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FCC votes to limit prison telecom charges

982 points by Avshalom 2y ago

user3939382 2y ago
Great. This was used to separate people from their families which increases recidivism.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  Yes, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholder.
  - Sharlin 2y ago
    I mean, increased recitivism means more value for the shareholders.
    - gchamonlive 2y ago
      Privatizing the social correction sector is a joke of really bad taste. Incentives are exactly like that, to increase recidivism and not actually re-socialize inmates. You'd think that competition would foster better correction facilities, but as with big pharma, being effective is counterproductive because it hinders growth, which is at the core of capitalism. Not saying competition is bad, only that it's maybe not universally applicable to all areas.
      - crabmusket 2y ago
        > You'd think that competition would foster better correction facilities Why would you think that? It's not like consumers get to pick their prisons.
        gchamonlive 2y ago
        Inmates are products, not consumers. Consumers would be governments, and they would in theory over time select those administration companies that would offer the best correction facilities for the lowest price. However, I am actually making the point against that. Privatization of that area makes no sense at all. I might have phrased that in a way that works against the central point of my argument, but the idea is that no, there is no competition that could possibly justify privatizing the corrections sector.
        crabmusket 2y ago
        I agree with what you're saying, I just didn't think it was a very sturdy strawman ;)
      - jakjak123 2y ago
        Failure to consider holistic societal gains is not something new for Americans at least. Both for tax payers and corporations, making any inmate a productive tax payer would be better for society and for shareholder value.
      - pants2 2y ago
        If the competition were set up with the right incentives, like payment to the private prisons based on their recidivism rates or job placement after incarceration, it might actually work. But today we're creating backwards incentives.
        crabmusket 2y ago
        That would require agreement on what the purpose of prison is, and what constitutes a "good" prison!
actionfromafar 2y ago
Is this an example of something which could be affected by the (absence of) Chevron doctrine?
- bubblethink 2y ago
  No. "The regulations adopted today mark the implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which established the FCC’s authority to regulate in-state phone and video calls from correctional facilities, in addition to out-of-state phone calls that it had already regulated." https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/154...
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    That's somewhat reassuring... but it would feel much better if you followed up with "and this is <insert reason> why the law is so clear-cut that the decision by the FTC cannot be seen as inventing regulation and so nobody will litigate much less win in court against the FTC".
    - semiquaver 2y ago
      This regulation implements a law that was passed in direct response to a court ruling striking down the FCC’s ability to regulate in-state prison calls because there was no clear wording in the law granting them that authority. Now there is, as the law was explicitly written to grant the FCC the power a court ruled they lacked. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/01/19/martha-wright-reed-act/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/01/19/martha-wright-r...
- kbos87 2y ago
  This was my immediate question. I'm also curious what in terms of services these vendors actually layer on top of any other phone system. There's clearly a payment processing layer where inmates can store credit to make calls, but are these systems otherwise that different from what would be offered by any other telecom vendor?
rottencupcakes 2y ago
Wow what a poorly written headline. I thought it said that the FCC had voted to limit the speed of prison internet.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  Perhaps we could edit the title to reflect that they're limiting the price and not the speed
- Avshalom 2y ago
  I just changed it to 'charges', the headline was too long so I was chopping words off.
avsteele 2y ago
What are the economics of this market? Do the prisons pay less in overhead in exchange for the higher rates? Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't competitive? According to one source (below): some prisons gets a commission on each call, which ultimately would be paid for by the users/convicts. This makes sense as a reason for high prices because you have the entity (prison admin) choosing a provider with an actual incentive to not choose the lowest cost one. https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/ https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/
- indymike 2y ago
  > Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't competitive? The prison operator has a (joke not intended) captive market and that is exploited by contractors who often share the proceeds with the prison operator.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  The economics are simply that prisons are rent-seekers.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  From my global (US) understanding of it: Prison telco providers also often provide their services at zero or negative cost to the prison (i.e. commissions on calls or services). They also provide additional "value-add" services to the prisoners which are also extortionally priced (music downloads, ebook purchases). The tablets are also often starting to replace physical mail - inmates are being denied physical mail, instead letters and drawings being filtered, scanned, and uploaded remotely from elsewhere. Or they can write letters outbound - just have to pay for "digital stamps" - even for electronic mail. Double points for making people on the outside buy the "digital stamps" to send them inwards, too! Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner while making themselves look like the Good Guys for providing access to all this information and capabilities in such a safe and controlled manner and at "no cost to the taxpayer!"
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    >Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner A packet of Ramen in a prison store will cost several dollars. There's zero acceptable justification for this. Making a prisoner pay more for a snack isn't justice. Also, it's not a snack, because in most states, prisoners are only required to be given two """Meals""" a day. There are very few nutritional or minimum standard requirements for these """meals""" and in many counties, there is a rule that every dollar of the budget for feeding prisoners that is not spent is given directly to the guy who sets the menu and operates the canteen. Most prison meals in these systems look like that famous picture of a "sandwhich" from the Fyre festival. You know, the kind of thing that would be used as an example of "Perverse incentive" in a high school economics textbook.
bubblethink 2y ago
