{"id":5315,"date":"2017-01-19T11:28:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T15:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=5315"},"modified":"2019-09-18T14:07:30","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T18:07:30","slug":"intrastate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/19\/intrastate\/","title":{"rendered":"Evading regulation, some in-state phone calls from jails cost over $1.50 a minute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two recent submissions to the FCC<\/a> shed new light on the high cost of in-state phone calls from jails. While the campaign to make phone calls from prison and jail more affordable<\/a> for family and friends of incarcerated people has made significant progress<\/a>, the new filings underscore how private companies continue to avoid regulation while charging unconscionable rates.\n<\/p>\n

These submissions present new research which reveals that some in-state calls cost over $1.50 a minute, and finds pricing structures that “bear a remarkable similarity” to practices prohibited by the FCC.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn order to “highlight the current ICS [Inmate Calling Service] landscape” for the FCC, Lee Petro, counsel for the Wright Petitioners, and the Prison Policy Initiative (thanks to members of our Young Professionals Network<\/a>) conducted a survey of jails served by the major ICS providers.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe most significant discovery made from reviewing the current pricing policies of the ICS providers was that several ICS providers have imposed a rate structure for intrastate ICS calls that bear a remarkable similarity to the now-prohibited “connection fee” which was prohibited in the 2015 Second Report and Order, and memorialized in Section 64.6080 of the Commission’s rules.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThese pricing schemes have resulted in 15 minute calls that would cost $24.95 from the Arkansas County Jail via Securus and $17.77 from the Douglas County jail in Oregon via Global Tel*Link.\n<\/p>\n

\nYou can find the summary of the Comments submission<\/a> findings in the Ex-Parte<\/i> submission<\/a>, and the rates for all of the jails surveyed in exhibits B and C of the Comments submission<\/a> (starting on page 82), and exhibits A and D in an updated filing<\/a> reflecting Legacy’s correction of their advertised rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first ever national survey of in-state jail phone rates finds some jails charge more than $1.50 a minute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,52,4,1],"tags":[56,57,66],"coauthors":[12],"class_list":["post-5315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of","category-briefings","category-phones","category-uncategorized","tag-communication","tag-exploitation","tag-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5315"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5346,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315\/revisions\/5346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5315"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}