Incarcerated People's Communication Services; Implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act; Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

This is a summary of the Federal Communications Commission's (Commission's) Report and Order, document FCC 24-75, adopted on July 18, 2024 and released on July 22, 2024, in WC Docket Nos. 12-375 and 23-62. This summary is based on the public redacted version of the document, the full text of which can be obtained from the Commission's Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS) website at www.fcc.gov/edocs or via the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) website at www.fcc.gov/ecfs , or is available at the following internet address: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-75A1.pdf .

Synopsis

I. Introduction

1. Today we take the most significant steps thus far to fulfill the dream of Martha Wright-Reed, who advocated tirelessly to ensure that incarcerated people would be able to communicate with family and loved ones at just and reasonable rates. While this document implements the requirements of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 (Martha Wright-Reed Act or Act), this proceeding began over twenty years ago when a determined grandmother petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to take action against the egregiously high telephone rates and charges that were impeding incarcerated people's ability to stay connected with their families and friends. Martha Wright-Reed championed the idea of easing the financial burdens imposed on incarcerated people and their families simply to make a phone call. As a blind elderly woman, who could neither write letters nor travel such long distances for in-person visits, she often spent hundreds of dollars a month in long distance phone calls to stay in touch with her incarcerated grandson. In her honor, and in the face of years of litigation frustrating the Commission's reform efforts in this area, Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Act, significantly expanding the Commission's jurisdiction over incarcerated people's communications services (IPCS) and directing the Commission to “establish a compensation plan to . . . ensure just and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention facilities.”

2. In this item, we exercise the authority granted the Commission by Congress and adopt comprehensive reforms that will significantly reduce the financial burdens incarcerated people face to communicate with their loved ones. We first reduce existing rate caps for all incarcerated people's audio communication services, by implementing a methodology specifically permitted by Congress in the Act, and establish, for the first time, interim rate caps for incarcerated people's video communications services. We also materially reduce the prices consumers pay for IPCS by limiting the costs that can be recovered through IPCS rates to only costs that the Commission finds are used and useful in the provision of IPCS. We also permit states to maintain rates lower than the Commission's rate caps. We next end IPCS providers' long-standing practice of making site commission payments to carceral facilities, the costs of which were passed through to consumers via higher IPCS rates. We further strengthen the requirements for access to IPCS by incarcerated people with disabilities, and adopt stronger consumer protection rules. We also permit providers, for the first time, to offer optional alternate pricing plans, subject to conditions to protect and benefit IPCS consumers.

A. Executive Summary

3. The Report and Order implements the expanded authority granted to the Commission by the Martha Wright-Reed Act to establish a compensation plan that ensures both just and reasonable rates and charges for incarcerated people's audio and video communications services and fair compensation for incarcerated people's communications service providers. The Report and Order fundamentally reforms the regulation of IPCS in all correctional facilities, regardless of the technology used to deliver these services, and significantly lowers the IPCS rates that incarcerated people and their loved ones will pay. These comprehensive reforms:

• Utilize the expanded authority Congress granted the Commission, in conjunction with the FCC's preexisting statutory authority, to adopt just and reasonable IPCS rates and charges for all intrastate, interstate, and international audio and video IPCS, including video visitation services;
• Lower existing per-minute rate caps for audio IPCS and establish initial interim per-minute rate caps for video IPCS, based on industry-wide cost data submitted by IPCS providers, while permitting states to maintain IPCS rates lower than the Commission's rate caps;
• Lower the overall prices consumers pay for IPCS and simplify the pricing structure by incorporating the costs of ancillary services in the rate caps and prohibiting providers from imposing any separate ancillary service charges on IPCS consumers;
• Prohibit IPCS providers from making site commission payments for IPCS and preempt state and local laws and regulations requiring such commissions;
• Limit the costs associated with safety and security measures that can be recovered in the per-minute rates to only those costs that the Commission finds are used and useful in the provision of IPCS;
• Allow, subject to conditions, IPCS providers to offer alternate pricing plans for IPCS that comply with the rate caps we establish;
• Revise and strengthen accessibility requirements for IPCS for incarcerated people with disabilities;
• Revise and strengthen existing consumer disclosure and inactive account requirements; and
• Revise the existing annual reporting and certification requirements.

4. We adopt the following rate caps: