LITTLE ROCK — The Constitution does not prohibit charging prisoners for essential services such as communication with the outside world, a federal appeals panel said Thursday.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Arkansas prison inmate Winston Holloway, who alleged that the state Department of Correction’s contract with Global Tel-Link required him to pay elevated phone charges, infringing on his First Amendment right of free speech.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court said in its opinion Thursday that Arkansas is one of many states that grant private companies exclusive rights to provide phone service to inmates, and that “these contracts have been criticized by the Federal Communications Commission and by others because they allegedly create, for both parties, an unrestrained incentive to increase the cost of telephone service to inmates.”
But the court also said that Arkansas inmates have other forms of communication with the outside world, such as personal visits and mail. The First Amendment does not require the state to provide a particular type of public forum to inmates, such as phone service, nor does it prohibit the state from imposing reasonable limits on such a forum, the court said.
“The Constitution does not prohibit charging prisoners for essential prison services, at least in the absence of a showing that the result is a severe deprivation of a fundamental right,” Judge James Loken wrote in the opinion.