It’s all about the incentives: Why a call home from a jail in New York State can cost 7 times more than the same call from the state’s prisons

by Katie Rose Quandt and Andrea Fenster, March 23, 2021

Families with loved ones incarcerated in New York State prisons pay some of the lowest phone fees in the entire country. Meanwhile, those with loved ones in the state’s county jails have some of the highest phone costs. How can this be?

It’s all about the incentives. In 2007, New York State passed progressive legislation requiring contracts between state prisons and private phone companies to be negotiated “for the lowest price to the consumer,” and prohibiting the department of corrections from accepting commissions on phone calls. (Nationwide, the commission-based structure of correctional phone calls is a major factor driving up costs for the consumer.) New York’s legislation, however, does not apply to county and city jails, meaning counties are free to choose the phone company that charges the most and kicks the most revenue back to the jail. As a result of this loophole, the average 15-minute call from a New York jail costs seven times more than an identical call from a state prison.

These exorbitant phone rates cost some the poorest residents of New York State — and a group disproportionately made up of women of color — more than $13 million a year just to talk to their jailed loved ones.¹ The role played by counties in driving up these costs is clearly demonstrated in our new dataset of commission percentages paid by phone companies to New York county jails. We found that the majority of the cost of an average jail phone call — 64 cents on the dollar — is kicked back from the service provider to the county or jail. In some counties, as much as 86% of jail phone call revenue ends up in the pockets of the county government.²

Cost of a 15-minute phone call in New York county jails — and how much more affordable they could be without commissions

These high commissions translate to high costs for families. We found that in 2019, a 15-minute phone call from the average jail in New York was more expensive than the average jail phone call in 43 states. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If individual New York counties pledged to waive the income they earn off the backs of their poorest residents, the cost of a 15-minute phone call would instantly drop significantly. And if the state stepped in with legislation requiring jail phone contracts to be negotiated on the basis of the lowest cost to the consumer (like it already requires of prisons), the rates would go down even further.

In fact, there are several solutions that would reduce phone costs for families of jailed New Yorkers:

1. Individual counties should immediately tell their provider they want to waive their commission and see the cost of phone calls proportionally reduced for the consumer. (This would ultimately benefit the counties themselves. Many people in jails will soon return to their communities, and studies show that maintaining close contact with family members is linked to better post-release outcomes and lower rates of recidivism.)
2. Counties should, in their next contracts, refuse to take a commission, and should negotiate not on the basis of maximizing revenue for the county, but to lower the costs for families. Many contracts in New York counties are expiring in the next few years — some of which will automatically renew unless the county actively seeks a new provider and renegotiates. (See our Expiration Dates appendix for information on when your county’s contract is expiring.)
3. When seeking a new contract, counties should put out separate Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for each service (such as phone calls, electronic messaging, and video visitation), instead of bundling these services together into a single RFP and contract. In fact, New York State should prohibit jails from signing bundled contracts for multiple services because it obscures the provider’s profits and the true cost of the contract. (For more on the harms of bundling see Footnote 2).
4. Counties should consider going one step further and paying the cost of phone calls themselves, therefore making calls free for families. New York City became the first US jurisdiction to pick up the tab on jail calls in 2019.⁴ (This may be less expensive than it sounds. Cities or counties covering the total cost of phone calls can negotiate even lower rates, since the phone companies no longer need to do individualized billing.)
5. New York State should extend its historic legislation that already bans commissions on phone calls in New York State prisons, and requires prison phone contracts to be negotiated for the lowest price to the consumer. Simply closing this loophole and applying the law to jails would save families at least $13 million on their phone bills.

Methodology & Appendices:

This analysis was made possible thanks to detailed public record requests made by George Dahlbender. This collection was supplemented by Andrea Fenster; Worth Rises also generously shared three additional contracts. Finally, although Schenectady and Sullivan counties did not respond to public record requests, we were able to find recent copies of their contracts on Muckrock.com, a nonprofit that helps people and organizations file and share record requests.

