The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently voted to implement a cap on rates and fees for prisoner communication with the outside world. Specifically, the video and telecommunication options while on-site visitation has always been free in many counties throughout the United States. Since this ruling with its effects meant to come online in March, there have been several states and even individual correctional facilities that have opposed this decision. One such state is Wisconsin which claims that capping the price of phone call fees to 11 cents per minute would not cover the overhead security costs or system implementation expenses that it is paying to put in telecommunication services for the prisoners in the first place.
The primary crux of the debate between the FCC, judicial courts, and state-funded correctional facilities comes down to money. Should the use of telecommunication services either via vendor or internally cost the state money, come to a break even arrangement for expenses, or be allowed to profit the state to re-invest the profits into what they see fit? It should be noted that the FCC ruling does not affect non-federal prisons or non-state prisons which leave privately run prisons off the hook. To put into perspective how these new FCC policies affect pricing currently a 15-minute intrastate phone call with no video function could cost about $3 while the new limit would lower that to as little as $1.65 almost a 50% reduction in cost.