Bluesky

Over the years, Angel Rice got used to making the most of short, efficient phone calls with her husband, who is incarcerated in a California prison. On each side of the prison walls, both were constantly aware that each passing minute drained funds from her prepaid account.

But when the clock struck midnight marking the beginning of 2023, phone calls from California prisons became free. Although each call still terminates after 15 minutes, there are no limits on the number of calls people can place.

“Now we can talk,” Rice told The Nation. “We can have in-depth conversations about finances, about how my day was, how his day was, what’s going on in our communities, with our children… We’re not cramped into [just] 15 minutes, trying to get life in that one moment. Now we have extended time to talk and be present with each other.”

California is one of a growing list of states and municipalities that have made phone calls free, starting with New York City in 2019. Today, calls are free in six prison systems—the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Connecticut, California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York—and several dozen jail systems, affecting more than 330,000 incarcerated people. Nearly all of these reforms came via legislation (New York enacted the change administratively).

Since the policies went into effect, incarcerated people with access to free phones have placed an additional 600 million phone calls, according to a new report from the nonprofit Worth Rises, a leading advocate for free phone calls. Analyzing call data from all six prisons systems and 17 jails, both before and after calls became free, the authors calculated that free calling led to an additional 6.4 billion call minutes. And it wasn’t just a spike: Since increasing, the call minutes remained at the new, higher level.

Altogether, the free minutes have saved these families more than $620 million. The majority of the savings went to Black and brown families: 70 percent of prison savings and 82 percent of jail savings.

Free calling also means Rice’s husband spends more time talking with his mother and his 12-year-old daughter, who is autistic. “He can be on the phone with her to help her with her homework,” she said. “They have their nighttime regimen—they have a call before she goes to bed. And he’s able to chat it up with her, really have that bonding moment.”

“Having these regular conversations allows him to be a part of her upbringing and make sure she has her father there,” she said. “Every time he says, ‘I spoke to my daughter today,’ you can hear it in his voice. You can just hear him light up.”

Research shows what Rice and her family know firsthand: Family contact is crucial for people on both sides of the prison walls. Phone calls are shown to improve relationships, increase self-esteem, and reduce depression and anxiety among incarcerated people. And since visitation can be challenging for a host of reasons, phone calls are often people’s only lifeline to their loved ones.

In interviews conducted as part of the report, incarcerated people told Worth Rises that free calls have helped them reconnect with adult children after years of distance, become part of their grandchildren’s lives for the first time, and support dying loved ones in their final days. A woman named Lacey, who is incarcerated in New York, described the sounds around her during head counts: “You hear one lady singing to her children. Another is [being] stern with her teenage son. You hear people laughing.”

Research also shows that family contact can improve adherence to prison rules. “The free phone calls have reduced the stressors greatly,” Justin Oles, deputy warden at a Connecticut prison, told the report authors. “It’s brought a calming effect to the [incarcerated] population.… Any way that we could make the job less stressful for our staff is a priority for us.”

How Prison and Jail Phones Work

Phones in prisons and jails are operated by third-party correctional communications companies. In order to win contracts, these companies have historically offered the jurisdiction a percentage of the profit. These kickbacks can actually disincentivize the prison or jail from negotiating a lower rate, since it would effectively decrease their share.

As a result, a 15-minute phone call from a US jail cost an average of $3.15 in 2021, and an in-state prison call averaged $1.20. These costs are paid by the people receiving the calls, who have to set up an account with the communications provider and add funds.

The two largest correctional communications companies—Aventiv (which rebranded from Securus) and ViaPath (formerly Global Tel Link)—control nearly 80 percent of the $1.5 billion correctional communications industry, which also includes video calling and electronic messaging.

When each state or municipality made calls free for users, it negotiated a new contract with the respective communications provider. In every case, now that the agency is footing the bill, the rate is significantly lower than what families were previously paying. On average, these rates dropped 62 percent for prisons and 68 percent for jails, demonstrating that families have been overcharged for decades.

Exploitative phone costs often bleed money from those who can least afford it. Nearly two-thirds of families with an incarcerated member are unable to meet basic needs, like food or housing.

A 2025 study found that communicating with, visiting, and supporting an incarcerated loved one costs families an average of $4,200 a year. This cost was 2.5 times higher for Black families than white families, in part because they were more likely to have multiple incarcerated members due to the overpolicing of communities of color, and were more likely to contribute financially. In fact, more than one in three families go into debt paying for incarceration-related expenses.

Free phone calls ease some of that financial strain. Of the five states, Connecticut had the highest per-minute cost before calls became free. Now, free calls save families in the state an average of $1,801 per year, the most saved per family in any one state. Interviewees with incarcerated loved ones told Worth Rises that free calling helped them afford bills, make important purchases like down payments toward buying a home, and reduce debt. “A Win for Everybody”

Families have been advocating to reduce the cost of phone calls for decades. Thanks in part to that work, the average cost of an in-state, 15-minute prison call had already dropped from $4.67 in 2008 to $1.20 in 2021.

Some reforms were set into motion in 2001, when Martha Wright-Reed sued the private prison company CoreCivic over the exorbitant cost of her incarcerated grandson’s calls. In response to her lawsuit, Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved to place maximum caps on correctional phone rates in 2013 and 2015. But correctional communications companies sued, and a federal court ruled that the FCC had overstepped.

Advocates kept pushing, and in 2023, Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Act, which enshrined the FCC’s right to regulate correctional phones, and required it to ensure “just and reasonable” rates. In response, Biden’s FCC issued widely celebrated rate caps in 2024. But last year, amid continued pressure and lawsuits from correctional communications companies, the FCC walked back some of these reforms, issuing new, higher caps.

Free calling policies, mandated at the state or municipal level, are not subject to the whims of a fickle FCC and litigious correctional communications companies.

“This is a win for everybody,” Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, told The Nation. “It is better for the folks who are inside… It is obviously incredibly powerful for the families who are saving important resources, but also connecting to people who love them. It is changing the work environment for correctional officers who are in these spaces. And obviously in doing all of that, it’s returning multitudes to us as the general public, in reentry and public safety results.”

Most people in prison or jail will eventually return to society. Interviewees told Worth Rises that free calls helped them contact housing providers, employment resources, and support programs, setting themselves up for reentry success.

Phone calls with family and friends can also help people remain part of the community they hope to return to, and are linked to lower recidivism rates upon release. “We are there for them when they are hit, when they’re having their down moments,” explained Rice. “They’re there for us when we’re having our down moments. Which we couldn’t do before. So it definitely helps with the rehabilitation piece, as far as staying connected and being a support to them.”

Tylek said free calling is the most cost-effective rehabilitation program available—and unlike most programming, it is available to the entire prison or jail population. “Phone calls are so cheap, relatively speaking, so scalable, and have the biggest impact of anything,” she said. “At the scale and cost, nothing beats it.”