In the following four appendix tables, we have highlighted key information from the contracts and other documents that counties provided. We are also providing links to the contracts themselves so that journalists and other advocates can hold the counties accountable:

1. Commissions pocketed by counties for phone, tablet, and video services
2. Which counties have bundled contracts?
3. Where are county kickbacks directed?
4. When does each county’s contract expire?

Appendix 1: Commissions pocketed by counties for phone, tablet, and video services

Appendix 2: Which counties have bundled contracts?

Appendix 3: Where are county kickbacks directed?

Appendix 4: When does each county’s contract expire?

We’ve saved Iowa consumers $1 million per year on jail phone calls — but there’s more work to do to stop exploitation in Iowa & beyond

by Wanda Bertram, March 10, 2021

We’re fighting for fair phone rates for people in jail and their families, and we just picked up a big victory. We pressured officials in Iowa to regulate the prices that predatory jail phone companies are charging. And we won.

Why Iowa? When a federal court said the FCC couldn’t regulate the cost of in-state jail phone calls, we adopted a state-by-state strategy. We’ve focused on places where state law allows regulators to cap phone rates, and where jail phone rates are the worst. Iowa is one of those states: Before our recent victory, jails there charged as much as $14.10 for a 15-minute call.

Now, the state Utilities Board has set a limit on the rates that these companies can force consumers to pay. We calculate that the new rules will save Iowans about $1 million every year. As reporter Erin Jordan explains in the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

The Iowa Utilities Board is forcing companies that provide phone service for county jail inmates to lower rates from as high as $1 a minute to a quarter or less.

Until recently, Bremer County had the highest jail phone rates in the state at $14.10 for a 15-minute call, which included $3.74 for the first minute and 74 cents after. Their service provider, Securus, lowered rates to 21 cents a minute — meaning a 15-minute call now will cost just $3.15.

The Utilities Board has not yet approved Securus’s new tariff, but has instructed the company and other providers to keep rates at 25 cents per minute or less for prepaid calls. The board has so far approved new, lower rates for five companies — Prodigy, Network Communication International Corporation, Combined Public Communications, ICSolutions and Global Tel*Link.

The exorbitant phone rates charged by jail phone companies — and ratcheted up by jails that hope to get a kickback — have caused untold suffering for families, particularly during COVID-19. For example, the Gazette interviewed a mother in Des Moines who said she has to limit the number of times her 4-year-old son can call his father, who is incarcerated.

The squeezing of these families for profit has been going on for years, but during the pandemic and recession (with in-person jail visits suspended) it has hit them harder and caused even more anguish. So even as the Prison Policy Initiative celebrates our victory, we’re pushing Iowa to do more.

Yesterday, we wrote to Governor Kim Reynolds, urging her to work with the Iowa Utilities Board to address the remaining issues of fairness for Iowa consumers, including:

• Rates are still too high. As we wrote in our letter: “During the last year, the Board has unofficially used an informal “rate cap” of roughly 25¢ per minute, based on previous FCC rules imposing interstate rate caps of 21¢ for prepaid calls. However, much has changed since the FCC imposed those interim rate caps in 2013. In October 2020, then-chair of the FCC Ajit Pai announced a new rulemaking to lower interstate rates to 14¢ for calls from prisons, and 16¢ for calls from jails. If the FCC finalizes those changes, then many Iowa carriers would be charging substantially more for in-state calls (up to 25¢) than they could for interstate calls (16¢).”
• Some companies are seizing unused consumer funds from prepaid accounts that should be returned to the families or turned over to the state’s unclaimed property program.
• Five companies are “double dipping” on deposit fees, charging two fees for each credit card transaction.
• At least one company is steering consumers to the most expensive and inefficient way to pay calls: “single calls” that require paying the $3 deposit fee on each and every call.

