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FCC Passes Landmark Reform of 'Egregious' Prison Phone Charges (vice.com)

Posted by timothy on from the and-the-coffee-sucks dept.

derekmead writes: The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to crack down on exorbitant prison phone rates, in a landmark victory for criminal justice reform advocates who have long criticized what they call abusive and predatory practices by phone companies. The new FCC rules cap the cost of prison phone calls at 11 cents a minute for debit or prepaid calls in state and federal prisons, and reduce the cost of most inmate calls from $2.96 to $1.65 for a 15-minute in-state call, and from $3.15 to $1.65 for a 15-minute long distance call. The new policy also cracks down on excessive service fees and so-called "flat-rate calling," in which inmates are charged a flat rate for a call up to 15 minutes regardless of the actual call duration.

6 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. 11 cents a minute? by rjstanford · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For a landline call? Still sounds pretty egregious to me. The prisoners already have to qualify for their calls, and from what I understand aren't allowed very many of them in the best cases. Why add another punishment on top of what they're already serving? There's no real reason to break out the phone calls and make them orders of magnitude more expensive to prisoners than they actually are.

    --
    You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    1. Re:11 cents a minute? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure there is - profit! The corporations involved in this have every reason to jack those rates as high as they can go, because the prisoners are quite literally a 'captive audience'. Privately run prisons are the worst about this, but even publicly operated prisons often contract out to private companies for things like telecommunication services.

      What, you mean there are things like morals, ethics, and limits on what should be reasonable? What are you, some kind of Communist?

    2. Re:11 cents a minute? by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Are the prison phone companies actually the ones doing all that though? I was under the impression that the phone companies involved were glorified calling cards that handled the finances of the phone call, but the security was up to the prison/jail/DOC still.

    3. Re:11 cents a minute? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The prisons need to enable inmates to call only the numbers they've been authorized to call.

      Last time I was in jail, there were no restrictions on who I could call. I don't see any need to maintain a "whitelist". A "blacklist" of numbers not to be called would be easier. But even then, it doesn't have to be enforced through the phone system. It could just be rule-based: You call your ex-girlfriend (the one you are in jail for beating up) and you will lose your phone privileges. Phone policies vary widely between different states, and even different prisons within states.

      Inmates have lower recidivism rates when they keep social contacts with the family and friends. Isolating these people from society by restricting phone calls arbitrarily, and charging extortionate tolls, is not sensible policy.

  2. Re:Good by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as people continue to believe this stuff should be ran as profit centers, this is what will happen. The Sheriff gets kickbacks, the companies who run the prisons get kickbacks.

    It has nothing to do with punishment or rehabilitation, but ensuring you have as many people in prison as possible to maximize profits.

    America has 20% of the world prisoner population, because America has made it profitable to keep people in prison; it's an industry worth tens of billions of dollars, and which uses prisoners as cheap labor.

    It's far too profitable to stop. And it has nothing at all to do with the reason for prisons in the first place.

    Essentially it's a giant tax-payer funded industry which doesn't offer much benefits to the tax-payer, and doesn't solve any problems.

    But states look at them as revenue sources, and keep doing it.

    This has been true for a very long time.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Let's go after addiction treatment centers next by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    $8.00 in quarters for a 4 minute phone call once per week, when the facility was already bilking my insurance more than $500/day for me to be there. Absolute nonsense, worse than the prisons in the article were charging. I wish I'd been able to take a picture of that payphone and its rate card to be featured on the back of 2600.

    When you're down and out in America, that's when they'll fuck you the most.