The biggest priorities for prison and jail phone justice in 40 states

High prison rates, high jail rates, high first minute charges, and more

by Peter Wagner and Alexi Jones, September 11, 2019

It can be hard to figure out where to start to improve phone justice in each state, especially in the states where legislators, regulators, or individual correctional facilities have already instituted partial reforms. For that reason, we’ve re-organized our national survey of in-state phone rates in to this handy map showing the biggest remaining issues in each state:

No state is perfect on prison and jail telephone issues, and there are many ways to measure “how bad” a state’s prison and jail phone rates are. Some states have good phone rates if they are measured by one criterion, but terrible if measured by a different one. For example, the Minnesota Department of Corrections charges only $0.75 for a 15-minute in-state call from state prison, but the jails in the state charge, on average, $7.19 for the same call. To give a more complete picture of how, exactly, each state is failing, we compiled data on five different measures of prison and jail phone justice (see Table 1 below). For states that rate poorly on multiple measures, the map above offers our opinion about which issue is most important and actionable in that state.

For even more detailed data for individual facilities in each state, see these appendix tables from our State of Phone Justice report:

• Drops in instate state prison rates over the last decade.
• 2018 Phone Rates Survey (2,055 local jails)
• The most expensive jail phone calls in each state

Now that leaders and advocates in each state have easy access to the biggest issues standing in the way of phone justice in their states, it’s time to get moving on making justice a reality.