With at least one county in the U.S. having negotiated jail phone rates down to one cent a minute, it’s clear that companies in Iowa are still charging far more money for a phone call than they need to — so we’re continuing the fight for a better deal for incarcerated Iowans and their families.

Meanwhile, we’re taking our successful Iowa strategy to other states. We’re currently working with a broad coalition of activists and telecom experts who are urging the California Public Utilities Commission to crack down on high jail phone and video-calling rates in that state. The political momentum that we build in these key states will help us put more pressure on the FCC to address continued exploitation in this area. Mass incarceration has created far too many opportunities for companies to get rich at the expense of poor families, and our advocacy won’t stop until that exploitation ends.

People in jails are using more phone minutes during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite decreased jail populations

Our study of 14 jails finds that there were 8% more overall minutes used during the pandemic, despite the fact that nationwide jail populations have fallen about 15%.

by Andrea Fenster, January 25, 2021

People in jails spent 8% more time on the phone over a three-month period of 2020 than in the same timeframe of 2019, according to data gathered from facilities around the country. This may come as a surprise, considering that there were fewer people behind bars to make these calls: jail populations have fallen about 15% on average since March, thanks to modest COVID-19 protection measures.

But, like the jail population reductions, the increase in phone minutes is attributable to COVID-19. Across the country, COVID-19 cases have ballooned in prisons and jails. Insufficient medical care, aging populations, poor preparedness, inability to social distance, and lack of sanitation combine in correctional facilities to create deadly conditions amidst a global pandemic. As a result, many jails have suspended in-person visitation, leaving phone and video calls as the main way for people to communicate with loved ones.

It makes sense, then, that more minutes were used in 2020 than 2019. This increase was attributable to both longer and more frequent calls: the number of calls increased by 3% and calls, on average, were 5% longer. These increases came despite the fact that many correctional facilities have used lockdowns as a COVID-19 prevention measure, which generally limit movement and phone access.

Calls from jails can be costly. For example, in one of the jails that provided data, in Pierce County, ND, a 15-minute call can cost $8.36. So when call volumes go up, billion-dollar companies like Securus–and the jails themselves–rake in the profits. Families around the country were already stretching their wallets to afford calls from their incarcerated loved ones. Now, during a pandemic that has caused mass unemployment, these phone bills are increasing as people accept longer and more frequent calls to help their loved ones maintain a lifeline to the outside world.

Methodology

To calculate changes in call volumes, we studied Securus Call Commission Reports from 2019 and 2020 in city and county jails across the nation. (We chose Securus both because it is the second-largest phone provider in prisons and jails, and because its reports are standardized across facilities, making them easy to compare.) To ensure that changes in the rates would not impact our results, we first identified Securus facilities where the per-minute call rates had not changed between our 2018 Phone Rates Survey and December 2020. We then sent record requests to 23 randomly-selected jails of varying populations, as well as 14 of the largest jails in the country, requesting each facility’s three most recent Call Commission Reports, as well as those for the same time period one year prior.

Ultimately, we received 14 complete responses as of January 21, 2021, from facilities ranging in average daily population from 12 to 3,844. ¹ (The average daily population for each facility was gathered from Securus’s 2019 Annual Report to the FCC, filed October 23, 2020.)

Since you asked: Can correctional facilities negotiate phone contracts that prohibit deposit fees? (Yes! Many do.)

We review the evidence and find 15 states that said no to unnecessary fees. Who will be next?

by Peter Wagner, November 20, 2020

The high cost of calling home from prisons and jails rightly gets a lot of attention in the press, but the industry’s practice of tacking on hidden fees is getting an increasing amount of attention from regulators and the savviest correctional facilities. These fees can be called by a variety of different names and can add up to significant costs to the families of people in prison. The problem got so bad that the companies were potentially making more from fees than from selling their product — phone calls.

