Inmates at ESP Having Problems With Phones?
Posted By MTWT - Chris on June 29, 2009 
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Inmates at Ely State Prison have very few privileges. Most of the men housed in the general population units have very little to look forward to. Ely is a lockdown prison where the inmates are in their cells sometimes 24 hours a day.
Phone calls mean the world to the inmates. They look forward to being able to call their loved ones to check in and those calls ease the worry about what is going on with family on the streets. Inmates at Ely are allowed 15 minute calls. Some get a call once a day, some once a week and then you have the ones that only get a fifteen-minute call once a month. When the inmate finally gets their hands on that phone they are excited to know that for 15 minutes they are getting “out” of the walls for that short period, and will spend time talking to loved ones.
Unlike most prisons, and unlike what you see on television, telephones are not hanging on the wall in the so-called general population units; they are brought to the inmate. It’s a cordless phone and sometimes the connection is so bad that it cuts off in mid-sentence and that ends the phone call. They are not allowed to call back because of the block on the phone. Inmates use a pin number and once they used their one time, that’s it, no more calls will be made until their next call day. This, in some cases, could be an entire month. It doesn’t matter if you got one minute on the phone, or the full fifteen minutes: the call is over.
The inmate has to submit a kite with the time frame they would like to use the phone every single day. If you don’t have a kite then you don’t get the phone. Inmates depend on the CO’s to make sure their kites get into the stack, along with those of men that would like to make a call on that day.
These phone calls mean everything to these men for so many reasons. Most make sure that if they want to make that phone call, that kite is submitted on time and correctly. There is no reason that family and friends should go days, sometimes up to eight or nine days, without hearing from their loved ones when they know they should get a call everyday. The family looks forward to those calls as much as the inmate does. We worry about our loved ones. On top of not getting their personal calls, inmates don’t receive the phone to call their lawyers. They have to submit a legal kite and with it put a date and time that they need to call their attorneys. The time will come and when the inmate calls out for the phone the CO at times will tell them their kite is not there. These men don’t forget to put their kites in everyday. Once or twice I can understand but not every day. They are told that kites were not submitted, when, in fact, the kites were submitted. They are told by some of the honest CO’s that they were most likely thrown out because they had a stack that was too deep to get through or they just were just passed over because the CO’s passing the phone may have a beef with that inmate. Either way, it’s very hard for the inmates to get the phone.
Another issue that most family and friends and even the inmates deal with is that once they get on the phone and start talking the CO that brought the phone to you comes back four minutes into the call to tell the inmate his time is up. How is his time up when:
1.) He is only allowed ONE fifteen minute call
2.) You just brought him the phone
3.) You tell him you made a mistake and it wasn’t his turn (ending anymore calls for the day)
Email received from family member:
“There was an incident one time where I was speaking with my loved one. His cellie was inside the cell with him and they both are allowed one fifteen minute call. My loved gave his cellie the phone first, so that he could call his mother before she left for work. The cellie got his full fifteen minutes. My loved one called me and about five minutes into the call the CO came to the door to inform him that their phone time was up. He asked the CO how that is possible. He told the CO that he was allowed a fifteen minute call every day, and that he was still talking. The CO, speaking loud enough so that even I could hear him through the phone said, “You have fifteen minutes, you have to share the fifteen minutes, split it between the both of you”.
Even if what he is saying is true (which it is not) they would still get seven and half minutes each on the phone. He had to give up the phone or risk being written up for disobeying an order and then he could possibly lose his calls for 30 days or more.”
Email received from family member:
“Yes I have had problems with the phones too. One time he called me and we didn’t get more than hello out of our mouths before the officer was at the door explaining to him that he had made a mistake and it wasn’t his turn to use the phone. My husband couldn’t call back when it was his time because his pin had already been activated for the day. We got less than two minutes on the phone that day and it was four days before he was allowed to call back. They didn’t bring the phone back to him for four days. My husband is on unit five and getting the phone on that unit is almost like pulling teeth. Some guys have gone seven to nine days without getting their phone calls. They only have one phone for every man on the unit.”
Email received from family member:
“I had been sick for a while and wrote to him that when he could get the phone to call me so I could tell him about what was going on with my health. We were about four minutes into the call when the CO came to the door to say his phone time was up. Most of the time he would just tell me goodbye and we would hang up the phone. This time was different because he had not had the phone since I got really sick. He didn’t obey the direct order and refused to give up the phone. He informed the CO that he had fifteen minutes, his wife was sick, and he was not giving up the phone until his fifteen minutes were up. I have not heard from him, I don’t know if he got written up and his phone privileges taken away. I won’t know this until I either get a phone call or a letter.”
These are just a few of the emails we get on the subject of phones inside Ely State prison. The inmates have to deal with a fight just to get the phone, then he must fight to keep it for his fifteen minutes. The family and friends have to worry about the inmate and whether or not something has happened to him. Is he sick? Did he get moved?
It’s time to fix the phone system within Ely State Prison. Get more phone so more people can call out at one time. If you give the inmate the phone by mistake, it was your mistake, let him finish his call because he can’t get another that day. Those that are each allowed fifteen minute calls should have fifteen minute calls; they don’t have to split their time with their cellie. Stop abusing your power with the phones, How would you feel if you couldn’t talk to your loved ones when it was your turn? NDOC claims they have no money, but the phone is a cash cow, overcharging inmate families for connection fees. The warden at ESP could help the department by allowing people to use the phone.
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