Jails pocket up to 60 percent of what inmates pay for phone calls

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There's widespread agreement that prisoners in the US pay far too much for phone calls, but several of the Federal Communications Commission's attempts to cap those prices have been blocked in court. One of the biggest obstacles is that phone companies have to pay large "site commissions" to prisons and jails in order to win the exclusive right to offer phone service to inmates. Prison phone company Correct Solutions Group has a contract with the Union Parish Detention Center that requires it to pay the jail a commission of 60 percent of the total gross revenue of phone calls.

Call prices have sometimes hit $14 a minute because of the high per-minute rates and various fees applied to inmate calls, according to the FCC. In October 2015, the FCC voted to impose caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on all interstate and intrastate inmate calling prices. The October 2015 ruling did not ban site commissions, but the FCC wanted the new limits to encourage a shift away from the payments. If the FCC's proposed caps had fully taken effect, inmates would today be paying much lower prices, and prisons and jails would likely have had to accept lower commission payments. But after voting to limit prices, the FCC repeatedly had to go back to the drawing board when judges threw out certain parts of the price cap rulings.


Jails pocket up to 60 percent of what inmates pay for phone calls