The good news is that in 2015, the Federal Communications Commission prohibited or capped many of the fees that companies can charge consumers to open, have, fund or close an account. Most notably, the FCC capped the amount that can be charged for an “automated payment” i.e., to make a credit card deposit via the internet or a telephone keypad, at $3. At the time that the FCC capped those fees, some prison phone providers were charging fees as high as $9.50 to make a deposit, despite the fact that most companies in most other industries would be so thrilled to have customers pre-pay for services that they wouldn’t charge a fee at all.

The even better news is that some correctional systems are standing up for the low-income families that pay for these calls by pushing back against some of these unnecessary fees. We found that 15 state prison systems and at least one county jail¹ have eliminated automated payment/deposit fees entirely.

State prison systems where there is no credit card fee to make deposits to prepaid accounts, October 2020

Our survey looked only at the results of these contracts, but it seems clear from the available information that this outcome was the result of savvy negotiating by the facilities and not the generosity of the providers. How these contracts came to be is not always readily or publicly available, but we discovered enough evidence from the small number of readily available records to conclude that most or all of these 15 states sought out this result. For example, the original Requests for Proposals in Indiana and New Jersey said that the states would not accept bids that included deposit fees. And while we did not have access to Oregon’s original advertisement, the contract includes a prohibition on charging fees.

In sum, if states want to prohibit their phone companies from sticking their hands into consumer’s pockets with unnecessary fees, they can do so. Fifteen of them already have.

Prison Policy Initiative asked California Public Utilities Commission to cap the cost of calling home from California jails

by Peter Wagner, November 10, 2020

Yesterday, the Prison Policy Initiative filed comments before the California Public Utility Commission, calling for it to reduce the cost of calling home from California prisons and jails. Our comments included a comprehensive survey of the phone rates in each county.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission capped the cost of interstate calls at 21¢ per minute and is currently accepting comments on a proposal to lower that cap further still. However, FCC rate caps only apply to calls that cross states lines. But most calls do not cross state lines and those calls can cost far more — up to 90¢ per minute. For now, it is up to individual states to set rate caps for calls that stay within a state, so the California Public Utility Commission announced on October 19 that it was requesting comments on whether and how it should begin to regulate the industry.

Our comments review the cost of in-state calls from California facilities, as well as the too-high cost of video calls from California facilities. Our comments also addressed two other harmful practices: the prevalence of vendors bundling the phone and video services together into one complicated exploitative contract; and evidence showing that some vendors are charging more than the maximum $3 deposit fees authorized by the Federal Communications Commission.

The Utilities Commission will be accepting reply comments on November 19 and holding a pre-hearing conference on December 10. The Utilities Commission expects to have a proposed decision in the spring or summer of 2021. All of the documents filed in this rulemaking are available in Docket 20-10-002.

Prisons and jails are rolling back free phone and video calls. They should be extending them instead

Amidst a pandemic and recession, policymakers should be fighting for extended — if not permanent — financial relief for incarcerated people and their families.

by Wanda Bertram, September 11, 2020

Covid-19 has put people with loved ones behind bars in a difficult bind: In-person visits are risky (and have been suspended in many places), but families have to pay in order to stay connected remotely through phone and video calls. For the past several months, some state and local governments have provided relief for these families in the form of occasional free calls. But now, as the pandemic still rages, many facilities are phasing them out.

We checked in on several counties and states that offered free calls at the beginning of the pandemic, and found that many have ended or curtailed the practice. Middlesex County, Massachusetts stopped offering free calls last week. Delaware appears to have ended free phone calls in August; Vermont ended free video calls in June. California, which in April offered three “free calling days” per week, has reduced its offering to two days per month. Pennsylvania has reduced its offer from five free phone calls a week to just one.

Officials may say (as in Middlesex County, MA) that they are phasing out free calls because they are bringing back in-person visits. But for many families, visits still aren’t safe. Family members with medical vulnerabilities may not be able to leave their homes, especially to travel to correctional facilities, which are hotbeds of viral spread. These families depend on phone and video calls as much as they would if in-person visits were still prohibited.

