A Captive Market

For millions of families, incarceration does not end at the prison gate. It follows them home in the form of phone bills, tablet fees, money-transfer charges, inflated commissary prices, and the constant pressure to pay for basic human connection and survival. What looks like a set of routine correctional services is, in practice, a captive-market economy built around people who cannot shop elsewhere and families who cannot simply walk away.^[1]

Prison telecommunications and commissary systems are often described as conveniences: calls to loved ones, electronic messages, music, hygiene items, snacks, religious goods, over-the-counter medicine. But for incarcerated people, these services are not luxuries. Communication is one of the strongest bridges to family stability, reentry preparation, and mental well-being. Commissary items often fill gaps left by institutional food, clothing, hygiene, and medical access. When these services are priced like premium products, the burden falls overwhelmingly on the people least able to pay.^[2]

A Captive Market by Design

The core problem is not merely that prices are high. It is that the market is structured to make high prices predictable. Correctional agencies typically award exclusive contracts to a single telecommunications, tablet, funds-transfer, or commissary vendor. Once the contract is signed, incarcerated people and their families cannot choose a cheaper provider, switch platforms, or bargain for better service. The prison selects the vendor; the family pays the bill.^[3]

The tablet market reinforces the same monopoly structure found in prison telecommunications. Correctional agencies typically contract with a single vendor for tablet services, leaving incarcerated people and their families with no meaningful choice of provider. Exclusive arrangements can cover messaging, video communication, entertainment content, digital mail delivery, trust-account access, and other daily services. Because consumers cannot choose between competing providers, vendors face limited pressure to reduce fees or improve service quality.^[12]

That lack of choice creates a powerful incentive for vendors to compete not by lowering prices for consumers, but by offering benefits to correctional agencies. In telecommunications, these benefits have historically included “site commissions”—revenue-sharing arrangements that return a portion of call, video, or messaging revenue to the facility or corrections department. In commissary systems, similar incentives appear through commissions, markups, administrative fees, and revenue flowing into special accounts often described as inmate welfare funds.^[4]

The result is a backward system: the people paying for the service have little or no market power, while the institution choosing the vendor may benefit from the very fees imposed on them. That is not a normal marketplace. It is a captive market with built-in incentives for exploitation.

The Cost of a Phone Call Is More Than Money

The prison telecommunications industry has long been dominated by a handful of corporations, particularly ViaPath Technologies (formerly Global Tel*Link) and Securus Technologies. Because correctional facilities typically award exclusive contracts, families have little meaningful choice over providers, rates, or service quality. The result has been a system in which communication itself becomes a revenue source rather than a rehabilitative tool. Tablets marketed as “free” to correctional institutions are frequently supported through pay-per-use ecosystems that charge incarcerated individuals for electronic messages, music, books, photographs, and other digital content. Even when the hardware is provided at no cost, the financial burden is transferred to incarcerated people and their families through a steady stream of usage fees and surcharges.^[5]

The growth of prison tablets has expanded the reach of the correctional marketplace far beyond phone calls. Modern tablet platforms frequently serve as all-in-one communications and entertainment systems, giving incarcerated people access to messaging, video calls, music, movies, games, educational content, account information, and commissary ordering. While these devices are often provided to prisons at little or no upfront cost, vendors recover that investment through user fees charged for digital content and services. As a result, communication and recreation increasingly operate on a pay-to-play model in which families shoulder the costs of maintaining contact and accessing basic digital services.^[11]

Recent federal reforms have placed unprecedented pressure on this business model. The Martha Wright-Reed Act expanded the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over incarcerated communications, including intrastate calls and video services, and enabled the agency to establish new rate caps. The FCC has recognized that incarcerated people have no meaningful choice of provider and that monopoly pricing harms families, public safety, and rehabilitation. At the same time, advocacy campaigns and increased regulatory scrutiny have challenged the economic foundations of prison telecom monopolies, exposing the extent to which family communication has been treated as a profit center rather than a public service. Even so, recent battles over rate-caps demonstrate how fragile these reforms remain when industry interests and corrections agencies seek to preserve existing revenue streams.^[6]

Martha Wright-Reed was a blind elderly grandmother from Washington, D.C., who became a national symbol of the fight against excessive prison phone rates after her incarcerated grandson was transferred more than 2,000 miles away to Arizona, making phone calls her only practical way to stay connected. In 2000, she became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the high cost of prison calls and the exclusive telecom contracts that made those costs unavoidable for families. The law was named for her because her personal struggle helped launch the broader movement that led to federal action on prison phone rates, including expanded FCC authority to regulate both interstate and intrastate incarcerated communications.^[14]

The human stakes are obvious. A child should not have to lose regular contact with a parent because a private vendor and a correctional agency built a profit model around a phone line. A spouse should not have to choose between a utility bill and a video call. A parent should not have to pay inflated transfer fees just to help a loved one buy toothpaste, stamps, or supplemental food.

