Related Stories
FCC gives inmates price break on prison phone calls
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Miami Herald/Associated Press
Posted: October 25th, 2015
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
The Federal Communications Commission voted to cap the price that phone companies can charge for calls to and from prison inmates, which they say can run up to a staggering $14 per minute. The rates for prison phone calls far exceed those of the general public, with the financial burden falling on the families of the more than 2 million incarcerated Americans. Under the new rules, scheduled to go into effect in early 2016, most prison inmates will not be charged more than 11 cents per minute for any call. The rules will ... also curb the extra charges that can often tack on up to an extra 70 percent, according to the commission. The truth is that each of us is paying a heavy price for what is now a predatory, scaled market regime, said Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Not one of us here would ever consider paying $500 a month for a voice-only service where calls are dropped routinely for no reason. While they dont ban them outright, the new FCC rules also strongly discourage what they describe as kickbacks, the commission phone companies usually pay correctional facilities to win lucrative phone service contracts. Incarceration is a policy choice, and its imminently unfair to then ask the families to pay for the correctional budgets, said Aleks Kajstura, legal director at the Prison Policy Initiative ... citing the case of one inmate who faced a $56 bill for a four-minute conversation with a pro bono attorney.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison industry corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Related Stories
Latest News
Key News Articles from Years Past