Even people who feel comfortable resuming in-person visits are likely still paying for more phone calls than they did before the pandemic. For one thing, in-person visits may be coming back very slowly, with only a limited number of visits available. What’s more, even where visits are fully restored, the stress of the pandemic means that most families need more communication than normal. People with friends or family behind bars need to stay up to date on their loved ones’ health and provide emotional support, especially given that chronic illnesses that make people vulnerable to the virus are more common behind bars.

The pandemic is making communication more important. Meanwhile, a recession is making communication less affordable. Even in normal times, one in three families with an incarcerated loved one go into debt paying for phone calls and visits, and 50% struggle to pay for basic housing and food needs. Withdrawing free calls now will hurt these already-needy families when they can least afford it.

In the short term, free calls should be extended as long as the pandemic and recession persist. Facilities with welfare funds for incarcerated people (ironically often funded by revenue from phone calls) should draw on these funds, if necessary, to cover the costs charged by phone and video providers. (Some welfare funds have large unspent balances.) Facilities should also pressure their providers to offer more calls free of charge, or at lower rates. Counties and states have plenty of negotiating power with their telecom providers to bring rates down — as evidenced by Dallas’s new cent-a-minute jail phone rates and Denton County, Texas’s dime-a-minute video calls.

But temporary free calls are just a stopgap measure. People with loved ones behind bars need permanent relief from the high cost of keeping in touch. The pandemic should provide an opportunity for states and counties to make long-term changes, such as renegotiating their contracts with telecom providers to secure lower rates, and ending the practice of taking kickbacks from the companies (which drives up the cost of calls for consumers). State legislatures and local governments can also pass bills to make phone calls from prison and jail cheaper or free — in California and Massachusetts, such legislation is currently on the table. Ultimately, the policymakers in charge of jail and prison communications should not be prematurely attempting to “return to normal.” Instead, policymakers should be fighting for a fairer future.

Hey Massachusetts state legislature, please pass S.2846!

S.2846 will make phone calls free of cost for incarcerated people and their families in Massachusetts.

by Jenny Landon, September 4, 2020

The Prison Policy Initiative joined a coalition of over 100 organizations, legal service providers, public defenders, social workers, and directly impacted people to sign on to a letter urging the Massachusetts State Legislature to pass S.2846, a bill that would make phone calls free of cost for incarcerated people and their families.

The burden of expensive phone calls overwhelmingly falls on family members, especially on women: in Massachusetts, families pay $24 million per year to stay connected to their incarcerated loved ones, and a national study found that the cost will put one in three families into debt. Black and brown people in Massachusetts are disproportionately criminalized and targeted by police, so expensive phone calls to correctional institutions disproportionately strip money out of the pocketbooks of families of color.

Before the pandemic hit, more than 50 percent of families with an incarcerated loved one struggled to pay for basic housing and food needs. With the economic hardship brought on by COVID-19, it is now urgent that Massachusetts stops subsidizing our exploitative and expensive carceral system with regressive costs that fall on the most impoverished in the state.

In Massachusetts, there are thousands of people held in jails pre-trial because they cannot afford bail, and their phone calls are the most expensive of all incarcerated people in the state. When people can’t get together the funds to get out of jail, exorbitant phone rates only make a difficult time even harder. Not only do people held pre-trial need to coordinate childcare or elder care, make arrangements for missing work, have prescriptions brought to the facility, or simply have someone to talk to while incarcerated, they also have to organize their defense.

People detained pretrial are more likely to plead guilty just to get out of jail, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to get longer sentences. Costly phone calls play a central role in this injustice by limiting how often and how long pretrial detainees can talk to their families and friends in the service of their defense. As a result, pretrial detainees often present a weaker defense than they would have if they had been able to make calls freely. On a systemic level, high phone rates from jails hurt indigent defendants by draining already-scarce resources from public defenders’ offices.

