Second Amendment to Cook County, IL Contract

On October 1, 2023, phone calls became free for some 860 jail detainees at the jail in Florida’s Alachua County, whose Board of Commissioners voted for the change six months earlier. That brought the cost from 21 cents per minute to zero, though for no more than three daily calls. ...

Massachusetts Becomes the Fifth State to Make Prison Phone Calls Free

Loaded on March 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News March, 2024, page 15

Filed under: Telephones, Telephone Access, Private Phone Contractors. Location: Massachusetts.

Until December 1, 2023, Massachusetts prisoners and their families paid 12 cents per minute for phone calls, 14 cents in jails, though the first 10 minutes there every month were free. That added up to about $25 million annually—money that will now be saved, after the 2024 state budget took ...

Minnesota Prison on Lockdown After Protest Over Dirty Water, Lack of Phone Use and Out-of-Cell Time

Loaded on March 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News March, 2024, page 52

Filed under: Protests, Exercise, Showers, Water, Lockdowns, Telephone Access. Location: Minnesota.

Over Labor Day weekend 2023, approximately 100 prisoners refused to return to their cells at Minnesota Correctional Facility (MCF) in Stillwater. They were protesting limited access to showers, phones and recreation, which the state Department of Corrections (DOC) blamed on a staff shortage.

The protest lasted seven hours on September ...

Ninth Circuit Revives Challenge by Federal Prisoner in Arizona to BOP’s 300-Minute Monthly Phone Cap

Loaded on Feb. 1, 2024 by David Reutter published in Prison Legal News February, 2024, page 22

Filed under: Retaliatory Transfers, Telephone Access. Location: Arizona.

by David M. Reutter

On July 3, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy that caps a prisoner’s phone calls at a total of 300 minutes per month.

The suit was ...