Is This the End of Sky-High Prison Phone Call Rates?

The Federal Communications Commission is putting caps on the rates that inmates pay for phone calls, after a 14-year campaign by advocates for prisoners and their families. The order caps per-minute fees at 11¢ in state or federal prisons, and up to 22¢ a minute in local jails, depending on the size of the facility, while also capping the various fees that have been common on inmate calls to this point. This is fundamentally cheaper than many current rates, which were as high as 89¢ a minute in 2013, even before factoring in fees.

Mignon Clyburn, the FCC commissioner who has been championing the issue, gave a tearful speech before the vote, pointing out how this issue always seemed to be at the end of the FCC's to-do list and saying that she was proud it had finally gotten around to passing rules “so that families could make a simple phone call and express their love over the phone without sinking into a further economic morass.” The vote followed party lines, with Republican commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly saying the FCC didn’t have the authority to regulate prison phone rates.