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Stan* discusses telephone use
Orange County Jail Interview
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Jail Media: So what about telephones? Did you have regular access to phones?
Stan Smith: Yeah, you would just do collect calls. Every day you would have phones privileges anywhere from two to six hours a day but the guards can always take it away. If one guy messes up in your dorm, everybody gets punished.
Jail Media: How many phones are there?
Stan Smith: Six phones in each dorm.
Jail Media: And each race kind of claims a phone?
Stan Smith: Yeah – the only guys who have it bad is the blacks and the Asians. I mean, they get treated like it’s the south in the forties and fifties. I mean, there might be twelve toilets but they only get one toilet. And they only get one phone out of six phones. And they only get one shower out of twelve showers. If you’re a different race you can hang out with the black guys, but you can’t eat with them and you can’t share food with them. You can’t sit on their bunk and they can’t sit on yours.
Jail Media: So you could share some common facilities, but you’re not really friends with them?
Stan Smith: Yeah, I mean, I was friends with some of them because we grew up in the same cities but you just can’t… I mean, the Mexicans and whites are very racist in there. Orange County is a very racist jail. They’re still thinking that blacks maybe have a certain disease or something – you know, they’re just ignorant.
Jail Media: How much does it cost to make a collect call – a local one?
Stan Smith: It’s like four bucks for a local call.
Jail Media: And how long do you get to talk?
Stan Smith: You can actually talk as long as you want for $4 to a local number.
Jail Media: Really? That’s a lot cheaper than most other jails.
Stan Smith: Yeah, that was one nice thing – as long as you could reach somebody you could talk for an hour or more.
Jail Media: Could you buy phone cards or was it only collect?
Stan Smith: No, no phone cards – they do that in LA, though. They don’t do that in Orange County, though.
Jail Media: When you call someone does it announce to the caller that you’re calling from the Orange County Jail?
Stan Smith: Yes.
Jail Media: OK – so you’re not going to trick your employer or anything by calling them to tell them you can’t make it to work? They’re going to know, if you call, why you’re not at work, right?
Stan Smith: Yeah – the operator is going to tell them they’re getting a collect call from the Orange County Detention Facility.
Jail Media: Did they screen the calls? Do they tell you the call may be monitored?
Stan Smith: Yeah, there are signs saying that they do that. To be honest, though, I’m not sure how good they are at actually monitoring.
Jail Media: OK, so they say that they can but they probably aren’t usually sitting there monitoring your calls?
Stan Smith: Exactly.
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