Mercer County jail inmates will have option to text

CELINA - Mercer County jail inmates in the coming month or so will have the option to use text messaging services, a potentially less expensive and more convenient alternative to making phone calls.

County commissioners recently approved sheriff Jeff Grey's request to add texting services through the jail's inmate telephone system provider CTEL. Grey said the service will cost the county nothing aside from electricity to charge the texting devices.

"Although, we will receive 2 cents for every incoming and outgoing text message that is sent," Grey wrote in a letter to commissioners.

Grey said texting would provide another way for inmates to keep in touch with their loved ones and attorneys while serving their sentences or awaiting trial.

"A lot of jails are starting to do it. It's fairly new technology, but we're not the first jail to get it," Grey said.

Inmates who chose to participate will be given a "Chirping" device that will allow them to send and receive text messages. They must pay $4 a month and 10 cents for each text sent or received, Grey said.

"Chirping funds are added by friends and family through vendor's customer service center or the inmate sales web site," the contract reads.

Grey hasn't yet decided whether to impose hours of operation. The inmate phones located in the cellblocks are turned on from 7 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. Inmates are free to use them at a rate of 26 cents per minutes, Grey said.

"We can do the same thing with the text-message devices. We haven't decided (yet)," he said.

Grey pointed out that office personnel will monitor non-attorney-related texts sent and received by inmates just as they do phone calls and other communications not involving an attorney.

"All that stuff is tracked. When you're in jail there's no such thing as privacy," Grey said.

Also, both inmates and those outside the jail's walls have the ability to accept or deny text messages from any individual, Grey noted.