Calling on the FCC to address the high cost of jail phone calls

This week, the Prison Policy Initiative filed comments urging the FCC to take steps to lower jail phone costs and stop unfair practices by the correctional phone industry.

by Stephen Raher, September 29, 2021

On September 27, Prison Policy Initiative filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission, explaining what the agency should do to lower phone costs for people in jail and address unfair practices in the correctional phone industry.

For nearly two decades, the FCC has worked in fits and starts to address high prices and other problems with communications services in jails and prisons. In May, the commission slightly lowered rates for some callers and announced its intent to further revise the rules applicable to the phone companies. This week was the deadline for parties to file comments on the next round of new rules.

Our comments provide the following new evidence to help guide the FCC’s decision-making:

• A comprehensive review of phone rates in all 50 state prison systems (as of mid-year)
• A review of phone rates in jails with populations over 1,000 people.
• A quantitative review of 93 current jail phone contracts, showing that the length of these contracts is getting longer (which reduces competition).
• A look at the average monthly phone bills for people in prison versus jail (in four states), showing that people in jail spend 16% less time on the phone but pay twice as much for calls.
• A second look at data that the National Sheriffs’ Association submitted to the FCC in 2015. We conclude that sheriffs’ data does not show that small jails spend more staff time facilitating phone calls.

We also make several legal arguments, urging the FCC to:

• Lower the amount that companies can charge as “ancillary fees” (for things like depositing money into a prepaid phone account).
• Reduce consumers’ phone bills by waiving Universal Service Fund taxes on prison and jail phone calls.
• Crack down on deceptive practices that steer people to unnecessarily expensive options. For example, someone who was just arrested will probably not know about the confusing calling options, and phone companies often encourage people to pick the most expensive option when calling their family to ask for help.
• Not make family members pay for facility security costs through their phone bills (for example, expenses like monitoring phone calls and maintaining lists of blocked numbers).
• Collect more data that will allow the agency to refute some of the long-running (and factually suspect) arguments made by the dominant correctional phone companies.

Several other allies filed comments as well. Replies are due at the end of October, and it will likely take the FCC months or even years to issue new rules.

New data: Wisconsin jails and telecom giants profiting from high phone rates that keep families apart

by Wanda Bertram, September 10, 2021

As people in jail and their families struggle to stay connected during the pandemic, we’ve collected the data on the exploitative prices families are forced to pay in Wisconsin for phone calls with incarcerated loved ones. This data already sparked an investigative report last month in the Appleton Post-Crescent.

People in jail in Wisconsin are charged different rates for phone calls depending on where they are locked up. In some jails, rates are as high as $14.77 for a 15-minute call–nearly a dollar a minute. The revenue fills the coffers of jails and of their corporate partners (who actually provide the phone service), Post-Crescent reporter Chris Mueller explains:

Brown County, for example, gets 54% of the revenue from phone calls made at its jail, totaling about $34,800 in January, about $32,000 in February and about $42,200 in March.

Other counties get a larger share of the money. Chippewa County, for example, gets 76%, totaling about $2,600 in December, about $3,100 in January and about $2,600 in February. Barron County gets 82%, amounting to about $2,400 in December, about $1,400 in January and about $1,700 in February.

Meanwhile, the people who pay are low-income, working-class Wisconsin residents:

“I don’t know anyone who has an incarcerated loved one who doesn’t work more than one job,” said [Peggy] West-Schroder.

West-Schroder would typically spend at least $20 a week on phone calls, though that amount would vary if her husband was transferred to a different facility or, for whatever reason, had limited access to the phone.

TMJ4, a Milwaukee news station, recently ran another powerful story about the consequences of making jail phone calls expensive. The story focuses on a woman named Ouida Lock, who has two sons in prison, and was forced to spend nearly $6,000 on phone calls over eight years. As Lock says in the story: “I can’t even fathom how much money has been spent. I know I could have bought a house by now.”

The TMJ4 story notes that costly jail phone calls have hit Black families especially hard: Black people in Wisconsin are not only overrepresented in prisons and jails; they also face the highest racial wealth gap in the country, with a Black worker earning “42 cents to every white dollar.”

Our data on Wisconsin and further resources

We’ve shared our full data set about Wisconsin jails in a table below, revealing how much money 30 county jails charge for phone calls, as well as how county jails and their phone providers split the revenue.

We also encourage readers in Wisconsin to explore our other resources on jail phone calls, including:

• Our big picture report State of Phone Justice, which includes recommendations for states and counties to get incarcerated people and their families a better deal.
• Our phone justice campaign page, which includes in-depth explainers about the prison and jail phone industry, a handy map of the biggest injustices in every state, and information on our state advocacy campaigns.

Phone rates and commissions in Wisconsin county jails:
A sample of 30 counties