The United States Federal Communications Commission voted A bill was passed Thursday that lowers maximum prices for prison phone calls and closes a loophole that allowed prison telecommunications companies to charge high rates for calls within the state. The vote will cut the price of interstate calls in half and set price caps for calls within the state for the first time.
The FCC said it “voted to end exorbitant phone and video call fees that have burdened incarcerated people and their families for decades. Under the new rules, the cost of a 15-minute phone call will be reduced to 90 cents from $11.35 in large jails and, in small jails, to $1.35 from $12.10.”
The new rules are expected to come into effect in January 2025 for all prisons and jails with at least 1,000 inmates. Rate caps would come into effect for smaller prisons in April 2025.
Worth Rises, a nonprofit group that advocates for prison reform, Dear All that the new rules “will impact 83 percent of incarcerated people (about 1.4 million) and save affected families at least $500 million a year.”
New powers over intrastate calls
The FCC has taken numerous votes to reduce prison phone rates over the years, but Thursday’s is particularly significant. While the FCC was previously able to cap prices for interstate calls, an attempt to set prices for intrastate calls was shot down in court in 2017.
Prison phone companies could sue again, but the FCC said it now has authority over prison phone prices within the state because of the Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Reasonable Communications Actwhich was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in January 2023. The new law “empowered the FCC to close final loopholes in the communications system,” the commission said.
The 2023 law, named after a grandmother The law, which campaigned for lower telephone rates for prisons, “eliminates key statutory limitations that had prevented the commission from setting fair and reasonable rates,” the FCC said. Specifically, the law removed “limits on the commission’s ability to regulate rates for calls and video communications within the state.”
More than half of prison audio call traffic takes place within the state, and both the calling party and the called party are located in the same state, according to data from a FCC Draft Order published before the meeting.
The FCC’s work to reduce prison phone rates “was not always accepted by the courts,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “We were told, over and over again, that the commission did not have the authority to address all aspects of these rates, because while interstate calls were within our jurisdiction, intrastate calls were not.”
Previously, the FCC imposed price caps on interstate calls ranging from 14 to 21 cents per minute for audio calls, depending on the size of the facility. Going forward, a uniform set of price caps ranging from 6 to 12 cents per minute will apply to both interstate and intrastate calls.
Prohibition of other fees
The FCC also adopted for the first time caps on video calling rates, ranging from 11 to 25 cents per minute. These caps are classified as “interim” and could be lowered in the future.
Other fees will also be banned. “With this new law, we’re fixing what’s been wrong for too long,” Rosenworcel said. “We’re cutting calling fees by more than half. We’re eliminating extra costs like ancillary fees and banning special site commission fees. We’re making it clear that these policies apply to both interstate and intrastate rates. We’re also setting rates for video calls for the first time. On top of that, we’re strengthening accessibility requirements for incarcerated people with disabilities and improving outreach to consumers.”
