Incarcerated Individuals
Innovating for Inclusion: 2025 Digital Equity Spark Grantees Tackle the Digital Divide
Ensuring everyone has access to affordable, reliable internet is key to unlocking educational, economic, and civic potential. The Michelson 20MM Foundation is committed to closing the digital divide, especially for underserved and historically marginalized communities.
Prison Phone Justice Delayed: What’s at Stake and What You Can Do
On September 15, 2025, United Church of Christ Media Justice helped organize a coalition letter of faith and public interest groups urging the Federal Communications Commission to overturn its unjust and unlawful suspension of fair prison phone and video rates. This letter supports a legal filing at the FCC, in which UCC Media Justice is also deeply engaged. Earlier in 2024, families finally began to see relief from decades of predatory prison phone bills.
Writing from my cell in the age of prison Wi-Fi
Two companies, ViaPath and Aventiv Technologies, form a duopoly that controls 80 percent of the $1.5 billion prison communications market. These two companies contract with nearly every correctional agency at the state, county, and federal levels, and the size of their kickbacks—money agencies earn from our communications—depends on how willing public officials are to allow price gouging. According to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, one-third of families with an incarcerated relative go into debt
Commissioner Carr Unveils Plan for Allowing Prisons to Jam Contraband Cellphones
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the FCC will be voting on a proposal that, for the first time, would allow prisons to jam contraband cellphones. Prior to the announcement, Chairman Carr joined Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, and other public safety leaders, including the National Sheriff’s Association, for a roundtable discussion in Little Rock (AR) on the threats that contraband cellphones pose to public safety officials and the general public.
FCC Seeks Comment on Review of Incarcerated Peoples Communications Services Waiver Order
The Federal Communications Commission announced the filing deadlines for oppositions and replies to an Application for Review filed by the Public Interest Parties concerning Incarcerated Peoples' Communication Services (IPCS). The Public Interest Parties seek review of the FCC’s industry waiver order, which temporarily suspends the compliance deadlines for rules adopted in the 2024 IPCS Order until April 1, 2027, or any alternative date the Commission sets as part of further action in the IPCS proceeding.
New York Makes Contact with Loved Ones More Accessible Phone Call Policy Change
As part of its ongoing mission to prepare individuals in custody for successful reentry and community reintegration, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) announced that, effective August 1, 2025, the Department will make contact with family and loved ones more accessible. Phone calls made by incarcerated individuals—via tablets or facility phones—will be free of charge. This significant policy change eliminates financial barriers to communication and aims to strengthen the vital connections between incarcerated individuals and their loved ones.
Sen Luján Presses President Trump’s New NTIA Administrator on Day One: Stop Delaying Broadband Funds for New Mexico
Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) called on Arielle Roth, the recently confirmed Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), to fulfill her responsibility to fully implement programs authorized and funded by Congress—specifically, the Digital Equity Act and the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Senator Luján urged Roth to make her first act as Administrator the immediate restoration of suspended digital equity grants and the release of approved federal funding to connect all New Mexicans to broadband.
‘Digital navigators’ offer one-on-one help to sharpen computer skills. Cuts to federal funding mean there could be fewer of them in Greater Cleveland
The Northeast Ohio Regional Digital Opportunity Alliance, which includes the Cuyahoga County Public Library, was planning to increase the number of digital navigators in 2025. It was part of a larger plan to expand efforts to close the digital equity gap.
Groups Challenge FCC's Bureau-Level Order Suspending Prison Phone Rate Cap
A coalition of public interest groups filed a formal challenge to a recent bureau-level decision at the Federal Communications Commission to delay rate caps that would make prison phone calls more affordable. Public interest groups including Worth Rises, the United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry, and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, filed an application for review urging the FCC to overturn the
Prisoners’ Phone Calls Will Soon Be Free in New York State
New York will make phone calls free for incarcerated people starting in August 2025, lifting a financial burden for the loved ones of the state’s more than 30,000 prisoners. It will join five other states and New York City, all of which have moved in recent years to adopt similar policies.