of the legal clinics i called new. the cell pone companies said that cell phones can not take collect calls. it was all very frustraiting. yea it did end up being on my messages but even that number is somehow connected with the cook county department of corrections so i don’t know if i could accept other collect calls…. like from an immigration detention center.
that is one of my biggest worries. how de we get in touch with our friends and family when they have been taken from us by an unjust justice system? i don’t think jail really provides a healthy way for people who have done something harmful to reintegrate themselves into our communities. if anything it just makes it harder. but this is a topic i shall take on later (maybe another day).
point being jail is expensive and some peole make a lot of money out of that whole system of trials, arrests, managing prisons, building and running prisons, etc. and the people who bear the brunt are mostly those from communities of color and other marginalized communities.
how does it make any sense to put someone in jail for five years for 5 grams of crack while that same amount of cocaine, a more expensive and pure drug from which crack can be made, will most likely only bring probation (and the maximun jail time is 1 year).
http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/dp_cc_sentencingpolicy.pdf
that’s a good website to see a study about this and the disparity between race that is there. since cocaine is more expensive it’s bought more by people who have some money, while crack tends to be bought by people with less money (or at least there is that perception which might influence wo gets searched for what). what is true is that more african americans go to jail (for longer periods of time) for using a less pure less expensive cocaine derivative.
just the whole way this is set up is biased. how can our communites work toward not being targeted? and to protect ourselves from discrimination? i mean is this the right approach, and just what does that mean.
cops are suppose to make our communites more secure. that’s why there are so many blue light camaras. but if our youth is being targeted, and the police continue to abuse their power, then something is wrong and we need to change it to create a healthier and more just environment. but i don’t know how yet. copwatch maybe. more know your rights trainings, yea. but we need more.
