The high cost of staying in touch while incarcerated can linger long after release

NEW ORLEANS — After serving 28 years in prison, Charles Amos walked out of Louisiana’s Angola prison a free man. But since his release last year, he’s felt the economic strain of costly prison phone calls to stay in touch with his incarcerated friends.

The 49-year-old spends $150 each month for phone calls, as well as other means of communication like e-messaging technology and video visits. For him, connecting with some of the men he grew up with in prison and whom he considers family is important.

The money, which gets deposited into his friends’ phone accounts, has become a fixed cost, just like an electricity bill.

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“Just like I don’t forget to pay my bills so the lights don’t go off, I’m not going to forget to send them money because I know how important that is,” Amos said.

While prices for phone calls have come down in recent years due to new regulations, advocates warn prison telecom companies are creating and emphasizing other services, like video calling and electronic messaging, at unreasonable prices that evade existing regulations.

After 28 years in prison, Charles Amos was greeted by his sister, Judy Bell, after being released from Angola prison in April. His sister made weekly phone calls to Amos during incarceration which he said sustained him and prepared him for reentry. Photo courtesy of the Amos family.

For Amos, those high price-per-minute charges — in Louisiana, an average of $2.10 for a 15-minute, in-state prison phone call and up to 30 cents for each text-based electronic message — are worth paying to keep incarcerated friends connected to the outside world. There is a wealth of research that points to the benefits of regular contact during incarceration, including improved health while in prison and a lower likelihood of recidivism after release.

Amos’ sister used to call him every Thursday at 11 a.m. Another friend, who was like a surrogate mother, would call every Tuesday at 7 p.m. He said those regularly scheduled calls sustained him.

“I don’t want to abandon my family. So I make the necessary sacrifices just as my family members made necessary sacrifices for me,” Amos said. “Coming home, I didn’t feel alone because I was building relationships over the years with various people. It gave me a solid foundation.”

Helping his friends stay connected to their families has eaten into his savings. It’s money that Amos could use to pay for his upcoming wedding and his new life. Last Christmas, Amos couldn’t buy gifts, and he delayed buying a winter coat because he wanted to make sure his friends in prison had money to make calls.

“It’s juggling and managing your money to survive in prison. Now I’m doing it on the outside,” he said.

Some families in the U.S. are paying $400 to $500 a month to connect with their incarcerated family members, said Wanda Bertram, spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative. Bertram said that for those leaving prison, that money can equal the cost of a security deposit on a new apartment or the price of a repair to a car needed for transportation.

More than one-third of families with incarcerated relatives go into debt to cover the cost of staying in touch, according to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. These costs add to the financial instability formerly incarcerated people experience since many leave prison saddled with debt. The center’s 2015 survey, conducted by researchers across 14 states, found that formerly incarcerated people have an average debt of more than $13,000 in fines and fees.

That is a debilitating number in states like Louisiana, where more than half of people in the state live below the poverty level or are considered working poor. For Black Louisianans, who make up a disproportionate percentage of the state’s incarcerated population, the picture is starker. Seventy percent of Black households struggle to make ends meet — earning more than the federal poverty threshold but not enough to cover all basic needs, according to the latest ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed) report from the Louisiana Association of United Ways.

Over the last two decades, political pressure from families and advocates has helped to lower the prices of prison and jail phone rates. In 2018, a 15-minute call from jails, which are run by cities and counties, cost more than $10 in more than half of U.S. states, according to PPI. The cost topped more than $15 in 15 states. As of 2021, a jail in the U.S. charges, on average, $3 for a 15-minute call. And while regulations at the national and statewide levels have also contributed to the overall drop in phone call rates for incarcerated people, a typical phone call home from jail is still at least three times as much in 20 states as a call from a state prison, the nonpartisan think tank found in its latest report.

Jails tend to be more expensive than state prisons, which often negotiate down rates and benefit from one centralized agency. County jails have no such structure and less negotiating power.

A big win in the fight against these phone costs came in January when President Joe Biden signed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the ability to regulate the price of in-state prison phone calls across the country.

Previously, the FCC capped prison and jail calls out of state at 21 cents a minute. The agency also tried placing a cap on in-state calls in 2015, but a federal court later struck down those regulations. The new Martha Wright-Reed Act grants the FCC the authority to regulate the rates of in-state calls and “ensure just and reasonable charges.”

It also clarifies that the FCC has jurisdiction to regulate video calls and “is a big step forward for phone justice,” Bertram said. “The FCC, however, must still go through the rule-making process, which means it could be late 2024 before they officially make changes,” she added.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in December that she would work “to expeditiously move new rules forward to fix this problem.”

In another signal that the political winds have shifted, Aventiv Technologies, the parent company of prison services provider Securus, said they now support the new law.

