The full board of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved a measure that institutes a hard cap on the amount phone service providers can charge for calls placed by prison and jail inmates.
Under the rule approved by the FCC this month, the cost of a 15-minute phone call made by inmates at federal and state prisons will be capped at less than $1, while jails with smaller populations will be limited to charging $1.35 per phone call.
For years, prison reform advocates have decried the high cost some prison phone providers charge inmates for the privilege of making calls to family members and friends while incarcerated. Those calls can cost as much as $11.35 in large jails and $12.10 in smaller facilities, according to information provided by the FCC.
Most facilities cap the amount of time an inmate may spend on the phone to no more than 15 minutes per call, and impose limits on the number of calls that can be made per hour or day. In some cases, the FCC said facilities were charging a high, flat fee for phone calls that were less than 15 minutes.
Moving forward, all prison phone providers and facilities will be required to offer inmates per-minute rates for domestic and long distance calls. The per-minute rate in large jails will be capped at 6 cents per minute, while smaller jails will be allowed to charge between 9 and 12 cents per minute. Telecom providers that offer video phone services will also be rate-limited at 11 cents per minute.
“It is never too late to do the right thing,” Jessica Rosenworcel, the Chairperson at the FCC, said in a statement.
Rosenworcel said the decision to cap phone calls was in honor of Martha Wright-Reed, a grandmother who petitioned the agency two decades ago to reign in the high prices of prison phone calls after being charged exorbitant fees to keep in touch with her grandson, Ulandis.
“It was better for all of us, she believed, if while he was incarcerated, he could stay in touch with family and hear about what was happening at home and in church,” Rosenworcel said.
“She was right,” Rosenworcel continued. “For those who are incarcerated and their loved ones, talk does not come cheap. People in prison are often separated from their families by hundreds of miles, and families may lack the time and means to make regular visits. So calls from payphones are often the only way to stay connected.”
Rosenworcel said the FCC has long advocated on behalf of prison phone rate cuts, but was repeatedly told it lacked the authority to do so. That changed when Senator Tammy Duckworth worked with other lawmakers in Congress to craft a new bill that extended that authority to the FCC. The Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act received bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Biden early last year.
“The excessive rates Martha Wright-Reed sought to reform flowed from a market failure,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a statement. “The market for inmate calling services does not benefit from the same type of competitive forces that we see in other segments of the telecom ecosystem. As a result, the FCC has had a critical role to play in regulating certain aspects of this marketplace, and it has taken actions to address providers’ practices over the years. A big part of enabling this is ensuring that [prison phone] providers are limited to charging just and reasonable rates for inmate calling services.
Carr said he was initially concerned with an earlier proposal that treated prison phone providers through the same consideration as home and business telecom service providers. They are not the same: In addition to supporting interstate connections, prison phone providers must also ensure that calls are recorded and screened for security purposes, and facilitate a way for prison staff to listen in on calls in real-time, among other things.
“As the item itself acknowledges, at least some IPCS providers will likely lose money for every call made under the new rules,” Carr said. “It is in nobody’s interest for these providers to exit the market, or for smaller facilities to go unserved because the economics no longer make sense. And undermining the investment-backed expectations of correctional facilities for their safety and security costs may create acute state budgetary pressures that could ultimately lead to a reduction in IPCS access or the loss of essential law-enforcement tools. These are outcomes that none of us want to see.”
Still, Carr said he was grateful that Rosenworcel’s team met with his staff to modify certain provisions of the initiative in the pursuit of striking a balance between public safety and affordability. Those provisions include a delay in the transitional deadline for prison phone providers to institute the new call rates, an effort to collect more data on the impact of these rates from smaller facilities and a public comment period on the possibility of a uniform fee recovery additive.
“While I still have some concerns about the item’s rate structure, I am grateful to my colleagues for working in good faith to address my feedback, and I will be voting to approve in part and concur in part,” Carr said.
