Budget conference: Senate wants expansion of prison phone calls program

Calls home to family can offer the incarcerated a lifeline to the outside world. Now, the Senate wants more opportunities for prisoners to earn phone time for good behavior.

The latest offer from the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee budgets $2 million to a phone call savings pilot program for prison inmates’ families.

The Department of Corrections last year launched a pilot program that would make a limited number of phone calls free and to dole those out to inmates demonstrating good behavior.

Under the program, incarcerated individuals who don’t receive a disciplinary report for three months could be eligible for a free 15-minute phone call, according to coverage in the Orlando Sentinel when it launched.

The state last year budgeted $1 million for the program, and the House Justice Appropriations Subcommittee had that much in its last budget offer. But Senators hope to double the amount of money allocated.

Of note, phone calls from Florida prisons are made collect, meaning the families receiving calls from inmates must cover the cost. Typically, those calls cost 13.5 cents per minute. The state’s communications provider does provide inmates with two free five-minute calls each month, but the pilot program allows inmates the chance to have another phone call each month that runs three times that length at no cost.

Of note, Alachua County last year began allowing free, unlimited calls from its county jail. That policy was proposed by a student group, the Florida Student Policy Forum, at the University of Florida, according to The Independent Florida Alligator.

The same organization has lobbied for the pilot program at Florida prisons and has supported that program’s expansion to something similar to the policy at the Alachua County Jail.

For now, support for the program continuing with at least its existing budget appears to exist in both chambers, with Senators looking for a rapid expansion.