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FCC Closes 'Final Loopholes' That Keep Prison Phone Prices Exorbitantly High 72
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 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." The nonprofit Prison Policy Institute said that prison phone companies charge ancillary fees for things "like making a deposit to fund an account." The ban on those fees "also effectively blocks a practice that we have been campaigning against for years: companies charging fees to consumers who choose to make single calls rather than fund a calling account, and deliberately steering new consumers to this higher-cost option in order to increase fee revenue," the group said.
The ancillary fee ban is a "technical-sounding change," but will help "eliminate some of the industry's dirtiest tricks that shortchange both the families and the facilities," the group said.
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." The nonprofit Prison Policy Institute said that prison phone companies charge ancillary fees for things "like making a deposit to fund an account." The ban on those fees "also effectively blocks a practice that we have been campaigning against for years: companies charging fees to consumers who choose to make single calls rather than fund a calling account, and deliberately steering new consumers to this higher-cost option in order to increase fee revenue," the group said.
The ancillary fee ban is a "technical-sounding change," but will help "eliminate some of the industry's dirtiest tricks that shortchange both the families and the facilities," the group said.
I keep my prison phone... (Score:1)
Re:I keep my prison phone... (Score:4, Funny)
In my prison wallet. :)
You butt dial only when you drop the soap.
good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Prisoners who are treated humanely , are helped with education, drug/alcohol rehab , and maintain strong family links are less likely to reoffend.
Brutality has NEVER worked
Re:good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why some people think spending several years teaching someone that society is their brutal enemy and taking away everything they might have to lose will result in a model citizen upon release.
Re: good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's not about rehabilitation, it's about punishment. And the people who get off on that...
Re: (Score:3)
Meantime the wealthy commit BIGGER crimes and get away with it
Re: good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is you want to treat the other 95% just as you would the 5%.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves" has never worked. Why is that the USA has the most punitive legal systems in the 1st world, yet also has the highest crime ?
Perhaps US culture is at fault ?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you there. The electorate is filled with idiots and ignoramuses. All you have to do is look at the MAGA crowd to see a fine sampling on that type of voter, people who ignore the obvious faults with a presidential candidate who is clearly incompetent and completely unsuited for the office and believe his lies and conspiracy theories. Idiots such as these are among those who would like to simply throw away the keys.
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It's not US culture, it's US citizens.
US culture is defined by the US citizens.
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Punishment is just the marketing that sells it to voters, it's actually about making money for private prisons.
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Re:good. (Score:4, Interesting)
But most of the people are in their as they already treated society as their enemy or something to be spat on.
No. More of the prisoners in normal countries are that. Most of the people in US prisons didn't treat society in any way and are locked up for the crimes of being black, having a joint, standing somewhere unfortunate. Some 40% of people in the USA are behind bars for reasons that would qualify for simple fines / community service in sane countries.
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Yeah, but he won't. He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself.
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[40%] of the people in US prisons didn't treat society in any way and are locked up for the crimes of being black, having a joint, standing somewhere unfortunate
Wow, major citation needed!
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Type it in Google and click the first link you find. It's well known that the USA imprisons a hugely disproportionate group of non-violent offenders who are no risk to society. At this point that would be like giving you a citation that the sky is blue.
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It sounds an awful lot like you just changed the goalposts because I called you out on a lie. You first mentioned a high percent of people being wrongly convicted, victims of racism, or people who committed victimless crimes. Now you are talking about nonviolent offenders, which includes fraud, every kind of scam, burglary, and a lot of people that society does need to be protected from!
To be clear, I'm not talking about nonviolent offenders and our justice system (restorative justice?). I'm talking about y
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But be careful you don't convince them with evidence that society *IS* their enemy.
The punishment is that they have their lives managed by others and so they are not free to leave. Without actual rehab, it's really just putting them at the mercy of people who in a just society would be on the other side of the bars.
Re:good. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one of those things that gets ingrained in you during those critical 4 to 14 years. Basically there's a period of time when the human brain is capable of ingesting information but isn't capable of evaluating it critically.
As a left winger I have a lot of unpopular opinions but by far the least popular is my belief that prison should be reserved for individuals we cannot prevent from committing other crimes and not just used as a generic punishment. That the idea of punishment for its own sake is nothing more than torture.
This idea is popular because it flies in the face of everything you're taught during those critical years when you are physically incapable of questioning the information given to you.
In general pointing this out is not going to endear you to anyone. Still it's the right thing to do. It's 2024 we should evolve beyond using torture to illicit compliance...
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Prison, first and foremost, removes dangerous people from society. It protects the many at the expense of convicted criminals. You should reevaluate who is torturing whom.
Re:good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Prison, first and foremost, removes dangerous people from society.
Remove them *temporarily* and then return them to society in a worse state is not useless, is counterproductive.
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An often repeated lie. What you describe is a forensic psychiatry, not a prison.
