New York City to make all calls from jail free

New York City becomes the first jurisdiction to make calls home from jails free. Who else is going to follow this smart step?

by Peter Wagner, July 19, 2018

Yesterday, the New York City Council made New York the first jurisdiction in the country to make telephone calls from its prisons and jails free. The city will not only give up the commission it currently makes on phone calls – it is going a step further and making the phone calls themselves free. This change will save the poorest families in the City of New York more than $8 million a year.

In many prisons and jails, calls home from jail are very expensive, costing up to $1/minute. Typically, the facilities grant one phone company a monopoly contract in exchange for the company sharing the revenue with the facility. Some jurisdictions, however, including the New York State prison system, have refused to accept kickbacks on contracts and have instead negotiated for lower rates. They argue (correctly) that giving up that income is a cost-effective investment in lowering recidivism.

Going further and just paying for the calls makes particular sense in jails, where people are either serving short sentences or are detained only because they are too poor to make bail.

This change will be a big deal for the families, but the cost may be quite modest for the system. For example, prison systems like Nebraska have proven that it’s possible to get the rates down to just over a penny a minute when they refuse to take a commission. The New York City jail has economies of scale over Nebraska’s prisons, and the city will be saving the vendor the expensive hassle of individually billing tens of thousands of families.

With this legislation, New York City has not only joined the ethical jurisdictions that are standing up for their poorest families – they have catapulted into the lead. Who will follow?

The legislation takes effect in 270 days, giving the city jail system time to negotiate a new telephone contract.