New federal guidelines will bring down the price of phone calls and remote video visitation at the Sedgwick County Jail starting next year.
People in the jail or their families pay 16 cents per minute for a phone call and 19 cents per minute for a remote video visit. Under the rate caps the Federal Communication Commission passed this month, large jails can only charge 6 cents per minute for a phone call and 11 cents for video visits – cutting the price of a 15-minute phone call by more than a half.
Sedgwick County Jail Administrator Jared Schechter said the jail is planning to implement the FCC guidelines in a new contract in February 2025.
“We’ve already talked with our vendor and made it very clear that we will go down to whatever the cap is, and our vendors assure us that there will not be a problem,” Schechter said.
The FCC passed the new rate caps to end excessive phone and visitation rates, which it said “have burdened incarcerated people and their families for decades.”
People in the Sedgwick County Jail and their families have felt the burden. James Houston Bales, an attorney with the Sedgwick County Public Defender Office, called the rates predatory.
“You have to pay through the nose for a video visit, for your phone calls, and it just adds to the problem, especially when you consider the fact that there are not a lot of rich people in the Sedgwick County Jail,” Bales said.
The Sedgwick County Jail offers three free in-person 20-minute video visits a week, but some families may have trouble getting to the jail, Bales said. He also said communication is vital for not only people in jail, but their families.
This is the first time the FCC is putting rate caps on video visitation. After Congress congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022, it empowered the FCC to regulate phone calls and video calls in prisons and jails in states.
Schechter said the Sedgwick County Jail wants to make communication costs as fair as possible.
