The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will no longer enforce a rule capping the price of prison phone calls, according to an announcement made Monday by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
This ruling is so disheartening. Just imagine how this will further impact all those who are swept up in the ICE raids! And it’s just plain cruel for all prisoners for whom the phone calls are a lifeline! The desire for money over justice and compassion seems to be boundless.
We'll see how well they sleep when Dems put a moratorium on ALL for-profit prisons; and revoke contracts for the remainder. These unregulated, immoral operations are rife with abuse by guards and inmates alike, and is primarily--but not entirely--a Red state phenomenon.
And, Nubby, the pay is not so great either. In one deep south private prison I read about, they paid guards $9/hr.. Who you gonna get for $9 an hour? How long are they going to stay?
Your comment assumes Dem’s will somehow, someday, regain power. Now THAT is really funny! As long as FOX “Not-Really-News” controls the messaging - and Trump - Dems are done, finished.
Hopelessness is not the solution! You can make a difference!
Join the protests: it's uplifting to be with like minded folks.
Make phone calls: ya gotta be thick skinned but you get a few nice people per session, which makes it worthwhile. I made phone calls for Susan Crawford; I can pat myself on the back for being part of that victory (and on one phone call, as soon as I announced myself as a Dem volunteer, a woman started screaming "Musk is an asshole! Musk is an asshole!" That made my day!).
Go to bridge standouts and write post cards and donate if you can.
I’m not hopeless, I’m mad. I’m mad that Rupert Murdoch and his minions at FOX, the Wall Street Journal and NY Post have been able to turn the entire Republican Party into a fascist organization. I’m mad that Murdoch and his minions have been allowed to poison the minds of well-meaning people with the drip, drip, drip, of half-truths, misinformation and outright lies. I’m mad that Murdoch and his minions have driven brother against brother, parents against the children and friend against friend.
I haven’t given up. I protest. I donate to Democrats. I donated to Susan Crawford’s campaign. I have made phone calls and written postcards and will continue to contribute in any way I can. But every time I think Trump, or the Republican Party, can’t get any worse there is FOX telling their viewers that this is necessary to retain our democracy – and it just keeps getting worse.
Murdoch turned the 1st Amendment upside down and inside out. Instead of assuring the “free press” keep us informed he has misused the 1st Amendment to keep his audience misinformed.
I haven’t given up but I have come to the realization that unless, and until, Murdoch and his minions are driven into oblivion we will never restore our democracy. We need to boycott FOX “Not-Really-News” and all the money-making programs FOX carries like the NFL, NBA and college sports. And we need to boycott companies that advertise on FOX and let them know why.
Murdoch’s Republican Party propaganda platform must be taken down if we are to have any hope of restoring our democratic republic.
That is ridiculous and defeatist. Keep your eyes on Virginia, we're going to have a massive Democratic landslide in November. This is just the beginning of turning this rotting ship of state around.
Defeatist? Yeah, that could be. Ridiculous? I wish it were but the final “blow” to any realistic expectation that the main-stream-media would expose Trump for the criminal he is was CBS’ caving in to Trump about a 60 Minutes interview of Harris. Murdoch weaponized the1st Amendment to elect Republican’s and he has yet to be taken down. Putting FOX out of business is the only way Dems will regain control.
That's the point. Always the cruelty of the child with the magnifying glass burning ants following a pleasant afternoon spent pulling wings from flies!
For profits prisons for housing prisoners, for profit commissaries within those prisons for hygiene products and clothes, for profit phone calls out of the prisons, all while still be able to use their bodies to make a profit working on chain gains. This is so much more than criminals and the crime they commit. Americans just can’t seem to figure out the connections (education, health and wealth) that need to happen to raise a healthy child who doesn’t need or want to break the law. When slavery and Jim Crow were outlawed some ingenious people really got to work on this problem of how to keep making money on the flawed American psyche in a way that no one notices or cares. It’s all evil.
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander is fascinating, a must read for explanation of how the prison industry grew in America.
It would seem that way, right? I get this coming from a reformed faith (American Puritanism that morphed into 19th century fundamentalism and then 20th century moral majority finally into the 21st century MAGA). Yes, it seems that a portion of Americans don’t WANT it. I see this as willful ignorance encouraged and rewarded by the media machine of bread and circuses (gotta love the Romans, they did this first) that distracts and discourages. The secular world has taken its cues from past religious success on how to push people down and make them think they deserve and want servitude.
At this point, with all the good we can know and do, it’s sad that this is still where we are, isn’t it, profiting off of someone else’s misery like the love of mother for her incarcerated son. Judd’s newsletter makes me cry every morning.
