The Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt a new rate cap Thursday that cuts the cost of prison phone calls for Indiana inmates and their families.
As we reported in June, the cost of keeping in touch with loved ones behind bars isn't cheap. Bloomington resident Alicia Graves paid $7.20 to talk to her incarcerated boyfriend for just 30 minutes.
While the FCC regulates the cost of interstate phone calls, until now it had no regulations in place for those calling loved ones who were serving time within the same state. According to the FCC, some of the fees prison telecommunications providers charge can raise the cost of calls by 40 percent.
The agency's newly adopted rates cut the cost of phone calls by about half, capping the cost of local and long distance calls from state and federal prisons at 11 cents per minute. The FCC adopted tiered rates for jails because they are often more expensive for providers to serve, especially in small communities:
14 cents per minute for debit and prepaid calls in jails with 1,000 or more inmates
16 cents per minute for debit and prepaid calls in jails with 350-999 inmates
22 cents per minute for debit and prepaid calls in jails of up to 349 inmates
The FCC also cut its long-distance rate cap on interstate calls by half.
"Many times the families of inmates are poor and so it's very difficult for them to afford high calling rates and so families say sometimes we had to choose between putting food on the table or putting the loved one in jail," says FCC Spokesman Mark Wigfield.
The new rules also set limits for the fees charged for automated payments, payment through a live agent, paper bills and third-party financial transactions. All other service charges are prohibited.
The new rules will go into effect 90 days after publication in the Federal Register in prisons and six months after publication in the Federal Register in jails.
The FCC is also seeking comment on several other issues regarding prison communications, including how to promote competition for calling services, the costs of video visitation and the use of revenue-sharing agreements between service providers and states.
