Calling on the FCC to make the most of its upcoming rulemaking on prison and jail telecom rates

Ahead of the FCC’s vote on new prison and jail phone rate caps, The Leadership Conference sent a letter to the agency, and we signed on.

by Wanda Bertram, June 20, 2024

The landmark 2023 Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Just Communications Act set in motion a new round of rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that incarcerated people and their families are paying fair rates for phone and video calls. As the FCC prepares to vote on new regulations, we joined The Leadership Conference (a coalition of over 200 civil rights organizations) in a letter sent to the agency this week with recommendations for how it can make the most of this opportunity.

First and foremost, we urge the FCC to set rate caps as low as possible for voice and video calls. The current rate caps, handed down in 2021, allow local jails to charge a maximum of 21 cents per minute, a rate that family members say can still add up to several hundred dollars a month. The letter notes that costs could be brought down “as low as pennies per minute,” as evidenced by the rates companies are already charging in counties like San Mateo, Cali. and Dallas, Texas, as well as many state prisons.

Beyond setting rate caps, The Leadership Conference letter also calls on the FCC to:

• Adopt consumer disclosure labels for prison and jail telecom products, to help customers understand whether they are being illegally charged (particularly after the new rate caps go into effect).
• Take extreme care when considering new pricing structures proposed by the companies, particularly subscription-based pricing, and only approve them if they are shown to save consumers money.
• Close regulatory loopholes to ensure that all prisons and jails are providing people who have hearing disabilities with the services they need to call home.

Recent data have shown how prison telecom companies continue to strike lucrative contracts with correctional facilities, particularly jails, deals that impose high costs on consumers and strain their bonds with loved ones. Diligent federal regulation can stop the worst of these abuses. We call on the FCC to use its rare mandate from Congress to guarantee the fairest possible deal for incarcerated people and their families.

Read the full letter from The Leadership Conference here: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10617989616085/1

Recent data offer a detailed snapshot of the cost of family contact in local jails

Some of the questions we receive most often about communication policies (and rates) in local jails can finally be answered, thanks to two new resources from Michigan and Minnesota.

by Wanda Bertram, April 11, 2024

How many jails have eliminated in-person visits? How much of a kickback does your average jail get from its telecom providers? How common are tablets in jails and what fees do incarcerated people pay to use them? Because the thousands of local jails in the U.S. are independently run, it’s hard to get comprehensive data to answer questions like these. So it’s encouraging to see two resources get published — out of Michigan and Minnesota, respectively — that will help fill the gap. I summarized my own takeaways from these reports in this blog post.

In Michigan, independent researcher Phil Lombard (using data obtained by requesting jail phone contracts in 40 counties) produced detailed spreadsheets showing the rates county jails are charging incarcerated people and their families for a variety of communication services, and the kickbacks these counties get from their providers. And in Minnesota, following the state legislature’s move last year to make prison phone calls free, the state Ombuds for Corrections published a report in September with similar data from 26 county jails, proving the necessity of reform for jails as well as prisons.

Both of these resources draw on a large and diverse sample of counties — large and small, urban and rural, and geographically varied — making it possible for researchers and activists to generalize from their findings about the state of telecommunications policy in local jails.

So what do the data show?

Video calling and e-messaging costs are desperately in need of regulation.

In both Michigan and Minnesota jails, the cost of these non-phone services vary widely. A 20-minute video call in Minnesota can cost between $3 and $10 (equating to as much as $0.50/minute); in Michigan, between $3 and $20 (or as much as $1/minute). E-messaging in both states ranges from just 9 or 10 cents per message to a bizarre $2 per message. As we have pointed out before about phone calls, the wide range of rates for these services is due to the fact that companies set prices based on profit-seeking, rather than on the cost of delivering the services.

Thanks to the Martha Wright-Reed Act passed by Congress last year, which confirmed the FCC’s authority to regulate video calls, the agency is required to hand down the first national video calling regulations sometime this year. And while e-messaging is still not subject to federal agency regulation, states have the power — either through legislation or through their public utilities commissions — to set rate caps for these and other telecom services. These reports should make it clear to the FCC and to states that regulating video calling and e-messaging is an urgent matter of consumer protection.

In-person visits and physical mail are disappearing in jails.

In Michigan, coincidentally, a coalition of public interest law firms is currently suing St. Clair and Genesee counties for their practice of banning visits and then cashing in on greater kickbacks from video calling. The new data show that this practice is not a novelty, but the norm in jails today.

