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 families paying exorbitant rates for phone calls and an entrenched carceral telecommunications industry.

Later, consolidation “reinforced the industry’s underlying incentive structure, allowing dominant providers to maintain high prices and expand with limited competitive pressure.” This created the current carceral communications landscape, “a $1.5 billion industry, with three providers owning nearly 90% of the market.”

The cost of carceral communications is often carried by the families of the incarcerated. Those families have already taken a $9.1 billion hit due to the lost wages of the incarcerated member. “They are far more likely than the general population to be low-income,” the report found. Each family also incurs “nearly $4,200 annually in related costs, with Black family members paying 2.5 times more than white family members.” The cost of telecommunications is a significant portion of the related costs.

According to the report, “The prohibitive cost of communication also imposes deep relational and emotional costs. When communication is limited by the ability to pay, people are forced to ration connection, keeping conversations brief, limiting contact, and often foregoing meaningful engagement. Incarcerated people and their families report engaging in an ‘emotional balancing act,’ censoring their emotions and avoiding complex topics in a profoundly damaging cost-benefit calculation. And then there are the relationships that were never sustained because the cost of connection was too high. This isolation strains mental health, weakens family bonds, and creates barriers to a relationship people rely on to rebuild their lives.”

Prison reform advocates and families of prisoners began challenging the high cost of carceral communications in the 1990s via lawsuits, regulation, organization and lobbying for legislation. Although their early efforts resulted in isolated wins and generated national attention, they did not result in systemic reforms.

In 2001, Martha Wright-Reed filed a lawsuit complaining of the high cost of communicating with her imprisoned grandson, Ulandis Forte. This and related litigation eventually spurred the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into regulating carceral communication after a lengthy struggle and the 2023 signing of the federal Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act. The resulting regulatory cap on carceral phone calls still left costs vastly higher than comparable calls outside prisons and up to more than 10 times the costs paid by the few agencies providing prisoners free phone calls. Sadly, shortly after Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) took office in 2025, the FCC backtracked and voted to raise the caps, as PLN reported. [See: PLN Nov. 2025, p.62.]

In 2021, Connecticut became the first state to make telecommunications free across all of its prisons. California, Massachusetts and Minnesota followed in 2023. Then New York did it in 2025 and Colorado reached 100% free phone calls in July 2026. The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) gives conditional free phone calls to certain prisoners. The Connecticut and Massachusetts legislation also made phone calls from county jails free. New York City jails have free calls. So do some county jails in California (Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco), Florida (Alachua and Miami-Dade), and Minnesota (Ramsey).

The report was based on quantitative and qualitative data from jurisdictions with free calls which incarcerate over 300,000 people. Across all jurisdictions, phone usage increased from an average of 25.1 minutes per person per day to 44.8 minutes in prisons and 26.7 to 56.7 minutes in jails. The higher the previous rate, the greater the increase in usage.

To date, the incarcerated and their families (hereafter, “families”) saved $622.5 million. They also benefited from 600 million additional phone calls and 6.4 billion additional minutes of connection. The annual per person savings ranged from $172 to $1,801. The annual per person value of the additional connection ranged from $244 to $2,927.

The savings were a significant boon to families who struggled to pay bills, often because the main earner was incarcerated. Having the agency pay for communication drastically reduced its cost with an average 62% reduction across state prisons and 68% reduction across jails. The most efficient negotiations yielded effective rates per minute between $0.016 and $0.024 in prisons and $0.03 and $0.04 in jails.

For instance, in Connecticut, families paid between $0.235 and $0.325 per minute under the previous contract. The state’s current contract with Securus requires a payment of $30 per incarcerated person per month for phone calls and $15 for electronic messaging. This averages out to $0.0222 per minute for phone calls. The state spends $3.9 million on phone calls and $1.9 million on electronic messaging each year.

In all of the prisons and jails, the report found, “staff describe free communications policies as a security tool, crediting access to free communication with reducing tensions, calming facilities, and making their jobs easier. Seventy-nine percent of incarcerated people also described positive changes in the prison environment once communication became free.”

“Since implementing the free phone call policy last August, we have seen significant increase in call activity, demonstrating that when financial burdens are removed, individuals in our care make greater use of opportunities to stay connected. These strengthened connections provide critical support and contribute to reduced conflict inside facilities and improved outcomes,” said New York State prison Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III.

This is especially interesting as New York previously had a low rate for prison phone calls, $0.03 per minute, yet had the highest per prisoner daily free call usage, 87.9 minutes.

Rolling out phone-call-capable tablets while making calls free resulted in a 208% jump in the rate of daily usage in California. The tablets eliminated another barrier to usage, long lines to use wall phones.

The deeper connections increased communications allowed benefited the mental health of both prisoners and their families. Connections with children were especially important. This, in turn, increased the prisoners’ motivation to rehabilitate. Although the billions of carceral minutes cost agencies millions of dollars, it is a tiny fraction of their budgets and easily justifiable as a rehabilitation program.

Free calls let prisoners better prepare for reentry, with the names of potential employers easily added to a prisoner’s telephone list and the possibility of lengthy telephonic job interviews. Free calls are clearly a win-win situation.  

Source: Connect Families Now

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