Why are the rates still so high ? Video calls are 0.16-0.25/min. I can understand that the old system was just a cash grab, but now that FCC is regulating it, why half-ass it? Surely, it doesn't cost anywhere close to that to support a video call.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  Maybe the pay for the people surveiling the calls is included?
  - bubblethink 2y ago
    Doesn't look like it. "For decades, the cost of an ever-expanding suite of invasive surveillance services has been passed on to incarcerated people and their loved ones. With today’s new rules, prison telecoms will be barred from recovering the cost of the majority of such services from ratepayers."
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      That sounds exactly like passing on the costs to the inmate. Now they are barred from passing the costs to the inmates. I wonder if the telecoms can opt out of offering service to prisons
      - bilbo0s 2y ago
        You guys aren't thinking clearly. It's far more likely that the FCC knows the requisite surveillance is already integrated into the general telecom infrastructure in the country. There is no longer any need for special surveillance, because we already track everyone. Each prison just gets a ittle web page telling them which prisoner should be watched and why. But don't worry. Even though we've now successfully integrated surveillance and tracking into our nation's telecom system, I'm confident they won't use any web app like the ones prisons will get to track people who are not in prison. /s Anyway, it's zero cost to the telecoms, precisely because the requisite tech is already there and running 24/7. And guess who put it there? Who will opt out? No one, because the government wants that data. And the telecoms and government are collaborating to get it from every segment of society. I know this next part might be going a step too far, but it wouldn't surprise me if the real issue behind this is that the rank amateur idiot prison telecom companies don't collect good enough data. The powers that be may have decided to get the bumbling dimwits out of the way so they can see more clearly what's going on.
wanderingstan 2y ago
This is great news. It’s appalling that the prison system is the only place left in the country that charges more for “long distance” calls (like 3x IIRC). I’ve helped several families set up Google voice numbers in the region of their loved one’s prison just to save money.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Most of the jail and prison systems I know have technical checks in place for Google voice and other VOIP systems to avoid you getting around their charges. They will ban the numbers and then often ban you from the phone system and sometimes put you in the Hole for games like that. I used to use them to try to call the UK instead of paying multiple dollars a minute when my mother was dying of cancer. But it's a game of cat-and-mouse. And if you're in a place that makes you wait 4-8 weeks to get a number added to your call list, then you can't afford your number to get banned. Every day I help multiple guys inside do "3-way" calls from prison to numbers that aren't approved onto their lists yet. It's a dangerous game, though, as the calls are often detected and blocked.
  - wanderingstan 2y ago
    FWIW, my interactions have been with the federal system over 10+ years. I never heard of any blocking of google voice numbers there. It appears to be common knowledge among the inmates as a way to avoid the long distance charges.
  - buu700 2y ago
    That's wild. Google Voice has been my primary phone number since before it was called Google Voice; at this point no one except me even knows my current "real" number. I'd hate to think that someone might get in trouble just for trying to call me from prison.
- RockRobotRock 2y ago
  I worked for a company which offered a bridge between CorrLinks (federal prison email system) and SMS. The inmate would get their own phone number they could receive messages from, and make outgoing texts as well. My boss's friend operates https://phonedonkey.com https://phonedonkey.com, which provides a VOIP relay service such as what you set up.
mosburger 2y ago
Aware that this comment is wading dangerously into U.S. politics - will the recent Supreme Court decisions w/r/t the powers of executive branch agencies like the FCC make it impossible to enforce this? Edit - this from the article makes me thing that maybe it'll be OK? Sounds like there was some congressional approval involved? > The regulations adopted today mark the implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which established the FCC’s authority to regulate in-state phone and video calls from correctional facilities, in addition to out-of-state phone calls that it had already regulated. The discussion during today's vote will result in only minor changes to the draft rules released on June 27, and be released in the coming days.
- ghufran_syed 2y ago
  yeah, “chevron deference” was only really an issue with ambiguously written laws IMO, or agencies taking an overly expansive view of their authority. And they still can, but now those decisions can be challenged in court. good summary here: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/chevron-is-out-of-gas-will-it-fuel-changes-to-the-fcc/ https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/chevron-is-out-of-gas-wil...
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Which means a denial of service attack on the system is most certainly coming via that jurisdiction in Texas that has the single judge who loves issuing national injunctions.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think people misunderstand the deference standard that was actually overturned and explaining looper helps
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Ultimately I believe it will be enforced, and then potentially challenged in court. This seems to be the path for most regulation in the USA. So the question always is "Who will challenge this?" because as you point out, it has become easier for challenges to regulations to succeed (at least in theory).
relistan 2y ago
This is long overdue. Maybe didn’t go far enough, but a step in the right direction.
miki123211 2y ago
1. The government decides that prisoners can make phone calls, but they can only use a single prison-approved phone operator, and that operator is a private company. 2. The private company realizes it has no competition, raises prices as much as it wants. 3. The government is surprised with the outcome. I would say the government is at fault here for prohibiting competition, not the companies. It's the 21st century, you could establish a system where any company, with an appropriate license and government approval, could offer tablets / cell phones for prisoner use, with appropriate limitations and restrictions placed on them of course. Prisoners could then choose which company they want to go with. That would instantly eliminate the problem.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- thuuuomas 2y ago
  “Instantly” here meaning “potentially, after current contract obligations end & institutions complete the switch to a new provider”.
- Avshalom 2y ago
  I do not think the government was at all surprised, punitive charges are very much a part of the prison system in this country[1] this is people deciding to lessen the burden slightly. [1] https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/pay-to-stay-state-law-charging-inmates-for-prison-cells-being-applied-differently-from-county-to-county https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investi...
