Texas Inmate Phone System Begins

MICHAEL GRACZYK

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas prison inmates are making routine phone calls for the first time.

The Texas prison board was told Friday the first of a planned systemwide program of telephone service to be available to most inmates began working this week at the Henley State Jail in Dayton, east of Houston. The system is being phased in this year throughout the 112 units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the nation's second-largest corrections agency.

Under terms of a contract with a Kansas telecommunications firm, the country's most restrictive telephone policy for state prisoners is ending for an estimated 120,000 inmates who will be allowed up 120 minutes of prepaid and collect calls each month.

Three more prisons — Vance, in Fort Bend County; Luther, in Grimes County; and Hobby, in Falls County — are to have phone service next week and should be among 13 brought up in April.

Another 31 become active in May and the entire system should be up by the end of September, said Paul Cooper, director and general manager of corrections markets for Embarq Corp., the Overland Park, Kan.-based company that last year was awarded a seven-year contract with the Texas prison agency.