A staggering 33 out of 40 jails in the Michigan sample have banned in-person visits (with one, Midland County, noted as having canceled visits specifically at the request of its video calling vendor, Securus). In addition, 20 out of 40 jails have either banned physical mail — following an example set by a disturbing number of state prisons — or restricted families to only sending plain postcards. The Minnesota report is not specific about which jails have banned visits or mail, but notes that “more than half the sample counties we surveyed do not allow in-person visits other than with an attorney.”

Excerpt from a table showing mail, e-messaging, visitation, and video calling rates and policies in a sample of Michigan jails. See the full data here.

The costs families pay would drop dramatically if jails didn’t take commissions.

Some of the most valuable data in these two new reports are the numbers showing that a substantial amount — even, in some counties, the majority — of the money families pay to telecom companies is directly kicked back to the counties themselves.

The Minnesota Ombuds for Corrections’s report provides detailed data tables showing how much families are charged for phone calls, video calls, e-messaging, and voicemail in various counties; as well as how much the counties that offer these services are taking in commissions. Some basic math shows that these kickbacks account for a significant amount of the rates families pay. For instance, the average commission paid to jails for video calling is 39% of total revenue. Vendors build these commissions into their rates, meaning that if jails did not demand these commissions, they could negotiate much lower rates with their providers. The typical Minnesota jail, which charges 29 cents per minute for video calling, could charge just 18 cents per minute if it refused commissions.

Table of video calling rates and commission amounts from the Minnesota Ombuds for Corrections’s “Cost of Connection” report.

Similarly, the Michigan dataset presents commission amounts for a variety of telecom services in many of the 40 sample jails. The average kickback paid to counties for video calling is 32% of total revenue. The average rate families pay to talk to their loved ones via video chat in these jails is 54 cents a minute, but if jails refused commissions, that average would drop to 36 cents per minute.

These two resources also offer insights into aspects of jail telecommunications we haven’t covered in depth before, which advocates might find useful. For instance, the Minnesota report highlights that tablets in some Minnesota jails are being rented to incarcerated people for a weekly or monthly fee, in addition to the well-known fees people pay to use the services on the tablets. And both resources show that people are paying steep fees for voicemail services: For the privilege of leaving an incarcerated loved one a voicemail that typically lasts a minute or less, families are paying around $1.50 on average and as much as $3.95.

These two new resources provide valuable data about jail communication policies and the urgent need for jail phone justice. I hope they will inspire federal and state regulators to take note.

Incarcerated people must be at the forefront of Biden Administration and Federal Trade Commission efforts to end “junk fees”

We joined the National Consumer Law Center and 27 other organizations to call on the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on abusive fees incarcerated people and their families are forced to pay.

by Mike Wessler, February 8, 2023

In February 2024, we sent a new comment to the Federal Trade Commission in response to its proposed junk fee rule and its impacts on incarcerated people. You can find this letter and an overview of our comments here.

“Junk fees,” those hidden charges attached to purchases or transactions, are something we’ve all faced. For those outside the prison walls, they are an inconvenience that may force them to find another company to do business with or grumble as they pay more for a product than they expected.

For incarcerated people, though, there is no escape. They don’t have the option to use a different service or company. And their ability or inability to pay these fees often has dramatic consequences, determining whether they can stay in touch with a loved one or buy food at the commissary to supplement the paltry meals the prison provides. And considering the unconscionably low wages they earn for their labor, these fees are no minor inconvenience.

As part of a broader effort by the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an independent agency charged with protecting consumers and enforcing antitrust laws, is currently considering new measures to crack down on these fees. This week, along with the National Consumer Law Center and 27 other organizations, we explained to the agency that because of their low incomes and uniquely constrained position as consumers, providing incarcerated people relief from junk fees should be at the top of their list.

In an 18-page joint letter, this coalition highlighted some of the most abusive financial practices in prisons and jails and the ways incarcerated people are especially vulnerable to these junk fees.

Money transfers

As facilities increasingly shift the costs of incarceration to the people who are locked up, money plays a more important role than ever in the lives of people in prisons and jails. They now often have to pay for essentials like hygiene products, food, and paper from the commissary. As a result, many families have to send money to their incarcerated loved ones to help them make these purchases.

Sensing an opportunity for profit, companies have sprung up to facilitate these money transfers. Our 2021 analysis of this industry found that these companies charge steep fees — up to 37% — and have complex pricing structures that make it hard to know exactly how much it’ll cost to send money to your loved one.