Cruelty is the point, and greed for the additional profits by price-gouging for inmate phone calls, and then also, the for-profit prisons *want* those inmates returning for another term of incarceration because it's clearly more profitable for them. We are in such a dystopian timeline.
"Studies have shown that visitation and phone calls from family decrease the chances that an incarcerated person will commit another crime."
You are absolutely correct. There was a study on child visitation with pre and post surveys of incarcerated parents. It showed that after a series of child / parent visitations the parents felt more connected to their families and were more motivated to make changes when released. This is backed up by the data on recidivism.
I don’t recall a specific study on phone calls at the moment. But, yes, it is well known that better connections to others with positive influences in their lives has the same result. It only makes sense.
There is no doubt that too many prisons are a real symptom of a sick, sick nation. And guess what? Getting sicker and less healthy and more criminal and desperate. Just wondering if the patient will survive.
The greed and cruelty of conservatives is incomprehensible to humane people everywhere. Clearly, we appear as craven unconstructive selfish barbarians to the rest of the free world.
"the FCC explicitly cited the "financial burdens" imposed on prison operators through inhibiting their ability to collect commissions. The FCC claims that, without the ability to receive commissions or charge high prices, many facilities would stop allowing incarcerated people to make phone calls."
If it smells like bullshit, you can bet, that it is!
(to the tune of "if you think it's butter but it's not, it's Chiffon")
Louisville KY had those high costs — $1.85 for collect calls to local landlines and $9.99 for calls to cell phones which generated income for the city. Now inmates are allowed 2 free 15 minute calls per week.
The visitation setup was always bad. It is possible to make it better. A group of volunteer artists organized under an advocacy group to facilitate child visitation and provided materials for art projects for the visits. Both for children to do as they waited for the visit with their caretaker & for parent/child activities. (The activities help parents engage with their children and are calming.) The advocacy group received a grant from Aetna to train service providers how to do this in their communities.
As with all things that are good for someone incarcerated, connections to the outside world are considered privileges. Privileges can be taken away for infractions.
I hear about jail conditions all across the country. It's never going to be good but the accused, tried, convicted and sentenced are still people too. We should not treat them as less than that no mattter how heinous their crimes may be.
We will continue to live in a lawless country, until we shut it down. Blue States! Withhold federal dollars now! Otherwise, we continue to assist in the funding!
Next investigate prison/jail commissary contracts and prices. Keefe is a dominant supplier and charges multiples of grocery store pricing. The menus tilt towards unhealthy processed foods.
More proof, as if we need any, that there's no bottom to the pit of greed and corruption that is this administration and its political party.
As with the so called big beautiful bill - now back in the House for reconciliation after Senate passage - that will strip millions of people of their health insurance and literally take food out of the mouths of children to pay for tax cuts for the people who need them the least, this FCC action helps facilitate and augment the modus operandi of both the Trump administration and the GOP, helping the richest to profit from the exploitation of the poorest people in our country, which is a key component of the raison d'etre of both of these entities, the moral and ethical corruption of which runs absolutely bone marrow deep.
As long as people convicted of crimes are imprisoned for *profit*, the profit takers will exploit them to the greatest extent that they can and ensure that whatever justice is available to them is as minimal as possible, since justice is empowering, and these leeches want the power to all remain in their hands, along with every penny they can scrape from the hands of the almost - or too often completely - powerless.
But what else should we actually expect from a government that sends an ignorant, over-paid, possibly corrupt and clearly incompetent cosplaying Barbie doll to parade around for the cameras in front of a sewer pit of a prison in El Salvador wearing a $50K Rolex?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Pam Bondi isn't "America's attorney general". She's Donald Tump's attorney general - lock, stock and two smoking barrels - and making Jeff Sessions having looked like Nicholas Katzenbach or Benjamin Civiletti by comparison.
This ruling is so disheartening. Just imagine how this will further impact all those who are swept up in the ICE raids! And it’s just plain cruel for all prisoners for whom the phone calls are a lifeline! The desire for money over justice and compassion seems to be boundless.
And yet, those private prison moguls sleep well at night on soft cotton sheets in air conditioned manses by the sea.
Karma never sleeps.
We'll see how well they sleep when Dems put a moratorium on ALL for-profit prisons; and revoke contracts for the remainder. These unregulated, immoral operations are rife with abuse by guards and inmates alike, and is primarily--but not entirely--a Red state phenomenon.
And, Nubby, the pay is not so great either. In one deep south private prison I read about, they paid guards $9/hr.. Who you gonna get for $9 an hour? How long are they going to stay?
Your comment assumes Dem’s will somehow, someday, regain power. Now THAT is really funny! As long as FOX “Not-Really-News” controls the messaging - and Trump - Dems are done, finished.