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As a left winger I have a lot of unpopular opinions but by far the least popular is my belief that prison should be reserved for individuals we cannot prevent from committing other crimes and not just used as a generic punishment. That the idea of punishment for its own sake is nothing more than torture.
In most countries, that isn't even a left wing view... It's called a sensible view.
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prison should be reserved for individuals we cannot prevent from committing other crimes
I suppose I'm not totally opposed to your philosophy here, but in practice, how are you identifying that cohort of prisoners? A mandatory stint in a... facility where they're assessed by professionals who determine if/when they're no longer a risk to society? That just sounds like a Scandinavian prison and isn't a concept nearly as unpopular as you make out.
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Most of the people actually in prison have serious problems with authority and no amount of beatings will change that. The sad corollary to this is that there are some people you can't rehabilitate either. The best you can do is keep them separated from society and probably other
Re:good. (Score:4, Insightful)
The other side is people who don't believe they have anything to lose. The solution to that would require social changes that some political factions might call "socialism" so that won't happen.
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people who don't believe they have anything to lose.
Their freedom.
require social changes that some political factions might call "socialism"
I guess some people just don't care for freedom. So they should be just fine with prison. Either in a DOC facility or behind an iron curtain.
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What freedom? Boss expects them to show at the drop of a hat but pays minimum wage. Rent is higher than the paycheck. Life consists of work and sleep.
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What freedom? Boss expects them to show at the drop of a hat
You don't work for yourself?
but pays minimum wage.
You don't work for yourself?
Rent is higher than the paycheck.
You don't work for yourself? Where you want?
Life consists of work and sleep.
You don't work for yourself? At a job you like?
Of course, under socialism, none of these will be your choices. You will do what you are told. Or gulag.
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There is the problem, someone says socialized healthcare and you jump immediately to the worst of Soviet communism as if it's the same thing. Someone says raise the minimum wage and you make the same jump. Same thing if someone suggests a minimum basic income, help with starting a small business, etc. All of it is soviet communism to you.
I don't know you personally, but that school of thought oddly enough tends to also screech about communism when someone suggests implementing market regulation or limits on
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socialized healthcare
We've had that for years. If some bum collapses on the sidewalk, they get taken to our local public hospital. No questions asked and no payment required.
raise the minimum wage ... minimum basic income
We did that. The landlords increased rents in anticipation of an increase in demand. Before the wage law actually kicked in. Those who were not working, or working "off the books" in the gig economy lost their residences and either moved away or are living under the freeway. Attempts to apply wage minimums to the gig economy backfired. People lost jobs an
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So since we already have socialized medicine you won't mind if we go ahead and implement madicare for all, right?
You acknowledge that the market for housing is screwed so a little regulation is in order, right?
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you won't mind if we go ahead and implement madicare for all, right?
As long as you paid into the fund.
You acknowledge that the market for housing is screwed
Nope. Supply and demand are behaving as expected.
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If prices went up in ANTICIPATION of renter's income increasing rather than as a response to actual demand, no it isn't.
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If prices went up in ANTICIPATION
Stock market.
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Still broken.
multiple goals (Score:2)
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. Pay my retainer if you want advice.
Generally speaking, criminal justice systems have one or more of four goals: rehabilitation, punishment, incapacitation, and deterrence.
Interestingly, at least as of when I was in law school in the late 80s, not a single system claims all four.
A few notes:
The term "penitentiary" comes from the Quaker notion of locking the wrongdoer up in a room with nothing but a Bible, until he finds the error of his ways.
Studies on the amount
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Under the current system yes, but I suspect it could be modified considerably.
For example instead of bail give those awaiting trial an ankle bracelet. The dumbest of them might still attempt property crime but with their exact location history being recorded, getting caught will be a near certainty. It shouldn't take long for word of that to get around.
I don't think we can really speed up capital punishment since we already have an error rate that's too high (you can't un-execute someone when they are exone
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I wonder if the people running the phone booths at these prisons can even run a profitable business at those rates.
If they can't, they'll drop out, and government can manage it instead, at obviously a much lower cost. There's no need to outsource every god damn thing/service.
I'd imagine that this equipment gets broken frequently, and they might not be able to keep the service running at 4 cents a minute.Unless the service provider can charge something exorbitant like $1,000 per unit to replace them, you're probably just going to end up with a row of phones with "out of service" tags hanging on them.
This could end up being one of those pieces of well meaning [legislation] that just ends up getting the phone service removed and makes more people smuggle cell phones into prison.
I'm willing to bet these aren't just freely accessible all the time - just like having visitors, inmates are probably required to book these and there's a specific room/section to access them.
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inmates are probably required to book these and there's a specific room/section to access them.
And then if one ends up getting broken, they could just post the name of the inmate that did it. "You could have made your call. But Billie Bob broke it. Go see him."
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Like they know who broke the phone? Please.
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could end up being one of those pieces of well meaning registration that just ends up getting the phone service removed and makes more people smuggle cell phones into prison.
Smuggle? I would say just let prisoners have their cell phones, and this would reduce the whole issue of having to provide an expensive phone system. People are social animals, so taking away contact is overly cruel to begin with.
