On August 26, 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published its final rule in the Federal Register, formalizing rulemaking that the agency issued the previous month which significantly reduces the cost of phone and video calls made by people held in prisons and jails nationwide. It is the latest development in a decades-long campaign to rein in predatory price gouging by prison telecom companies.

Phone rates in state prisons were limited to $.06 per minute, and per-minute rates in local jails dropped to no more than $.12. The FCC imposed interim caps on the cost of video calls equal to $.16 per minute in prisons and $.11 to $.25 per minute in jails. The order included a number of other measures to address abusive practices by prison phone companies, and to make communication services more affordable and accessible. All the reforms go into effect in 2025. See: Incarcerated People’s Communications Services; Implementation of the Martha Wright- Reed Act; Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services, Fed. Reg. Vol. 89 No. 165.

To properly appreciate this most recent FCC action, it must be considered in the context of longstanding exploitation of prisoners and their families by telecom providers, operating in collusion with ...

by Douglas Ankney
When a jail is found to violate a detainee’s Sixth Amendment expectation that communications with his attorney are privileged, courts often shrug it off as harmless; after all, the detainee won’t raise the objection unless what was discussed could undermine his defense, and in that case courts are loathe to let the guilty go free.
But a nation of laws must abide by all of them, no matter the result. So it was a welcome surprise when the Supreme Court of Nevada on March 7, 2024, refused to take the easy way out and agree with a lower court that a detainee who violated jail phone policy to make a legal call had waived attorney-­client privilege for it.
The Court’s ruling came in an appeal by former Clark County Detention Center detainee Jamal Jacqkey Gibbs. In April 2021, he was 29 and at the Las Vegas apartment of his girlfriend when her daughter returned from a visit with the child’s father, Jaylon Tiffith, 29. The mother then got in a fight with Tiffith’s new girlfriend, who was also not named. Both Tiffith and Gibbs—recently released from state prison after completing a 10-­year term for a 2008 gang ...

Lawmakers on both coasts of the U.S. sponsored legislation in January 2024 to make telecommunications free to state prisoners and their families. This follows a national trend to ease the financial burden on families with incarcerated loved ones and reduce the associated risk of reoffending for those who can’t afford to stay in touch.

In Washington, state Sen. Drew Hansen (D-Brainbridge Island) introduced the Connecting Families Act or SB 6021. State prisoners currently have limited free calls and video visits, but when those are used up, prisoners must pay high per-minute charges for additional phone calls or $4.95 for a thirty-minute video call. Emails require purchase of stamps at 20 for $5. The legislation eliminates fees for prison phone calls, emails and video visits, which Hansen and other advocates argue will reduce recidivism rates and prison violence, as well as improve mental health for the incarcerated, by promoting stronger family ties.

The bill needs to pass the Ways and Means Committee, but the cost is currently unknown; the state Department of Corrections (DOC) has a telecommunications contract with Securus that runs until 2028, meaning the state must absorb any cost until then. Jerry Thomas, a state prisoner 15 years into ...

On December 1, 2023, phone calls became free for detainees and prisoners in Los Angeles County jails. The county’s Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 on November 22, 2023, to amend the existing phone service contract with ViaPath Technologies—formerly Global Tel*Link (GTL)—to shift the cost of calls from the county’s approximately 12,000 detainees and their families to the jail system’s Inmate Welfare Fund (IFW).

When the Board first voted to study the idea in 2021, audits revealed that GTL kickbacks dumped about $15 million annually into the IFW. Along with profits from detainee commissary purchases, the fund balance grew to $32 million, use of which is limited by state law to goods and services provided for the benefit and education of detainees.

The county Sheriff’s Department (LASD) taps the IFW for about $9 to $20 million each year for programming and another $5 to $14 million for facility maintenance. Under the revised ViaPath contract, up to $12.9 million will now come from the fund for calls. But since the county is losing the kickbacks, the hit on its budget is expected to be twice that amount.

The contract provides that the county will be billed no more than 4.2 cents per ...

On June 4, 2023, a request for a rehearing en banc before the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was denied in a suit accusing prison telecom providers Securus Technologies and Global Tel*Link (GTL)—now known as ViaPath Technologies—of illegal price-fixing. That left to stand the Court’s earlier decision on May 25, 2023, reviving a companion claim that the firms violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act.

Securus and GTL/ViaPath have long faced price-gouging complaints from their “customers”—prisoners and their family members and friends forced to pay inflated costs for poor-quality calls. Despite moves by regulators and some legislators to lower phone rates and ancillary fees, there is still much room improvement.

In 2020, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, filed a class-action suit in federal court for the District of Maryland on behalf of four plaintiffs, challenging the practice by GTL and Securus of charging up to $14.99 for a single collect call fromsomeone in prison or jail. Also named as a defendant was 3Cinteractive Corp., whichhandled billing, processing and marketing for Securus and GTL.