Hopelessness is not the solution! You can make a difference!
Join the protests: it's uplifting to be with like minded folks.
Make phone calls: ya gotta be thick skinned but you get a few nice people per session, which makes it worthwhile. I made phone calls for Susan Crawford; I can pat myself on the back for being part of that victory (and on one phone call, as soon as I announced myself as a Dem volunteer, a woman started screaming "Musk is an asshole! Musk is an asshole!" That made my day!).
Go to bridge standouts and write post cards and donate if you can.
Bring your friends and make a party out of it!
Never forget THEY WANT YOU TO GIVE UP!
I’m not hopeless, I’m mad. I’m mad that Rupert Murdoch and his minions at FOX, the Wall Street Journal and NY Post have been able to turn the entire Republican Party into a fascist organization. I’m mad that Murdoch and his minions have been allowed to poison the minds of well-meaning people with the drip, drip, drip, of half-truths, misinformation and outright lies. I’m mad that Murdoch and his minions have driven brother against brother, parents against the children and friend against friend.
I haven’t given up. I protest. I donate to Democrats. I donated to Susan Crawford’s campaign. I have made phone calls and written postcards and will continue to contribute in any way I can. But every time I think Trump, or the Republican Party, can’t get any worse there is FOX telling their viewers that this is necessary to retain our democracy – and it just keeps getting worse.
Murdoch turned the 1st Amendment upside down and inside out. Instead of assuring the “free press” keep us informed he has misused the 1st Amendment to keep his audience misinformed.
I haven’t given up but I have come to the realization that unless, and until, Murdoch and his minions are driven into oblivion we will never restore our democracy. We need to boycott FOX “Not-Really-News” and all the money-making programs FOX carries like the NFL, NBA and college sports. And we need to boycott companies that advertise on FOX and let them know why.
Murdoch’s Republican Party propaganda platform must be taken down if we are to have any hope of restoring our democratic republic.
That is ridiculous and defeatist. Keep your eyes on Virginia, we're going to have a massive Democratic landslide in November. This is just the beginning of turning this rotting ship of state around.
Defeatist? Yeah, that could be. Ridiculous? I wish it were but the final “blow” to any realistic expectation that the main-stream-media would expose Trump for the criminal he is was CBS’ caving in to Trump about a 60 Minutes interview of Harris. Murdoch weaponized the1st Amendment to elect Republican’s and he has yet to be taken down. Putting FOX out of business is the only way Dems will regain control.
That's the point. Always the cruelty of the child with the magnifying glass burning ants following a pleasant afternoon spent pulling wings from flies!
For profits prisons for housing prisoners, for profit commissaries within those prisons for hygiene products and clothes, for profit phone calls out of the prisons, all while still be able to use their bodies to make a profit working on chain gains. This is so much more than criminals and the crime they commit. Americans just can’t seem to figure out the connections (education, health and wealth) that need to happen to raise a healthy child who doesn’t need or want to break the law. When slavery and Jim Crow were outlawed some ingenious people really got to work on this problem of how to keep making money on the flawed American psyche in a way that no one notices or cares. It’s all evil.
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander is fascinating, a must read for explanation of how the prison industry grew in America.
Suggested edit: Americans just don't WANT to figure out the connections"
Puritans need people to punish. Otherwise what's the point?
It would seem that way, right? I get this coming from a reformed faith (American Puritanism that morphed into 19th century fundamentalism and then 20th century moral majority finally into the 21st century MAGA). Yes, it seems that a portion of Americans don’t WANT it. I see this as willful ignorance encouraged and rewarded by the media machine of bread and circuses (gotta love the Romans, they did this first) that distracts and discourages. The secular world has taken its cues from past religious success on how to push people down and make them think they deserve and want servitude.
Couldn’t agree more.
At this point, with all the good we can know and do, it’s sad that this is still where we are, isn’t it, profiting off of someone else’s misery like the love of mother for her incarcerated son. Judd’s newsletter makes me cry every morning.
Me too. The sad mornings part. But this is America where we say Profits Uber Alles!
I wish Substack had an emoji that agrees but acknowledges how sad we all are.
Everything this administration does is designed to be cruel to those in need and profitable to their money grubbers.
And the brainwashed ones say "Our guy won so get over it!"
Cruelty is the point, and greed for the additional profits by price-gouging for inmate phone calls, and then also, the for-profit prisons *want* those inmates returning for another term of incarceration because it's clearly more profitable for them. We are in such a dystopian timeline.
"Studies have shown that visitation and phone calls from family decrease the chances that an incarcerated person will commit another crime."
You are absolutely correct. There was a study on child visitation with pre and post surveys of incarcerated parents. It showed that after a series of child / parent visitations the parents felt more connected to their families and were more motivated to make changes when released. This is backed up by the data on recidivism.
