'Communication Is Our Bond,' and It's About to Cost More

Inmates at the Rappahannock Regional Jail will soon see the cost of phone calls rise 67%, following a decision by the Trump Administration's FCC to rollback a 2024 policy capping the cost of calls.

By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Darnise Carter tries to talk with her fiancé, who is incarcerated in federal prison, four or five times a day.

Before the Federal Communications Commission’s 2024 vote to impose caps on rates charged to inmates for phone and video calls, she was putting “at least” $350 on her fiancé’s account every month so that he could call her.

“Communication is our bond,” said Carter, a volunteer coordinator with FailSafe-ERA, the Fredericksburg area nonprofit that provides support and re-entry services to families impacted by the justice system. “It’s important because it keeps him grounded; but with me being on a limited income, it was real hard.”

Carter said it’s only been in the past few months that she started seeing the effects of the 2024 rate caps, but they’ve been dramatic—suddenly, a $15 infusion to her husband’s account was lasting them two full weeks.

But that “huge relief” will be short-lived. Late last month, the FCC voted to increase the 2024 rate caps, canceling what the organization itself estimated to be a savings of $386 million for the families of incarcerated people and adding to costs that are born disproportionately by women of color.

In a November 6 report and order, the FCC wrote that “today’s action aims to … [address] the negative, unintended consequences that have flowed from the prior FCC’s approach—namely, unacceptable risks to safety and security as well as reductions in the availability of calling services.”

The rate caps were imposed initially as a result of the federal Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022. Prior to the rate caps, a 15-minute phone call from one of Virginia’s local or regional jails cost on average $2.65, 4.5 times as much as the same call from prison, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

The cost of keeping in contact with incarcerated loved ones was putting one in three families in debt, according to the nonprofit Worth Rises, and was generating $1.4 billion in annual revenue for the correctional telecom industry.

Two companies—Virginia-based GTL and Texas-based Securus—account for 83% of this market, according to Prison Policy Initiative.

Carter was one of the many family members who advocated for the passage of the Martha Wright-Reed Act in 2022.

“We had to share how [the cost of communication] affected us and how much money we had to put on [our loved ones’] accounts in order for them to have some normalcy,” she said. “We advocated for the improvement in mental health of the incarcerated person—when communication is consistent, mental health improves, and without it, behaviors deteriorate.”

Under the 2024 rate caps, large jails with populations of 1,000 and up, like the Rappahannock Regional Jail, could charge no more than $0.06 per minute for a phone call and $0.11 for a video call.

Previously, large jails could charge as much as $0.16 per minute for a phone call.

However, communications companies and industry associations challenged the 2024 rate caps. In a letter to the FCC, the Virginia Association of Regional Jails and the Virginia Sheriff’s Organization wrote that the rate caps will have “a negative fiscal impact on jails and localities in Virginia” by eliminating commissions and noting that “many jails have entered into multi-year contracts with service providers.”

This letter was included in the minutes of the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority’s July 2024 meeting. RRJ superintendent Kevin Hudson told the Authority at its August 22, 2024, meeting that as a result of the FCC rule, the jail would lose $1.75 million in revenue “immediately”—the same amount that the jail budgeted to receive in revenues from “inmate telephone” for the fiscal year.

Industry groups also argued that the 2024 rate caps made it impossible for communications providers to recoup the cost of safety monitoring of phone and video calls. According to a petition filed with the FCC last fall by the Network Communications International Corp, the FCC “misapplied the ‘used and useful’ standard to exempt more than two-thirds of the safety and security costs incurred by [incarcerated people’s communication services, or IPCS] providers to make audio and video IPCS available to consumers.”

The new rate caps raise the maximum rate that can be charged by large jails such as RRJ for phone calls from $0.06 per minute to $0.10, a 67% increase. The maximum rate for video calls was raised from $0.11 per minute to $0.19, a 72% increase.

Carter said that incarcerated individuals and their families are not asking for special treatment—just connection.

“For my fiancé to be able to call me and say, ‘Hey, I’m having a hard day and I just needed to hear your voice’—that shouldn’t cost him so much,” she said. “The prison system neglects to understand that because they don’t provide mental health treatment, we, their families, are their mental health.”

Sue Parr, one of FailSafe’s founders and the facilitator of a monthly support group for family members of justice-involved people, stressed that, “No one is saying that if you do wrong, you shouldn’t be reprimanded.”

But she said that often, it’s the family breadwinner who is incarcerated, and the person who is left on the outside should not be given a greater load to shoulder.

“Our loved ones age quickly in there from constant stress,” Parr said. “The evidence is there to show that it helps everyone—the inmate, the family, the guards, and the administration—when there is a connection.”

For Carter, the FCC’s decision is “so disheartening.”

“Especially in these economic times,” she added.

Editor’s note: This story was corrected on November 20 to state that a person referenced is incarcerated in federal prison.

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