ONE FREE PHONE CALL FROM JAIL, VIDEO EVIDENCE, AND INMATE RELEASE NOTIFICATIONS - 072

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, one free phone call from jail, video evidence, and inmate release notifications. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode number 72 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. In this last episode of the decade, I'm answering your questions about your one free phone call from jail, obtaining video evidence from another department, and notifying victims of an offender's release from custody. But first, I need to thank Gold Shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, C.C. Jameson from ccjameson.com, Larry Keeton, Vicki Tharp of vickitharp.com, Chrysann, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli of nataliebarelli.com, and Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com for their support. And I'd also like to send a huge thank you to my Coffee Club patrons, I really appreciate you guys. You can find links to all of the writers supporting this episode in the show notes at writersdetective.com/72 and to learn about setting up your own Patreon account for your author business or to support this show for as little as $2 per month, visit writersdetective.com/patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

Welcome to the last Writer's Detective Bureau episode of the decade. I hope you've had a wonderful holiday season and thanks for sticking with me after my unanticipated break. Santa brought me a sinus and upper respiratory infection that required three doctor's visits in three different rounds of medication and after recording episode 71, the infection caused bronchitis, which we were careful not to have turned into pneumonia fortunately. So, thanks for your understanding with me missing an episode last week. Fortunately, the hardcore antibiotics have... well, they've got me back to 100% now and it was just in time for me to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in order to allow my counterpart to have some Santa time with his young kids for the holiday.

But all in all, it was a great holiday, so I hope you guys had one as well. I'm thankful for feeling so much better. Oh, and my wife knocked it out of the park with my Christmas gift this year. She got me a fricking cappuccino machine for as much as she says I'm hard to buy for, she proved how much she truly knows me. And I'd like to know the one thing you were most thankful for this holiday season. Post the picture on Instagram and tag me @writersdetective. And that way, as we wind down this decade, I'd love to be able to see of your holiday cheer and the things that made you smile. All right, so let's get into this week's first question.

Bec Hatch asked this question in the Facebook group, which if you haven't joined yet, you can find by going to writersdetectivebureau.com/facebook. So Bec writes, "I have a question about a recently arrested person, that single phone call they get to make. Is that recorded or listened to by the police? Can my guy make it completely in private or will the arresting officers be nearby? Thank you." Hey, Bec, your arrested person gets a free completed phone call upon arrest, and it may be as many as three free phone calls. But they can make additional calls after that, it's just that they're going to have to pay for them one way or another. Usually the person receiving the phone call will have to pay like an old-school collect call, and then we'll talk about calling cards and stuff in a minute. But all outbound phone calls from the jail are recorded with the exception of calls that are flagged as going to known local attorney's offices, like the phone number for the attorney's office is flagged in the system.

Just because the calls recorded doesn't necessarily mean that the jail staff or the police get to listen in; no different than a wiretap. There are still privacy protections in place for some calls, like the whole attorney client privilege thing. So anyone listening has to be trained in identifying what calls they are and are not allowed to listen in on. So in short, the officer that listens in cannot listen to any calls that are privileged, but other than that, all calls leaving the jail are subject to monitoring and recording. And there's an automated statement saying so at the beginning of every call. The first phone call is often made in a private booth of some sort in the booking area of the jail. You'd think that the first call would be to an attorney, but more often than not, the first call is actually to a bail bonds company in the hopes of getting out of custody usually. There is no privilege to that call. It's only for attorneys or doctors or clergy.

So, there's no exception for talking to the bail bondsman, nor is there any kind of expectation of privacy when you're talking on the phone in the jail other than those privileges we just talked about. So the monitoring of the call happens electronically, like a wiretap. So whether there's a guard or an officer nearby, it doesn't really play into whether the call's being monitored because that's going to be done from another location in the jail, most likely on a computer. And then after the calls, and then completing the booking process, like taking your photo and changing out into jail clothes and being or fingerprinted and all that, the inmate will have access to other phones in the various areas of the jail as well. In that first few hours of incarceration, before they actually get changed out into their jail clothes, they'll most likely be in a holding tank somewhere in the booking area and there's usually a phone in that holding tank as well.

So when you answer the phone and someone from the jail is calling, you're going to hear an announcement that goes something like this, "Hello, this is a collect call from, and then insert the name of the inmate, an inmate at the County Jail. To accept this call, press one to hear pricing for this call, press two to decline further calls from this facility, press three." Then once they accept the call, they'll hear something like, "Thank you. This call is subject to monitoring and recording." Now, obviously it's not going to sound exactly like that, but it'll be some variations similar to it. And it's also now possible for money to be placed on inmates calling cards through like the commissary process where you put money on their books so that way the inmate can pay for the outbound call rather than just relying on the collect call or the recipient of the phone call to have to pay.

