WASHINGTON — A decade after families of prison inmates asked for action, the Federal Communications Commission agreed to limit how much companies can charge for phone calls made from behind bars.
The FCC voted 2-1 to cap interstate phone rates at 21 cents a minute for debit or prepaid calls and 25 cents a minute for collect calls. Companies wanting to set higher rates would have to file a request for a waiver and could not charge more until that waiver was granted.
The FCC has said that inmates, or people who pay their bills, are being charged fees that range from 50 cents to $3.95 to place calls, plus additional per-minute rates from 5 cents to 89 cents. In some cases, a 15-minute call has cost $17, and numerous fees have been tacked on to call charges. Inmates’ families, many of them poor, usually are stuck with the bills. For security, inmates are not allowed to have cellphones.
‘‘For 10 years, the families and friends of inmates have been asking the FCC to ease the burden of an inmate calling rate structure.,’’ said FCC acting chairwoman Mignon Clyburn.
The petition asking the FCC to regulate inmate phone call rates was filed in 2003 on behalf of families after a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Martha Wright-Reed against a private prison company. She had struggled to keep up with phone bills while her grandson was incarcerated.