These fees are tough to justify at a time when services like Venmo and Zelle make transferring money outside of the prison walls easy and free.

Communication and technological services

As prison and jail phone rates recently came under increased scrutiny, the companies behind these services have evolved to offer new services that have, thus far, largely evaded government regulation and oversight. As these companies moved into these unregulated industries, they packed their products with unfair and unclear fees that sap money from incarcerated people and their loved ones.

• Electronic messaging: In recent years, electronic messaging has exploded in popularity in prisons and jails. While the service has immense potential to strengthen connections between incarcerated people and their loved ones, unreasonably high costs and hidden fees have, thus far, made this yet another way for these companies to reap immense profits off the backs of some of the poorest people in society.
• Tablets: Similarly, so-called “free” tablets offer the promise of maintaining stronger connections to the outside by allowing incarcerated people to access music, videos, and other digital content, but are often little more than a tool to sap money from incarcerated people. For example, one tablet provider charges incarcerated people a $14.99 fee for a 14-day digital music subscription. For comparison, Spotify’s standard price is $9.99 a month, and its most expensive plan, the “family plan” — which provides six accounts that can stream music at the same time — is only $15.99 a month.

Release cards

Even when a person is released, they’re still not free from the exploitative grasp of these companies, thanks to the advent of “release cards.” These prepaid debit cards, which we’ve covered extensively, are often given to people as they leave prison or jail. They’re loaded with any funds they had in their trust account — wages earned while behind bars, support from family members, or money the person had in their possession when arrested.

At first, this may sound like a convenient way to give someone their money when they’re released, until you learn of the complex and costly fees that quickly drain their value. This includes fees for:

• Using your card for a purchase,
• Not using your card recently enough,
• Declined purchases,
• Using your card at the wrong ATM or bank, and
• Closing your account.

Often the only way to avoid these fees is by closing your account almost immediately upon your release, a time when you’re likely to be looking for stable housing and employment — things that are often necessary conditions for someone’s release to be approved.

Other junk fees in the criminal legal system

Our comment goes on to explain that beyond these services, junk fees are baked into the mass incarceration economy, with incarcerated people and their loved ones being subjected to fees for:

• Commercial bail,
• Pretrial diversion programs,
• Private probation,
• Electronic monitoring,
• And more.

This push by the FTC and the Biden Administration to address junk fees is laudable — and long overdue. However, if it is to be successful, they must recognize that you can’t truly address the worst impacts of junk fees without addressing how they harm incarcerated people and their families.

The nearly two million people behind bars (and their loved ones on the outside) are unfairly exploited by corporations and governments every day. Addressing these junk fees will not end this exploitation entirely, but it will be a significant and meaningful step toward economic justice.

Since You Asked: What’s next for prison and jail phone justice now that the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act is law?

We explain what the new law accomplishes, how the FCC can — and should — enforce it, and why the fight for phone justice is not over.

by Wanda Bertram, January 19, 2023

Earlier this month, President Biden signed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022, a bill that we and other advocates for prison phone justice have been supporting for years. Below, we explain what the new law accomplishes and what comes next. While the fight for phone justice is far from over, the bill empowers the Federal Communications Commission to take major steps to bring down communication costs for incarcerated people and their families — and the FCC has indicated that it plans to do so soon.

What does the new law do?

The Martha Wright-Reed Act accomplishes two main things: It clarifies the FCC’s authority to regulate in-state calls placed from correctional facilities, as well as clarifying the agency’s authority to regulate video calls.

For context: The FCC has successfully imposed caps on rates for out-of-state calls from prisons and jails, but not in-state calls. After the agency created regulations in 2015 that lowered the cost of both in-state and out-of-state calls, telecom corporations sued the regulator, and a federal court ultimately ruled that the FCC exceeded its legal authority in capping in-state calls. Since then, the FCC has made no attempt to cap in-state phone rates.

Most incarcerated people today who call loved ones in the same state are likely charged rates similar to out-of-state rates (or just charged the out-of-state rate), as we explain in our recent report State of Phone Justice 2022. But some are charged much higher rates. The Martha Wright-Reed Act will allow the FCC to bring relief to this minority of people still paying higher in-state rates, and protect all people in jail and their families from future attempts by the telecom industry to block regulation.

The Act also clarifies the FCC’s jurisdiction over video calling costs. We and others have long argued to the FCC — over a flood of misinformation from prison telecom companies — that the agency has the authority to regulate the exorbitant cost of video calls behind bars. But the agency has not taken action so far.

