A federal appeals court today struck down price caps on intrastate phone calls made by prisoners. Inmates will thus have to continue paying high prices to make phone calls to family members, friends, and lawyers.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with prison phone company Global Tel*Link in its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. But that's exactly what the FCC's current leadership wanted. The FCC imposed the prison phone rate caps during the Obama administration, but current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai instructed commission lawyers to drop their court defense of the intrastate caps.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:48PM (1 child)
Chairman Pai is a good lapdog.
I'm glad prisoners will be back to working 6 hours (or their family two minimum-wage hours) for every minute they wish to call their family.
Best way to help them be ready, when they get out after their 10 years minimum sentence for walking in the wrong place while not white.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday June 15 2017, @12:17AM
Not only that, when they get out it will be critical to their re-integration to have live family ties. Simply as a public safety thing the phone calls to family should be charged at market rates at most.