By Alabama Public Radio
Montgomery, AL – Family members who take calls from Alabama inmates are planning to boycott the high phone charges this month. They say they're hoping to deprive the state Department of Corrections of revenue. The Montgomery-based group, Family Members of Inmates, is encouraging prisoners' relatives to keep in touch with letters instead of accepting the inmates' phone calls. The calls are billed to the recipient and cost more than 10 times as much as a 50-cent pay phone call. The charges from the phone calls bring in about half a million dollars a month...and the DOC relies on that money for about 13 percent of its annual budget.