FCC Will Cap the Cost of Prison Phone Calls

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted this week to lower the cost of keeping in touch with the incarcerated.

"The Federal Communications Commission today voted to end exorbitant phone and video call rates that have burdened incarcerated people and their families for decades," the agency announced in a Thursday press release. "The new call rates will be $0.06 per minute for prisons and large jails, $0.07 for medium jails, $0.09 for small jails, and $0.12 for very small jails, and as low as $0.11/minute for video calls—with a requirement that per-minute rates be offered." As a result, "the cost of a 15-minute phone call will drop to $0.90 from as much as $11.35 in large jails and, in small jails, to $1.35 from $12.10."

This affects more than just phone calls: "The new rules also, for the first time, address the exorbitant cost of video visitation calls, dropping those prices to less than a quarter of current prices and requiring per-minute rate options based on consumers' actual usage," per the announcement.

The FCC's three Democratic commissioners voted to approve the rules, as did Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington; Commissioner Brendan Carr, the remaining Republican, voted to approve the order in part and to concur in part.

In January 2023, President Joe Biden signed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act into law. The act clarified the FCC's authority to regulate the rates of in-state calls from prisons, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in 2017 that under existing law, the agency could only regulate calls that crossed state lines.

Many of the over 1.2 million Americans incarcerated at any given time depend upon prison calls to maintain ties to friends and family. "Research shows frequent phone calls to family members increase jail safety, promote positive mental health outcomes, and help maintain connections with loved ones," wrote Nicole Loonstyn and Alice Galley of the Urban Institute in 2023.

Part of the reason is distance: "A majority of parents in both State (62%) and Federal (84%) prison were held more than 100 miles from their last place of residence," according to a 2000 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. When a loved one is incarcerated too far away, it's much easier to just pick up the phone.

But all too often, prison officials leverage their position to take advantage of desperate families. In a 2022 survey of four states, Peter Wagner and Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative found that some prisons and jails charged as much as $8 for a 20-minute video call.

Earlier this year, two lawsuits accused Michigan sheriff's offices of banning in-person jail visits and forcing families to use phone calls and video chats, starting at $10 for a 25-minute video call. According to the lawsuits, the technology companies facilitating the calls enticed officials with over $200,000 per year, plus a 20 percent monthly commission from call revenue.

A 2015 Prison Policy Initiative report found that the trend of banning in-person contact in favor of video visitation was on the rise in county jails, where the majority of inmates have yet to be convicted of a crime and whose families are more likely to live locally.