The staggering price prisoners’ relatives must pay to call their loved ones

WE ALL know about the “one phone call” supposedly allowed to arrestees. Most of us are less familiar with the price gouging by prison phone service providers that renders the many calls inmates make over the course of their time behind bars a huge burden. The Federal Communications Commission was fighting in court to cap rates on those calls when they occur within a single state — until February, when Chairman Ajit Pai decided to drop the defense.

Even a believer in free-market efficiency can recognize that, in this case, the market has failed. Because prisons receive commissions from the phone companies they contract with, facilities strike deals with providers not to get inmates the best service at the best rate, but to get themselves the biggest kickback. Mr. Pai has acknowledged as much in his discussion of the FCC’s less controversial efforts to regulate rates on calls made between (not within) states, which the agency will continue to defend. Yet the problem is the same inside state lines as across them. And the FCC’s regulation of interstate rates has prompted providers to push intrastate rates even higher.

That leaves people such as Joanne Jones struggling to find room in their budgets to talk to loved ones who have been shipped hundreds of miles away. Ms. Jones tallied in 2015 that she had spent more than $1,000 over the past year on the line with her son in Texas. In some states, a 15-minute phone call can cost as much as $15 or $20 . It likely costs a company no more than 5 cents per minute to transmit that call , and probably less, according to FCC filings submitted by Lee G. Petro, the pro bono counsel for inmate advocates.