While the tech policy community debates Susan Crawford’s new book Captive Audience, her plea for sweeping regulation to avert a cable monopoly, a truly “captive audience” suffers: Inmates in state prisons across the country are paying exorbitant rates for telephone calls. While a fifteen minute local call (generally the maximum permitted length) might cost as little as $.50 in some states or $.90 in Federal prisons, it could cost $15 or more in others. This means a prisoner and his family might spend $240 per month just for him to call home an hour a week—not counting fees charged to prisoners for depositing money into calling cards or the cost to the family of setting up a separate number so the prisoner can make local calls from the prison, which is often far enough away for normal calls to be long-distance.

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