Commissary: The Company Store Behind Bars

The commissary system raises the same ethical problem in a different form. Incarcerated people frequently earn pennies per hour yet must buy many everyday items at prices far above community retail costs. Reports describe commissary markups reaching several hundred percent on food, hygiene products, medicine, and other necessities. When wages are extremely low and prices are inflated, the bill moves outside the facility and lands on families.^[7]

In many facilities, commissary purchases are not discretionary. Institutional food may be insufficient, limited in variety, or nutritionally inadequate, making supplemental food purchases a practical necessity rather than a luxury. Studies of prison commissary systems have documented markups reaching several hundred percent above community retail prices, with some products costing many times their market value. Hygiene items, over-the-counter medications, religious goods, and basic food products frequently become significant financial burdens for incarcerated people earning only pennies per hour.

That burden is often regressive. Families already dealing with lost income, childcare costs, transportation barriers, court debt, and emotional strain are asked to subsidize the basic living needs of someone in state custody. If they cannot, incarcerated people may go without, rely on debt, or be pushed into informal prison economies that create further risk.

The commissary market is also highly concentrated. Large vendors such as Keefe Commissary Network and other national contractors dominate prison store operations across the country. Like prison telecommunications providers, they benefit from exclusive contracts that prevent consumers from seeking lower-cost alternatives. In some jurisdictions, commissions or revenue-sharing arrangements allow corrections agencies to receive a percentage of commissary sales, creating incentives that can conflict with affordability and consumer protection.

Both commissary commissions and welfare-fund revenue make the conflict of interest even clearer. Money collected from inflated prices and service fees may be routed into discretionary funds controlled by correctional systems. These funds are often described as supporting incarcerated people, but research has shown that they can function as shadow budgets, paying for operations, staff expenses, equipment, or other institutional priorities. If the state is responsible for incarceration, it should fund correctional operations transparently through appropriations—not through hidden charges imposed on incarcerated people and their families.^[8]

Dark Money in Plain Sight

These revenue streams are troubling because they are both visible and obscure. Families see the charges immediately: a fee to deposit money, a fee to send a message, a high price for ramen, deodorant, or medicine. What they often cannot see is where the money goes after payment, how commissions are calculated, how contracts are awarded, how welfare funds are spent, or whether lower-cost alternatives were rejected because they produced less revenue for the institution.

This is the “dark money” problem inside prison services. It is not dark because it is imaginary; it is dark because it is difficult for the public to trace. Revenue generated from families can move through vendor contracts, commissions, account fees, welfare funds, and discretionary spending with far less scrutiny than ordinary public budgeting. That opacity allows correctional systems to rely on the poorest families as an off-budget funding source.

The increasing reliance on tablets also illustrates how correctional revenue streams can become embedded in everyday prison operations. Some contracts provide commissions tied to video calls, entertainment content, and other fee-based services, creating financial incentives that may conflict with affordability. Critics argue that when agencies benefit from higher usage and higher fees, the system becomes less focused on communication and rehabilitation and more dependent on revenue generation.^[13]

Reform must therefore be about more than lowering one rate or banning one fee. It must address the incentive structure that rewards agencies and vendors when families pay more.

What Real Reform Should Require

Meaningful reform should start with a simple principle: incarceration should not create a profit opportunity from family connection or basic need. Public agencies should not be allowed to balance budgets on the backs of incarcerated people’s loved ones.^[9]

• Ban commissions and kickbacks tied to communications, commissary, deposits, tablets, and digital services.
• Require contracts to prioritize the lowest total cost to incarcerated people and families, not the highest revenue return to the facility.
• Mandate full price transparency, including all deposit charges, service fees, infrastructure fees, markups, and refund rules.
• Cap commissary prices for essential goods at or near community retail prices, with special protections for hygiene items, food staples, medicine, writing materials, and religious items.
• Provide free or deeply affordable voice and video communication so families can maintain contact without financial punishment.
• Subject welfare funds and similar accounts to public audits, clear spending limits, and independent oversight.
• Prohibit the use of family-funded revenue for ordinary prison operating costs that should be covered through transparent public budgets.
• Create enforceable consumer protections through agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, public utility regulators, and correctional oversight bodies.
• Ensure that educational programming, law library access, grievance systems, account information, and family communication functions remain free or available at minimal cost through prison tablet systems.
• Prohibit the replacement of in-person visitation, traditional mail, or physical educational resources with mandatory fee-based digital alternatives.

Michigan Has a Stake in the Fight

Michigan illustrates how deeply these systems have become embedded in correctional operations. The Michigan Department of Corrections relies on major national vendors for communications, digital services, electronic fund transfers, commissary operations, and family package programs. ViaPath serves as the state’s telephone provider through its ConnectNetwork and AdvancePay systems, while JPay provides digital tablet infrastructure and electronic messaging services. Commissary operations and family package programs are managed through Keefe Commissary Network and its affiliate Access Securepak. These arrangements place Michigan squarely within the broader national debate over whether correctional services should be structured around public responsibility or private extraction.^[10]

Michigan is also facing important decisions about the future of these services. The state has initiated a procurement process for prisoner store and family package operations, creating an opportunity to reevaluate how correctional contracts are awarded and whether affordability, transparency, and family access should be weighed more heavily in future agreements. The choices made during contract renewals will influence not only service providers but also the financial burdens borne by incarcerated people and their families.

