I do not want to tell you what I have spent on prison phone calls in case my mother ever reads this. But because not many of you have had occasion to know about this criminality (I’m not talking about the inmates), I would like to devote today’s 200 words to it.

People who could most use the encouragement of Mamma’s voice are being charged $20 per fifteen minutes to reach out and touch someone. At least that’s what I’ve been paying to CBS, Correctional Billing Services, division of Evercom Systems).

I phoned the correctional facility to ask why it’s so expensive. They said they didn’t know. They gave me a phone number to call and it was CBS. I asked one of the nice Caribbean people who answered and she said it was the prison that sets the rates. With a little investigation, I learned that exclusive contracts for prison phone service are awarded by a competitive bidding process. “Evercom…installs and maintains its equipment at no cost to the facilities, and then pays generous kickbacks for the right to extort the families and friends of inmates” (North Country Gazette, January 23, 2007).

Politicians are all about votes and votes are all about constituencies, and there isn’t a big lobby for inmates. Besides, inmates get what they deserve, right? They’ve made their beds, let’em lie in them. They won’t get help from the federal courts either, which have backed off from interference with internal prison affairs since the 1970s.

But Jesus gave us a peek at the final exam, and one of the questions regards how we treated those in prison (Matthew 25:36). Even if some of us can’t visit them, it would be nice to let them call.

This is not sour grapes; these are sweet enough for me.

It would be nice, I suppose, when strangers ask me where my son graduated from, to say U Penn instead of the penitentiary. But do not overlook the fringe benefits of disaster; you probably have some in your own life:

My two boys, seven years apart in age, never had relationship, which was a constant grief for me. I don’t know if the younger one even knew what his brother’s handwriting looked like; only the back of his hand now and then. What freedom couldn’t do captivity achieved, and they have become penpals over the past two years.

I heard someone ask my son, before his incarceration, what he likes to read. He, in his dismissive manner, “Reading makes my head hurt.” Once in prison he read everything he could get his hands on, and was pleased when transferred to a prison that was reputed to have the best library in the system.

And if he had gone to U Penn, I just wonder if I would have received the letter from him that I got on February 27, 2007, from solitary confinement, that began, “Dear Mom, I thought you’d like to know that I asked Jesus to be my Savior last night.”