I don’t recall a specific study on phone calls at the moment. But, yes, it is well known that better connections to others with positive influences in their lives has the same result. It only makes sense.
Portugals experiment with dealing with drug use shows you get what you pay for. Pay for a punitive system of incarceration and incarceration rises. Pay for health support and community connections like jobs etc.and you get a healthier population that shuns addition. Withdraw the funds to reduce addition / incarceration and begin the cycle again. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-drug-decriminalization-a-failure-or-success-the-answer-isnt-so-simple/
There is no doubt that too many prisons are a real symptom of a sick, sick nation. And guess what? Getting sicker and less healthy and more criminal and desperate. Just wondering if the patient will survive.
Good on Anna Gomez. Let's hope this change gets invalidated by the courts somehow.
I nominate naming the Trump Era “The Great Shakedown” .
The greed and cruelty of conservatives is incomprehensible to humane people everywhere. Clearly, we appear as craven unconstructive selfish barbarians to the rest of the free world.
"the FCC explicitly cited the "financial burdens" imposed on prison operators through inhibiting their ability to collect commissions. The FCC claims that, without the ability to receive commissions or charge high prices, many facilities would stop allowing incarcerated people to make phone calls."
If it smells like bullshit, you can bet, that it is!
(to the tune of "if you think it's butter but it's not, it's Chiffon")
Louisville KY had those high costs — $1.85 for collect calls to local landlines and $9.99 for calls to cell phones which generated income for the city. Now inmates are allowed 2 free 15 minute calls per week.
The visitation setup was always bad. It is possible to make it better. A group of volunteer artists organized under an advocacy group to facilitate child visitation and provided materials for art projects for the visits. Both for children to do as they waited for the visit with their caretaker & for parent/child activities. (The activities help parents engage with their children and are calming.) The advocacy group received a grant from Aetna to train service providers how to do this in their communities.
As with all things that are good for someone incarcerated, connections to the outside world are considered privileges. Privileges can be taken away for infractions.
I hear about jail conditions all across the country. It's never going to be good but the accused, tried, convicted and sentenced are still people too. We should not treat them as less than that no mattter how heinous their crimes may be.
Otherwise, we become monsters too.
It's so hard to not be discouraged by the ever-increasing grift and greed of this regime. They just keep taking and taking for their own benefit.
When will enough be enough?
Maybe we need to look at the French, who managed to resist this kind of thing twice in not so old history...
You can't even be appallled or surprised anymore... if given the choice they go for the cruelest thing to do... truly reprehensible
We will continue to live in a lawless country, until we shut it down. Blue States! Withhold federal dollars now! Otherwise, we continue to assist in the funding!
Just when I think I know how awful these two prison companies are, there's always more.
The same goes for Blondie and Homan.
Next investigate prison/jail commissary contracts and prices. Keefe is a dominant supplier and charges multiples of grocery store pricing. The menus tilt towards unhealthy processed foods.
More proof, as if we need any, that there's no bottom to the pit of greed and corruption that is this administration and its political party.
As with the so called big beautiful bill - now back in the House for reconciliation after Senate passage - that will strip millions of people of their health insurance and literally take food out of the mouths of children to pay for tax cuts for the people who need them the least, this FCC action helps facilitate and augment the modus operandi of both the Trump administration and the GOP, helping the richest to profit from the exploitation of the poorest people in our country, which is a key component of the raison d'etre of both of these entities, the moral and ethical corruption of which runs absolutely bone marrow deep.
As long as people convicted of crimes are imprisoned for *profit*, the profit takers will exploit them to the greatest extent that they can and ensure that whatever justice is available to them is as minimal as possible, since justice is empowering, and these leeches want the power to all remain in their hands, along with every penny they can scrape from the hands of the almost - or too often completely - powerless.
But what else should we actually expect from a government that sends an ignorant, over-paid, possibly corrupt and clearly incompetent cosplaying Barbie doll to parade around for the cameras in front of a sewer pit of a prison in El Salvador wearing a $50K Rolex?
https://newrepublic.com/article/197452/kristi-noem-watch-rolex-political-donations
Pam Bondi, America's attorney general, was once a lobbyist for a private prison group? Jeezus, I'm embarrassed.
Can I please bring up VEEP? Does anybody else feel the prescient irony smacking them in the face?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Pam Bondi isn't "America's attorney general". She's Donald Tump's attorney general - lock, stock and two smoking barrels - and making Jeff Sessions having looked like Nicholas Katzenbach or Benjamin Civiletti by comparison.
And maybe two inches taller, making Sessions an official tiny man.
OMG. Where does the corruption stop?