Video calls are especially important to regulate, because the companies rapidly pivoted to this technology when the FCC began to restrict what could be charged for phone calls. As a result, video calling rates are much higher than phone rates today. In a four-state survey for State of Phone Justice 2022, we found that families of people in prisons and jails are paying as much as $8 to make a 20-minute video call, for a much lower-quality version of the technology that most people today are able to use for free. Even worse, jails and companies often use video technology as a pretext for eliminating or curtailing in-person family visits, as we exposed in our 2015 report Screening Out Family Time. The new law empowers the FCC to cap the amount that companies can charge for video calls, which will make these harmful contracts less attractive to jails.

When will the law be implemented, and how?

While we don’t know exactly when the FCC will take action to implement the Martha Wright-Reed Act, the law requires the FCC to promulgate regulations “not earlier than 18 months and not later than 24 months after the date of enactment of this Act” — in other words, sometime in the latter half of 2024. In a press release, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel committed to “expeditiously move new rules forward” in light of the bill’s passage.

The FCC already has all the data it needs to begin setting “just and reasonable rates” as soon as the law allows. In 2021, the agency collected rate data from every phone company serving prisons and jails. That data is still current enough for the FCC to use it to set new rate caps that apply to in-state as well as out-of-state calls. (We offer a few more recommendations to the FCC in State of Phone Justice 2022.) Additionally, while data about video calling rates is spotty and hard to come by, there is still plenty of information already in the record that the FCC can use to put initial price caps in place. In fact, there is precedent for doing so: When the agency took steps to rein in the cost of phone calls in 2015, it relied on similarly incomplete data to set initial rates and then revised those rates as it gathered more information. The agency should replicate that successful process now to provide the quickest relief possible to incarcerated people and their families. As the agency gathers more data, it can and should take more fine-tuned action to rein in exorbitant video calling rates.

Is the fight for phone justice over?

In a word: No. The cost of phone and video calls in almost all jails and many state prisons is still way too high, and even when the FCC implements the new law, there is no guarantee that the agency will set caps as low as it should.

One piece of important good news: The phone rate caps that the FCC has set so far (and will set going forward) don’t preempt states that want to pass laws setting even tighter caps. Illinois, for example, capped phone rates from prisons at 7¢ per minute for prisons, and New Jersey capped rates from prisons and jails at 11¢ per minute.
Rather than wait on FCC action, state legislatures should act now to bring down phone and video calling rates to a few cents a minute, or follow the example of California and Connecticut by just making calls free.

In the meantime, even as voice and video calling regulations become stronger, the corporations that dominate the industry are expanding telecom exploitation. Companies are working hard to evade regulation by growing the number of “services” they offer to prisons and jails. People desperate to stay in touch with their incarcerated parents, kids, and other loved ones as much as possible are being squeezed by companies for electronic messaging as well as phone calls and video, and stricter policies around mail and in-person visits are pushing them towards these more convenient, but also more expensive, options. State legislators and regulators should act to make sure that telecom companies are not able to simply replace one exploitative service with another.

What’s next?

The Martha Wright-Reed Act is an important step forward in the fight for prison and jail phone justice, but it doesn’t guarantee effective action at the FCC; nor does it spell the end of this movement. Prisons and jails are still charging exorbitant rates for phone calls, while implementing many other “services” that fleece poor families desperate to stay in touch.

The FCC must act swiftly and set bold caps on both phone and video calls, to ensure that families never again pay hundreds of dollars a month to stay connected to a single loved one. State and municipal governments, meanwhile, should not rest on their laurels. If anything, policymakers, regulators and legislators should recommit themselves to the fight against these exploitative companies. After all, at a time when the price of a phone call outside the walls of a prison or jail is approaching zero, you can’t help but ask yourself, “why are incarcerated people and their families being charged for calls at all?”

For more information on the current state of the prison and jail telecom industry, see our recent report State of Phone Justice 2022: The problem, the progress, and what’s next.

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money: Class-action settlement reveals Global Tel*Link’s addiction to seizing customer money

Evidence from court case shows why the FCC should act to stop abusive practices in the industry.

by Stephen Raher, September 7, 2022

On August 30, a federal court in Georgia approved a settlement in the years-long class action lawsuit against Global Tel*Link Corporation (“GTL”), one of the two major providers of phone services in prisons and jails. This litigation challenged GTL’s policy of seizing customer money from “prepaid accounts” after a short period of inactivity. Just as important, though, it shows why the FCC needs to take action to end this type of abusive practice throughout the industry.

