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Three companies dominate the multi-billion dollar prison telecommunications industry
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The FCC voted Thursday to lower rates for phone and video calls in prisons and jails across the country
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Poor families of color are disproportionately affected.
For decades, the prison telecommunications industry has earned as much as $1.4 billion a year from a customer base of inmates who had no choice but to rely on their services to connect with their loved ones. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules aimed at curbing what advocates have long called the exploitation of the nation’s poorest families.
In order for people in prison to use phone or video calls to chat with family, the person on the other end of the line has to pay. According to research from the Prison Policy Initiative, in 2021, they paid an average of $3 for a 15-minute phone call.
The FCC rules, which take effect next year, significantly reduce the amount prisoners pay per minute to use the services. The rules are the result of years of activism in the criminal justice system.
“Capping the cost of all phone and video calls, as the FCC has done, will provide relief to millions of families. Other provisions in the regulation will prevent the exploitation of consumers through fees and deceptive pricing,” said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative.
Correctional communications is largely dominated by three companies: Securus, ViaPath (formerly known as GTL) and ICSolutions. Worth Rises, a criminal defense organization, estimates that they control nearly 90% of the entire industry. The new regulations will force a change in the business model for correctional telecommunications companies, as they face an estimated $500 million in lost revenue, according to Worth Rises.
A Viapath spokesperson said the company remains stable as it evaluates the impact of the FCC’s decision.
Aventiv Technologies, the parent company of Securus, released a statement Friday saying: “We recognize that today’s vote prioritizes ‘progress over perfection’ in the Federal Communications Commission’s rulemaking efforts and appreciate their direct acknowledgement that providing prisoner communications carries certain security and safety costs that differentiate prison communications from the everyday phone and video services we are familiar with.”
ICSolutions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nearly 90 percent of these telecommunications companies’ customers are women of color and low-income families who have no choice but to spend thousands of dollars on phone calls each year. According to data from Connect Families Now, an organization that advocates for phone justice in prisons, one in three families ends up in debt as a result.
According to Prison Legal News, only five states have passed legislation to make prison phone calls free. PBS reported that New York, Ohio and Rhode Island have ended site commissions for telecommunications services.
The FCC’s latest ruling is the most comprehensive reform effort to date.
While inmates have previously paid up to 21 cents per minute for calls in prisons and large detention centers, the new mandate will ensure that no one – in any correctional facility – pays more than 12 cents per minute.
However, the caps will vary depending on the size of the prison. For example, in prisons or large prisons, the cap is now 6 cents per minute, down from the previous cap of 14 cents. However, in medium and small prisons, the cap will remain higher: 7 cents and 9 cents respectively, down from the previous cap of 21 cents. Video calls will also be capped at 11 cents per minute. These caps are expected to be introduced between January and July.
FCC rules prevent facilities from passing on other costs to inmates and their families.
According to Bianca Tylek, director of Worth Rises, conversations between prisoners and the outside world are monitored. For years, the costs of monitoring conversations were passed on to the person making the call.
This forced families to pay for the service of having their own conversations monitored, and now prisons and detention centers must pay for the services themselves.
The rules also eliminate “site commissions,” or bribes offered to correctional facilities to earn a percentage of contract revenue from phone calls, and require facilities to make “reasonable efforts” to return leftover phone calls to the accounts of people released from prison before confiscating the money.
Correctional telecommunications will still benefit prisoners
Worth Rises estimated that the new rules will have the biggest impact on about 90% of prisons that charge more than the capped rates that will be in place going forward. Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, said prisons typically negotiate better contracts with telecommunications companies and therefore tend to offer better rates to inmates. Small prisons, where inmates are convicted or awaiting trial for lesser offenses, tend to get the worst rates.
“So while the FCC’s new rate caps will be felt by everyone who pays money to prisons and jail phone companies, the impact will be greatest in local jails,” she said.
Yet for many proponents of the decades-long reform effort, phone and video calling limits are just the first of many battles to be won. Companies will simply increase their earning potential by offering other forms of telecommunications, such as texting or email, that are largely unregulated and free of government oversight.
“Even with the tariffs and all that, prison telecoms will continue to be immensely profitable, just not as profitable as they were,” said Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center. “These companies will continue to try to make up for their lost or diminished profits by exploiting these families.”
Update July 22, 2024: This story has been updated with a statement from Aventiv.
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