Data Source: Placeholder text here.. (Graph: Prison Policy Initiative, 2022)

This graph originally appeared in State of Phone Justice 2022: The problem, the progress, and what's next.

This graphic aggregates eight national prison rate surveys and three national jail rate surveys of the cost of a 15-minute call from a prison or jail to in-state and out-of-state phone numbers. Calls home from local jails still cost more than calls home from state or federal prisons, but the rates have been coming down thanks to advocate pressure and efforts by the Federal Communications Commission, state legislatures, and state regulatory agencies. The largest drop, in 2014, was due to the FCC rate caps on out-of-state calls, which put indirect political and market pressure on companies and facilities to reduce the cost of in-state calls as well. But compared to prisons, jail rates still remain stubbornly high. For a table showing the average cost in each of these surveys, see Appendix table 2. Note that while we did not formally collect out-of-state jail phone rates in our 2016 or 2018 surveys, we are confident that the average cost would have been near the FCC’s then-existent cap of $3.15 and have added that to this graphic.