Authored By: Rob Mohr
Public Justice’s Access to Justice team filed a class action complaint against St. Clair County, Michigan; three sheriff’s department members, and Securus Technologies, over what the organization calls an “exploitative conspiracy between Securus and St. Clair County.” The April 12th complaint alleges that the Jail restricted inmates in August of 2022 to only sending and receiving plain postcards, thereby “forcing people at the Jail to choose between only limited contact with their family or friends or paying the exorbitant fees to use the Securus tablet to send and receive longer messages or photos, thus increasing profits for Securus and the Jail.”
The suit claims that inmates were unable to receive art from their children, documents, or educational material if it did not comply with the policy. Furthermore, any mail that did not meet the requirements was destroyed or returned to the sender without alerting the recipient. Public Justice calls the mail policy, in tandem with Securus’s contract, a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Securus filed a motion to compel arbitration based on the terms of service for using the tablets, which contained a forced arbitration clause. However, a judge denied the motion and called for limited discovery on the validity of the agreement, considering whether the plaintiff, Taurean Proch, could have consented to the agreement in his incarcerated state. Securus then withdrew its motion after Public Justice began representing Proch.
The legal action mirrors an existing case Public Justice has logged against the Jail, the Sheriff, and Securus. This case, M.M. vs King, is part of their Right to Hug campaign, which targets jails that have replaced in-person visits with third-party prison telecom video and telephone calls. Public Justice has another open case in Genesee County, Michigan targeting the relationship there between the county jail and another prison telecom company, Global Tel*Link. Both cases name the children of the incarcerated as plaintiffs.
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