by Matt Clarke

In June 2026, Worth Rises, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to dismantling the prison industry and ending the exploitation of those it touches,” published a report, The Power of Free Communication in Prisons and Jails.

The report depicts the quantitative and qualitative effects free phone calls have on the carceral environment, prisoners’ relationships with others, rehabilitation, preparation for reentry and the finances of prisoners’ families. It relied on hard, statistical evidence as well as interviews with prisoners, their families, and staff. Unsurprisingly, there was universal praise for free communications. The following is a synopsis of the report.

Prior to its breakup in 1984, AT&T monopolized carceral communications and very expensive collect phone calls were generally the only available option. After the breakup, niche carceral communications providers introduced a revenue-sharing model as a way to pry prison and jail communications away from the large, established telecommunications companies.

The model gave the incarcerating agency a commission, a cut of the profits in exchange for exclusive contracts. This, in turn, gave the agencies a perverse incentive to select the provider with the highest commission rather than the lowest rates. The result was incarcerated persons and their …

by Douglas Ankney

In February 2024, Commissioners Lina Khan, Chair; Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, and Alvaro M. Bedoya of the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) determined that the facts substantiated the allegations made against Respondents Global Tel Link Corporation (“GTL”); Telmate, LLC; and TouchPay Holdings, LLC (collectively “ViaPath” or “Respondents”). And in their Decision and Order, the Commissioners ordered Respondents to take specific remedial actions to address the issues raised in the Complaint.

Complaint Respondents contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons; state Departments of Corrections; immigration and juvenile detention centers; county jails, and city jails (collectively “Facilities”). Respondents have contracts with Facilities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and boast that “more than 1.9 million incarcerated people, constituting more than 85% of the inmate population” use their services.

The incarcerated people include persons convicted of crimes and persons detained awaiting trial as well as civil detainees in immigration detention centers. Additionally, ViaPath’s services were used by more than 13 million consumers in 2020 who were not incarcerated (that is, they were family and friends of the incarcerated persons). GTL’s annual revenue alone was over $600 million. The incarcerated consumers access Respondents’ services …

by Michael Thompson

The River North Center had been on lockdown for three months as of February 2026 due to the murder of a guard. Following the murder, John Holomon Russell was charged with aggravated murder, as well as the attempted murder of two other prison guards, and transferred to Red Onion Prison in another county.

The lockdown was one of the longest in the state since the pandemic. It left the unit’s prisoners unable to access phones or showers more than once per week. For some, the choice of a 20-minute call or a shower had them sacrificing hygiene for contact with their families during a time when there were no religious services, mental health appointments, or family visits.

Dawn Hall is the widow of the murdered guard and has filed a lawsuit blaming the Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) and River North’s warden in federal court. The lawsuit alleges her husband’s death was a “civil rights violation due to unsafe working conditions caused by chronic understaffing,” her attorney told The Virginian-Pilot. Nevertheless, the DOC had declined to discuss staffing levels at the prison with The Virginian-Pilot due to security concerns.

For its western …

Two women allegedly used drones and plastic crows filled with contraband in an attempt to smuggle contraband into the United States Penitentiary, Pollock (USP Pollock) in Grant Parish, Louisiana. Melanie Worthington, 38, and Kassy Cole, 41, were arrested on March 9, 2026, after Grant Parish deputies intercepted the “birds,” which were stuffed with methamphetamine, marijuana, tobacco, and cell phones. The duo admitted they were paid $40,000 to execute the sophisticated delivery.

This drone effort follows a bizarre “meth cannon” incident at the same prison last year. Both women face felony charges for introducing contraband and possession with intent to distribute. Sheriff Steven McCain noted that despite the “creative” avian disguise, the operation resulted in the year’s tenth smuggling-related arrest at the federal complex. USP Pollock is situated on a portion of the former Camp Livingston, a World War II-era military training base. Its remote, wooded location is why smugglers often attempt to use the surrounding tree line as cover for their operations. 

Source: CBS News

Since 2023, nearly all of the more than 90,000 prisoners locked up by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) have been assigned a tablet that can make calls, receive messages, and access other apps. But currently, a massive shift is underway that is disrupting these services for prisoners as the CDCR switches from one tablet vendor to another.

The transition is months behind schedule and, according to CalMatters, it has already led to increased text messaging charges at the first prison it has been fully introduced to. In a recent bidding war between two companies, Securus won out and signed a four-year, $189 million contract with the CDCR to replace its chief competitor Viapath/Global Tel Link. Taken together, Securus and Viapath hold a tight grip on the incarcerated telecommunications market, with the former holding 3,400 contracts with prisons and jails across the country and the latter close to 2,000.

