When someone is locked up, it has a major impact on the prisoner and his or her family and friends. It’s made worse by the high cost of phone calls they must pay to stay in touch, The New York Times reported.
It was reported that inmate calling services, which are dominated by a small number of phone companies, rake in $1.2 billion annually. These private companies provide phone service to inmates in U.S. jails and prisons in every state.
“Rates and fees (are) far in excess of those established by regular commercial providers,” The Times reported. “Now, after years of complaints from prison-rights groups and families of the incarcerated, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating the financial intricacies of the industry, which has been largely unregulated.”
The Times reported the FCC found that nearly half a billion dollars in concession fees, also known as “kickbacks,” were paid to correctional institutions in 2013.
“The agency (FCC) is expected to rule this year on whether to ban the concession fees and limit the cost of prison phone calls,” The Times reported in March 2015.
According to The Times, Global Tel-Link Corporation and Securus Technologies are the two dominant phone companies in the inmate-calling service industry. Global Tel-Link controls half of the market for jails and prisons.
“Richard A. Smith, Securus’ chief executive, said in a letter to regulators that his company had paid $1.3 billion in concession fees to prisons and local governments over the past decade,” The Times reported.
Last year Global Tel-Link’s phone traffic reached 3 billion minutes with 215 million calls made from jails and prisons, it was reported.
Securus, second in the industry to Global Tel-Link, charges a variety of fees for basic phone calls and services, including a fee to close an account, The Times reported.
“The fees make up an estimated 40 percent of the average prison phone bill,” according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization, The Times reported.
The FCC last year placed a cap on the interstate calls. In response to the cap, according to The Times, phone companies increased the charges on intrastate calls made from jails and prisons. These calls, it was reported, make up the majority – 90 percent – of calls made from jails and prisons.
