HELP US END MASS INCARCERATION The Prison Policy Initiative uses research, advocacy, and organizing to dismantle mass incarceration. We’ve been in this movement for 22 years, thanks to individual donors like you.

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Pie chart showing how the money spent on calls gets divided between fees, commissions and other charges.

Data Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek has estimated that the prison phone industry does $1.2 billion in business every year. (Todd Shields, Prison Phones Prove Captive Market for Private Equity, Bloomberg BusinessWeek (October 4, 2012)) Considering the speed at which pre-paid accounts are overtaking collect calls, we estimate that 90% of the market is now in pre-paid accounts. We then applied Global Tel*Link’s fee structure (as described in Tables 3 and 5 of Please Deposit All of Your Money: Kickbacks, Rates and Hidden Fees in the Jail Phone Industry. (Graph: Prison Policy Initiative, 2013)

This graph originally appeared in Please Deposit All of Your Money: Kickbacks, Rates and Hidden Fees in the Jail Phone Industry.



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