Under the terms of the settlement, GTL will provide cash payments to some customers, account credits to others, and will institute a uniform policy of not seizing customer funds until accounts have been inactive for a minimum of 180 days. GTL has also agreed to implement procedures to warn customers before their accounts are declared inactive. Prison Policy Initiative filed an amicus brief in the case, pointing out certain ambiguities in the settlement agreement — our concerns were addressed by the addition of clarifying language in the court order approving the settlement.

One of the more interesting facts revealed in the case came at the very end — just days before the final hearing, the court denied GTL’s request to keep secret the amount of money it has taken from “inactive” accounts over the years. Although the court allowed GTL to keep such amounts secret for recent periods (specifically, September 2021 onward), we now know that from April 2011 through August 2019, GTL took over $121 million from customer accounts that it declared inactive — this averages to over $1.2 million a month. This isn’t money that GTL earned in return for providing a service, it’s simply money that GTL took because it could.

We have pointed out this shocking figure to the FCC, along with a request to enact rules that would prohibit companies from taking funds like this. Even though GTL has agreed to some reforms as a result of the class-action settlement, other telecom companies can and do seize customer funds in a similar manner, and no company should be able to enrich itself by taking money simply because a customer hasn’t made a call in recent months.

Information about the settlement

Although the deadline to file a claim for cash payments has passed, customers with active or reactivated accounts are still eligible to receive credits. See the official class website at https://gtlprepaidsettlement.com/FAQ.

Prison Policy Initiative asks FCC to reject prison phone company’s request for special treatment to peddle “subscription” phone plans

Securus wants the FCC to waive its rules, but won’t disclose important details about how the plans work.

by Wanda Bertram, January 10, 2022

Securus, a giant prison phone company with a history of misconduct, recently petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to give the company special permission to peddle flat-rate subscription plans in lieu of charging callers a set amount per minute. The Prison Policy Initiative asked the FCC today to reject Securus’s flimsy bid for special regulatory treatment. In our comments to the FCC, we express our concerns with Securus’s petition:

1. Subscription plans could be a good deal for consumers. Or they could be a rip-off. As with most things, the devil is in the details, but Securus hasn’t provided any details on how its subscriptions work. The company’s marketing materials play down or completely omit important details about the plans — for example, that all payments you make via the subscription model are non-refundable, even in the (quite common) case that your loved one can’t use the phone for days or weeks. Securus emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of its subscription products while withholding most details that could make customers reasonably question the value of a subscription plan.
2. Securus makes several claims about its subscription plan — including claiming that a pilot of the subscription plan showed “increased call length” and “reduced costs” — without providing any supporting data.
3. Securus claims that the “effective” per-minute rates for its subscription plans are “well below” the FCC’s current rate caps, but this claim is based on the debatable assumption that subscribers will use all the minutes they possibly can.
4. Securus has declined to disclose important details about its pilot of the subscription model, such as how many customers subscribed, what subscribers’ average usage was, what the average per-minute rate for users was, and what Securus’s profit margin on subscription programs was.
5. We still don’t know what counts as a “call” under the subscription pricing plan. If an incarcerated caller places a call but no one answers, this may count against the weekly or monthly allowance, making subscriptions a far worse deal for consumers. This is just one of several material questions that Securus doesn’t answer in its petition.
6. Securus hasn’t even precisely defined what it wants. At various points in the petition it states that it wants to: continue its pilot subscription program at eight prisons and jails, expand the program, or let any phone company offer subscription plans.

The FCC shouldn’t waive its long-standing rules for Securus unless it would clearly serve the public interest to do so. Securus should face a high burden of proof before the FCC grants it special treatment, particularly given the company’s history of nickel-and-diming its customers.

You can read our full comments here.

Research roundup: The positive impacts of family contact for incarcerated people and their families

The research is clear: visitation, mail, phone, and other forms of contact between incarcerated people and their families have positive impacts for everyone — including better health, reduced recidivism, and improvement in school. Here’s a roundup of over 50 years of empirical study, and a reminder that prisons and jails often pay little more than lip service to the benefits of family contact.

by Leah Wang, December 21, 2021

To incarcerated people and their families, it’s glaringly obvious that staying in touch by any means necessary — primarily through visits, phone calls, and mail — is tremendously important and beneficial to everyone involved. Yet prisons and jails are notorious for making communication difficult or impossible. People are incarcerated far from home and visitation access is limited, phone calls are expensive and sometimes taken away as punishment, mail is censored and delayed, and video calls and emerging technologies are all too often used as an expensive (and inferior) replacement for in-person visits.

