Bernie Sanders Joins 14 Senators Calling for a Cap on Prison Phone Call Charges

The Federal Communications Commission's proposal to reduce the high cost of prison phone calls received a major boost Thursday when 15 US senators sent the agency a letter backing the plan.

The FCC has been trying to address the problem of exorbitant prison phone rates for years, but the effort has picked up fresh momentum in recent months under the leadership of FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who has championed the issue.

Many inmate advocates say that the high cost of prison phone calls—which in some cases can reach $14 per minute—is the result of abusive and predatory practices by the small handful of companies that control the $1.2 billion prison phone market.

The senators' letter was signed by 15 lawmakers including Sen. Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Not a single Republican signed the letter.

Sanders has championed prison reform on the campaign trail.

The FCC's plan would ease the financial burden on families with incarcerated loved ones by capping the cost of prison phone calls at 11 cents a minute for debit or prepaid calls in state and federal prisons. The proposal would reduce the cost of most inmate calls from $2.96 to $1.65 for a 15-minute in-state call, and from $3.15 to $1.65 for a 15-minute long distance call.

"It is of utmost importance that the FCC move forward with its proposal to curb the cost of intrastate calling rates for inmates," the senators wrote. "These changes will enable families to stay connected and allow inmates to be better prepared to reenter society once their time has been served."

The prison phone reform effort is part of the broader criminal justice reform movement, which has picked up support from lawmakers across the political spectrum. President Obama has made the issue a key priority, and recently became the first sitting president to visit a federal corrections facility.

Sanders has included language bolstering the FCC's authority to crack down on predatory prison phone practices in the "Justice Is Not For Sale" act, a broad criminal justice reform package the Vermont lawmaker has introduced in Congress.

Steven Renderos, senior campaign manager at the Center for Media Justice, a nonprofit group that has long fought for prison phone reform, called the senators' letter "an important vote of confidence for the FCC as they prepare to take a historic vote to end predatory phone rates.

"Making prison phone calls affordable is an important step towards undoing the profit driven system of incarceration in the United States that extracts millions of dollars from families with loved ones on the inside," Renderos told Motherboard.

Booker and Sanders were joined by Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Bob Casey (D-PA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Al Franken (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Sheldon Whitehouse, (D-RI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and Gary Peters (D-MI).

The FCC is scheduled to vote on the new prison phone rate caps at its October 22 open meeting. FCC commissioner Clyburn, who has made prison phone reform a personal mission, is expected to be joined by the other two Democratic commissioners to approve the new policy.

In their letter, the senators criticized the controversial industry practice of paying so-called "commissions"—the lawmakers called them "kick-backs"—to correctional facilities in exchange for prison phone contracts.

Many corrections officials say these "commissions" are necessary to supplement cash-strapped prison budgets and help pay for inmate services, but the senators noted that the payments create incentives for prisons to "profit from charging inmates higher rates."

"What may come as a financial benefit to institutions comes at a serious social cost," the senators wrote, "since many incarcerated people find the high costs of calling home prohibitive, and the high rates can keep them from staying in touch with loved ones."

The FCC's proposed policy "strongly discourages" such payments, but does not ban them outright.

The $1.2 billion prison phone industry is dominated by two companies, Securus Technologies and Global Tel*Link, which have exclusive contracts to provide phone service for inmates at most of the federal and state prisons around the country. Representatives for Securus and Global Tel*Link were not immediately available for comment.