INMATES UNABLE TO PHONE FOR HELP

Most today people in Los Angeles and throughout California have come to rely on their cell phones as their phone book. If you ask folks to give you a phone number, chances are that they have to look through their phone to get it for you. Fewer people actually memorize phone numbers these days, which can cause a lot of problems if they happen to end up in jail.

If you get arrested, all of your property - including your cell phone - will be collected before you are taken into the jail. That means, if you don’t keep a few phone numbers in your head, how will any of your friends or family find out that you’ve been arrested?

Many people are unaware that with the phone systems in jails you can only place collect calls to landlines. These days, many people have stopped using landline service in favor of their cell phones. And you can’t make a collect call to a cell phone, from jail or anywhere else. There are some services that will allow the person being called the option to accept a collect call from you, but it’s not available everywhere.

CALLING A BAIL BONDSMAN

This leaves you with the option to call a licensed bail bondsman. Most jails will post a list of local bail bonds offices for inmates. However, this is not the case at the LA County Jail.

Jail officials say that this is because the Sheriff’s Department does not want to display favoritism for any bail bonds offices. It is an issue for the County Board of Supervisors to decide. Even the deputies working in the jail will not provide the number of a bail bondsman to inmates.

This limitation of the jail phone system is effectively holding inmates hostage by keeping them from obtaining a bail bond or even speaking to an attorney. If you can’t remember the landline phone number of a friend or relative or keep a bail bondsman’s phone number memorized, you’re going to be spending a few days in jail.

LAWeekly recently reported the story of Stephen Petrick who was arrested by the Santa Monica Police Department and remained in the Los Angeles County Jail for five days because he had no access to the phone numbers of friends.

Some other jails have handled this issue by posting a list of bail bond companies near the phones for the inmates to choose from. The bail bond companies generally have to pay in order to be on the list.