Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores’ Platinum Equity LLC and Securus Technologies LLC are among the parties named in lawsuits against county jails and telecom firms in Michigan. The lawsuits claim St. Clair County and Genessee County were “part of a quid pro quo kickback scheme” with telecom providers to charge families “exorbitant rates to communicate with one another through ‘services’ such as low-quality phone and video calls,” according to reporting from the Detroit Free Press.
St. Clair County allowed in-person family visiting until 2017, while Genesee County allowed the practice until 2014. The lawsuits seek preliminary and permanent injunctions in both counties that would end the in-person visitation ban and damages, the Free Press reports.
The complainants in both lawsuits are individuals with family members who are currently or were recently in the two jails. The St. Clair County lawsuit names the county, Sheriff Mat King; Securus, Platinum Equity, and individuals including Gores, Platinum Equity partner Mark Barnhill, and president and CEO of Securus and Aventiv Technologies David Abel.
The Genesee County lawsuit names the county, Sheriff Christopher Swanson, Global Tel*Link Corp., and Deb Alderson, the company’s president and CEO, according to the Free Press.
Please read the local reporting for the full story (and support local journalism so stories like these are still able to be reported!).
The story speaks to the families of those involved in the lawsuit and the hardships they faced in trying to communicate with family while not being able to be physically present.
Gores has talked about hoping Platinum Equity’s stake in Securus could allow it to be a “change agent” in the industry. The private equity firm has also talked about the actions it has taken to reduce costs previously, including cutting call rates by 45%, calling for the elimination of site commissions, calling for more taxpayer-funded models for these agreements, and providing nearly half a billion minutes of free phone call time.
I’ll go back to the other time I’ve written about Securus Technologies’ involvement in the prison telecom industry in 2020:
As a person and a fan, I take all that in and am left with one overarching thought — so what?
We are still at a fundamental truth, and that truth is — making something less bad doesn’t make it good. …
For me, though, there’s no good way to be in a bad business. There is no profit motive strong enough for me to look past the fundamental exploitation involved. A bad business is bad for business, and I hope Tom Gores sees that fundamental truth someday soon.