DeSantis veto of free prison phone call appropriation disappoints criminal justice reform advocates

(Photo by Iuoman/Getty Images)

Responding to reports that prisoner contact with loved ones helps reduce the recidivism rate, state lawmakers last year approved a $1 million pilot project to allow inmates with good behavior to make one free 15-minute phone call per month to the outside world.

Pleased with its rollout, members of the Florida Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations came back during the 2024 legislative session with a budget line item expanding the program to $2 million from an inmate trust fund, and not from general revenues.

But Gov. Ron DeSantis slashed that line item in June. Advocates for prison and criminal justice reform say that’s a problem.

“Keeping families connected is very important for re-entry and so is the education,” said Karen Stuckey, who’s had to deal with escalating phone bills as both her son and husband have been incarcerated in Florida prisons. “If you want somebody to be successful, you have to keep them connected to their families or their loved ones. Because when you get out, it’s really, really hard.”

“If you want somebody to be successful, you have to keep them connected to their families or their loved ones. Because when you get out, it’s really, really hard.

– Karen Stuckley, wife and mother to inmates

Independent studies have shown the benefits of allowing inmates to make keep in contact with loved ones. A 2006 report from the Urban Institute found that within five years of release, incarcerated people with strong family connections were 25% more likely to cease criminal activity. A 2005 report on incarcerated mothers’ contact with children found that telephone calls, even more than physical visits, related to positive maternal perceptions of relationships with children.

In Florida, inmates may only make collect calls, for which the correction department’s vendor, ViaPath Technologies (formerly Global Tel* Link Corp.) charges 13.5 cents a minute. They still are allowed two, free, 5-minute calls per month. The Department of Corrections receives $5 million a year from its telephone commissions via its $24.375 million contract with ViaPath, signed in 2020.

This is not a new issue. In 1998, the Florida House of Representatives issued a report regarding state policies on mail, visiting, and telephone access.

“The agency’s strategic plan for 1998-2003 recognizes that more than 95% of the offenders will at some point be released to the community, and that programs must be provided to ensure public safety,” the report concluded.

It noted that while rehab programs target matters like job- and life skills and substance abuse, “there is little mention of using the family to assist in rehabilitation, or the importance of inmates having family contacts.”

Last fall, Massachusetts became the fifth state in the country to eliminate fees for prison and jail calls, joining Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Colorado.

Modest program

Florida’s one-year pilot program was relatively modest, providing just one free 15-minute call a month.

Stuckey is a Volusia County resident who initially led the movement to provide free calls to inmates. Her costs for phone calls totaled $6,095 for the two years between March 2020 and April 2022, she said. During the same period, her cellphone bills for personal calls with unlimited service cost her $1,038.

Realizing the cost was unsustainable but not willing to stop communicating with her family members, she began reaching out to state lawmakers about doing something.

Broward County Democratic state Sen. Lauren Book responded to Stuckey’s appeal and filed a proposal during the 2022 session requiring the Department of Corrections to provide inmates phone calls free of charge. Her bill didn’t acquire a House sponsor but died without being heard in any committee.

Meanwhile, in Gainesville, two idealistic University of Florida students with no direct connection to the incarcerated were searching for policy issues they could invest their energy into when they learned about the movement to provide free phone calls to the incarcerated.

Graham Bernstein and Konstantin Nakov, with the student-led Florida Student Policy Forum at UF, were reviewing news articles about what was taking place in state legislatures around the country when they came upon an article in the Harvard Political Review detailing the exorbitant costs of prison phone calls and how there was little competition within the prison phone call market.

They were emboldened to act when they attended a Future of Florida Summit on the UF campus and heard about the significance of providing free phone calls to inmates from Kevin Scott with Community Spring, a Gainesville nonprofit economic justice group, which was already working with the formerly incarcerated in Alachua County.

Free jail calls

Newly inspired, the Florida Student Policy Forum began advocating to have free calls provided for inmates at the Alachua County Jail. (That program, which provides free phone calls to inmates, began last October and continues).

Simultaneously, Bernstein teamed with Stuckey and other prison reform advocates to lobby state legislators about a similar proposal. Those efforts reached fruition when the Florida Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations approved the $1 million appropriation for free phone calls that DeSantis signed into law in 2023.

Unlike many who get involved in prisoner reform, Bernstein doesn’t have any friends or family in the corrections department.

“I was just convinced by the weight of the data and the weight of the research, and the conversations that I had with people who either had been incarcerated themselves or have family members who are incarcerated,” he told the Phoenix.

“There is a robust history of research and documentation about how communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones can reduce recidivism rates, improve public safety, and save taxpayer dollars,” Bernstein said.

The Biden administration and Congress agree. Last month, the Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to implement the bipartisan Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act , a law that Biden signed in January 2023 that ensures inmate communication charges at prisons and jails across the nation are “just and reasonable.”

“The Commission has long recognized — and worked to combat — the negative consequences that unreasonable communications rates and charges have on incarcerated people, their families and loved ones, and society at large,” an FCC report on the law said last month.

“The record in this proceeding provides overwhelming evidence of the substantial burden excessive communications rates have on the ability of incarcerated people to stay connected and maintain the vital, human bonds that sustain families and friends when a loved one is incarcerated.”

No burden to taxpayers

Advocates for the Florida free phone call program are particularly upset because the $2 million allocated to expand the free phone call program wouldn’t have involved taxpayer money but rather the Inmate Welfare Trust Fund. That account contains proceeds from operating inmate canteens, vending machines used by inmates and visitors, hobby shops and “other such facilities,” as listed in Florida law .

“I think it’s so important for people to understand this — this is not coming out of the state’s budget — this is trust-fund money,” said Denise Rock of the inmate advocacy group Florida Cares. “That wasn’t Florida’s money. That’s not taxpayer dollars.”

“The whole thing just doesn’t make any sense,” said Bernstein, now in his senior year at the University of Florida.

The governor did not publicly comment about why he rejected the appropriations. Karen Stuckey believes “he was trying to make his numbers look good about how much he slashed out of the budget.” She noted that the line item was listed as the Inmate Phone Call Pilot. “Anything with inmates, he could care less [about],” she said.

“It disappoints me that the governor vetoed it,” added St. Petersburg-based Democratic state Sen. Darryl Rouson, a member of the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations that approved funding for the program over the past two years.

“It sounds like an excellent program that would help with inmate attitudes while they’re in prison and could contribute to the safety of correctional officers. If you have a happy inmate who feels connected to his family, then you would think that would add to the atmosphere while they’re locked up.”

Bernstein said he remains optimistic, despite his disappointment at the veto.

“They’re still people at the end of the day and their families are people, too,” he said of the inmates. “So, treat them like people and you can see reduced recidivism rates and taxpayer savings, so that’s basically what I would give as an answer.

“I understand that there are differences on policy, but that’s how I would personally defend the pilot program and why I think a state with a conservative Legislature like Florida was ripe to implement it, and why it should be implemented in the future.”

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