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 …

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 …

by Chuck Sharman

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on September 30, 2025, to issue a Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to relax the current ban on using cellphone “jamming” technology in prisons and jails. The Commission’s target: nearly 500,000 contraband cellphones used by 25% of U.S. prisoners and jail detainees, according to a September 2024 estimate from global security firm SOC LLC.

That number may be inflated, of course, to promote the need for SOC’s SignalSecure system, which is marketed to help interdict this flood of contraband. But the Urban Institute, in its own 2024 study, counted 20,000 contraband cellphones seized by 20 state prison systems over the previous year.

Under 47 U.S.C. § 333, anyone who “willfully or maliciously interferes” with FCC-authorized radio communications—including signals to and from cellphones—commits a crime. But prison and jail officials contend that this has handicapped their fight against contraband cellphone use. In response, the FCC proposed to change the definition of an “authorized” radio communication to exclude calls placed to or from contraband cellphones. Those would become “unauthorized” by definition, so they could legally be blocked by use of a cellphone “jammer.”

Currently, officials have more …

by Chuck Sharman

Backtracking from new rules passed just a year ago that would have lowered phone call rates in prisons and jails to $0.06 to $0.12 per minute, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on October 28, 2025, to hike those rate caps to $0.10 to $0.18 per minute. The FCC had voted in August 2025 to table imposition of the former rate caps for two years, but its latest action means that they will not take effect at all.

As PLN reported, the FCC voted in August 2024 to slash rate caps for prison phone calls to $0.06 per minute and no more than $0.12 per minute in jails. Video call rates were also lowered to a maximum of $0.16 per minute in prisons and $0.11 to $0.25 per minute in jails. The order further eliminated “site commissions”—kickbacks paid to lockups by telecom providers awarded their contracts—which many lockups had come to rely on for part of their operating budget. Charges were also banned for “ancillary services,” like adding money to an account. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.1.]

The FCC’s new order maintains the bans on site commissions and ancillary service charges. But the …

On June 30, the Federal Communications Commission announced a two-year postponement of a rule to lower the price of phone and video calls in prisons and jails. As PLN reported, the FCC voted in 2024 to approve the regulation, which was set to go into effect nationwide later this year and promised to rein in predatory price gouging by prison telecom companies. Along with curbing the kickbacks paid by companies to corrections systems, it would have capped phone rates to 6 cents per minute in state prisons and to no more than 12 cents per minute in local jails; rates for video calls were reduced to 16 cents in prisons and a maximum of 25 cents per minute in jails. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p. 1]. 

In a statement announcing the postponement, the Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr said that the price caps had led to “negative, unintended consequences,” such as making fees “too low” to cover “required safety measures” and not allowing enough time for states to find alternative revenue sources. In a separate statement, FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez strongly criticized the decision, writing that the agency, instead of enforcing a bipartisan law, is “now …

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 …

In December 2023, Massachusetts became the fifth state to provide free phone calls in its prisons and the first in all local jails. Video calling and e-messaging were also made available at no cost [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p. 15]. Those progressive reforms were the culmination of years of advocacy to reduce the excessive costs imposed on prisoners and their families simply to stay in touch, including efforts by the No Cost Calls Coalition.

The free phone calls and other communication options removed an “immense financial burden off some of the most disadvantaged households in the state,” declared Aaron Steinberg with Prisoners’ Legal Services. While the volume of calls from state Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities and jails more than doubled over the next year, the No Cost Calls legislation that resulted in free communications services also had unintended consequences.

Initially, there was a problem with supply and demand: too few phones for the increased number of prisoners who wanted to take advantage of the free calls, which led to fights. The distribution of tablets with a phone app in state prisons and some jails largely alleviated that issue but a larger one remained—the loss of …

Over five years ago, in May 2020, Washington prisoners Michael Linear and Lonnie Burton filed a complaint in state court against prison telecom JPay LLC, which held the exclusive contract with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide prisoners their “sole means of access to any electronic content, email, games, music, or internet access.” 

JPay, the prisoners said, had “abused its monopoly by devising a scheme that baits inmates into purchasing excessively priced products and services, withholds the terms and conditions on those products and services from inmate review, and subjects inmates to a protracted sham trouble-shooting process that neither results in a repair or refund.”

As the prisoners noted, the firm’s kiosks provided access to the terms of service only after they clicked a button accepting them—at which point the kiosk “timed out” within two minutes, long before they had a chance to locate and read the relevant terms. Worse, one of those terms they were forced to accept before they could review it was an agreement to submit to arbitration to resolve any disputes—including challenging excessive fees, like a $8.95 for a $40.00 deposit into a prisoner’s account. 

Sure enough, JPay responded …

On June 6, 2025, Julian Mendez, 46, a prisoner on death row at the Kern Valley State Prison in Riverside County, California, was killed by inmate Mario Renteria, 36, using a makeshift weapon, KGET in Bakersfield reported. During the attack, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), guards ordered the men to “get down,” but the two prisoners ignored this command; the guards then used “chemical agents” in an attempt to break up the fight. Around this time, around 30 other prisoners rushed in and began striking Renteria. Guards, having lost control of the situation, launched “blast grenades” to disperse the crowd. 

Following the incident, the CDCR implemented a modified program to investigate a rise in violence and overdoses at certain facilities including Kern Valley. Medical and legal services remained in place during the program, but access to phones, tablet communications, and in-person visitations were suspended. As of this writing, on June 26, the state lifted the restrictions in nine prisons but kept them in place in Kern Valley and 11 others.  

Additional source: KTLA

On May 6, 2025, the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, a non-profit law firm, filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (DRC) over the practice of intercepting mail between prisoners and their attorneys. The practice, which is called the “Legal Mail Policy Variance,” was intended to intercept drugs and other contraband from being brought into facilities. It requires prison staff to make a photocopy of legal mail in front of the prisoner and—after handing them the copy or delivering it to their tablets—shred the original. This policy was introduced to four of the 28 DRC prisons across Ohio in 2024: the Southern Ohio, Marion, Lebanon, and Ross correctional institutions. 

The Ohio Justice and Policy Center contends that it often receives mail from prisoners which includes allegations against specific guards, and that opening and reading this mail could result in retaliation. “[This policy] opens the door for private correspondence to be viewed with total disregard for our client’s civil rights and First Amendment rights,” said Gabe Davis, the firm’s chief executive officer. “We are suing the department because this has to stop now.” According to state data, of the known sources for how drugs enter …