Prison- and jail-imposed barriers to family contact fly in the face of decades of social science research showing associations between family contact and outcomes including in-prison behavior, measures of health, and reconviction after release. Advocates and families fighting for better, easier communication behind bars can turn to this research, which demonstrates that encouraging family contact is not only humane, but contributes to public safety.

In-person visitation is incredibly beneficial, reducing recidivism and improving health and behavior

The positive effects of visitation have been well-known for decades — particularly when it comes to reducing recidivism. A 1972 study on visitation that followed 843 people on parole from California prisons found that those who had no visitors during their incarceration were six times more likely to be reincarcerated than people with three or more visitors. A few years later, researchers found similar results in a study of people paroled from Hawaii State Prison.

Since the 1970s, the body of evidence in favor of prison visitation has only grown. In 2008, researchers found that among 7,000 people released from state prisons in Florida, each additional visit received during incarceration lowered the odds of two-year recidivism by 3.8 percent (in this study, recidivism was defined as reconviction). Findings out of Minnesota a few years later were similar: Receiving one visit per month was associated with a 0.9 percent decrease in someone’s risk of reincarceration; better yet, each unique visitor to an incarcerated person reduced the risk of re-conviction by a notable 3 percent.¹ Among people who received visits during their incarceration, felony re-convictions were 13 percent lower and revocations for technical violations of parole were 25 percent lower compared to people who did not receive visits.

Visitation is also correlated with adherence to prison rules. In 2019, an Iowa researcher found that in-prison misconduct (as measured by official citations) was reduced in people who received visits at Iowa state prisons. Based on these results, one additional visit per month would reduce misconduct by a further 14 percent. “Probably as a direct result of the reduced misconducts,” the study’s author notes, “a similar increase in visitation would also reduce time served by 11 percent.”

These findings add to other recent studies linking visitation and reduced prison misconduct. The timing of visits may matter, as visiting “privileges” can swiftly be taken away as a cruel punishment: According to one study, misconduct tended to decrease in the three weeks before a visit. This may explain why more frequent visits lead to more consistent good behavior, better overall outcomes and post-release success. Families who visit, concluded Holt and Miller in the California study, are a “prime treatment agent” for incarcerated people.²

Research has also found that visitation is linked to better mental health, including reduced depressive symptoms — an important intervention for the isolated, stressful experience of incarceration. Yet even before the pandemic halted visitation, and despite these known benefits, correctional facilities have made visitation hard due to remote locations, harsh policies, and the financial incentives to replace visits with inferior video calls.

Consistent phone calls to family improve relationships

Phone calls tend to be more common than in-person visitation, as they involve fewer logistical barriers. In fact, the key studies we found reveal that 80 percent or more respondents used phone calls to contact family, far more than the number receiving visits, and sometimes more than those using mail to keep in contact.³ As with visitation, family phone calls are shown to reduce the likelihood of recidivism; more consistent and/or frequent phone calls were linked to the lowest odds of returning to prison.

A 2014 study of incarcerated women found that those who had any phone contact with a family member were less likely to be reincarcerated within the five years after their release. In fact, phone contact had a stronger effect on recidivism compared to visitation, which the study also examined.

Of course, reduced recidivism is not the only benefit. A 2020 survey of incarcerated parents showed that parent-child relationships improved when they had frequent (weekly) phone calls.

These positive findings have not gone unnoticed by senior policy makers: “Meaningful communication beyond prison walls helps to promote rehabilitation and reduce recidivism,” explained Mignon Clyburn of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a 2015 statement on the high cost of phone calls. “In a nation as great as ours, there is no legitimate reason why anyone else should ever again be forced to make these levels of sacrifices, to stay connected.”⁴

Given the frequency and importance of phone calls from prisons and jails, their prohibitive cost in many jurisdictions and the loss of phone “privileges” as a punishment are both inhumane and counterproductive.

Mail correspondence is a lifeline, and taking it away only hurts families

Mail is widely understood as a major lifeline for incarcerated people, with some literature finding that it’s the most common form of family contact.The fulfilling feeling of receiving personal mail, the ability to write and read (and reread) mail at one’s own pace, and the relatively low cost of a letter mean that it’s a highly practical and cherished mode of communication, universal to people both inside and outside of prison. And while prison mail hasn’t taken center stage in academic literature, some of the studies mentioned earlier did examine mail contact as part of their methods, finding that it contributes to parent-child attachment and relationship quality.