Re:good. (Score:4, Insightful)
40 years ago I did electrical work at a minimum-security prison, we installed new "pegging points" , ie key activated switches around the cells, the new ones stood out from the wall by about 3/4 of an inch. Prisoner told me they would not last a day, I told him they were imported from Sweden , they were a security device, and could take up to 3 weeks to get new ones, and if they got smashed they would stay locked in their cells until new ones arrived. They lasted years until they closed the prison because of asbestos.
Re:good. (Score:4, Interesting)
They're still charging $0.06 per minute on the low side in 15 minute increments for calls.
Way way above the cost to provide the service.
As a bit of background, I was a telephone engineer for 20 years and saw the transition from facilities based POTS/TDM service to VOIP. I saw the cost of providing the service go from ~$0.06 to less than a penny. Think of going from row upon row of TDM line cards in cabinets to a pair of 2U chassis for a media gateway.
e.g. When cellcos started charging a flat rate was when the cost to provide an itemized bill became higher than providing the service.
Back to the point, if these predatory companies can't make a profit at 6x cost than they don't deserve to operate at all.
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Why making a phone call from a prison would cost more than making a phone call from any other building? The cellular network is blocked inside the prison building? What do you need beyond a solidly built phone (think Nokia 3310)?
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False. Brutality works. A lot of people have gotten away with brutality -- a lot of prisoners are living better than their victims. That said, we shouldn't do it. Brutality is bad, that's why we shouldn't do it .. we shouldn't choose it based on whether it works or not, rather is it the right thing to do. Causing intense suffering is bad.
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False. Brutality works.
Actually, it does not. All it does is make the situation worse. The Science is _really_ solid on this one.
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Obviously. But those that advocate and implement brutality are not after fixing any problems. They are after satisfying their sadistic urges and feeling superior. You know, primitives.
Agency exercising agency (Score:3, Interesting)
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Hmm, SCOTUS doesn't seem to like it when a federal agency exercises any discretion. Maybe they'll nip this in the bud and jack up the fees to $1000 per phone call, with the usual ideological split of course.
The people bribing -- I mean gifting -- Justices Thomas and Alito stuff have to get their money from somewhere, might as well be from convicts than their own pockets. The Justices may as well help (themselves) ... #Inflamatory-SCOTUS-dig-that's-probably-more-true-than-not
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The most amazing part is that what should've been reviled as the worst decision handed down in decades
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Federal Agencies like to exercise their bureaucratic power by redefining things, altering definitions, etc, to increase their scope of authority by casting a wider net. Thus granting themselves more authority than they actually have. THAT is what SCOTUS has been stripping away from federal agencies.
Ramen will now cost $4-$6 per pack! (Score:1)
Ramen will now cost $4-$6 per pack!
FCC Vote ... (Score:2)
Re:FCC Vote ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of WHO it was targeted at. The price for a phone call is essentially free, so why do prisoners have to pay 12$ a minute? Greed, likely the prison getting a kickback out of it.
That's why cell phone smuggling is such a thing.
That said, I could see in some cases why a prison might charge a fee for the use of the phone to discourage someone from running an organized crime ring inside the prison to placing harassment phone calls to their victims or new targets. So perhaps an intermediatory is necessary, but I still don't see why that has to be $12/minute. Surely someone monitoring the call can be replaced with an AI that transcribes the call and sends it to the prison record keeping.
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That may not save money. We'll need AI trained to detect background noise-based signaling and usage of substitute words, things like that. Developing such an AI will cost money. Also, there'll need to be random human auditing of AI's work.
Follow the money (Score:2)
Who was benefiting the most from the perverse system?
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the commissary or recreation programs typically got a cut, and this small fraction is used to sell the extortionate prices.
I have an idea (Score:2)
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Right, because our "justice" system is perfect and innocents are never incarcerated.
Back when I used to read the newspaper, I would see a story once every few months of a guy in *death row* released/retried because new evidence was found that might exonerate them. At least one case was a obvious framing by the authorities. [It was an arson case and the fire inspector and police colluded to frame the guy]
So "avoid prison by not committing crimes" doesn't always work.
Also, even for the valid prisoners
Good (Score:3)
I wasn't familiar with this until my sister was arrested for a DUI about 10 years ago. She was panicking and called me like 10 times from the phone in the jail not knowing that each each call was a $15 charge. Eventually I just had to tell her to stop calling, we'll bail her out when the judge sets it.
If they want to limit calls to a certain amount or something as a punishment that's fine, but setting them to some stupidly expensive rate to profit off of it is just wrong.
Calls from jail were a racket (Score:2)
For example, 20 years ago, my late ex was in jail in Brevard Co, FL (the "Space Coast"). $50 please, for don't remember how many calls, and by the way, you can only call from one, landline phone number, at a given time.
Meanwhile, all that stats show that the more contact *most* people in jail have with family and friends, the *lower* the recidivism rate.