The Federal Communications Commission voted today to lower the price caps on prison phone calls, closing a loophole that allowed prison telecom companies to charge high rates for intrastate calls. Today’s vote will cut the price of interstate calls in half and establish price caps on intrastate calls for the first time.
The FCC said it “has voted to end the exorbitant phone and video call rates that have burdened prisoners and their families for decades. Under the new rules, the cost of a 15-minute phone call will drop from $11.35 to $0.90 in large prisons and, in small prisons, from $12.10 to $1.35.”
The new rules are expected to come into effect in January 2025 for all prisons and for prisons with at least 1,000 inmates. The rate caps would come into effect in April 2025 in smaller prisons.
Worth Rises, a nonprofit that advocates for prison reform, said it “estimates the new rules will impact 83 percent of inmates (about 1.4 million) and save affected families at least $500 million annually.”
New authority over intrastate appeals
The FCC has had numerous votes to lower prison phone rates over the years, but today’s is particularly significant. While the FCC has previously been able to cap the price of interstate calls, an attempt to fix prices for intrastate calls was rejected by the courts in 2017.
Prison phone companies could sue again. But the FCC said it now has authority over intrastate prison phone prices because of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in January 2023. The new law “gave the FCC the authority to close the last remaining loopholes in the communications system,” the commission said.
The 2023 law, named after a grandmother who campaigned for lower prison phone rates, “removes key statutory limitations that have prevented the Commission from setting comprehensive, just, and reasonable rates,” the FCC said. In particular, the law removes “limits on the Commission's ability to regulate rates for intrastate voice calls and video communications.”
According to data in a draft FCC order released ahead of the meeting, more than half of prison audio calls occur within the state, with the calling and called parties both located in the same state.
The FCC's work to lower prison phone rates “has not always been embraced by the courts,” Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. “We were told—over and over again—that the commission did not have the authority to address every aspect of these rates because while interstate calls fell within our jurisdiction, intrastate calls did not.”
Previously, the FCC set price caps for interstate calls ranging from $0.14 to $0.21 per minute for voice calls, depending on the size of the facility. Going forward, a uniform set of price caps ranging from $0.06 to $0.12 per minute will apply to both interstate and intrastate calls.
