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FCC Can't Cap the Cost of Cross-State Prison Phone Calls, Court Rules (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Federal Communications Commission does not have the authority to cap the cost of prison and jail phone calls within states, an appeals court ruled in a decision today, dealing a massive blow to inmates and their advocates who have spent years litigating caps on the cost of such calls. Over several years, the FCC, under Democratic leadership, moved to cap the cost of calls for inmates. Activists argued that prisoners were effectively being extorted by private companies charging exorbitant rates -- a move that benefited private prisons and the states that got cuts of the revenue. Some of those states joined with companies in appealing the FCC's rules. The agency first moved to cap rates across state lines, and then, later, within states. Today, the court ruled that the FCC had overstepped when it attempted to regulate the price of calls within states. In the majority opinion, the court left little wiggle room for advocates of price-capping, with the possible exception of the cross-state caps, which are a minority of calls made by inmates. The opinion vacated not only the agency's proposed caps for in-state calls, but said the agency also lacked justification to require reports on video calling services. It also vacated a provision that would ban site commission payments.
So any lawyer working with inmates in a certain state just needs to get a virtual phone number in another state, and have it forward to his regular phone number.
This happens to be about the FCC, but really has nothing to do with the FCC per se.
This is about whether a federal agency can regulate purely intrastate activity. The FCC's rules capping costs for state-to-state calls stand.
>"This is about whether a federal agency can regulate purely intrastate activity. The FCC's rules capping costs for state-to-state calls stand."
+1 Insightful
Bingo. It has nothing to do with if we think the rates are fair or not. It has to do with the autonomy of the States. If you don't like it in your State, complain to your State, not the Fed.
It is really, really hard for many to swallow the concept that we are are the "United States of America" and not the "Federal State of America."
Prisoners typically have access to only one service provider for telephone/videophone/email services. The providers are all profiteers. They can easily provide cheaper services, but their motivation is to pursue monopoly pricing. Some inmates have had success with Google numbers, but others complain of poor sound quality.
There used to be several number selling companies that would sell local numbers to prisoners' families (which made calls cheaper), but a lot of them went out of business when FCC capped prices on long distance calls. Maybe they'll come back now to provide long distance numbers? Probably not enough volume of business to make it worthwhile.
Of course they can provide cheaper services. A local call in most areas is FREE. And long distance is a penny or less a minute (or even free) in plenty of areas.
Except in prison, where you can pay dollars per minute for a local call. Not even satellite phones cost that much! Hell, even cellphones at their most expensive 30 years ago were still cheaper than a prison phone call. Long distance could easily cost more than what NASA pays to call the ISS. Hell, I bet even a phone call to Mars would cost less than from prison. (And no, prisoners cannot pay for it - it's always collect).
That's obviously a completely irrelevant, and shockingly callous statement. Don't you find it a little strange that the more disadvantaged someone in your society is, the more difficult and expensive everything becomes? Live in a poor neighbourhood, pay more in insurance. Suffer poor health, pay more in health insurance, if you can even get it. Wind up in jail, be unable to afford a telephone call to your family, who may very well be the only people you have left.
The whole thing is tilted, so that once you start falling, you tend to keep going, and there may be no way back. Whatever good fortune you have experienced in your lifetime, I'd wager much of it came from luck. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps you pulled yourself out of the gutter, perhaps you were born into poverty, suffered ill-health, wound up in jail through no real fault of your own, and still managed to survive, and eventually to overcome.
But that's pretty vanishingly unlikely. I certainly didn't. I was born with good health, a reasonable brains, into a comfortable situation. Education was both provided for free, and I was expected to undertake it. When I completed it, a job was easy to come by. I bumped into a wonderful girl by accident, and how I have a beautiful family, and a good and happy life. All of that, all of it, was nothing better than luck. That luck could change any day. I am not so conceited and blind to imagine otherwise.