As written in the full letter:

As a result of the work of Black organizers, constituents across the Commonwealth understand that no-cost calls are about keeping families together. People should not be forced to pay for a lifeline, nor the programs offered by the DOC and county facilities. It is unconscionable that in this moment a mother is forced to choose between buying groceries and talking to her incarcerated child or that a child would need to forego hearing his incarcerated mother’s voice when they most need comfort. The Commonwealth must intervene to ensure that corporations can no longer profit from lines of communication that are critical to creating the support networks necessary for success upon reentry. We respectfully ask you to pass S. 2846 this session!

For these reasons and many more, we urge the Massachusetts State Legislature to pass S.2846. Are you in Massachusetts and want to support this bill? Call your representatives and senators!

Jails and prisons are suspending visits to slow COVID-19. Here’s what advocates can do to help people inside.

Send our letter to your local jail, asking them to make video and phone calls free.

by Bernadette Rabuy and Wanda Bertram, March 17, 2020

As jails and prisons across the country suspend in-person visits to slow the spread of COVID-19, families are being rapidly cut off from their incarcerated loved ones. Phone calls and video calls are now the only option for anxious families trying to stay in touch. It’s more important than ever that these calls be available at no cost.

We prepared a template letter for local advocates fighting to preserve family contact in jails during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advocates are encouraged to customize our letter as needed and send it to their county sheriff or jail warden or administrator. The full text of the letter is below, and a shorter version of the letter follows (for people in counties where public comments must be under 300 words).

Dear [Sheriff/Warden name],

Your office recently took the step of [suspending/restricting] in-person visitation at [jail name] to prevent the spread of COVID-19. While there is no question that in-person visitation can be risky at this time, incarcerated people and their families must be able to communicate in order to endure this trying, confusing, and constantly evolving pandemic.

We are writing to request your leadership in protecting incarcerated people and their loved ones by providing phone and video calls free of cost for at least thirty days – as sheriffs have done in the past on special occasions, such as Christmas, and as has been recommended by prosecutors nationwide. Other counties, such as Shelby County, Tennessee, have already taken this simple and critical step.

As you know, there is a general panic as cases of COVID-19 spread. Incarcerated people’s loved ones are even more likely to be concerned. Correctional facilities are filled with people with chronic illnesses and complex medical needs; these people are at a particularly high risk for serious complications from infections like COVID-19. Moreover, it can be difficult for correctional facilities to prevent unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, which also put people at risk for COVID-19.

While the decision to halt visits may be best for public health reasons, it puts loved ones in a bind. Families are forced to check in with their incarcerated loved ones by paying for phone or video calls. But incarcerated people and their loved ones are disproportionately low-income, and likely to be employed in fields most impacted financially by social distancing. Unless you make changes, families will likely have to choose between purchasing essential groceries or a phone call with Mom or Dad.

If [jail name] has a welfare fund for incarcerated people or has otherwise collected commissions from the fees charged for communication services, instituting a policy of free calls would be the best immediate use of that funding. You may even discover unexpected benefits to a temporary policy of free calls: For example, increased communication with loved ones has been shown to reduce misconduct in facilities by lowering anxiety and tension. Stability may be one reason jurisdictions like New York City have shifted to free phone calls permanently.

With tensions running high in [jail name] as well as in our communities, waiving the costs of phone and video calls is a simple step your office can take to provide comfort to families and protect public safety, both in and outside of the jail. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Shorter version:

Dear [Sheriff/Warden name],

Your office recently took the step of [suspending/restricting] in-person visitation at [jail name] to prevent the spread of COVID-19. While in-person visitation can be risky at this time, incarcerated people and their families must be able to communicate in order to endure this constantly evolving pandemic.

We are writing to request your leadership in protecting incarcerated people and their loved ones by providing phone and video calls free of cost for at least 30 days – as other counties have done, and as has been recommended by prosecutors nationwide.

