Maximizing Inmate Telephone Revenues
By Barbara La Follette, President, DC TeleSystems

DC TeleSystems' past experience auditing inmate telephone records revealed that in many instances, revenues to Correctional and Jail Facilities fall far short of their potential. I attribute this deficiency to two basic factors: lack of vigilance and administration of the inmate telephone system and the level of expectation. Completely understandable- Jail and Correctional Professionals simply do not have the time to tackle daily telephone issues in addition to their many other challenges and responsibilities In this article, I will address the first issue involving vigilance and administration of your inmate telephone contract.

Many Correctional and Jail Facilities may be losing thousands of dollars because their inmate telephone system is not operating efficiently. At a time when budgets are tight, inmate telephone calls are a depended upon source of substantial revenues to most Jail and Correctional Facilities. Generally, all or a portion of telephone revenues are designated either to offset the costs of inmate programs or to enhance general revenues. However, when the system is not working properly, (and if staff are not proactively overseeing administration of their telephone contracts), thousands of revenue dollars can be lost.

Unfortunately, performance problems among inmate telephone providers are common. By contract, responsibility is on the inmate telephone vendor to produce and maintain quality service. With few exceptions, many companies do not perform periodic analyses to determine if all telephones are generating revenues and if they are not, most companies do not ask why not. They do not systematically review changes and trends in inmate populations, fluctuations in inmate calling patterns or policies that impact phone revenues. Failure to perform these services result in lost revenues.

Correctional and Jail Facilities cannot be assured that commissions are accurate and being maximized if there aren't appropriate checks and balances to ensure that the system is operating efficiently, customers are being billed correctly, and revenues are being accurately reported and honestly disclosed.

The key to maximizing revenues is to proactively administer your telephone contracts to ensure the expectations and projected revenues of the telephone system are met. DC TeleSystems provides our clients with a professional Telecommunications Site Manager (TSM) dedicated to overseeing every facet of the inmate telephone system and attentive to your facility. In most instances, our TSM is on-premise and therefore aware of your day-to-day operations to provide informed guidance to administrative staff, inmates and their families. Calls are not routed to a remote location to an uninformed operator unfamiliar with your facility and unaware of your daily inmate telephone operations.

I have compiled some recommendations that can be applied to test and ensure contract compliance with your current inmate telephone vendor:

Maintain an accurate inventory of the phones
The inventory should include the phone number and location of each inmate telephone that can be easily cross-referenced to revenue reports. In 100% of our past audits, we found the telephone count to be off by as much as 35%. This means that 35% of the phones were not reporting revenues accurately! An Equipment Station Report should be provided by your inmate telephone provider and kept up-to-date as telephones are moved and new cell blocks are opened.

Have a procedure in place to report a trouble issue when a telephone is down.
Monitor progress of your current telephone vendor all the way to resolution. Some facilities reported as many as 20% of the inmate telephones have been down for weeks at a time.

Compare the commission statement against your telephone inventory to ensure revenues are being reported on every telephone.
Telephone companies typically do not include phones with $0 revenues on standard commission reports. The question Administrators should ask is, "If phones are not producing revenues, why are they there?" In the past, we identified thousands of dollars of lost revenues because telephones with high inmate traffic did not appear on commission reports.

Monitor phone revenues and inmate calling patterns monthly.
If the number of inmates has increased significantly and commissions have gone down - something may be wrong. The cost of inmate calls over the past few years has risen sharply. If there are dramatic swings in revenues for no apparent reason, staff should undertake a comprehensive review of the phone system.

To assist in these steps, DC TeleSystems provides our clients with a TSM to be "on top" of the system at all times and to perform all of the above tasks to ensure total system performance, maintain efficiency and safeguard your revenue source- so that you do not have to.

Our team at DC TeleSystems embodies the belief that proactive oversight and management of your inmate telephone system and equipment will improve system performance, increase telephone security, ensure accountability, all while maximize telephone revenues without increasing call costs.