Marking up prices for phone calls and commissary items is a common practice in jails and prisons across the country, but San Francisco now joins a growing number of cities, counties, and states that are reducing or eliminating these costs, including New York City who made all calls from jail free in 2019. The plan to make jail phone calls free and end commissary markups was funded in Mayor Breed’s budget for Fiscal Year 2019-20 and was developed by the Sheriff’s Office over the past year. Prior to these reforms, if an incarcerated person made two 15-minute phone calls a day in San Francisco, it would cost $300 over 70 days, which is the average jail stay, or $1,500 over the course of the year.
Under the new contract with GTL, rather than paying the vendor per call minute as families did, the City will pay the vendor a fixed monthly rate per phone device. The innovative cost structure better reflects the cost of service paid by the vendor to provide access to phones in all county jails. The new contract also allows for free video calls.
The contract is a win-win for incarcerated people and the City of San Francisco. In 2018, incarcerated people and their families paid over a million dollars for phone calls from San Francisco jails. In 2020, incarcerated people will pay nothing for calls and the Sheriff’s Office will seek to maximize phone access as much as possible across all jails. For the City, the contract is also a good deal. Overall, San Francisco taxpayers will pay less for jail communications than incarcerated families previously paid to the phone provider.
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