With visitation halted, families are forced to check in with their incarcerated loved ones by paying for phone or video calls. But incarcerated people and their families are disproportionately low-income, and likely to be employed in fields most impacted financially by social distancing. Unless you make changes, families will likely have to choose between purchasing essential groceries or a phone call with Mom or Dad.

If [jail name] has a welfare fund for incarcerated people or has otherwise collected commissions from communication services, a policy of free calls would be the best immediate use of that funding. You may even discover unexpected benefits, like how increased communication with loved ones has been shown to reduce misconduct in facilities by lowering anxiety and tension. Stability may be one reason jurisdictions like New York City have shifted to free phone calls permanently.

With tensions running high in [jail name] and in our communities, waiving the costs of phone and video calls is a simple step your office can take to provide comfort to families and protect public safety, both in and outside of the jail. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The biggest priorities for prison and jail phone justice in 40 states

High prison rates, high jail rates, high first minute charges, and more

by Peter Wagner and Alexi Jones, September 11, 2019

It can be hard to figure out where to start to improve phone justice in each state, especially in the states where legislators, regulators, or individual correctional facilities have already instituted partial reforms. For that reason, we’ve re-organized our national survey of in-state phone rates in to this handy map showing the biggest remaining issues in each state:

No state is perfect on prison and jail telephone issues, and there are many ways to measure “how bad” a state’s prison and jail phone rates are. Some states have good phone rates if they are measured by one criterion, but terrible if measured by a different one. For example, the Minnesota Department of Corrections charges only $0.75 for a 15-minute in-state call from state prison, but the jails in the state charge, on average, $7.19 for the same call. To give a more complete picture of how, exactly, each state is failing, we compiled data on five different measures of prison and jail phone justice (see Table 1 below). For states that rate poorly on multiple measures, the map above offers our opinion about which issue is most important and actionable in that state.

For even more detailed data for individual facilities in each state, see these appendix tables from our State of Phone Justice report:

• Drops in instate state prison rates over the last decade.
• 2018 Phone Rates Survey (2,055 local jails)
• The most expensive jail phone calls in each state

Now that leaders and advocates in each state have easy access to the biggest issues standing in the way of phone justice in their states, it’s time to get moving on making justice a reality.

When jails replace in-person visits with video, what happens when the technology fails?

As more jails ban face-to-face visits in favor of paid video chats, a growing number of people in jail are being cut off from their families when the technology breaks down.

by Sarah Watson, June 18, 2019

Jails are increasingly replacing in person visits with video calls. This high-tech fad goes against the recommendations of the American Correctional Association, the American Bar Association, and even the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Corrections. These jails ignore the many problems we’ve documented, such as high costs for families, poor quality of the systems and the loss of human contact. But there’s another liability that jails now have to consider: What happens when their shiny new technology fails?

Their vendors — who provide the systems for free in exchange for charging high rates to the families — will say that their technology is perfect. As every person who owns a computer knows, however, technology is not flawless, and these systems do fail — sometimes keeping people in jail from contacting their families for weeks at a time:

The good news is that counties are starting to take notice of the downsides to video calling. Most recently, the sheriff of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (see table above) fulfilled a 2018 campaign promise to reinstate in-person visits, on the grounds that video should be used in addition to in person visits, not as a substitute.

“Allowing our residents to stay connected to family and loved ones through in-person visits improves public safety,” Sheriff McFadden explained. “This simple step alone has been shown to significantly lower the chances that a person will commit another crime after they get out. It also reduces the chance a person will commit an infraction inside the jail which could adversely impact their release. In addition, it improves mental health outcomes and strengthens family units and community ties.”

Mecklenburg County had the right idea. When this technology works, it should be considered a supplement to in-person visits, not a substitute; and when the technology fails, it’s useless. Instead of investing in flawed technology, jails should be looking for more ways to increase traditional methods of family contact.