Inmate Telephone Services Are A Rip-Off

If you have a loved one in prison right now, you probably already know the high price of using the phone systems that correctional facilities have in place. The prices are absolutely ridiculous.

In some places, inmates have to pay as high as 37 cents just to make an in state call. Talk about kicking someone when they are down. That's something like 10 - 20 times what normal citizens are paying.

Why are inmates being taken advantage of like this?

I mean come on, they are already in prison, why punish them and their families even more with huge phone bills?

The families of these inmates are being hurt the most. Guess who is paying the bills? Not the inmates, they have no income. The families have to pay the bills. And usually these families are already struggling financially because the main bread winner is in prison.

California Gets Rich off Inmate Telephone services: People have been trying to fight the government for a long time to lower the cost of Inmate phone services. But the fight is going slowly and making very little progress, and there is a reason for this.

State governments are getting rich income made from Inmate Telephone Services. From 2002 to 2007 California collected more than $303 million in revenue from their Inmate Telephone Service. Holy cow! Are you kidding me?

If states are making this much off prison phone services I doubt they will be looking to eliminate that income stream any time soon, especially with a crappy economy.

How to Lower your Inmate Telephone Service Bills : Ok, so you are in a bind. You don't want to pay the sky high bills that prisons charge, but you want to talk to your loved one who is behind bars. Here is how to lower that bill..

Some states allow the use of Debit/Prepaid calling cards that will give you a lower calling rate.

The states that allow this are:

Please note: Most prisons will not allow inmates to call toll free numbers such as
1-800 numbers. They block these numbers because inmate abuse.

So if you are going to buy a Debit/Prepaid calling cards, make sure the card has a non toll free access number.