prison phone prices

fcc-chair-decides-inmates-and-their-families-must-keep-paying-high-phone-prices

FCC chair decides inmates and their families must keep paying high phone prices

Policy, prison phone prices, securus / /

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has decided to let prisons and jails keep charging high prices for calling services until at least 2027, delaying implementation of rate caps approved last year when the FCC had a Democratic majority.

Carr’s office announced the change yesterday, saying it was needed because of “negative, unintended consequences stemming from the Commission’s 2024 decision on Incarcerated People’s Communications Services (IPCS)… As a result of this waiver decision, the FCC’s 2021 Order rate cap, site commission, and per-minute pricing rules will apply until April 1, 2027, unless the Commission sets an alternative date.”

Commissioner Anna Gomez, the FCC’s only Democrat, criticized the decision and pointed out that Congress mandated lower prices in the Martha Wright-Reed Act, which the FCC was tasked with implementing.

“Today, the FCC made the indefensible decision to ignore both the law and the will of Congress… rather than enforce the law, the Commission is now stalling, shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities at the expense of incarcerated individuals and their loved ones,” Gomez said. “Instead of taking targeted action to address specific concerns, the FCC issued a blanket two-year waiver that undercuts the law’s intent and postpones meaningful relief for millions of families. This is a blatant attempt to sidestep the law, and it will not go unchallenged in court.”

Price caps have angered prison phone providers and operators of prisons and jails that get financial benefits from contracts with the prison telcos. One Arkansas jail ended phone service instead of complying with the rate caps.

Win for prison telco Securus

Carr issued a statement saying that “a number of institutions are or soon will be limiting the availability of IPCS due to concerns with the FCC’s 2024 decision,” and that “there is concerning evidence that the 2024 decision does not allow providers and institutions to properly consider public safety and security interests when facilitating these services.” Carr’s office said the delay is needed to “support the continued availability of IPCS for incarcerated people.”

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FCC closes “final loopholes” that keep prison phone prices exorbitantly high

Policy, prison phone prices / /
A telephone on a wall inside a prison.

Enlarge / A telephone in a prison.

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to lower price caps on prison phone calls and closed a loophole that allowed prison telecoms to charge high rates for intrastate calls. Today’s vote will cut the price of interstate calls in half and set price caps on intrastate calls for the first time.

The FCC said it “voted to end exorbitant phone and video call rates that have burdened incarcerated people and their families for decades. Under the new rules, 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.”

The new rules are expected to take effect in January 2025 for all prisons and for jails with at least 1,000 incarcerated people. The rate caps would take effect in smaller jails in April 2025.

Worth Rises, a nonprofit group advocating for prison reform, said it “estimates that the new rules will impact 83 percent of incarcerated people (about 1.4 million) and save impacted families at least $500 million annually.”

New power over intrastate calls

The FCC has taken numerous votes to lower prison phone rates over the years, but today’s is particularly significant. While the FCC was previously able to cap prices of interstate calls, an attempt to set prices for intrastate calls was struck down in court in 2017.

Prison phone companies could sue again. But the FCC said it now has authority over intrastate prison phone prices because of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Biden in January 2023. The new law “empowered the FCC to close the final loopholes in the communications system,” the commission said.

The 2023 law—named for a grandmother who campaigned for lower prison phone rates—”removes the principal statutory limitations that had prevented the Commission from setting comprehensive just and reasonable rates,” the FCC said. Specifically, the law removed “limits to the Commission’s ability to regulate rates for intrastate calls and video communications.”

More than half of prison audio call traffic is intrastate, with the calling and called parties both in the same state, according to data in a draft of the FCC order released before the meeting.

The FCC’s work to reduce prison phone rates “was not always embraced by the courts,” Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. “We were told—over and over again—that the commission did not have the authority to address every aspect of these rates, because while interstate calls fell within our jurisdiction, intrastate calls did not.”

Previously, the FCC imposed price caps on interstate calls ranging from $0.14 to $0.21 per minute for audio calls, depending on the size of the facility. Going forward, a uniform set of price caps ranging from $0.06 to $0.12 per minute will apply to both interstate and intrastate calls.

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