BILL ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 2580

By: Wu

County Affairs

Committee Report (Substituted)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

It has been suggested that access to telephone services by an arrested person in a county jail has been overly restrictive and that calls can be prohibitively expensive with access fees and per‑minute charges. C.S.H.B. 2580 seeks to address this issue by providing for certain free access to telephone services for a person confined in a county jail.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IMPACT

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly create a criminal offense, increase the punishment for an existing criminal offense or category of offenses, or change the eligibility of a person for community supervision, parole, or mandatory supervision.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

C.S.H.B. 2580 amends the Local Government Code to require the sheriff of each county, not later than December 1, 2019, to adopt a policy governing the use of telephone services by persons confined in the county jail. The bill requires the policy to:

· allow each person confined in the county jail pending trial to make domestic telephone calls to the person's attorney for a total duration of 20 minutes per month at no cost to the person or the person's attorney and to make one 10-minute domestic telephone call per week to a person other than the person's attorney at no cost to the person or the person receiving the call; and

· allow each other person confined in the county jail to make one 10-minute domestic telephone call per month at no cost to the person or the person receiving the call.

EFFECTIVE DATE

September 1, 2019.

COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE

While C.S.H.B. 2580 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following summarizes the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.

The substitute changes the persons covered by the policy governing the use of telephone services from persons confined in the jail pending trial to all persons confined in the county jail.

The substitute does not include a provision requiring a county jail to provide each arrested person who is confined in the county jail pending trial with access to domestic telephone services at no cost to the person or the party receiving the telephone call, but the substitute provides for no-cost access under the requirements for the policy adopted by the sheriff.

The substitute changes the requirements regarding the frequency and duration of telephone calls allowed under the policy and does not include a provision prohibiting the policy from unduly restricting calling patterns or volume.