Reform efforts in Michigan are supported by a network of advocacy organizations working to reduce the financial burdens associated with incarceration. Safe & Just Michigan has highlighted the ways court debt, communication costs, and prison-related expenses destabilize families and undermine successful reentry. Humanity for Prisoners works directly with incarcerated people and their families to address barriers within the correctional system, including financial and administrative obstacles. Civil-liberties advocates have also raised concerns about the growing reliance on digital-only communication systems and the impact those systems can have on access, transparency, and family connection.

Grassroots advocates increasingly frame excessive communication charges, commissary markups, and transaction fees as economic justice issues. The financial burden created by these costs does not stop at prison walls. Families struggling to pay for phone calls, messaging services, deposits, and commissary purchases are often the same families already facing economic hardship. In this way, correctional pricing policies can have ripple effects throughout communities across Michigan.

For Michigan policymakers, the challenge is not simply reducing costs but ensuring accountability. Greater transparency in contracts, stronger public oversight, independent auditing of correctional revenue streams, and procurement policies that prioritize family access over institutional profit would represent meaningful steps toward reform. If rehabilitation and successful reentry are truly public goals, Michigan’s correctional systems should be evaluated by how effectively they support family connections, not by how much revenue those connections can generate.

For Michigan families, reform is not theoretical. It affects whether a grandmother can afford weekly calls, whether a child can hear a parent’s voice, whether an incarcerated person can buy basic hygiene supplies, and whether public money is accounted for openly. State procurement decisions, contract renewals, and legislative oversight should all be evaluated through one question: Does this reduce the burden on families, or does it preserve a revenue stream from them?

A System Built on Family Sacrifice Must End

Prisons are public institutions. Their costs should be publicly debated, publicly funded, and publicly accountable. When states outsource essential services to private monopolies and allow revenue-sharing arrangements to flourish, they create a system where families become involuntary financiers of incarceration. That is not justice. It is not fiscal responsibility. It is a hidden tax on love, poverty, and survival.

Reforming prison telecommunications and commissary systems is not simply about cheaper phone calls or lower ramen prices. It is about ending a business model that turns human connection into a commodity, basic needs into profit centers, and family loyalty into an off-budget funding mechanism. If prisons are serious about rehabilitation, public safety, and human dignity, they must stop charging families for the right to remain connected and stop using captive markets to extract money from those least able to afford it.

Notes

1. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, “Booker, Warren Introduce Legislation to End Predatory Junk Fees Imposed on Incarcerated Individuals and Their Families,” U.S. Senate; Prison Policy Initiative, “The Company Store: A Deeper Look at Prison Commissaries.”

2. Prison Policy Initiative, “The Company Store: A Deeper Look at Prison Commissaries”; Fines and Fees Justice Center, Locked In, Priced Out: How Prison Commissary Price-Gouging Preys on the Incarcerated.

3. National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Detention Facilities Communication Companies; Prison Policy Initiative, Regulating the Prison Phone Industry.

4. Prison Policy Initiative; Prison Legal News, “Locked In, Priced Out: Markups and Kickbacks in Prison Commissaries”; Fines and Fees Justice Center, Locked In, Priced Out.

5. The Appeal, “The Slow Death of a Prison Profiteer: How Activism Brought Securus to the Brink”; Prison Legal News, Pay-for-Play Tablets: The Costly New Prison Paradigm; Booker and Warren, “Predatory Junk Fees.”

6. Federal Communications Commission, Incarcerated People’s Communications Services (IPCS); Prison Policy Initiative, Regulating the Prison Phone Industry; Filter Magazine, “Piece by Piece, FCC Dismantles Its Prison and Jail Phone Call Price Caps.”

7. Fines and Fees Justice Center, Locked In, Priced Out; The Appeal, “Locked In, Priced Out: How Prison Commissary Price-Gouging Preys on the Incarcerated”; Prison Legal News, “Markups and Kickbacks in Prison Commissaries.”

8. Prison Legal News, “Markups and Kickbacks in Prison Commissaries”; Prison Policy Initiative, “Federal Prison Rules Push for ‘Financial Responsibility’ While Impoverishing People.”

9. Booker and Warren, “Predatory Junk Fees”; Worth Rises; Fines and Fees Justice Center.

10. Michigan Department of Corrections, Telephone Calls with Prisoners; Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget contract documents for JPay and Keefe Commissary Network services.

11. Prison Legal News, Pay-for-Play Tablets: The Costly New Prison Paradigm. [prisonlegalnews.org]

12. Prison Legal News, Pay-for-Play Tablets: The Costly New Prison Paradigm. [prisonlegalnews.org]

13. Prison Legal News, Pay-for-Play Tablets: The Costly New Prison Paradigm.

14. OurFreedom.ai, “Honoring Martha Wright-Reed: A Grandma Who Changed America,” https://ourfreedom.ai/blog/honoring-martha-wright-reed-a-grandma-who-changed-america/.