New rules make jail calls cheaper, but Orleans sheriff has extra time to comply
26th August 2024 · 0 Comments
By Bobbi-Jeanne Misick
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — A new federal regulation set to take effect early next year will significantly reduce the rates that prisoners and jail detainees will have to pay to call their friends and relatives. The rule goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. But in the New Orleans jail, at least, the new rates will not have to go into effect for an extra year, federal officials said.
Under a rule passed by the Federal Communications Commission last month, in-state audio calls with people held in prisons and large jails – defined as jails with populations of 1,000 incarcerated people or more – cannot exceed 6 cents per minute. (Rates for small and medium-sized jails will be capped at between 7 and 12 cents per minute, depending on their average detainee populations. Those rates will take effect in April 2025.)
Studies show that people in prison benefit from greater communication with friends and family. Still, for decades incarcerated people and their loved ones have been forced to pay rates that place a burden on their budgets to maintain those relationships. Telecommunications contractors and the facility operators they work for make money by enforcing high rates and splitting the revenue.
The FCC estimates that the new rules will save incarcerated people and their families, friends and attorneys $386 million a year.
“The big picture is that the FCC has communicated through its ruling that families of incarcerated people should not be footing the bill for their loved ones’ incarceration,” Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist at Prison Policy Initiative, said in an interview.
In Louisiana, 6 cents per minute is far below the average rate charged by telecommunications contractors for jails and prisons. According to a 2022 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, 15-minute calls from state prisons cost $2.10, or 14 cents per minute. The report found that rates at local jails can be as high as 25 cents per minute for in-state calls. In New Orleans, Sheriff’s Office officials recently announced a new contract with Smart Communications that will lower the per-minute cost – previously 21 cents per minute – to 14 cents.
That contract will now have to be amended in order to comply with the rule. But because it was already signed in May, nearly two months before the FCC’s July 18 vote to adopt the new cap, and requires renegotiation to adjust the rates, the Sheriff’s Office will have a one-year grace period to make the change, an FCC spokesperson confirmed to Verite News.
In her successful 2021 campaign for the office, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson blasted the high costs of jail calls, saying she would work to provide free phone service. The office has yet to eliminate charges entirely, but recently announced a new policy that will allow detainees up to 15 minutes of free audio call time per day and one free video call per week.
“OPSO will be reviewing our new contract with the vendor as well as the new FCC regulations to determine our path forward to ensure we are in compliance with new federal guidelines by the provided deadline,” Casey McGee, an OPSO spokesperson, said.
McGee said Hutson is seeking additional funding from the New Orleans City Council to expand free audio calls.
Smart Communications did not respond to requests for comment as of presstime.
It’s not clear when other large jails will need to lower their rates. Verite News contacted officials at Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes for comment on the new rules. Neither responded by publication time.
The Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections, which runs the state’s prisons, did not respond to requests for comment. But its current telecommunications contract with Securus Technologies is set to end in March 2025, according to the state purchasing database.
In a statement, Securus’ parent company Aventiv Technologies offered measured praise for the FCC rule change. The company emphasized its support for a “data-driven” approach to setting jail and prison phone rates – one that recognizes the costs of providing the service.
“We recognize this vote prioritizes ‘progress over perfection’ in the Federal Communications Commission’s rulemaking efforts and value their direct acknowledgment that providing incarcerated communications requires certain security and safety costs that distinguish corrections communications from the daily calling and video services familiar to us,” the statement said.
The Louisiana Public Service Commission will be tasked with ensuring that all incarcerated people within the state are charged the correct rates. The agency has jurisdiction over the telecommunications companies, but not the facilities.
Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, whose district includes New Orleans and Baton Rouge, joined a recent virtual meeting for the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition last week to discuss the new FCC rules. He said his office is working toward reducing the cost for calls for incarcerated people in Louisiana to zero.
“Human interaction to me is a human right,” Lewis said at the meeting.
‘I come up short sometimes’
High prison and jail call costs are often influenced by what the prison phone industry calls “site commissions,” a percentage of the call rates that companies share with facility operators, like local sheriff’s offices.
On top of the per-minute fees, companies often charge for extra services, like opening a phone account or even adding money to it. But the new FCC rules prohibit those additional fees and change the way that facilities collect revenue from the calls. Beginning next year, telecommunications companies can pay up to 2 cents per minute to facility operators, but cannot pass the cost of those commissions on to inmates.
Baton Rouge resident Telita Hayes said she adds between $300 and $400 each month to her fiance William Reese’s account at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Those funds go toward his phone calls, electronic messaging and commissary expenses. Hayes said Securus charges her between $8.50 and $12 for making those deposits. She said sometimes the extra fees have to come out of what she’d like to give Reese, and paying that much to support her partner on top of her own living expenses takes a toll.
“I come up short sometimes,” Hayes said. “Sometimes I find myself having to let something go and then [I] get behind to be able to make sure he has what he needs, to make sure he’s able to call.”
Hayes said it’s even harder for the families she knows with multiple incarcerated loved ones to make their communications budgets stretch.
“I want people to understand that we incur these costs because we love our loved ones, but it shouldn’t be a struggle for us to take care of them,” she said.
Criminal justice reform advocates say the cost for prison and jail communications should fall on the state or the municipalities.
“We think of prisons and jails as being public entities and public facilities and largely they are public,” said Michael Cahoon, a community impact organizer at the Louisiana nonprofit Promise of Justice Initiative. “What’s not public is the ancillary services and industries that profit off of mass incarceration.”
This article originally published in the August 26, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
