A brand new law (just waiting for the president’s signature) allows the Federal Communications Commission to directly regulate rates in the notoriously predatory prison call industry. Under the threat of having to provide a solid product for a reasonable price, companies may choose to call it quits and open the market to a more compassionate and forward-thinking generation of providers.
Prison call systems depend on the state and prison system and generally vary good enough until shockingly bad. With a literally tethered customer base, companies had no real incentive to innovate, and prison and state bribe financial models encouraged revenue at all costs.
Prisoners are routinely charged exorbitant rates for simple services such as phone calls and video calls (an upsell), and their visitation rights have even been revoked, leaving paid calls as the only option. Needless to say, this particular financial burden is disproportionate to people of color and those on low incomes, and it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.
It’s been that way for a long time, and former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn spent years trying to change it. When I spoke to her in 2017, before she left the agency, she called the prisoner and called it “the clearest, most glaring type of market failure I’ve ever seen as a regulator.” It was an issue she had worked on for years, but she gave high credit to Martha Wright-Reed, a grandmother who had organized and represented the fight to bring reform to the system until her death.
And it is after Martha Wright-Reed that the bill is named today. It’s a simple account, authorizing the FCC “to ensure fair and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention centers.” It does this with some minor but significant changes to the Communications Act of 1934, which (among other things) established the FCC and is regularly updated for this purpose. (The bill has passed the House and Senate and will almost certainly be signed by President Biden shortly, once the festivities related to the spending bill, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit, and the vacation address are over.)
“The FCC has been aggressively addressing this terrible problem for years, but we are limited in the extent to which we can address the rates for calls within a state’s borders,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Today, through the leadership of Senators Duckworth, Portman and their bipartisan coalition, the FCC is empowered to close this egregious, embarrassing, and damaging loophole in our rules on phone rates for inmates.” (She also thanked Wright-Reed, as well as Clyburn.)
Free Press has collected a number of other comments from interested parties, all praising the legislation for curbing “carceral profiteering” and generally benefiting prisoners rather than continuing to treat them as a source of labor or easy money.
While it’s great that costs will come down once the FCC can enact and enact a rule on the matter, the effect will likely be greater than just savings.
Most companies in existence today will almost certainly face massively reduced revenues and increased scrutiny as the FCC requires reports and takes whatever other action it deems necessary to enforce the new rules. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if many of these companies simply leave when things are going well.
Introducing regulation in a space like this, dominated for years by legacy providers, could well lead to a changing of the guard — something we’ve seen ahead of time with some states embracing new models like Ameelio’s. The start-up started as a way to send free postcards to inmates, but soon they had built a modern digital video calling infrastructure that is much cheaper and easier to operate than the old one.
Now operating in three states, Ameelio’s service can also serve as a base for activities such as education and legal advocacy in prisons because the costs are so much lower and access is easier. (As indeed the founders discovered and created Emerge Career.)
A bunch of shady companies in a hurry to leave signifies a market opportunity as states scramble to find providers – no doubt Ameelio will try to fill some of those gaps, but in the coming years other companies will likely step in to participate as good.
The prison system we have in general is in dire need of reform, but it will happen bit by bit, as we see happening here.
