Managing the Cost of Staying in Touch

Staying in touch by phone, video, and mail costs money, and for many families it becomes one of the larger and more unpredictable expenses connected to a loved one's incarceration. Per-minute call rates, video visit fees, and account funding charges vary by facility and vendor, and they are not always obvious until an account has already been set up.

Some states and jurisdictions have passed laws capping call rates or making calls free, while others have not, so the cost a family pays can differ sharply depending on where their loved one is held. This is genuinely a patchwork, and it is worth checking rather than assuming a cost you heard about elsewhere applies to you.

This lesson lays out the categories of cost so a family can budget realistically and ask the right questions, rather than being surprised by a bill or an account fee after the fact.

Most facilities contract with a single vendor for phone and video service, and that vendor sets the per-minute rate, connection fees, and any charge for funding or maintaining an account. Rates can differ significantly between facilities, even within the same state.

Video visitation, where offered, is frequently billed per session rather than per minute, and equipment or app requirements can add cost if a family does not already have a compatible device.

A number of states have moved to cap in-state call rates or eliminate charges altogether for calls from state facilities, following advocacy specifically focused on this cost. Whether this applies to your situation depends on the state and whether the facility is state, county, or federal, so it is worth asking directly rather than assuming a rule you read about nationally applies locally.

Traditional mail costs postage and paper, which is modest, but many facilities now use a scanning system where original mail is digitized and the family receives, or the person inside receives, a copy rather than the physical item. Some of these systems charge a fee to the sender or the recipient's account.

Photos sent by mail sometimes require a specific paper type or format, and some facilities restrict how many can be included per letter, which affects the practical cost of sending photos regularly.

Money sent to a person's commissary or trust account, to cover their own purchases including phone credit in some systems, usually goes through a specific vendor with its own transaction fee, separate from the phone or mail vendor.

Ask the facility or vendor whether bulk funding of a phone account reduces per-minute cost or fees compared to funding small amounts repeatedly — some vendors charge a flat fee per funding transaction regardless of amount, which makes smaller, more frequent top-ups more expensive overall.

Some nonprofit and advocacy organizations maintain updated information on state-by-state call rate rules and can point a family toward the current, accurate figure for their state rather than a number that may be outdated.

Where legal aid or family support organizations exist locally, ask whether they know of any available financial assistance specifically for calls, video visits, or trust account deposits — some jurisdictions or nonprofits offer this, though it is not universal.

Because rates and rules vary this much, the only reliable way to budget is to get the actual current rate for the actual vendor at the actual facility, rather than estimating from a number seen online or heard from another family.

Once you have the real numbers, decide as a family what a sustainable weekly or monthly amount looks like for calls and video, and communicate that plainly to the incarcerated family member so nobody is caught off guard by a account running low mid-week.