Texas Inmate Phone System Begins

Texas is the last state to bar routine phone access for inmates. Most Texas prisoners now are allowed one five-minute collect call every 90 days, and only with a warden's permission and only with a prison officer present to monitor the call.

The new system will allow inmates up to 15 minutes per call to friends and family on an approved list of visitors. Calls to crime victims or the victims' families will be barred.

Inmates and their families can prepay for telephone calls at rates of about 23 cents a minute for in-state calls and 39 cents for out-of-state calls. Collect calls within Texas will be about 26 cents a minute and 43 cents for outside the state. International calls and calls to cell phone aren't allowed.

Phone privileges won't extend to about 36,000 inmates with disciplinary problems, gang affiliations or those on death row.

A few weeks before the system becomes active at a unit, Embarq makes voice prints of each eligible inmate as a security check for phone access. Cooper said so far 65,000 inmates have enrolled.

"We educate offenders on how the system is going to work so they know and write letters to friends and families," he said.