Federal prisons make inmate calling, video visits free during pandemic
Sen. Amy Klobuchar had led a dozen senators in raising the issue of the exorbitantly high costs that phone carriers charge to prison inmates.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is making calling and video visitation free for inmates after the coronavirus forced a halt to in-person visits, the agency said in a letter to Congress obtained by POLITICO.
“Effective April 9, 2020, telephone calls were made free for the inmate population,” bureau Director Michael Carvajal wrote in the letter dated Friday to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who had led a dozen senators in raising the issueof the exorbitantly high costs that phone carriers charge to prison inmates.
The bureau oversees 122 prisons throughout the U.S.
“Video-visiting, which is available to our female population, was also made free on that same date,” Carvajal added. He also described efforts to allow inmates to confidentially communicate with legal counsel outside of the view of prison staff.
Inmate advocates for years have decried the costs that prisoners and their families pay for phone calls, concerns aggravated as prisons in recent weeks ended in-person social and legal visitation.
Last month’s $2.2 trillion relief package from Congress included language, with the Justice Department’s blessing, allowing the bureau to make such communication services free for inmates if emergency conditions materially affect operations. Carvajal’s letter confirmed that it had done so.
Klobuchar had joined senators including Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in pressing the bureau on the issue last week.
“Studies have demonstrated that family contact is a valuable source of support during incarceration and that those who maintain contact with their family experience lower rates of recidivism after release,” the senators wrote in an earlier letter last month, noting that “inmates are still required to pay as much as 25 cents per minute in addition to fees charged each call.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has separately urged the bureau to make prison phone calls free.