- airza 2y ago
  "the government" as an entity here really elides the difference between the federal government and state governments; state governments hold the majority of prisoners in the US and the ability of the federal government (via the FCC) to regulate prison phone calls that do not cross state lines is new since 2022. But even on top of that, what would the dream free market implementation even look like here? An entire licensure and certification system for these tablets which will inevitably be crammed with as many upsells as the law does not prohibit? What is the recourse for someone who is in prison and chooses a company whose products do not work? Are they supposed to call tech support?
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40999575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40999575
hiddencost 2y ago
Now give them minimum wage parity.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
I found this part interesting: > This comes as the two largest market players, Aventiv and ViaPath, each navigate financial crises. Aventiv recently effectively defaulted on its $1.3 billion debt after a year of failed refinancing efforts. ViaPath was reportedly closing in on a $1.5 billion refinancing deal until news of the regulations killed the deal. This suggests that either they overestimated how big the kickbacks they can pay to the prisons were, or the whole business model wasn't actually that lucrative, and providing phone services to prisoners is actually expensive (likely primarily due to the surveillance requirements). This regulation doesn't just remove the exploitation of a captive market, but also makes prisons shoulder the cost of surveillance. Which, for the reasons explained in the article (better connections to society = better chances of rehabilitation) is likely a good idea, but I can see why people would make an argument that this part of the cost of incarceration should be borne by the inmates/families, not the rest of society (the obvious counterargument would be that we don't make inmates pay the full cost of their incarceration either).
- matwood 2y ago
  Without more information it's hard to know if those companies are just poorly run or if the service really costs that much. I think society should shoulder to entire cost of prison, and hopefully we think better about who we want in prison and for how long.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Easy startup idea to provide prison phone service via a cheap VoIP provider and use a light weight LLM to flag suspicious transcripts.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    They already do. After I left prison I was hired to tidy up the transcripts of the calls as the AI they used wasn't great on prison slang. All the calls were flagged by the prosecutor's office for illegal activity, but they were all the opposite when I listened to them. It was sad. They already are cheap VOIP services too, you can hear the high level of digital compression on all the calls. There is a high cost probably in maintaining all the handsets inside the facilities.
jmyeet 2y ago
Three things I want to mention: 1. Materialism vs Idealism. Materialism is simply the idea that people affect the physical world and the physical world affects them. Idealism is the idea that essentially some people are inherently good or evil. Idealism underpins our entire discourse around prisons (and, more generally, politics). It's really damaging. It essentially says that some people are just inherently violent or otherwise criminals. It's far more productive to take a materialist view because an awful lot of crime is simply a response to material conditions. The link between poverty and crime has been observed since Plato. If simply locking people up worked, the US would be the safest country on Earth since we have 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. 2. We exploit every aspect of prisons and prisoners to the deteriment of those prisoners and our society as a whole. Keeping in contact with family helps reduce recidivism but no, we can't have that. We need to extort prisoners communications. Same with any form of commissary. Then there's prison labour. And of course contracts to build prisons. Every aspect is a profit opportunity. 3. Prisoners are human beings. We should never forget that. Something as simple a prison cats reduce recidivism [1] at such a ridiculously low cost. The US justice system is overly carceral and punitive. We had an era of locking people up for a decade for mere drug possession. Thing is, you can only do this by dehumanizing them, which robs you of your own humanity. [1]: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/10/19/cats-inmates-rehabilitate-each-other-through-animal-care-program/5798291002/ https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/...
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  It's so gigantic you can't even pay ex prisoners the hundreds of thousands, minimum, it would take to return some equity without causing a currency crisis printing the money! So many wasted man-years, the unconceived children, etc.
lr4444lr 2y ago
I'm happy about it, but agency regulations like this are notoriously flimsy and prone to overturn by administrative changes.
atemerev 2y ago
Good call — it would be inconvenient to run a country in 2025 otherwise.
alsetmusic 2y ago
I’m genuinely shocked that there was bipartisan support on this. I can’t remember that happening on any FCC ruling since I started paying attention to the ones that made headlines and that’s since the first net neutrality era (which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; just that I didn’t notice if it did).
dvektor 2y ago
I remember when I first went to jail in 2013, every month paying for a $20 phone card and getting to make a 25 minute "long-distance" call. I couldn't believe that this was legal, and even if it was, I was in disbelief that morally, this was allowed to go on. There are so many other similarities in corrections that my family and I would unfortunately go on to discover over the years, things that until you experience them firsthand, either by yourself or a loved one being incarcerated, that you likely wouldn't believe.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Amen, brother. I was an advocate for prison reform before getting locked up, but once you're inside and you find out how truly insane everything is, you realize that jails and prisons are where decency and kindness go to die. I'm in a Zoom conference with the federal court in 45 mins trying to get two constitutional violations at the biggest jail in the country fixed, but obviously the government's lawyers are maintaining that this jail is too big to fix the problems. The judge's line is that if the smallest jails in the country can not violate the rights of the detainees, why can't the biggest? The government is adamant that their size protects them from having to say, provide a working mail system.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    It is Teams, not Zoom. I'm in the conference with the federal judge and the government lawyers right now. Currently they are maintaining their stance that they are unwilling to fix constitutional violations. They'd rather go to trial and lose and pay my lawyer the 7 figure sum in fees he's owed, than agree to fix the conditions. This is the sort of people that run our jails and prisons -- and spend your tax dollars.
