Pai Dissent All But Certain on Prison Calling Order
Groups that support an FCC order that would effectively lower prison phone rates made a last pitch Thursday that the FCC move forward on the order. Commissioner Ajit Pai indicated Wednesday that unless changes were made to the order he would feel compelled to dissent (CD Aug 8 p1). FCC sources said Thursday it appears unlikely there will be a deal with Pai before the Friday meeting. The order effectively caps interstate calling rates at 10-30 cents per minute while teeing up limits for intrastate calls in a further NPRM (CD Aug 2 p4).
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"Most Americans don’t realize that it’s about 10 times more expensive to call anyone from a prison than to call Singapore from your office desk,” said Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, on a call with reporters. “Phone calls placed from within prisons can result in charges of up to $60 for a one-hour call. After 10 years of advocacy the Federal Communications Commission is finally set to vote on meaningful reform to these predatory phone rates charged to families of prisoners.”
Henderson was joined on the call by other advocates of prison calling price reform. “Less than a year ago, I joined inmate families as they rallied outside the FCC asking for an end to long distance predatory prison phone rates,” said Cheryl Leanza, with the United Church of Christ’s media justice and communications rights ministry. “Tomorrow the FCC will act under the leadership of acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, who heard the call of justice."
Some 20 percent of prison calls are interstate, so the order will be of immediate help, said Lee Petro of Drinker Biddle, pro bono counsel to Martha Wright, a Washington, D.C., grandmother who asked the FCC to curb calling rates in a petition filed more than a decade ago (CD July 11 p1). Petro, who noted that interstate rates tend to be higher than intrastate rates, said he was pleased that the FCC appears to be set to ask questions about intrastate rates as well. “This is the first step, I think, in providing uniform relief,” he said. “We've argued that the FCC should adopt our proposal for both interstate and intrastate calls and, hopefully, at the end of the day they will."
Responding to Pai’s comments, Petro said advocates of reform have offered three “very simple plans” over the last 10 years. Prison calling “providers and the correctional authorities have repeatedly chided us for being overly simplistic in our efforts to offer relief to their customers and they've offered a myriad of reported conditions and exceptions that would be necessary,” he said. “They've also flatly refused … to submit the costs data to substantiate their objections."
"When it comes to keeping families together -- incarcerated individuals with their families -- that’s in the national interest,” Henderson said. “That’s not a partisan issue."
"When the security arguments start up, we need to mind that 90 percent of the people who are in prison today will one day be released and so we all have a tremendous security interest in seeing that people in prison are successfully rehabilitated,” said Galen Carey, vice president-government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals.