Prison Phone Justice

Officers
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Judith L. Lichtman
National Partnership for
Women & Families
Vice Chairs
Jacqueline Pata
National Congress of American Indians
Thomas A. Saenz
Mexican American Legal
Defense and Educational Fund
Hilary Shelton
NAACP
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Lee A. Saunders
American Federation of State,
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Barbara Arnwine
Lawyers' Committee for
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Helena Berger
American Association of
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Cornell William Brooks
NAACP
Lily Eskelsen García
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Marcia D. Greenberger
National Women's Law Center
Chad Griffin
Human Rights Campaign
Linda D. Hallman
AAUW
Mary Kay Henry
Service Employees International Union
Sherrilyn Ifill
NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, Inc.
Jo Ann Jenkins
AARP
Michael B. Keegan
People for the American Way
Samer E. Khalaf, Esq.
American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee
Elisabeth MacNamara
League of Women Voters of the
United States
Marc Morial
National Urban League
Mee Moua
Asian Americans Advancing Justice |
AAJC
Janet Murguía
National Council of La Raza
Debra Ness
National Partnership for
Women & Families
Terry O’Neill
National Organization for Women
Priscilla Ouchida
Japanese American Citizens League
Rabbi Jonah Pesner
Religious Action Center
Of Reform Judaism
Anthony Romero
American Civil Liberties Union
Shanna Smith
National Fair Housing Alliance
Richard L. Trumka
AFL-CIO
Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers
Dennis Williams
International Union, UAW
Policy and Enforcement
Committee Chair
Michael Lieberman
Anti-Defamation League
President & CEO
Wade J. Henderson
Executive Vice President & COO
Karen McGill Lawson

October 15, 2015
Chairman Thomas Wheeler
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Re: Rates for Inmate Calling Services, WC Docket No. 12-375
Dear Chairman Wheeler:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the undersigned
organizations, we write to urge the Federal Communications Commission to ensure residents
of prisons, jails and detention centers receive access to reasonable rates for all their
telephone calls. We thank you for capping long-distance rates in 2013 and encourage you to
quickly complete your current proceeding to ensure the remaining 85 percent of calls—those
that are in-state—are also addressed.
Unreasonably high prison phone rates are problematic for a variety of reasons. They:
x Vastly exceed rates paid by non-incarcerated people. For example, a 15-minute call
can cost up to $6 in Virginia and Louisiana. Many states charge a per-call fee and an
additional 24 cents per minute, even for debit calling when payments are provided upfront, meaning no collection costs are incurred. 1 Fees and ancillary charges include
egregious examples such as charging $8 for each $150 deposited into a prepaid calling
account. 2
x Exploit a market failure depriving consumers the benefit of competition. While
competition would be everyone’s first choice for constraining telephone prices,
individuals paying for prison phone calls are literally a captive market unable to shop
around for lower prices. Instead, correctional institutions select telephone providers.
These institutions demand a “commission” or payment from the telephone company
chosen, the cost of which is passed on to family members footing the bill. In this case,
competition drives prices further and further upward.
x Unjustly punish the families of people who are incarcerated. Incarcerated people
rarely pay for their own telephone calls. Typically friends and family members submit
funds into an account, or accept collect calls, in order to communicate. Thus, these
friends, family, clergy, attorneys and others bear the annual $1.2 billion in telephone
costs. As Right on Crime explains, the correctional system should help “preserve
families.” 3

October 15, 2015
Page 2 of 2

x

Contribute to rising costs of incarceration by increasing recidivism. Maintaining the
bonds of a family and support network is an effective way to reduce recidivism among
incarcerated people, which in turn reduces the cost of the criminal justice system.
According to a 2011 Pew report, corrections in the states cost about $52 billion a year
nationally and 43 percent of prisoners nationally return to the lockup within three years.
Reducing those numbers could save hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Sound
public policy dictates that we should not disincentivize the very behavior that will help us
keep families together and, in turn, reduce future crime.

x

Are unnecessary. A number of state departments of corrections (DOCs) have
demonstrated they can provide communications services at reasonable rates. States such
as South Carolina, New Mexico, New York and Pennsylvania DOCs charge in-state rates
between 4 and 6 cents per minute for a 15-minute call. 4

Exorbitant rates paid by prisoners’ families increase recidivism, place an undue and unfair financial
burden, contribute to increasing costs, and are unnecessary. Congress has given the FCC special authority
to address telephone rates in incarcerating institutions and it should use that authority to cap in-state
prison phone call rates, thereby making our communities safer. Please contact Leadership Conference
Media/Telecommunications Task Force Co-Chair Cheryl Leanza, UCC O.C., Inc., at 202-841-6033 or
Corrine Yu, Leadership Conference Managing Policy Director, at 202-466-5670, if you would like to
discuss the above issues.
Sincerely,
American Civil Liberties Union
Arizona Innocence Project
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
Adele Bernhard, Director, New York Law
School Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic
Center for Community Change Action
Karen L. Daniel, Director, Center on Wrongful
Convictions
Data & Society
Demand Progress
Innocence Project
Midwest Innocence Project
Professor Marla L. Mitchell-Cichon, Director,
WMU Cooley Innocence Project
Montana Innocence Project
NAACP
National Organization for Women

1

National Urban League
Pennsylvania Innocence Project
Public Knowledge
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and
Human Rights
Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps
Robert F. Kennedy Juvenile Justice
Collaborative
Robert F. Kennedy National Resource Center for
Juvenile Justice
Rocky Mountain Innocence Center
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human
Rights
United Church of Christ, OC Inc.
Wrongful Conviction Project, Office of the Ohio
Public Defender

See Comments of the Human Rights Defense Center, Appendix C, FCC Docket WC 12-375 (filed Jan. 12, 2015).
Prison Policy Initiative, Please Deposit All Your Money (2013).
3
See The Conservative Case for Reform, available at: http://rightoncrime.com/the-conservative-case-for-reform/.
4
See HRDC Comments, supra, at 6.
2