The Federal Communications Commission is poised to cap the rates charged for phone calls made to and from prisons, saying inmate calling services are overcharging prisoners, their families, and attorneys.
"Just how high are these rates? A pro bono attorney paid $14 a minute to speak to an incarcerated client," FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in a speech last week. "Families write explaining how they are making extraordinary sacrifices by paying $400-$500 a month to hear their loved one’s voice. The endless array of new and increasing fees can add nearly 40 percent to costs—fees as high as $9.50 to open a new account, $4.75 to add money to an account, and $2.99 a month for the account maintenance fee. These rates and fees would be difficult for any family to bear, but if you were already struggling to stay afloat, you are now foregoing basic necessities like food and medicine just to make a phone call. No family should be forced to make this choice."
Studies have shown that contact between inmates and families during incarceration reduces the risk of recidivism, the FCC said.
Clyburn pushed through new limits on interstate calling rates for inmates when she was acting chairwoman of the commission in 2013, but that only addressed calls that crossed state lines. Yesterday, Clyburn teamed up with Chairman Tom Wheeler to propose new rate caps on all inmate calls including the intrastate calls that happen within a state, which account for 85 percent of calls from correctional facilities.
The FCC is scheduled to vote on the item on October 22.
"These new caps reduce the average rates for the vast majority of inmate calls substantially, from $2.96 to no more than $1.65 for a 15-minute intrastate call, and from $3.15 to no more than $1.65 for a 15-minute interstate call," an FCC fact sheet said. The FCC proposal would also cap the types of one-off fees that Clyburn criticized.
Per-call caps will range from 11 cents to 22 cents per minute, depending on the size of the facility. The tiered rates allow higher charges in small facilities, accounting for "the higher relative costs faced by jails (especially small jails) as opposed to state and federal prisons," the FCC said.
Inmates' families and prisoners' advocates sought lower caps, while prison phone companies wanted higher ones, The New York Times wrote.
"Jails and prisons around the country have in recent years become financially reliant on revenue received from prison phone companies, which pay millions of dollars in concession fees, called commissions, to win exclusive contracts," the article said. "High concession fees drive up the cost of phone calls because the companies say they must try to recover their investment."
The FCC is trying to discourage those commissions, but the group isn't banning them.
Clyburn said states including New York, New Jersey, and Ohio have already capped rates at four to five cents per minute. But she said that nearly 80 percent of states haven't done so, leaving many inmates to pay much more than the average rates listed in the FCC's fact sheet.
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