Securus began offering the high-cost calls in 2010 through its “Pay Now” service, ...

by Matt Clarke

On January 12, 2024, the federal court for the Western District of Texas refused a motion by Williamson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) officials, which argued for dismissal of claims by former detainee Rodney A. Hurdsman, 55, that jailers recorded his privileged calls with his attorney and shared the recordings with police and prosecutors in his criminal case.

Importantly, Defendants were barred from enforcing a clause in an earlier settlement agreement with Hurdsman that said it “encompass[ed] any claims” of his, including any he “may acquire or discover in the future.” The Court said that because Hurdsman is a prisoner, his suit is subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, which does not recognize such private agreements.

Hurdsman’s claim dates to 2015, when he arrived at the jail on a burglary charge. He allegedly warned that he would be making privileged phone calls to his defense attorneys, even providing their phone numbers, names and addresses. The jail’s then-chief, Mike Gleason, allegedly agreed that the phone calls would be unmonitored and unrecorded, but instead listened to and recorded them, secretly sharing the recordings with law enforcement officials.

In 2017, Hurdsman was released from WCCF to ...

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed H. 1796 on November 15, 2023, making hers the fifth state in the nation to eliminate fees for prison and jail phone calls. When the law took effect on December 1, 2023, the state joined Connecticut, California, Minnesota and Colorado in providing no-cost communications for those incarcerated.

State Sen. Cindy Creem (D-Middlesex) and Rep. Chynah Tyler (D-Boston) sponsored the legislation, which also covers video calls and email. Their efforts gained momentum in July 2023 when fellow state lawmakers included funds to cover the cost in the state budget. However, Gov. Healey delayed implementation in response to financial concerns voiced by county officials.

To resolve those worries, a fund administered by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance will rebate counties’ additional call costs. Existing telecommunication contracts with companies like Securus will continue until expiration and then be renegotiated.

Previously, the cost of a phone call was 12 cents per minute in the state Department of Correction and 14 cents per minute at most county jails. Advocates noted that the financial burden disproportionately affected the families of Black and Latino prisoners and detainees, who make up more than half of the state’s incarcerated population.

Senior Attorney ...

On October 1, 2023, phone calls became free for some 860 jail detainees at the jail in Florida’s Alachua County, whose Board of Commissioners voted for the change six months earlier. That brought the cost from 21 cents per minute to zero, though for no more than three daily calls.

The Board voted to provide unlimited free calling, but the plan implemented by the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) allowed two free calls per day, each lasting up to 10 minutes and separated by at least 15 minutes.

“Start with two, see how that works,” explained Deputy County Manager Carl Smart.

When commissioners heard about the two-­call limit, they reportedly prevailed upon Sheriff Emery Gainey, newly appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on October 2, 2023, to up the daily number to three. Calls must be monitored, and no calls are allowed between 10:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Left unaddressed was the biggest constraint—the jail’s oversized population. With 293.5 jail admissions for every 100,000 residents over 18, the county’s incarceration rate is double Florida’s overall rate of 143.4.

At the same April 2023 meeting where they voted to provide free calls, commissioners agreed to eliminate a kickback from private telecom ...

Until December 1, 2023, Massachusetts prisoners and their families paid 12 cents per minute for phone calls, 14 cents in jails, though the first 10 minutes there every month were free. That added up to about $25 million annually—money that will now be saved, after the 2024 state budget took effect. Signed by Democratic Governor Maura Healy on August 9, 2023, that included an amendment making telecommunication free for prisoners.

That made Massachusetts the fifth state to mandate free telecommunications from its lockups, after Connecticut (in 2021), California (in 2022), as well as Colorado and Minnesota (in 2023). But the measure improves on legislation in those other states because it applies to both prisons and jails, covering not only phone calls but also video calls, email and messaging. The law also bars lockups from taking kickbacks from prison telecom vendors—something the state supreme court said it would not do, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.50.]

A dedicated $20-million trust fund will pay the costs. Other provisions protect in-person visitation as well as prisoners’ access to calls, since supporters of the reform worried that fewer calls would be available once they became free. Jails and prisons may not limit ...

Over Labor Day weekend 2023, approximately 100 prisoners refused to return to their cells at Minnesota Correctional Facility (MCF) in Stillwater. They were protesting limited access to showers, phones and recreation, which the state Department of Corrections (DOC) blamed on a staff shortage.

The protest lasted seven hours on September 3, 2023, but the prison remained on lockdown the following day. All but two of the protesters returned to their cells. Those two were placed in solitary confinement, including Phillip Vance, 42, who has served 20 years for a 2002 murder he steadfastly insists he didn’t commit.

Vance said the “protest” involved sitting and playing cards in the dayroom rather than returning to small and stifling cells at the un-air-conditioned prison. Before he went to “the hole,” he said: “We’ve been locked in our cells the last couple of days with record temperatures, no access to ice, water, showers, to our families.”

Complaints about dirty water, which comes from a well onsite, met with pushback from DOC. Spokesman Andy Skoogman called it “patently false,” insisting the water “has been deemed safe by testing” and there has been “no outbreak or abnormal number of water borne illnesses, such as diarrhea or ...