“We believe it is long overdue for our industry to stop fighting with reform-minded legislators and regulators. We look forward to working collaboratively with regulators and legislators,” the company wrote in December.

However, advocates and groups like the Prison Policy Initiative have already warned the new law does not keep up with new technology and that telecom companies are evading regulations by shifting toward other unregulated communication services like video calls, tablets, and e-messaging.

In a new report released last week, PPI said the “explosive growth” of this trend by a handful of telecom providers has further cut off communications for already financially burdened families trying to communicate with their loved ones.

“We see a lot of prisons and jails adopt these new technologies and then eliminate in-person visits and eliminate physical mail,” said Bertram of PPI. “The major gaps right now are in regulating the cost of non-phone services. Those are clearly the sites of the most intense exploitation.”

People in prison are often charged by the minute to read books on tablets and e-books, and people are charged to receive a photocopy of their mail, she added.

In its report, PPI said, “Other technology has exploded in prisons and has become the new way that the same companies that made tons of money off of prison phone calls continue to profit off the backs of some of the most vulnerable members of society,” noting this practice “has yet to face the legislative and regulatory oversight it desperately needs."

For video calls, some states like Connecticut, offer the service for free. But as PPI has noted, video calling is largely less regulated than phone calls and can vary in price depending on the location.

“People in prison and jail or their families are forced to pay $8 for a 20-minute video call. We're talking about a service that most of us use for free,” Bertram said.

Also, at least 43 state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons offer some electronic messaging options, which are text-based like email, but have certain limitations, such as not supporting non-English characters and news stories cannot be shared. Critics, like PPI, say this type of messaging is not like regular email because it is rigid, lacks certain features, and has arbitrary restrictions like character limits. Attachments like photos and videos are also limited and costly.

Only a handful of locations offered this technology when the nonprofit last looked at e-messaging in 2016. Today, a small number of companies also dominate the market. In Louisiana, Securus offers e-messaging under its “JPay” service. The company alone serves nearly half of the prison systems that offer e-messaging, holding contracts in 22 states.

Nationally, the cost to send an e-message varies widely. It’s a free service in Connecticut but 50 cents in Alaska and Arkansas, according to PPI.

“Price gouging is a great word for it,” Bertram said. “People who are close, whose relationships are not maintained, will wither. And that's going to leave incarcerated people without a lifeline to the outside world.”

Amos also said families are charged exorbitant fees for services related to prison and jail communications. Ancillary fees connected to actions in opening and maintaining a phone account, like depositing money, opening and closing accounts, getting refunds, and receiving paper bills, add to the overall costs. For example, when Amos digitally deposits $50 into an incarcerated friend's account, there can be as much as an extra $18 in fees.

Nationally, PPI found that fees added up to nearly 40 percent of what incarcerated people and their families spent on calls.

“It seems like there is always some type of scam with the prison system. They are always looking to get the most dollars out of you,” Amos said as he recalled his struggles to stay connected while incarcerated. “Initially, when I first went to prison, it was months before I could talk to somebody.”

The body of evidence over the last 50 years is clear about the positive impacts of contact for incarcerated people and their families.

Studies have found that prisoners who stay connected with their family members while incarcerated have better post-release outcomes and lower recidivism rates. It also improves the health and behavior of those incarcerated.

A 1972 study, “Explorations in Inmate-Family Relationships,” found that those who had no visitors during their incarceration were six times more likely to be reincarcerated than people with three or more visitors. Similar findings in the years since continued to demonstrate how contact with family while incarcerated can lead to better outcomes when they return to the community and lower recidivism rates.

Pointing to that research, Prison Legal News once noted in 2014 that it was “abundantly clear that maintaining close family relationships during incarceration results in lower recidivism rates and therefore less crime, which benefits society as a whole.” Despite that “clear correlation,” the magazine, owned by the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center, wrote that corrections officials aren’t doing enough to encourage that contact.

In Louisiana, Davante Lewis recently won a seat on the Public Service Commission (PSC), which can set in-state rates. Lewis campaigned on taming the correctional phone market in Louisiana and since joining the commission has ordered a study on costs for all communication services with the ultimate goal of free phone calls.

“I don't think it's a privilege that you get to communicate and have human interaction. That should be something that is just given,” Lewis said. The high costs of incarceration, including phone and visit costs create “economic instability, which means now the family that was supporting the incarcerated person has become housing unstable, food insecure, or maybe unable to afford their vehicle.”

“This creates all of these barriers for when someone comes back out. They now don't have a stable place to go,” Lewis added.

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He’d also like to reign in what advocates call “predatory contracts” that promise what activists call “kickbacks” to local and state authorities, with the cost passed on to families and incarcerated people.