    - basil-rash 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      OK, settled the case. Luckily my lawyer was working pro bono as he racked up over $600K in billable hours I understand. I'm waiting for an email back to see if I can discuss it or whether it is NDA'd lol. The judge said that she had never seen any institution so stubbornly against fixing what they were legally entitled to fix.
ThomW 2y ago
Prisons need to be run by the government and aim for rehabilitation. For-profit prisons shouldn't exist. What's the incentive for a company to rehabilitate prisoners? It'd ruin repeat business and eat into profits. :/
- jagged-chisel 2y ago
  I’m all for government-run rehabilitation focus. I had an entire message about a capitalist stopgap, but every idea I have creates some perverse incentives.
- Avshalom 2y ago
  To be clear these fees are just as bad at government run prisons and jails.
- pandemicsoul 2y ago
  I wonder how many people in this thread generally vote for Republicans, who are disproportionally the recipients of for-profit prison company money? https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=G7000 https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=G7000
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Not all states have private prisons. Oregon, or example, prohibits them (and prohibits sending Oregon inmates to a private prison in another state). But we still have 9 cents a minute for phone calls. I think it's paid by the outside caller, though, not the inmate. I generally support prison being a less-than-lavish experience, but charging for phone calls seems over the top. Inhumane, if it prevents inmates from talking with their loved ones. They're still humans, and most of them will get out of prison someday, we should keep that in mind.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  You're not thinking big enough. Why do we even need so many people in prison? The staff in prisons are never motivated to run any kind of real rehabilitation programs, and worthwhile ones are incredibly rare. They get the press when you see a prisoner learning AutoCAD or something, but there are so few slots for something like that, while everyone else does bullshit classes where they ask you what you should do when you find a wallet in the street and then make you color some pages with crayons (really).
Interesco 2y ago
I had a friend who was incarcerated for a time; he sent me a message from the "jail-approved" platform smartjailmail. In order to respond I had to purchase credits - each message I sent was 50 credits and I could include "return postage" (sending them 50 credits to reply) with a max of 2000 characters per message. Pictures cost 100 credits to send. The minimum number of credits that I could purchase was 500, and all transactions included a payment fee of a few bucks. Glad to see this changing as it struck me as a very predatory business model.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Yeah, it's still like this at most places. I use this system every day to communicate with a lot of inmates in prison, trying to get them information from the Internet, mostly legal topics, but also MCU news :)
whoitwas 2y ago
This is excellent. Crush the private prisons to dust.
currymj 2y ago
I think there is a lot of confusion around private prisons in the US. I can't understand why this is such a talking point for people who want prison reform. For-profit companies operating carceral facilities is just not the main reason things are so bad. There is an easy way to see this: lots of public, government run jails & prisons are also brutally awful and evil places. For example, Rikers Island is not a private prison. On top of this, private facilities incarcerate only a small percentage. You could turn all the private prisons over to be operated by government employees and not much would improve. On the other hand, it is true that many problems in the carceral system are created by profit-seeking companies. Mainly they look like what we see here: contractors operating a single service possibly winning the contract through kickbacks, and then providing a bad service. You see this in food and healthcare too not just telecom. I guess it is true that private prison operators will want to do the same thing. But it's a problem for all facilities, not just the small number of private facilities. And even if you could solve these issues via regulation or competition, it wouldn't change the many other evils that are inflicted on incarcerated people. So I can't understand why "the US has private prisons" appears to be everybody's primary talking point about why the US carceral system is so awful.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  The uncomfortable resemblance to slavery and other obviously problematic aspects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal) of it probably has a lot to do with it getting such disproportionate attention. (The vast majority of prisons are still public.) That and it offers an easy, feel-good solution that unfortunately doesn't address systematic problems: just ban private prisons.
  - currymj 2y ago
    even if one is concerned with remarkable similarity of prison labor to slavery, implications of 13th amendment clause, etc., most of the prison labor is for wholly-government-owned enterprises, frequently manufacturing things for other government departments. As another example, Louisiana is phasing out private prisons. That should be great! Meanwhile Angola (state-run) continues to have prisoners picking cotton. I know people know about this because they always bring up prisoners picking cotton in these conversations, but then the talking point remains "private prisons" somehow. So I still don't get why this idea is so sticky.
wnc3141 2y ago
It's one of the most egregious vestiges of the patronage system. The lack of political accountability has allowed the problem to fester.
bdcravens 2y ago
I have a friend in a local county jail. He pays $0.21/minute for calls. I also communicate with a friend in the state prison system in Texas. An "email" (they do have limited use tablets) costs a "stamp", and each photo I attach is 1 stamp (limited to 5). (each "stamp" costs $0.45)
notfed 2y ago
> The new order more than halves the per-minute rate caps for all prison and jail phone calls across the country Not good enough. Anyway shouldn't these fees as least go back to cover public court fees or something? Why are we allowing cartels to leach money from prisoners?
bjoli 2y ago
Isn't this, together will all other wins in things like environment protection, bound to be rolled back in the event of a Trump victory?
ada1981 2y ago
I thought this had to do with sentencing / prosecution. Doh.
iftheshoefitss 2y ago
The thing that’s awesome about the US is nondestructive mitigation. Systems can be upgraded in place without killing a huge chunk or percentage of the population
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
totallywrong 2y ago
The comments in this thread are terrifying, hard to believe this is happening in the US in 2024.
ddingus 2y ago
About damn time! Of course most people have no idea how brutal these systems are simply because they have nobody in the system. That was me, until someone ended up using this stuff. Frankly, I was shocked! I have a major league problem with for profit prison. Big conflict of interest. And this extortion on top of it. Good to see reform.

