Congress Tried Twice to Reduce Prison Phone Rates

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11, 2025 – Two years before Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission to rein in the cost of prison phone calls, lawmakers in the House tried to impose their own limits on the industry.

That House effort began in 2021 when Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., introduced the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act. The bill sought to reform the incarcerated communications marketplace by setting interim call rates at just four to five cents per minute, explicitly banning payments telecom providers make to correctional facilities in exchange for exclusive contracts, and imposing strict limits on ancillary fees.

While House lawmakers' more prescriptive approach never made it out of committee, it paved the way for a narrower Senate version that became law on January 5, 2023, after passed by the Senate on Dec. 21, 2022, and passage by the House on Dec. 22, 2022.

The Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, the January 2023 law, required that all prison and detention communications rates be “just and reasonable,” but left it to the FCC to decide what that means – authority the FCC has since used to revisit and scale back its own rules.

While both measures directed the FCC to set “just and reasonable” rates, they differed sharply in how much guidance Congress provided.