Many prison phone contracts are based on a "commission" model, where the prison or jail accepts a site commission from the phone service provider. In Louisiana, those payments amount to more than $3 million, according to 2016 figures from the Human Rights Defense Center.

Today, states such as New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island have outlawed site commissions. California and Connecticut have made prison calls free of charge, while Colorado lawmakers are considering a similar bill.

Lewis said the exorbitant phone costs exist, in part, because “there is a built-in profit system between telecommunication companies and prisons, jails, and wardens.”

“Why are we making it so hard to have people communicate when we know [family contact] reduces recidivism?” Lewis asked. “What’s worse, a family can spend almost half their yearly salary communicating with a loved one. And to me, that is just unacceptable and is not fair and not just. If we did this in a fair and just way, everyone would benefit.”

For nonprofits trying to help formerly incarcerated people, the high communications costs are upending their budgets. Instead of going to reentry programs, funds are now being directed to communication services for those struggling to maintain relationships.

Norris Henderson (center) embraces Charles Amos (right) and his sister, Judy Bell, at an event honoring Henders u o’s success over the last 20 years since his release. Henderson mentored Amos during incarceration and provided him with a job at VOTE, a nonprofit he built for formerly incarcerated people. Photo courtesy of the Amos family

Norris Henderson mentored Amos while in prison and gave him a job once he was released. Henderson is the executive director of the advocacy organization Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), which is founded and run by formerly incarcerated people. Amos said the phone calls and e-messaging became even more critical to help VOTE track prison conditions during the height of COVID.

“The impact [from the cost of communicating] has been enormous. Some of us have been tethered to this phone system for better than 40 years,” Henderson said. “One of the commitments most folks make on the way out is that they won't forget where they came from or all the people they left behind. And so to stay connected to them, you wind up putting money into an account.”

Henderson led a monthlong phone boycott at Angola in the mid-1990s while he was incarcerated, which led to an investigation and an eventual change in telephone provider. Nearly three decades later, he’s still one of the most prominent voices for prison phone justice reform.

Henderson said prison phone companies and correctional departments are “taking advantage of a captive audience.” He doesn’t buy into the argument by those same operators that communication systems require unique security features. Still, Henderson is more hopeful that change is coming.

“You get a lot of contraband cell phones inside prisons. And the reason is that people want to stay in touch with their folks. And this is how they do it because these folks can’t afford to pay the exorbitant prices.” Henderson said. “I tell folks all the time, ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.’ And I think we've been making some progress. We haven't gotten where we need to be, but we're making some progress.”

Across town at “Daughters Beyond Incarceration (DBI),” organizers believe requiring incarcerated people to pay for phone calls breaks their connection with their families.

The group’s primary mission, which sprung out of the high cost of communication, is to overcome those barriers so that each daughter from 8 to 18 years old can have a strong, positive relationship with their parent during and after incarceration.

The group, which helps 150 girls, spends $12,000 a year just on communication services, founder and executive director Dominque Jones-Johnson said. Phone calls are normally the only way children can maintain contact since most can’t travel the hundreds of miles separating them from their loved ones in prison.

In Louisiana, which has been called “The Incarceration Capital of the World,” parental incarceration affects about one out of every 12 children.

“I tell everyone on my team that every year we do our budget, we have to make sure that we allocate funds to cover the cost of our incarcerated loved ones,” Jones-Johnson said. “I think we won't be able to solve this until you take all of the fees out and just allow people to talk to their loved ones for free.”

Jones-Johnson knows the cost firsthand. Her family has an excel spreadsheet to track the more than $300 they spend each month so her four children can talk to their incarcerated grandfather three times a day. How much they talk depends on how many 15-minute intervals the family can afford.

The group co-authored the “LA Informational Handbook for Caregivers of Children with Incarcerated Parents,” which includes a breakdown of phone costs and fees, resources, and strategies to support children with incarcerated parents. Jones-Johnson spoke about the issue at a February PSC meeting. She said it was to send a message to Lewis and the other public service commissioners.

“Regardless of what my parent does, don't take away my privileges to talk to my parents while incarcerated,” Jones-Johnson said, recounting her remarks to lawmakers. “And, if you truly want to help me become a positive adult or positive citizen in this community, then what I need is to be able to communicate verbally and physically with my father, my incarcerated loved one.”

For Charles Amos, who still views life through the eyes of incarceration, reducing or eliminating the $150 he spends each month on phone costs would put his life on stronger financial footing, and he could focus on continuing to rebuild his life.

“I would like to put money aside in the savings, but my first paycheck goes to the prison,” Amos said. “For now, I feel like I can make those sacrifices for the guys in prison. I believe they need it more than I do.”