982 points by Avshalom 2y ago

user3939382 2y ago

Great. This was used to separate people from their families which increases recidivism.

Mashimo 2y ago
Yes, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholder.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  I mean, increased recitivism means more value for the shareholders.
  - gchamonlive 2y ago
    Privatizing the social correction sector is a joke of really bad taste. Incentives are exactly like that, to increase recidivism and not actually re-socialize inmates. You'd think that competition would foster better correction facilities, but as with big pharma, being effective is counterproductive because it hinders growth, which is at the core of capitalism. Not saying competition is bad, only that it's maybe not universally applicable to all areas.
    - crabmusket 2y ago
      > You'd think that competition would foster better correction facilities Why would you think that? It's not like consumers get to pick their prisons.
      - gchamonlive 2y ago
        Inmates are products, not consumers. Consumers would be governments, and they would in theory over time select those administration companies that would offer the best correction facilities for the lowest price. However, I am actually making the point against that. Privatization of that area makes no sense at all. I might have phrased that in a way that works against the central point of my argument, but the idea is that no, there is no competition that could possibly justify privatizing the corrections sector.
        crabmusket 2y ago
        I agree with what you're saying, I just didn't think it was a very sturdy strawman ;)
    - jakjak123 2y ago
      Failure to consider holistic societal gains is not something new for Americans at least. Both for tax payers and corporations, making any inmate a productive tax payer would be better for society and for shareholder value.
    - pants2 2y ago
      If the competition were set up with the right incentives, like payment to the private prisons based on their recidivism rates or job placement after incarceration, it might actually work. But today we're creating backwards incentives.
      - crabmusket 2y ago
        That would require agreement on what the purpose of prison is, and what constitutes a "good" prison!

actionfromafar 2y ago

Is this an example of something which could be affected by the (absence of) Chevron doctrine?

bubblethink 2y ago
No. "The regulations adopted today mark the implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which established the FCC’s authority to regulate in-state phone and video calls from correctional facilities, in addition to out-of-state phone calls that it had already regulated." https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/154...
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  That's somewhat reassuring... but it would feel much better if you followed up with "and this is <insert reason> why the law is so clear-cut that the decision by the FTC cannot be seen as inventing regulation and so nobody will litigate much less win in court against the FTC".
  - semiquaver 2y ago
    This regulation implements a law that was passed in direct response to a court ruling striking down the FCC’s ability to regulate in-state prison calls because there was no clear wording in the law granting them that authority. Now there is, as the law was explicitly written to grant the FCC the power a court ruled they lacked. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/01/19/martha-wright-reed-act/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/01/19/martha-wright-r...
kbos87 2y ago
This was my immediate question. I'm also curious what in terms of services these vendors actually layer on top of any other phone system. There's clearly a payment processing layer where inmates can store credit to make calls, but are these systems otherwise that different from what would be offered by any other telecom vendor?

rottencupcakes 2y ago

Wow what a poorly written headline. I thought it said that the FCC had voted to limit the speed of prison internet.

ants_everywhere 2y ago
Perhaps we could edit the title to reflect that they're limiting the price and not the speed
Avshalom 2y ago
I just changed it to 'charges', the headline was too long so I was chopping words off.

avsteele 2y ago

What are the economics of this market? Do the prisons pay less in overhead in exchange for the higher rates? Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't competitive? According to one source (below): some prisons gets a commission on each call, which ultimately would be paid for by the users/convicts. This makes sense as a reason for high prices because you have the entity (prison admin) choosing a provider with an actual incentive to not choose the lowest cost one. https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/ https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/

indymike 2y ago
> Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't competitive? The prison operator has a (joke not intended) captive market and that is exploited by contractors who often share the proceeds with the prison operator.
Sharlin 2y ago
The economics are simply that prisons are rent-seekers.
kotaKat 2y ago
From my global (US) understanding of it: Prison telco providers also often provide their services at zero or negative cost to the prison (i.e. commissions on calls or services). They also provide additional "value-add" services to the prisoners which are also extortionally priced (music downloads, ebook purchases). The tablets are also often starting to replace physical mail - inmates are being denied physical mail, instead letters and drawings being filtered, scanned, and uploaded remotely from elsewhere. Or they can write letters outbound - just have to pay for "digital stamps" - even for electronic mail. Double points for making people on the outside buy the "digital stamps" to send them inwards, too! Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner while making themselves look like the Good Guys for providing access to all this information and capabilities in such a safe and controlled manner and at "no cost to the taxpayer!"
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  >Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner A packet of Ramen in a prison store will cost several dollars. There's zero acceptable justification for this. Making a prisoner pay more for a snack isn't justice. Also, it's not a snack, because in most states, prisoners are only required to be given two """Meals""" a day. There are very few nutritional or minimum standard requirements for these """meals""" and in many counties, there is a rule that every dollar of the budget for feeding prisoners that is not spent is given directly to the guy who sets the menu and operates the canteen. Most prison meals in these systems look like that famous picture of a "sandwhich" from the Fyre festival. You know, the kind of thing that would be used as an example of "Perverse incentive" in a high school economics textbook.

bubblethink 2y ago

Why are the rates still so high ? Video calls are 0.16-0.25/min. I can understand that the old system was just a cash grab, but now that FCC is regulating it, why half-ass it? Surely, it doesn't cost anywhere close to that to support a video call.

