A report on prison telecom costs presented to state lawmakers in Washington on December 13, 2024, showed dramatic decreases nationwide in the price of calls from prisons and jails over the past decade. A similar drop was not found in rates for e-messages sent from lockups. Data provided by the Prison Phone Justice (PPJ) campaign of PLN’s publisher, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), also found nearly $45.5 million paid by prisoners and their families directly to prisons and jails, in the form of “commission” kickbacks from telecom vendors. 

The report was prepared by the Washington State Office of Financial Management (OFM), pursuant to statutory authorization. See: Laws of 2024, Ch. 376, § 133(20). But the short time frame provided for its work did not allow for public records requests to be completed to every jurisdiction nationwide. That’s why, in addition to HRDC’s PPJ data, researchers relied on the findings of two other prison reform nonprofits, the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) and Worth Rises, as well as Ameelio, a nonprofit which calls itself the country’s first technology nonprofit to offer telecom services to prisoners.

Data from Worth Rises was used to draw comparisons between jurisdictions and over time of per-minute call rates from prisons and jails. As PLN also reported, at least five states have made calls free for state prisoners: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Minnesota. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.15.] In the first year, that cost those states an estimated $33.2 million, $1.1 million, $4.75 million, $20 million and $3.6 million, respectively. No-cost call legislation pending in Pennsylvania is expected to cost that state some $16.5 million in the first year, with 70% of that going to the state Department of Corrections and the rest to county prisons.

Calls were nearly free in Illinois, averaging just one cent per minute in January 2024. On the other end of the spectrum, a 15-minute call cost $2.03 in Florida and $2.10 in Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio and Oklahoma. Still the overall trend was encouragingly lower. A 15-minute call in Alabama fell from $6.75 in 2015, the highest cost in the country that year, to 75¢ in 2024, putting it among the 15 lowest-cost states.

HRDC’s PPJ data provided a look at how much of what prisoners and their families pay for calls is returned to prisons and jails in the form of “commission” kickbacks. This subsidy, paid by the caged to their captors, topped a staggering $13 million in both Georgia and Michigan in 2018 alone. It is telling that telecom vendors paid these to the lockups that contract with them, rather than the prisoners who actually consume their services. 

The Martha Wright Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, signed by former Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) in January 2023, resulted in new lower rate caps for prison communications that were announced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2024, as PLN reported. However, under the administration of current Pres. Donald J. Trump (R), implementation of those rate caps has now been stayed as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1; and Aug. 2025, p.39.]

PPI provided data that was used to analyze e-messaging rates. The report found those largely unchanged between 2016 and 2024, with costs even rising slightly in some states—despite enormous growth in their volume. Call volume in states where prices fell or became free rose predictably, too. Many prisoners and jail detainees now have tablets from which they can choose e-messaging, calls or even video calls, though the latter were high-priced across the country, averaging $5.00 or more for a 15-minute call in Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, New Jersey, South Dakota and Tennessee.

The report noted that wireless communication costs for non-incarcerated consumers have fallen over the past decade by more than 10%, even as prices overall climbed by about 25%. Perhaps that’s part of the reason that prison telecoms have pushed back so hard against those now-stayed rate caps, even though they would still allow incarcerated people and their families to be charged nearly six times what non-incarcerated consumers pay. See: Study on Communication Rates for Incarcerated Individuals, Wash. OFM (Dec. 2024).