Monday, July 27, 2022
Dear Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and members of the Committee:
I am writing on behalf of Progressive Massachusetts to thank you for your support of legislation that would keep families connected by eliminating the cost of phone calls for those who are incarcerated and for their loved ones. As you and the other members of the Conference Committee consider the FY23 budget reports, we urge you to consider that, to truly keep families connected, calls should be free, fully funded, and guaranteed.
We are proud to be among the 70 organizations, including legal service providers, public defenders, social workers, bar associations, and directly-affected people, that have advocated for No Cost Calls. We recognize that criminal legal reform is a racial justice issue and that mass incarceration disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities and people living in poverty. We understand that families often have to choose between staying connected to an incarcerated loved one and paying for necessities like rent or food—or risk going into debt.
We urge you to include the following essential pieces in the ultimate budget language:
Guaranteed Telephone Access
Currently, Massachusetts jails and prisons do not restrict how many minutes incarcerated people can talk to their loved ones each day. Calls are only limited by the cost. The Legislature must ensure that this current level of contact does not decrease once calls are free. Both the House and the Senate have approved language that aims to avoid new restrictions on access to phone calls. We urge you to bar any new caps on calls in order to maintain continuity and to guarantee at least 120 minutes per person per day.
Funding of Communication Services
We strongly support the House language creating a $20M Trust Fund dedicated to communication services. Upon proof of expenditures, the Fund would reimburse prisons and jails for their spending on communication services. That Trust Fund should be in the final FY23 budget, to take effect this year.
Prohibition on Commissions
Both the House and Senate budgets address site commissions, i.e., payments made by phone companies to jails and prisons, taken from revenue paid by consumers. While some Sheriffs have said they need this money to provide programs, the House and Senate have agreed that low-income telephone consumers should not pay for programs in the jails and prisons. Instead, the Sheriffs should seek such funding through their budget requests, with full transparency and accountability, and the Legislature should ban site commissions.
Start Date
Families have shouldered the financial hardship of paying the high costs of maintaining contact with their incarcerated loved ones for too long. We respectfully request that you include fully funded, guaranteed No Cost Calls in the final FY23 budget, to take effect this year.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director Progressive Massachusetts