Mashimo 2y ago
Maybe the pay for the people surveiling the calls is included?
- bubblethink 2y ago
  Doesn't look like it. "For decades, the cost of an ever-expanding suite of invasive surveillance services has been passed on to incarcerated people and their loved ones. With today’s new rules, prison telecoms will be barred from recovering the cost of the majority of such services from ratepayers."
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    That sounds exactly like passing on the costs to the inmate. Now they are barred from passing the costs to the inmates. I wonder if the telecoms can opt out of offering service to prisons
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      You guys aren't thinking clearly. It's far more likely that the FCC knows the requisite surveillance is already integrated into the general telecom infrastructure in the country. There is no longer any need for special surveillance, because we already track everyone. Each prison just gets a ittle web page telling them which prisoner should be watched and why. But don't worry. Even though we've now successfully integrated surveillance and tracking into our nation's telecom system, I'm confident they won't use any web app like the ones prisons will get to track people who are not in prison. /s Anyway, it's zero cost to the telecoms, precisely because the requisite tech is already there and running 24/7. And guess who put it there? Who will opt out? No one, because the government wants that data. And the telecoms and government are collaborating to get it from every segment of society. I know this next part might be going a step too far, but it wouldn't surprise me if the real issue behind this is that the rank amateur idiot prison telecom companies don't collect good enough data. The powers that be may have decided to get the bumbling dimwits out of the way so they can see more clearly what's going on.

wanderingstan 2y ago

This is great news. It’s appalling that the prison system is the only place left in the country that charges more for “long distance” calls (like 3x IIRC). I’ve helped several families set up Google voice numbers in the region of their loved one’s prison just to save money.

qingcharles 2y ago
Most of the jail and prison systems I know have technical checks in place for Google voice and other VOIP systems to avoid you getting around their charges. They will ban the numbers and then often ban you from the phone system and sometimes put you in the Hole for games like that. I used to use them to try to call the UK instead of paying multiple dollars a minute when my mother was dying of cancer. But it's a game of cat-and-mouse. And if you're in a place that makes you wait 4-8 weeks to get a number added to your call list, then you can't afford your number to get banned. Every day I help multiple guys inside do "3-way" calls from prison to numbers that aren't approved onto their lists yet. It's a dangerous game, though, as the calls are often detected and blocked.
- wanderingstan 2y ago
  FWIW, my interactions have been with the federal system over 10+ years. I never heard of any blocking of google voice numbers there. It appears to be common knowledge among the inmates as a way to avoid the long distance charges.
- buu700 2y ago
  That's wild. Google Voice has been my primary phone number since before it was called Google Voice; at this point no one except me even knows my current "real" number. I'd hate to think that someone might get in trouble just for trying to call me from prison.
RockRobotRock 2y ago
I worked for a company which offered a bridge between CorrLinks (federal prison email system) and SMS. The inmate would get their own phone number they could receive messages from, and make outgoing texts as well. My boss's friend operates https://phonedonkey.com https://phonedonkey.com, which provides a VOIP relay service such as what you set up.

mosburger 2y ago

Aware that this comment is wading dangerously into U.S. politics - will the recent Supreme Court decisions w/r/t the powers of executive branch agencies like the FCC make it impossible to enforce this? Edit - this from the article makes me thing that maybe it'll be OK? Sounds like there was some congressional approval involved? > The regulations adopted today mark the implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, which established the FCC’s authority to regulate in-state phone and video calls from correctional facilities, in addition to out-of-state phone calls that it had already regulated. The discussion during today's vote will result in only minor changes to the draft rules released on June 27, and be released in the coming days.

ghufran_syed 2y ago
yeah, “chevron deference” was only really an issue with ambiguously written laws IMO, or agencies taking an overly expansive view of their authority. And they still can, but now those decisions can be challenged in court. good summary here: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/chevron-is-out-of-gas-will-it-fuel-changes-to-the-fcc/ https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/chevron-is-out-of-gas-wil...
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Which means a denial of service attack on the system is most certainly coming via that jurisdiction in Texas that has the single judge who loves issuing national injunctions.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I think people misunderstand the deference standard that was actually overturned and explaining looper helps
jvanderbot 2y ago
Ultimately I believe it will be enforced, and then potentially challenged in court. This seems to be the path for most regulation in the USA. So the question always is "Who will challenge this?" because as you point out, it has become easier for challenges to regulations to succeed (at least in theory).

relistan 2y ago

This is long overdue. Maybe didn’t go far enough, but a step in the right direction.

miki123211 2y ago

1. The government decides that prisoners can make phone calls, but they can only use a single prison-approved phone operator, and that operator is a private company. 2. The private company realizes it has no competition, raises prices as much as it wants. 3. The government is surprised with the outcome. I would say the government is at fault here for prohibiting competition, not the companies. It's the 21st century, you could establish a system where any company, with an appropriate license and government approval, could offer tablets / cell phones for prisoner use, with appropriate limitations and restrictions placed on them of course. Prisoners could then choose which company they want to go with. That would instantly eliminate the problem.

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thuuuomas 2y ago
“Instantly” here meaning “potentially, after current contract obligations end & institutions complete the switch to a new provider”.
Avshalom 2y ago
I do not think the government was at all surprised, punitive charges are very much a part of the prison system in this country[1] this is people deciding to lessen the burden slightly. [1] https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/pay-to-stay-state-law-charging-inmates-for-prison-cells-being-applied-differently-from-county-to-county https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investi...
airza 2y ago
"the government" as an entity here really elides the difference between the federal government and state governments; state governments hold the majority of prisoners in the US and the ability of the federal government (via the FCC) to regulate prison phone calls that do not cross state lines is new since 2022. But even on top of that, what would the dream free market implementation even look like here? An entire licensure and certification system for these tablets which will inevitably be crammed with as many upsells as the law does not prohibit? What is the recourse for someone who is in prison and chooses a company whose products do not work? Are they supposed to call tech support?

