In a lawsuit, Securus Technologies said the department opted for a "wish list of goodies" over lower rates for inmates and their loved ones.

The Florida Department of Corrections used the procurement process for a new phone contract to ask for "value-added" perks such as inmate tracking technology, security upgrades and iPhones for its staff, instead of focusing on affordable calling rates, because it wasn't getting what it needed from the state Legislature, a federal lawsuit claims.

Securus Technologies, the department's longtime phone vendor, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court, as first reported by the legal newswire Law360. Securus also owns JPay, which provides tablets, video calling and inmate banking services in Florida prisons.

The company claims the state agency "improperly subverted its inmate-telephone-contract procurement ... so the Department could obtain a panoply of goods and services that had nothing to do with inmate telephone services." Because it focused on lower call rates, Securus lost out on the contract in favor of competitor Global Tel Link, which offered more perks, the lawsuit claims.

By leveraging the procurement process to obtain its wish list, the department violated the Florida Constitution because it was exercising budgeting and appropriation powers granted only to the Legislature, the lawsuit argues.

Securus, which is known for charging steep fees of its own, accused the department of doing so "on the backs of some of Florida's most vulnerable citizens: the state's inmates and their families."

The Department of Corrections told the Times-Union on Wednesday that it had not yet been served the lawsuit "but will review thoroughly upon receipt."

In the last year, the Times-Union has reported on various contract moves with private vendors that have adversely affected inmates and their loved ones. They include spiking commissions off the JPay contract (owned by Securus), a multi-million-dollar wipeout of inmate-owned mp3 data, and record-high revenue generated off the department's canteen contract.

The lawsuit by Securus claims that the terms of the new phone contract led to a cost increase of $3.5 million per year for inmates and their loved ones to complete telephone calls in order to secure what the department calls "value-added services." The contract would also divert $150 million from the state's General Revenue Fund to the department instead, Securus said.

Interestingly, the department's invitation to negotiate "explicitly prohibited" the vendor to remit a portion of the revenue from the contract back to the agency as a "commission," which is usually how phone contracts operate, according to the lawsuit.

Without such commissions, the private vendors could have made the call rates even lower for inmates' families and friends, which would help strengthen those contacts and reduce the chance of released inmates re-offending, the lawsuit argued. But instead of opting for lower rates, the department focused on "value-added services," Securus said, submitting a "wish list" that included a cellphone forensic laboratory that would also aim to eliminate contraband wireless communications within prisons, facial recognition software and "various other telephone-related services."

However, during the negotiation phase of the procurement process, the department changed course, the lawsuit claimed, using the negotiations to have the vendors compete with each other over providing goods and services the department could not obtain through legislative funding. These sought-after services were "wholly unrelated" to the procurement process, Securus said.

"The department's negotiation phase turned into a months-long, drawn-out process in which the negotiation team shifted focus from one value-added service to another haphazardly," Securus said in the lawsuit.

As an example, the company pointed to a Dec. 20, 2017 negotiating session in which a representative from the department told Securus it was focused on obtaining iPhones and expensive contraband-detection systems as "icing on the cake."

"I would say, you know, as a parting gift, if you'd like to throw in some iPhones every year, we would be super jazzed about that," the lawsuit quotes the representative as saying. "So you know, a hundred, 200 a year, I think we would be super. I mean, it would be like a good little icing on top of the value-add cake."

In that same session, Securus claims, a department staff member for the first time told the company that the agency wanted the vendor to "act as the middle man in obtaining or replacing the Department walkie-talkies referred to as 'yard radios' supplied by the company Harris Corporation at more than three dozen correctional facilities." The estimated cost would total $5.7 million, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims that GTL, to which the department intends to award the phone contract, offered negotiated value-added services including inmate tracking services, contraband detection motion-sensing cameras, visitation management, staff radios, up to 1,250 Dell computers, up to 750 iPhones, and a virtual gun range for staff training.

Ben Conarck: (904) 359-4103