"Correctional Billing Services"? WTH?

Decisions.  Decisions.

Either I have been previously immune to the issues around the "New Jim Crow" / "Prison Industrial Complex" OR I need to keep doing what I am doing so that I make sure that no one that I have responsibility for gets ensnared in it.

While these two points are not necessarily mutually exclusive it does detail a distinction in consciousness.

Remember last year when I reported that my annual donation to the "United Negro College Fund" had been taken away due to my cousin's incarceration and need for bail?   Well I just got my grandmother's phone bill - which I pay every month.

When I called the customer service for this "Bama" phone company where she lives to figure out what CORRECTIONS they need to make on her bill which cost "$45.71", I soon got a lesson in "Social Justice".  Despite the fact that I had switched over to "flat rate billing" as a means of reducing the window of exposure that they were charging her for the "inter-lata" calls that people in her house were making - they always seem to sneak some other charges on the bill.   This small telephone company makes the legacy BellSouth (now AT&T) seem like an honest company, despite my years of complaints against what they used to do with my bills before I switched to Vonage.

I learned that this charge was NOT "corrective billing adjustments" for a previous under-billing that they found.  This is what they charged my grandmother's phone bill when her grandson called his mother collect from jail.  It just so happened that she was staying with my grandmother rather than at her own house.

My Ideological Theories Were Being Tested - Until I Focused On The Real Problem

I recall several years ago going to a "Fight The Power" Community rally at the "Providence Missionary Baptist Church" in Atlanta.  A woman was standing outside with a petition for everyone to sign.   The "Prison Industrial Complex" was getting over on poor Black people as they charged unreasonable "per minute" rates for collect calls from Black men who were locked up.

In my mind I said "GOOD!  Maybe if their mothers had to pay this bill they will apply more pressure on their 'Street Pirate sons' to keep their behinds out of jail".  Failing this they have no skin in the game.   As I walked up the stairs and heard this activist lady get me to sign I told her "I will sign it when I come out of the conference, I am running late and don't want to miss it."  This is my standard "Girl Scouts selling cookies at the front of the grocery store" avoidance story.

My cousin got locked up because he did not pay a previous ticket for a moving violation.   The bail that I paid included the fines for the traffic violation.

While I did not realize that my agreement to remove the burden off of my grandmother (and her caretakers') backs included me getting involved in my cousin's drama - now that I have a financial exposure as such (they would turn off the phone if I did not pay the $45 for a call that my aunt accepted) I am now forced to become more engaged with my cousin.

I told him that he and his (live in) girl friend should take a ride down to Atlanta for a weekend so we can hang out.  He told me he would but I never heard from him.

For the second time that I talked with my aunt - his mother - she told me that he would call me to "thank me" for paying his bail.

I need no thanks.

I have no doubt that there is a bit of shame involved with his situation.   I have no interest in establishing myself as a "superior" to him - per the money that I have paid.

There is no doubt that his decision to do the things that lead to him having a child in high school, dropping out of school and then have a subsequent child - with a girl that he no longer gets along with - is the series of choices that will shape the rest of his life.

There is nothing that I can do to "preach" to him.   His only hope is to see that with his present lack of skills that he can sell into the market - he will be forced to live on the margins, one misstep away from being ensnared by "the system", "the bank", "the law" - or whatever adversary that activists prefer to stand up as the prime threat to Black people.

I plan to drive up there in a few weeks.  My mission is to get the little 7 year old girl - his niece, born from his sister who is following a similar path - a connection to the Internet so that she will have access to tools that will allow her to acquire more marketable skills.  I plan to compel my children to form a relationship with her, teaching her the skills that they have.

I will take my cousin out for a "man to man" talk, possibly asking him his plans for the next 5 to 10 years and getting him thinking about how to "operationalize" them.

Just because he and I are indelibly attached to each other due to familial relationships and thus I have an interest in him remaining out of jail - this does not mean that I should work to "fight the state" from charging exorbitant fees for prison phone calls, just in case he gets locked up again.  My interests should be focused on doing what I can to help him make the proper decisions so he is not locked up in the future.

Just as my preacher told us yesterday - "Without moving away from the forces that set his current situation CHANGE is not possible".