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40999575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40999575

hiddencost 2y ago

Now give them minimum wage parity.

deleted 2y ago

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tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

I found this part interesting: > This comes as the two largest market players, Aventiv and ViaPath, each navigate financial crises. Aventiv recently effectively defaulted on its $1.3 billion debt after a year of failed refinancing efforts. ViaPath was reportedly closing in on a $1.5 billion refinancing deal until news of the regulations killed the deal. This suggests that either they overestimated how big the kickbacks they can pay to the prisons were, or the whole business model wasn't actually that lucrative, and providing phone services to prisoners is actually expensive (likely primarily due to the surveillance requirements). This regulation doesn't just remove the exploitation of a captive market, but also makes prisons shoulder the cost of surveillance. Which, for the reasons explained in the article (better connections to society = better chances of rehabilitation) is likely a good idea, but I can see why people would make an argument that this part of the cost of incarceration should be borne by the inmates/families, not the rest of society (the obvious counterargument would be that we don't make inmates pay the full cost of their incarceration either).

matwood 2y ago
Without more information it's hard to know if those companies are just poorly run or if the service really costs that much. I think society should shoulder to entire cost of prison, and hopefully we think better about who we want in prison and for how long.
Workaccount2 2y ago
Easy startup idea to provide prison phone service via a cheap VoIP provider and use a light weight LLM to flag suspicious transcripts.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  They already do. After I left prison I was hired to tidy up the transcripts of the calls as the AI they used wasn't great on prison slang. All the calls were flagged by the prosecutor's office for illegal activity, but they were all the opposite when I listened to them. It was sad. They already are cheap VOIP services too, you can hear the high level of digital compression on all the calls. There is a high cost probably in maintaining all the handsets inside the facilities.

jmyeet 2y ago

Three things I want to mention: 1. Materialism vs Idealism. Materialism is simply the idea that people affect the physical world and the physical world affects them. Idealism is the idea that essentially some people are inherently good or evil. Idealism underpins our entire discourse around prisons (and, more generally, politics). It's really damaging. It essentially says that some people are just inherently violent or otherwise criminals. It's far more productive to take a materialist view because an awful lot of crime is simply a response to material conditions. The link between poverty and crime has been observed since Plato. If simply locking people up worked, the US would be the safest country on Earth since we have 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. 2. We exploit every aspect of prisons and prisoners to the deteriment of those prisoners and our society as a whole. Keeping in contact with family helps reduce recidivism but no, we can't have that. We need to extort prisoners communications. Same with any form of commissary. Then there's prison labour. And of course contracts to build prisons. Every aspect is a profit opportunity. 3. Prisoners are human beings. We should never forget that. Something as simple a prison cats reduce recidivism [1] at such a ridiculously low cost. The US justice system is overly carceral and punitive. We had an era of locking people up for a decade for mere drug possession. Thing is, you can only do this by dehumanizing them, which robs you of your own humanity. [1]: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/10/19/cats-inmates-rehabilitate-each-other-through-animal-care-program/5798291002/ https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2020/...

rustcleaner 2y ago
It's so gigantic you can't even pay ex prisoners the hundreds of thousands, minimum, it would take to return some equity without causing a currency crisis printing the money! So many wasted man-years, the unconceived children, etc.

lr4444lr 2y ago

I'm happy about it, but agency regulations like this are notoriously flimsy and prone to overturn by administrative changes.

atemerev 2y ago

Good call — it would be inconvenient to run a country in 2025 otherwise.

alsetmusic 2y ago

I’m genuinely shocked that there was bipartisan support on this. I can’t remember that happening on any FCC ruling since I started paying attention to the ones that made headlines and that’s since the first net neutrality era (which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; just that I didn’t notice if it did).

dvektor 2y ago

I remember when I first went to jail in 2013, every month paying for a $20 phone card and getting to make a 25 minute "long-distance" call. I couldn't believe that this was legal, and even if it was, I was in disbelief that morally, this was allowed to go on. There are so many other similarities in corrections that my family and I would unfortunately go on to discover over the years, things that until you experience them firsthand, either by yourself or a loved one being incarcerated, that you likely wouldn't believe.

qingcharles 2y ago
Amen, brother. I was an advocate for prison reform before getting locked up, but once you're inside and you find out how truly insane everything is, you realize that jails and prisons are where decency and kindness go to die. I'm in a Zoom conference with the federal court in 45 mins trying to get two constitutional violations at the biggest jail in the country fixed, but obviously the government's lawyers are maintaining that this jail is too big to fix the problems. The judge's line is that if the smallest jails in the country can not violate the rights of the detainees, why can't the biggest? The government is adamant that their size protects them from having to say, provide a working mail system.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  It is Teams, not Zoom. I'm in the conference with the federal judge and the government lawyers right now. Currently they are maintaining their stance that they are unwilling to fix constitutional violations. They'd rather go to trial and lose and pay my lawyer the 7 figure sum in fees he's owed, than agree to fix the conditions. This is the sort of people that run our jails and prisons -- and spend your tax dollars.
  - basil-rash 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    OK, settled the case. Luckily my lawyer was working pro bono as he racked up over $600K in billable hours I understand. I'm waiting for an email back to see if I can discuss it or whether it is NDA'd lol. The judge said that she had never seen any institution so stubbornly against fixing what they were legally entitled to fix.

