Why LA County Supervisors Want To Make Jail Phone Calls Free

Will phone calls become free for people incarcerated in America’s largest jail system?

L.A. County is a step closer to following in the footsteps of state prisons in California, after county supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to ask Sheriff Robert Luna to eliminate the fees required to make calls.

How county officials will balance the cost of implementing the change is unclear. Officials are still figuring out how to replace an estimated $30 million per year from the jail phone fees that pays for education programs and maintenance at the jails.

The backstory

A past move by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to eliminate the fees never went into effect.

More than two years ago, in May 2021, supervisors declared they had approved making the calls free. But it turned out that action only directed a study of the issue, and the fees are still in place.

This week’s action, in contrast, is a direct ask to remove the fees. It requests the sheriff provide free calls by Dec. 1 to people incarcerated, and directs county staff to find funding to pay for it.

Luna’s office declined to answer questions from LAist on whether the sheriff will follow through on eliminating the fees. A spokesperson told us sheriff officials will work with the county to “assess the feasibility and implementation” of the request.

The phone call fees – often paid by family members and friends of people in jail – generate tens of millions of dollars per year for L.A. County’s jail system. But research has pointed to the high fees as barriers to positive social connections, making it more likely that people end up back in jail after they’re released.

What changes are coming?

“Communication with family and friends as we know, is incredibly beneficial to someone's mental health well-being while incarcerated and is a factor in reducing the risk of recidivism,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis at Tuesday’s supervisors meeting.

“To me, this is a public safety issue and investing in prevention,” Solis added. “Prevention of people cycling in and out of our jails.”

Solis brought forward the motion to make the calls free, along with Supervisor Holly Mitchell.

What happened at the meeting

At Tuesday’s meeting, Mitchell shifted gears and wanted the county to instead study how to replace the lost fee revenue before asking to eliminate the fees.

But after Solis criticized that idea, Mitchell changed her position and supported the original proposal to ask the sheriff to eliminate the fees. She said the county has been misusing the revenue from the phone program – which county auditors also have found.

“We are asking people who are locked up and their families to pay for staffing and programs that we as the entity that locked them up should be providing,” Mitchell said.

“It's a regressive tax.”

The vote comes after state legislators passed a law making phone calls free in state prisons. That law doesn’t apply to county jails.

Funding challenges

One of the big challenges supervisors face is how to replace the money they’d lose if the phone calls become free.

The roughly $30 million per year raised from phone calls is used to pay for jail maintenance and education programs.

For now, supervisors directed county staff to look at drawing down the $48 million in revenue from the phone calls that’s piled up in recent years.

Supervisors say money from the phone calls has been misspent – and they don’t have clear tracking on where it ended up.

“We really don’t know where that money is going,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said of the jail phone revenues.

“I know that they are out of compliance,” Solis said, of the funds from the phone calls.

Audits found problems

A 2021 county audit found the Sheriff’s Department may have been illegally spending almost half of the jail phone fees on jail maintenance, despite state law restricting its use for maintenance and requiring that the money mainly be used for the education and wellbeing of people incarcerated.

Other nearby counties were putting a much larger share of their jail phone fees toward programs for people incarcerated — up to 85% — compared to L.A. County’s 51%, the audit found.

A follow-up audit later that year found sheriff officials had not implemented recommendations to ensure the phone revenues aren’t illegally used for the county’s jail maintenance responsibilities. And another review in late 2021 found sheriff officials repeatedly failed to provide supervisors with a detailed list of how the money was spent, despite state law requiring it.

L.A. County is now facing a lawsuit over its high jail phone fees, alleging it’s an illegal tax used to fund the jails.

Luna’s media relations department declined Tuesday to say what the current phone call fees for L.A. County jails are, saying the request would instead have to be made as a formal Public Records Act request.

Such requests often take 10 days or longer for government agencies to provide records.