The high cost of prison phone calls: Advocates show who really pays
by: Laura Nixon
posted on Thursday, December 06, 2012
When someone goes to jail, few people realize the whole family goes too. That’s how the daughter of one former inmate felt when her mother was sentenced to prison. When that happened, she said, “I was sentenced to be without my mother.”
Emphasizing the toll of incarceration on families and loved ones provides a new way to understand crime and punishment and what to do about it. Broadening the conversation to include more than just individual inmates is what advocates from the Center for Media Justice and other organizations are doing this holiday season as they push to reform one aspect of the prison system that, because of its high cost, has a particularly profound affect on families: prison phone calls.
Approximately 2.7 million children in the U.S. have one or more parent in prison. Since inmates are often incarcerated far away from their families, phone calls are the only contact many of these children have with their parents during the holidays and throughout the year. Yet, exorbitant phone prices — sometimes over $1 a minute — and kickbacks to prisons as high as 70% per call are making it hard for them to communicate with their incarcerated loved ones.
Inmates’ families, not inmates, must pick up the tab for all calls coming from a jail or prison. What’s more, the barrier that these expensive phone systems put between prisoners and their families affects prospects for rehabilitation. When the incarcerated lose touch with loved ones, it increases the chances of recidivism, and ultimately threatens community safety and well-being.
The FCC has the power to regulate calls between states, but it has delayed taking action for almost a decade. Now advocates are pushing the FCC to cap the rates that can be charged for interstate calls from prisons (The FCC can’t directly prohibit the practice of collecting kickbacks).
Still, the importance of the FCC taking action can’t really be understood if media coverage of the issue only focuses on the incarcerated. That’s why advocates have been talking about the issue in terms of its impact on families and communities, a strategy that, according to amalia deloney of the Center for Media Justice, “is working really well — namely, because it helps to expand and deepen the understanding of the wide impact that incarceration has. It’s shifted the debate away from punishment to one of consumer protections, family reunification, reduced recidivism and rehabilitation.”
This framing of the issue expands the debate from a focus on the individual and away from default frames about punishment and crime. Instead, it paints a larger landscape that includes community and family health and well-being. Looking at the issue in those terms makes it clear how much is at stake and why it’s so critical that the FCC act. It’s a great example of how evoking family and family values can shift the conversation, opening the door for changes that can benefit the health of whole communities.