ThomW 2y ago

Prisons need to be run by the government and aim for rehabilitation. For-profit prisons shouldn't exist. What's the incentive for a company to rehabilitate prisoners? It'd ruin repeat business and eat into profits. :/

jagged-chisel 2y ago
I’m all for government-run rehabilitation focus. I had an entire message about a capitalist stopgap, but every idea I have creates some perverse incentives.
Avshalom 2y ago
To be clear these fees are just as bad at government run prisons and jails.
pandemicsoul 2y ago
I wonder how many people in this thread generally vote for Republicans, who are disproportionally the recipients of for-profit prison company money? https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=G7000 https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=G7000
rootusrootus 2y ago
Not all states have private prisons. Oregon, or example, prohibits them (and prohibits sending Oregon inmates to a private prison in another state). But we still have 9 cents a minute for phone calls. I think it's paid by the outside caller, though, not the inmate. I generally support prison being a less-than-lavish experience, but charging for phone calls seems over the top. Inhumane, if it prevents inmates from talking with their loved ones. They're still humans, and most of them will get out of prison someday, we should keep that in mind.
qingcharles 2y ago
You're not thinking big enough. Why do we even need so many people in prison? The staff in prisons are never motivated to run any kind of real rehabilitation programs, and worthwhile ones are incredibly rare. They get the press when you see a prisoner learning AutoCAD or something, but there are so few slots for something like that, while everyone else does bullshit classes where they ask you what you should do when you find a wallet in the street and then make you color some pages with crayons (really).

Interesco 2y ago

I had a friend who was incarcerated for a time; he sent me a message from the "jail-approved" platform smartjailmail. In order to respond I had to purchase credits - each message I sent was 50 credits and I could include "return postage" (sending them 50 credits to reply) with a max of 2000 characters per message. Pictures cost 100 credits to send. The minimum number of credits that I could purchase was 500, and all transactions included a payment fee of a few bucks. Glad to see this changing as it struck me as a very predatory business model.

qingcharles 2y ago
Yeah, it's still like this at most places. I use this system every day to communicate with a lot of inmates in prison, trying to get them information from the Internet, mostly legal topics, but also MCU news :)

whoitwas 2y ago

This is excellent. Crush the private prisons to dust.

currymj 2y ago

I think there is a lot of confusion around private prisons in the US. I can't understand why this is such a talking point for people who want prison reform. For-profit companies operating carceral facilities is just not the main reason things are so bad. There is an easy way to see this: lots of public, government run jails & prisons are also brutally awful and evil places. For example, Rikers Island is not a private prison. On top of this, private facilities incarcerate only a small percentage. You could turn all the private prisons over to be operated by government employees and not much would improve. On the other hand, it is true that many problems in the carceral system are created by profit-seeking companies. Mainly they look like what we see here: contractors operating a single service possibly winning the contract through kickbacks, and then providing a bad service. You see this in food and healthcare too not just telecom. I guess it is true that private prison operators will want to do the same thing. But it's a problem for all facilities, not just the small number of private facilities. And even if you could solve these issues via regulation or competition, it wouldn't change the many other evils that are inflicted on incarcerated people. So I can't understand why "the US has private prisons" appears to be everybody's primary talking point about why the US carceral system is so awful.

Nasrudith 2y ago
The uncomfortable resemblance to slavery and other obviously problematic aspects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal) of it probably has a lot to do with it getting such disproportionate attention. (The vast majority of prisons are still public.) That and it offers an easy, feel-good solution that unfortunately doesn't address systematic problems: just ban private prisons.
- currymj 2y ago
  even if one is concerned with remarkable similarity of prison labor to slavery, implications of 13th amendment clause, etc., most of the prison labor is for wholly-government-owned enterprises, frequently manufacturing things for other government departments. As another example, Louisiana is phasing out private prisons. That should be great! Meanwhile Angola (state-run) continues to have prisoners picking cotton. I know people know about this because they always bring up prisoners picking cotton in these conversations, but then the talking point remains "private prisons" somehow. So I still don't get why this idea is so sticky.

wnc3141 2y ago

It's one of the most egregious vestiges of the patronage system. The lack of political accountability has allowed the problem to fester.

bdcravens 2y ago

I have a friend in a local county jail. He pays $0.21/minute for calls. I also communicate with a friend in the state prison system in Texas. An "email" (they do have limited use tablets) costs a "stamp", and each photo I attach is 1 stamp (limited to 5). (each "stamp" costs $0.45)

notfed 2y ago

> The new order more than halves the per-minute rate caps for all prison and jail phone calls across the country Not good enough. Anyway shouldn't these fees as least go back to cover public court fees or something? Why are we allowing cartels to leach money from prisoners?

bjoli 2y ago

Isn't this, together will all other wins in things like environment protection, bound to be rolled back in the event of a Trump victory?

ada1981 2y ago

I thought this had to do with sentencing / prosecution. Doh.

iftheshoefitss 2y ago

The thing that’s awesome about the US is nondestructive mitigation. Systems can be upgraded in place without killing a huge chunk or percentage of the population

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totallywrong 2y ago

The comments in this thread are terrifying, hard to believe this is happening in the US in 2024.

ddingus 2y ago

About damn time! Of course most people have no idea how brutal these systems are simply because they have nobody in the system. That was me, until someone ended up using this stuff. Frankly, I was shocked! I have a major league problem with for profit prison. Big conflict of interest. And this extortion on top of it. Good to see reform.