Eliminating Predatory Prison Phone Rates is a Critical Reentry Issue
Here’s why.

Throughout Second Chance Month, we’ve been describing why issues like voting rights restoration and fair chance housing opportunities are critically important for people reentering society. This week, we’re highlighting a less obvious issue that can impact how successfully an incarcerated individual is able to return to their community: predatory prison phone rates.
While prison phone rate reform sounds like — and is — an important element of prison reform, it is also a deeply important reentry concern. Here’s why.
Communication is one of the few methods that incarcerated people have of maintaining contact with the world they knew before they were incarcerated — but many people in prison are hundreds of miles from their families, making in-person visits too expensive and time-consuming to be conducted more than a few times a year. And, while many people in prison do write letters, prison systems can limit the number of letters permitted per month.
For a sizable proportion of the country’s prison population, phone calls are the most reliable and practical method of maintaining relationships with parents, children, spouses, siblings, and friends. Yet, discouragingly, too often prison systems and phone companies take advantage of this dependence and — banking on the fact that neither the general public nor its political leaders are likely to make much of a fuss on behalf of incarcerated people — charge what can only be described as scandalously high rates for these vital phone calls.
In February 2014, after more than a decade of advocacy, several prison phone rate reforms went into effect, including a 25-cents-per-minute cap on interstate collect calls. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also banned prison phone-service providers from charging extra fees to connect a call or to use a calling card.
In October 2015, the FCC took another important step when it voted on a proposal to cap exorbitant prison calling rates and fees for in-state calls.
“As an agency whose core mission is to promote the public interest, the Commission routinely takes actions that impact the lives of ordinary Americans. But few issues have a more direct and meaningful impact on the lives of millions of American than inmate calling reform. With today’s action, we will provide material relief to nearly two million families with loved ones behind bars,” said then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “To be clear, this is not a niche issue impacting only the families of incarcerated Americans. As Dr. Martin Luther King famously wrote — fittingly in a Birmingham jail cell — ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”
However, prison phone service providers sued to block the prison phone rate rules, and under new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the agency refused to defend the rules in federal court. In June 2017, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the FCC’s in-state caps — though it did uphold the caps placed on interstate calls.
Last month, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D. Ill., introduced bipartisan legislation to respond to and fix the D.C. Circuit’s ruling. The Inmate Calling Technical Corrections Act of 2018 (S. 2520) — cosponsored by Sens. Cory Booker, D. N.J., Brian Schatz, D. Hawaii, and Rob Portman, R. Ohio — is a targeted bill that addresses the key need to eliminate predatory prison phone rates in the United States and returns appropriate authority to the FCC.
“The vast majority of prisoners will eventually be released, and it’s only common-sense that — once they’ve repaid their debt to society — we should do whatever we can to ensure they do not return to a life of crime and instead have a chance to succeed,” Sen. Duckworth said when she introduced the legislation. “Preserving contact with family members during incarceration can help make that a reality, but market failures unique to the prison telecommunications industry can make that more difficult. Fortunately, there is bipartisan agreement that the law should be clarified to enable the FCC to finally address those market failures. Our bipartisan legislation will help make sure that prison telecommunication rates are fair so family members can more easily afford to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones, improving the odds that rehabilitated offenders will be able to become productive members of society upon their release.”
Current policy isn’t just inhumane — it reduces the chances that incarcerated individuals will successfully reintegrate into their communities upon release. We can and must do better, and this legislation is an important first step.
This post is the third in a series of four stories published in commemoration of Second Chance Month. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a Second Chance Month partner and believes that together we can unlock brighter futures for the 65 million people in America who have repaid their debt to society.