Yet mail is another example of a service whose benefits become obvious once it’s under attack. In 2007, notoriously cruel Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio instituted a postcard-only policy in the county jail, with sheriffs in at least 14 states following suit. These postcard-only policies severely limit parents’ and children’s ability to stay in touch. A study of incarcerated parents in Arizona cited mail as the most common mode of communication with their children, and those who used mail contact reported improved relationships with their children as compared to the year before their incarceration. Postcards also change the economic argument for mail correspondence: With their tiny physical space available for writing, we found that relaying information on a postcard is about 34 times as expensive as in a letter.

In recent years, other correctional systems have embraced another mail-restriction policy that advocates know is harmful: The telecom company Smart Communications has created “MailGuard,” a mail digitization service marketed as a response to (exaggerated) claims of contraband entering prisons through the mail. MailGuard’s scans of letters and photographs tend to be low-quality, and privacy is clearly violated as one’s mail is opened and scanned. We’ve criticized this practice and maintain that mail scanning is a poor substitute for true mail correspondence.⁵

Video calling and emerging technologies could enhance carceral contact if they weren’t prohibitively expensive

Sometimes billed as “video visitation,” video calling from prisons and jails allows families to connect virtually. Used effectively as a supplement, video calls could help eliminate many of the barriers that in-person visitation presents. However, we’ve argued time and time again that these calls fail to replicate the psychological experience — and therefore benefits — of in-person visitation, and should never be used as a replacement. A 2014 survey found incarcerated people in Washington State were pleased when video calling allowed family to see them, but extremely frustrated by the cost and significant technical challenges of the software. Video calling is a “double-edged sword” providing a mediocre service while lining the pockets of private corporations.

Most advocates and groups (including the American Correctional Association) agree that video calling should only supplement in-person visitation, not replace it entirely. But anecdotally, some corrections officials offer video calling only, and promote it as a safer and more efficient option to visitation. (In terms of safety, the argument that most contraband is introduced into prisons through visitation is a myth we’ve busted.)

In fact, taking away visitation can make prisons and jails less safe. For example, when in-person visits were banned at the jail in Knox County, Tennessee, in favor of video-only visitation, incarcerated people lost the opportunity to maintain healthy social connections. As a result, assaults between incarcerated people and assaults on staff increased in the months after the ban on visits was implemented. Data also show that, similar to the Iowa study mentioned earlier, disciplinary infractions in the jail increased after the ban.

Though the Knox County, Tennessee Sheriff’s Office claimed video-only visitation would be safer, the data suggest the opposite: The replacement of family visits with video calls at the Knox County Detention Facility resulted in more assaults between incarcerated people and on staff. There was also no drop in the rate of reported contraband, and there were higher levels of disciplinary infractions at the jail. See more of the devastating findings compiled by the grassroots coalition Face to Face Knox.

The Knox County research wasn’t an isolated finding: In Travis County, Texas, there was an escalation of violence and contraband after that jail switched from offering both video calls and visitation for a few years, to banning in-person visitation altogether. The change also reduced overall family contact: The number of video calls dropped dramatically compared to the average number of in-person visits that had happened at the jail before the policy change. As it turns out, the availability of both in-person visitation and video calling actually increased the average number of in-person monthly visits. And unsurprisingly, visitors who were surveyed overwhelmingly preferred in-person visitation to video calling. In 2015, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office reinstated in-person visits.

Technologies like video calling (and electronic messaging) have the potential to improve quality of life for incarcerated people and help correctional administrators run safer and more humane facilities. New research suggests that video calls may even help reduce recidivism (but only when they supplement in-person visits). Sadly, the promise of these new services is often tempered by a relentless focus on turning incarcerated people and their families into revenue streams.

Families endure tremendous hardship due to incarceration, but staying in touch can mitigate negative impacts

Many of the studies discussed here focused on the benefits of family contact for incarcerated people. But what about their families — do they gain from the time spent visiting, writing, or calling? Research says yes, family contact also provides relief to the family of an incarcerated person. This is important, because simply having an incarcerated loved one indicates poorer health and a shorter lifespan. In particular, children — the “hidden victims” of incarceration — are at increased risk for mental health problems and substance use disorders, and face worse intellectual outcomes compared to children without an incarcerated family member. (Youth can themselves be confined in detention facilities, turning parents into visitors; similar to the research explored earlier, visitation of confined youth was remarkably beneficial.⁶)

Research suggests that families who visited during a loved one’s incarceration show improved mental health measures and have a higher probability of remaining together after release. And a 1977 study, explained in a larger review of family contact research, found that children who had displayed concerning behavior upon their fathers’ incarceration showed improved behavior after visiting with their fathers.