The recordings of the phone calls are associated with each inmate, whether that's their booking number or some PIN of some sort that they're issued for the phone. So that way it's tracked as to who's making that phone call. And then the inmate states his or her name at the beginning of the call so the person answering the call knows who is on the line. And that's also a way for them to figure out who's making the phone calls when they're listening. And then there's also going to be a record of the phone numbers that are being dialed. So not only can the cops search by calls from a specific inmate by that booking number or PIN number, they can also search by this specific phone number that was dialed. This can often offer insight into social networks amongst the inmates, sometimes. If an inmate is using another inmate's calling card or enters another inmate's booking number or PIN into the phone system, that may indicate some sort of alliance or friendship between the two because one is letting the other one do that.

Or by seeing that multiple inmates are calling the same number, you may end up hearing multiple sides to the same story or being able to figure out that they're all in that same circle of friends. Or, you may even learn that two different inmates have the same girlfriend and they don't know it. It's crazy the stuff that gets revealed on jail phone calls. Or, is that number a friend to several inmates and then they use that person, whoever's answering that phone, to make three way phone calls in an effort to hide the ultimate phone number that they're trying to call from the jail staff as to who the inmate ultimately talks to. So if I'm calling my designated friend, where that's the number that's recorded in the system, and then that friend makes the three way phone call to the next person, that phone number, that third phone number is not going to show up in the records.

And another common trick is to not record their names like they should, but after listening to hundreds of hours of jail calls, you definitely get to know the tricks, like using that name, recording time to pass a quick message and have the call recipient simply hang up and refuse the cost of the call. And I mean my younger brother used to do this when we were in high school; those pre-cellphone days, back when I had a car and he was too young to drive. Phone booths were still a thing and calling collect had just changed from a live operator when you press zero to an automated option to make a collect call. And just like the jail, you recorded your name after the beep. So I'd be at home and the phone would ring and when I'd answer I would hear, "Would you like to accept a collect call from Adam picked me up at the bowling alley." So then I just hang up because the message had been received.

So I hope that helps with your question Bec. I guess the real way, if you really need for your story, for your character that's in jail to get an unrecorded call with somebody, you might have him be in tight with his attorney and get the attorney to agree to make a three way phone call to that third party. But the attorney would probably be reluctant to do that unless they were really close. And then, if they were ever found out, especially if that had to do with actually committing the crime or covering up the crime, there could certainly be larger repercussions there. So I hope this helps.

Eric Washington asks, "If there were video evidence you needed that was in the custody of another city agency, how would you obtain it? Would the Crime Evidence Unit be involved to see if it could be enhanced? Thank you." When you say another city agency, I'm assuming you mean another police department in the same county or area or another like another municipality that's a law enforcement agency. In rereading your question, if it's another department like the water department, I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem with getting it. But in any kind of evidence, we follow the best evidence rule, which means we preserve the best evidence possible for court. And by that, I mean the evidence needs to be the actual evidence we found in the exact condition we found it. So in the case of digital evidence, like a video recording or a computer's hard drive, we do our searches and enhancements and so on, on an identical copy of the original evidence, not the actual evidence itself.

And that way, when we get something useful, we can demonstrate to the jury exactly how we found it or enhanced it, potentially walking the jury through the exact process, starting with the original best evidence. And that way, that original best evidence is never tampered with. So for this scenario, Eric, I would ask for a working copy of the evidence from that other agency and make sure that the other agency does not dispose of the original best evidence recording without contacting me first. And by that I mean if this video is already in their evidence as part of another case, I don't want them destroying the evidence after they close their case because I want to rely upon it from my case as well. It's possible that the other agency would transfer custody of the original evidence to my department once their case was closed.

As for getting my working copy, it could be burned to DVD and delivered or picked up from the other agency, or it could be sent to me electronically. I can certainly rely on someone in my forensics unit or even go to an outside expert to try to clean up the video or the audio for that matter. Or I can even try doing it on my own. However, I go about trying to enhance the video, I need to document exactly how I did it, every single step that I took. So like I just said, that way I can recreate that process for the jury and prove that I didn't add anything that wasn't already there. And that what I found on my working copy is something that was always there on the original best evidence that is before them as an exhibit in the courtroom.

And lastly, there've been several questions in the Facebook group recently about whether victims would be notified if the suspect in their case escaped from custody, whether that's a jail, a prison, or a mental institution. And the short answer is "yes", and it would fall on either the investigating police agency or the prosecutor's office to make that notification. But this actually goes beyond escapes from custody, which thankfully are pretty rare, as the victim or survivor of a violent crime. Many states have mandatory notifications when the suspect has been released from custody. So if the suspect in your case was sentenced to 10 years, but he gets released early, you should be notified of exactly when and where he's being released. And a lot of that goes back to the legislation in the last 20 years called the Victims' Bill of Rights. So, it's a good practice to go look up the Victims' Bill of rights for your state and see what's in there.

Well, about it for 2019; thank you so much for listening throughout the year. It's been an amazing year. I've loved getting to meet so many of you in the real world, and if you guys aren't busy on new year's, I'm working, but my wife's going to be out of town. But when I get home from work, I might jump on Facebook Live or something along those lines. So let's ring in the new year together. And with the start of the new year right around the corner, don't let not knowing the answer to a police question stop you from writing every single day. Just send the question to me by going to writersdetective.com/podcast. Thanks again for listening throughout 2019 have a wonderful, empowering, and safe new year and write well.