Crime Pays—for Phone Companies

Calling home costs just pennies a minute for most Americans. Not so for the 1.4 million locked up in state prisons. They pay as much as $17 for a 15-minute call. Fed up, more than 200 inmates and relatives wrote to U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski this past summer pleading for his help. “Hello, does anybody hear me out there?” asked David Wrobleski, who’s serving a life sentence in Michigan. “Over the years, I have lost most of my contact with my family and friends due to the increased cost of a telephone call from the prison setting. I come from a very poor family.”

In exchange for exclusive deals to provide service to inmates, phone companies typically turn over a portion of their billings to prisons. Forty-two states collected $152 million in commissions in 2008, with the average being 42 percent of the calling charges, according to a recent FCC filing. That system perversely encourages prison officials to award contracts to the highest bidders, say some 30 groups spanning the political spectrum. The American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the pro-life American Values, and the American Conservative Union are among those now pressing the FCC to act on a petition filed by prisoners and family members almost 10 years ago and cut what they say are “exorbitant” rates. The groups want the charges capped at 20¢ to 25¢ a minute.