Calling from prison can be expensive--traditionally, prisoners have called collect, using the prison's very expensive phone service.
Then competing phone services intervened, allowing prisoners' relatives to reduce their phone bills considerably. For the most part, these competing services use call forwarding: "An inmate's relatives establish a number near the prison that the inmate can call at the prison's local rate, typically much less expensive than long distance. The call is then forwarded to the relative's home, at a privately negotiated rate well below what the prison would charge."
Now, prisons across the country are cracking down on these competitors, blocking prisoners' calls and threatening prisoners with solitary confinement if they or their relatives try to get around the prison's phone service.
The prisons claim that requiring use of their own phone services allows monitoring; furthermore, the revenue generated pays for prison services. (The state also gets a big chunk of the phone revenues.)
Inmate advocates argue that prisons are creating "a modern version of the old mining town's 'company store'--charging exorbitant prices and allowing no choices."
Read the story here.