Downward angle icon Downward angle icon. People incarcerated in prisons and jails must pay a per-minute fee to communicate with the outside world. Dustin Chambers/Reuters Three companies dominate the multi-billion dollar correctional communications industry The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to lower phone and video calling rates in prisons and jails across the country Poor families of color are disproportionately affected.
For decades, the prison communications industry has made up to $1.4 billion a year from a customer base of inmates who have no choice but to rely on their services to stay in touch with loved ones, and the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules Thursday to limit what advocates have long called exploitation of the nation’s poorest families.
Prisoners must pay to talk to their families by phone or video call: As of 2021, prisoners pay an average of $3 for a 15-minute phone call, according to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative.
The FCC rules, which go into effect next year, will drastically reduce the amount inmates pay per minute to use the service, following years of activism in the criminal justice sector.
“Capping fees for all phone and video calls, as the FCC has done, will provide relief to millions of families, and other provisions in the FCC’s order will prevent consumer exploitation through fees and unfair pricing,” said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative.
Corrections communications is largely dominated by three companies: Securus, ViaPath (formerly GTL) and ICSolutions. Criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises estimates that these three companies control nearly 90% of the entire industry. Corrections communications companies face an estimated $500 million in lost revenue, and the new rules will force them to change their business models, according to Worth Rises.
A Viapath spokesman said the company was assessing the impact of the FCC’s decision and was stable. Securus and ICSolutions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nearly 90% of these telecommunications companies’ customer base is made up of women of color and low-income families who are forced to pay thousands of dollars in phone bills each year, with one in three families falling into debt as a result, according to data from Connect Families Now, a prison telephone justice advocacy group.
According to Prison Legal News, only five states have passed legislation making phone calls free in prisons, and PBS reported that New York, Ohio and Rhode Island have eliminated site commission for communications services.
The latest FCC ruling would be the most comprehensive reform effort to date.
Inmates in prisons and large jails have previously paid as much as 21 cents per minute for phone calls, but with the new mandate, no inmate will pay more than 12 cents per minute for phone calls in any correctional facility.
However, the cost caps vary by prison or jail size. For example, in prisons and large jails, the cap will be 6 cents per minute, down from the previous cap of 14 cents. However, in medium and small jails, the caps will be higher, at 7 cents and 9 cents, respectively, down from 21 cents. Video calls will also be limited to 11 cents per minute. These caps are scheduled to be implemented between January and July.
FCC rules would prohibit facilities from passing on other costs to inmates and their families.
Worth Rights executive director Bianca Tyreke said calls between prisoners and the outside world were monitored and for many years the costs of monitoring calls were passed on to callers.
This meant that families had to pay for services to monitor their conversations; now prisons and jails will have to pay for the services themselves.
The rules also eliminate “field fees,” or bribes, offered to correctional facilities for a percentage of toll revenues and require facilities to make “reasonable efforts” to return any remaining toll fees in the accounts of people released from prison before garnishing them.
Prison communications will still benefit from inmates
Worth Riges estimates that the new rule will have the biggest impact on the roughly 90% of prisons that charge rates above the upcoming rate cap. Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist at the Prison Policy Initiative, said prisons tend to negotiate better contracts with telecommunications companies, which makes the rates more favorable for inmates. Smaller prisons, which house inmates convicted of minor crimes or awaiting trial, tend to have the worst rates.
“So while the FCC’s new rate caps will affect everyone who pays rates to prison and jail phone companies, the impact will be most severe in local jails,” she said.
Still, many advocates of the decades-long reform movement believe that caps on phone and video calling are just the first step in a battle that needs to be won: Companies will simply expand their revenue potential by offering other forms of communication that are largely unregulated and subject to no government oversight, such as text messaging and email.
“Even after taking into account fees and other factors, prison communications companies will continue to make huge profits, even if not as much as before,” said Paul Wright, director of the Human Rights Center. “These companies will continue to try to make up for lost or limited profits by exploiting these families.”
