Arkansas Jail Cutting Inmate Phone Service Entirely March 30
Service cutoff is days before a FCC prison call rate caps set to take effect for small jails
WASHINGTON, March 8, 2025 – When federal rules to lower jail phone rates take effect next month, Baxter County, Arkansas, won’t be offering cheaper calls to inmates — they won’t be offering phone service at all.
State Broadband
Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery announced that the county’s 100-person jail will eliminate phone service entirely on March 30 — just days before the Federal Communications Commission’s new rate caps go into effect for jails with fewer than 1,000 detainees.
“Due to new regulations being put in place by the [FCC] that begin on April 1, the Baxter County Sheriff's Office has determined that it will no longer be feasible to keep and maintain the inmate phone system in use at the Baxter County Detention Center,” Montgomery wrote in a statement.
Under the FCC’s rules, the cost of a 15-minute phone call will drop to $0.90 from as much as $11.35 in large jails and, to $1.35 from $12.10, in small jails, according to the FCC.
Montgomery justified the move, claiming, “An inmate phone system is a means of communication that… is not required to be provided by law.”
Montgomery's reasoning mirrors arguments made by the National Sheriffs’ Association in a legal brief filed last month in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. “Access to IPCS [incarcerated people’s communication services] is not a given,” the association warned in its court filing.
The sheriffs’ association is backing a 14-state lawsuit, led by Arkansas and Indiana attorneys general, seeking to block the FCC’s rate caps, which went into effect for large prisons on January 1.
The communications provider at Arkansas’s Baxter County Jail is Securus Technologies, a major player in the prison phone industry, serving more than 3,400 correctional facilities nationwide. Securus has been leading the charge against the FCC’s rate caps, arguing they violate provisions that “all” IPCS providers are ”fairly compensated,” within the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act.
Part of a broader, nationwide fight, says Worth Rises
Representatives from Worth Rises, one of the public interest groups intervening in the case, told Broadband Breakfast on Thursday that they believe Baxter County's move is not just a local decision but part of an effort to create a public narrative that supports the industry’s legal fight.
“What he [Montgomery] is doing is creating a narrative for the courts, the public, the FCC that is in support of what the states are filing, [and] what the [National Sheriffs’ Association] is filing,” said Worth Rises Executive Director Bianca Tylek.
The FCC’s new rules prohibit jails from collecting commissions on phone calls — a practice where counties shared revenue with prison telecom companies in exchange for contracts. The rules also prevent telecom providers from passing the majority of surveillance costs onto incarcerated people and their families.
Jails are still allowed to monitor and record calls, but they can no longer force families to foot the bill for it, she said.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed multiple lawsuits against a separate sheriff in St. Louis, Missouri, Alfred Montgomery, as lawsuits against Sheriff John Montgomery. The story has been corrected.