The R Street Institute sums it up nicely: Supportive family relationships can promote psychological and physiological health for incarcerated people and their loved ones, at a time when everyone’s health is otherwise deteriorating. When done well, visitation can ease anxiety in children and mitigate some of the impacts on strained interpersonal relationships. Serving families at this most critical period simply makes communities healthier.

Making family contact readily available should be a no-brainer for prisons and jails

Of course, staying in touch with an incarcerated person is almost never easy. There can be great distress and tension as a family navigates its role, and the inconsistent timing and frequency of contact can be unsettling to someone whose incarceration is overly predictable and tedious, while life outside can be anything but.

Still, academic research is unified in its message that family contact during incarceration provides immense benefits, both during incarceration and the reentry period. Prisons and jails should make all types of family contact safely and equitably available, and end the practice of taking contact away as a punishment for rule violations. And with no certain access to visitation as the pandemic wears on, families and incarcerated people should receive more phone and video time, fewer fees, and better mail options in order to preserve family ties and the critical benefits that result from family contact.

Below, we’ve compiled all of the research discussed and linked above as a bibliography for our readers. And for further reading on the harmful restrictions on communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones, see our resources on visitation and our campaigns fighting for phone, mail, and visitation justice.

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

What families can expect to be charged under the new FCC rules

A new order from the Federal Communications Commission lowers existing caps on rates and fees in the prison and jail telephone industry.

by Andrea Fenster, June 10, 2021

On May 24, the Federal Communications Commission released a historic order lowering existing caps on rates and fees in the prison and jail telephone industry. The same document also signals the FCC’s intent to further lower rates in the future, and create additional rules governing this industry. The public is invited to comment on a wide range of topics.

The FCC’s newest order applies only to out-of-state calls, where the caller and called person are physically in different states, but not to in-state calls, where the caller and called person are physically in the same state. Importantly, the FCC says that companies must charge the out-of-state rate unless they know where the parties are physically located. Previously, many companies calculated rates based on area codes, which will no longer be allowed. (This means some third-party services that offer different phone numbers with a different area code to obtain better calling rates will no longer be effective).

These newly lowered caps go into effect October 26, 2021. Here is what families with incarcerated loved ones can expect to be charged:

Rate caps:

• For prisons: With one exception, out-of-state calls will not cost more than 14¢ per minute. Previously, rates were capped at either 21¢ or 25¢ depending on whether the call was collect or debit. The exception is that the FCC is allowing companies to charge higher rates if a mandatory state statute or regulation requires a commission payment to the facility, however, “in no event…can the total rate cap exceed $0.21 per minute.” (FCC Order at fn309).¹
• For jails with an average daily population of 1,000 or more: With one exception, out-of-state calls will not cost more than $0.16 per minute. Previously, rates were capped at either 21¢ or 25¢ depending on whether the call was collect or debit. The exception is that the FCC is allowing companies to charge higher rates if a mandatory state statute or regulation requires a commission payment to the facility, however, “in no event…can the total rate cap exceed $0.21 per minute.” (FCC Order at fn309).²
• For all other jails: Out-of-state calls can cost no more than 21¢ per minute. Currently, collect calls can cost up to 25¢ per minute at these jails, but when the new regulations take effect, collect calls and debit calls will both be capped at 21¢.

International rate caps:

• International calls from both prisons and jails will now be capped at the out-of-state rate that applies (above), plus the amount that the provider pays to an underlying wholesale carrier for the cost of the call. Prior to these rules, international calls were not subject to price caps. The exact caps will be hard to predict because the “underlying wholesale” cost is not widely known. But for context, calls from the United States to Mexico via one wholesaler, Twilio, cost between $0.013 and $0.045 per minute depending on the location within Mexico and whether it is to a cell phone. The prices for other countries vary and other wholesalers may have different prices, but the FCC’s intent is clearly to restrict price gouging by the providers.

Single calls:

• From both prisons and jails, single call products, like Text2Connect™ and PayNow™, will now be capped at $6.95 per call, plus the applicable per-minute rate. We have previously found that companies were charging $9.99-14.99 for a single telephone call.

Third-party financial transaction fees:

• In both prisons and jails, third-party financial transaction fees, like fees associated with Western Union and MoneyGram payments, will be capped at $6.95 per transaction. Currently, these fees can be as high as $9.99.