By the end of 2025, Securus tablets were supposed to get rolled out in every CDCR prison. But most state prisons are still stocked with Viapath devices and will not transition until later this year. Although California is one of only five states that cover the …

by ReuvenBlau and KennedySessions

This article was originally published in The City.

After visiting her son on Rikers Island last June, Benjamin Kelly’s mother dialed 311 in a panic.

He was hallucinating about an insect crawling up his nose, dead bodies in the walls and something reaching up from the floor to grab him, Angela Kelly told the operator.

She urged the jail’s medical staff to change his medication.

That never happened, according to a report by the city’s Board of Correction.

Two weeks later, a correction officer found Kelly, 37, hanging from a bedsheet inside the Eric M. Taylor Center, one of 10 jails on the island.

The desperate call was one of 40,483 complaints logged to the city’s 311 hotline about the troubled jail system in 2025, according to city records, which show more than 30,000 calls a year since 2021.

The 311 system was launched during the Bloomberg administration as a state-of-the-art way for New Yorkers to communicate with city agencies about everything from potholes to social service benefits to noise complaints.

But grievances about conditions inside the jails don’t function like typical …

by Michael Thompson

As reported in PLN, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had postponed a 2024 rule poised to reduce the financial burden for incarcerated people throughout the country. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p. 19] The June 30, 2025 pause was followed by a draft proposal in October that significantly raised prices to nearly double those in the 2024 rule. When the finalized document was released on November 6, it surprisingly contained further changes, which included even more substantial price hikes. Through this new rule, the FCC effectively reversed course on nearly every major provision of the 2024 rule.

The 2024 rule would have saved millions of dollars for people incarcerated in jails and prisons, as well as their friends and families who have been known to pay in the vicinity of $500 per month for the right to communicate with them. Instead, the November final draft slipped in an additional 6.7% inflation factor over the October draft price hike with no public notice.

At issue is the profiteering off of incarcerated people and their loved ones. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez made the point well in her critique of the …

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) prisons are buckling under a 15-­year high incarceration rate, now exceeding 50,000, and projected to climb past 55,000 by 2030 due to tougher sentencing. Simultaneously, guard staffing is at a 15-­year low, signaling a severe retention crisis despite budget increases. Another growing problem: drones.

DOC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver reported that massive drones, some capable of lifting 225 pounds, are easily delivering drugs and cellphones directly to cell windows and rooftops of Georgia’s prisons. And these incidents are on the rise, with the DOC recording 71 cases of drone activity in November 2025 alone. Prisoners will often take advantage of a Georgia prison’s crumbling infrastructure to intercept a package. “The majority of [packages] are dropping on the ceiling,” Oliver said. “So what you have, when you’re talking about our aging infrastructure, most of the prisons that were built, they have internal pipe chases inside the dorm, inside the dormitory themselves. The inmates are able to get inside the pipe chase, access the roof, which is the metal roof, push it up, get the contraband, come back in.”

While technology exists to “mitigate” these flights, DOC …

by Katya Schwenk

The yacht is moored at the mouth of the Miami River, in the long shadows of the city’s luxury hotels and high-­rises. It is of Italian design: sleek, imposing, with a flybridge and sundeck and five cabins, and a price point of about $10 million. On the hull, bold silver lettering declares its name: Convict.

The Convict is the crown jewel of prison technology company Smart Communications, whose CEO, Jonathan Logan, has a reputation for flaunting the millions he has made in the business of prisons and jails. There is also Logan’s $300,000 Lamborghini, with a license plate that reads “INMATE.” There are the photos he posts dressed in garish suits, posed in the driver’s seat of his Rolls-­Royce.

The yachts, the cars—they all form part of Smart Communications’ “empire,” as insiders refer to it. The company rakes in tens of millions in revenue each year from its prison communications tech, a business model that mostly involves charging people incarcerated in the U.S. prison system to send emails (50 cents a pop) or make phone calls (7 cents a minute) or leave 30-­second voicemails ($1 each).

It …

For years, the Adams County Detention Facility in Brighton has prohibited in-person visits. But in late October 2025, a group of three children—with the youngest just four years—are suing the Adams County Sheriff and HomeWAV, a telecommunications company, in hopes of lifting the ban and getting to visit their incarcerated parents. The suit, which also lists two mothers whose 18-year-old sons are locked up at the Adams County jail, is part of a trio of cases led by civil rights groups. Called the “Right 2 Hug” project, the other two cases were filed in Michigan (they were both dismissed in 2024, but are currently on appeal).

As reported by Colorado Public Radio, the Plaintiff’s attorneys are seeking an emergency order that would allow the children and mothers to visit their relatives while the case is underway; they are also aiming to win damages from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office as well as HomeWAV, which the jail contracts with for phone and video services.

Across the country, families spend an average of $4,200 each year to stay in touch with their loved ones behind bars. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p. 36.] And when the Federal Communications …